Together with the Circle of Hell event next week, we’re launching Update #8.2.0 on Tuesday, October 29! With the update, we’re rolling out several changes to the game that you can find below.
We also wanted to take the time to talk more about the changes we’re making to create a unique Hardcore experience in Battlefield™ 2042!
//The Battlefield Team
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Hardcore
Hardcore Modifiers - These Modifiers will affect gameplay in official Hardcore servers and matches. All modifiers listed below apply to official Hardcore playlists, so make sure you check them out to avoid any surprises (hint, hint, Friendly fire).
Infantry:
Dev Comments:
“Hardcore brings back most traditionally anticipated modifiers to achieve high-risk, high-reward gameplay with an emphasis on portraying the perils of combined arms warfare.
Some additional tweaks to control the pacing and speed of combat for Battlefield 2042 are also in effect.
Our main goal for Hardcore on Battlefield 2042 is to emphasize positional play, increase reliance on friendlies, squadmates, and cover, as well as maximize time spent on the frontlines in chaotic engagements that are still a few steps short of FUBAR.
Additionally, players are heavily rewarded for situational awareness and level knowledge.
Be warned: Friendly Fire is enabled, killing more than the grace amount of friendlies will enable friendly fire damage reflection, which returns 100% of damage back to the offender, regardless of the offender being on foot or deployed in-vehicle.
When using high explosives or vehicle weaponry, stay frosty at all times, especially when engaging in high activity areas.”
- Soldier Maximum Health set to 60%.
- Friendly Fire Enabled (also affects vehicles).
- Friendly Fire Damage Reflection enabled (triggers after repeat Friendly Fire Kills). Zero-tolerance policies in effect.
- Crawling State Enabled on man-down. Double-tap your targets to eliminate surprises.
- Traversal Sprint (Double-tap sprint button) disabled.
- Slide (Crouch during sprint button) disabled.
- Soldier Redeploy Delay Halved. Boots on the ground twice as fast.
- Soldier Health Regen Rate set to 0.1 / 10% for default (1.0 by default). Battlefield medics note an increased need for assistance.
- Mandatory Uniform Applied - in official Hardcore servers, Specialist uniforms will now respect the Specialist’s team via the following visual makeups: Team 1 set to “Green / Beige” palette, Team 2 set to “Red (Tier 1)” palette.
- AI in official Hardcore matches will respect all modifiers set for infantry.
Weapons:
Dev Comments:
“The prime directive here is to double down on the fantasy of playing an Assault, Support, Engineer, or Recon. Some tweaking tools have been implemented to ensure we can respond to feedback on the fly as players learn the ropes and build ideal strategies, keep your eyes peeled to BattlefieldComms for any further updates or changes.”
- Magazine Discarding is now enabled, if you reload a magazine the bullets remaining within that magazine will be discarded. To all Support Players: note the increased need for munition resupplying.
- Strict Class Identity is in play within Official Hardcore with the Assault Class primary weapon classes being ARs, Shotguns, DMRs, and the Ghostmaker Crossbow. Engineer Class primary weapon are LMGs, Lever Action Rifles. Support Class primary weapon classes are SMG-PWDs, Shotguns, and finally, Recon Classes are Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, DMRs, the Ghostmaker Crossbow and Lever Action Rifles.
- Assault Rifle Class damage multiplier added, set to default. High Lethality at all ranges.
- SMG-PDW Class damage multiplier added, set to 0.8 from default 1.0, to offset the effectiveness of High RoF weapons in Hardcore.
- LMG Class Damage multiplier added, set to default. Eyes open for friendlies in the line of fire, you will be punished!
- Bolt Action Rifle Class Damage multiplier added, set to 0.8 from default 1.0, to offset effectiveness at longer than intended ranges.
- Shotgun Class Damage multiplier added, set to default. Blow. them. away.
- Sidearm Class Damage multiplier added, set to default. Small form factor, big punch.
Interface:
Dev Comments:
“The goal here is the simplest one: Minimize non-diegetic information (out of world elements like the HUD and minimap, or soldier name tags) and bring the focus to more diegetic information instead (elements gleaned from the world like soldier uniforms, audio, hit effects, etc).
We've added some additional features (like the inventory widget being dynamically visible) to make sure that some information can be acquired intentionally if needed, and to minimize frustration. Where the choice was between player comfort and immersion, we have chosen player comfort for this implementation of Hardcore, but remain open to feedback as always.
Let the penguins know your thoughts as we continue to monitor your reactions and feedback to this update.”
- Show only icons when seeing friendlies, name tags disabled.
- Added and enabled a setting to remove the minimap entirely (as opposed to showing a disabled minimap widget).
- Added and enabled a setting to allow players to access the Big Map (default input "M") even if the minimap is disabled. Orient and coordinate.
- Added and enabled a setting to move the Squad List to the minimap's original position.
- Added and enabled a setting to show a "minimal" version of the squad list with reduced information.
- Added and enabled a setting that causes the inventory widget to be invisible.
- Added and enabled a setting that causes the inventory widget to become visible when the player interacts with their loadout (and certain other actions), and subsequently become invisible again 2 seconds later.
- Disabled crosshairs and hit markers for all infantry (hit confirmation audio remains active). Confirm your targets.
- Added exceptions to crosshair disabling (Repair Tool retains its overheat element despite crosshairs being disabled).
- Enabled a "Realistic Audio" mix that modifies the base audio environment (Slightly reduced ambiance, world sounds, soldier movement sounds. Slightly increased weapon audio, bullet passbys, impact loudness, explosions)
Vehicles:
Dev Comments:
“We're trying to make vehicles terrifying, especially for unprepared groups and non-Engineer players, while ensuring their power fantasy is intact for pilots and passengers. This is largely achieved through survivability increases that synergize well with the faster Time To Kill in Hardcore.
To counter the increased kill potential, vehicle weak points are more vulnerable than ever to well-positioned engineers, and the SOFLAM / Launcher team-up remains the gold standard for eliminating armor of all shapes and sizes (we see you, SOFLAM Recon mains).“
- Vehicle Maximum Health set to 1.4 (from default 1.0). Vehicles gain increased survivability in all engagement scenarios.
- Vehicle Health Regeneration is disabled. Vehicles can now only be repaired using the Engineers' Repair Tool, or with equipped Repair Systems.
- Added and enabled a setting that causes vehicle Weak Spots to take increased damage from all sources (Doubled from default, leading to potentially devastating damage). Watch your six!
- Increased velocity required to road-kill friendly teammates. Set to (15f) from default (0.5f). Enemies will still be roadkilled at the originally intended velocity.
- Disabled the ability to trigger Anti-Tank Mines with friendly vehicles.
- Added and disabled a contingency setting to completely remove the ability to road-kill friendlies.
Hardcore Mode rules:
Dev Comments:
“Hardcore games, due to their increased rate of attrition, and our goal to provide more "in the trenches" combat close to objectives, have been assigned longer capture timers, more tickets, and increased time limits.”
- Increased match time limit for all Hardcore Modes to 60 minutes.
- Doubled available tickets for both teams in all Hardcore Modes.
- Flag Capture Time doubled. Die with your boots on.
- Flag Neutralization Time doubled.
Battlefield Portal
New modifiers available in Portal that are not used in official Hardcore servers:
Dev Comments:
“In the process of developing Hardcore, we've experimented with a number of additional settings that didn't make the cut for our intended offering. We will ship these settings regardless, and they can be seen below, and accessed by players when creating their own Battlefield Portal experiences.
The reasons for any exclusion, regardless of the setting itself, are largely the same: The modifier was deemed to be too difficult to understand / clearly explain during the natural flow of gameplay, or it damaged immersion without any commensurate addition to player comfort or quality of life.
Some may have had an outsized impact on game balance, and were hence set to default.”
These settings are available for use in Custom Experiences within Battlefield Portal and are not actively used on Official Hardcore Servers and matches.
- Added a setting to award tickets on kill.
- Added a setting to award tickets on downing an enemy.
- Added a setting to award tickets for reviving friendly players.
- Added a setting to award tickets for destroying vehicles.
- Added a setting to penalize tickets when friendlies are sent to the downed or crawling state (as opposed to when they return to the deploy screen).
- Added a setting to enable Ascension Points. This is a system that awards players points for in-game actions beneficial to their team. AP must then be spent to meritocratically access vehicles, instead of deploying them directly from the call-in menu or deploy screen. Vehicles have predefined AP prices, based on their combat effectiveness and utility.
- Added a setting that subtracts Ascension Points on returning to the deploy screen after being downed.
- Added a setting that awards players an amount of Ascension Points upon initial entry to the server.
- Added a setting that sets a cap on how many Ascension Points players can hold at one moment in time.
- Added a setting that can multiply recharge timers for infantry and vehicle skills that are able to self-replenish. These values are currently set to default within the builder.
- Added a setting that can multiply the delay before weapons and abilities can automatically self-replenish. These values are currently set to default within the builder.
Additional Changes:
- Equipped badges are now shown first in the badge list.
- Return to Sender - Now gives a score when the player interacts with an enemy grenade and throws it back.
- Scoreboard - When a player causes Friendly Fire they will now lose points in the scoreboard and will receive a notification on the XP feed to indicate a loss of points.
- Fixed an issue causing Javelin Mastery to show in the stats tab.
Gameplay Flow & Social:
Player card customization screen:
- Gameplay hints have a higher chance of showing on loading screen
- There will now be an in-game notification when you enter the deploy screen when saving of loadouts or weapon customization is disabled. Dev Comments: “It has always been the case that when you play on a server where weapons or weapon attachments are restricted, we don't save any customization changes you make since you are forced to play with things you maybe normally don't want to and we don't want this to override your saved customization for normal matches. For example, if you're playing on a shotguns-only server we don't want that to override your recon loadout in normal matches. We’ve now added a UI element to tell you when that is the case.”
Customization / Deploy screen:
- Fixed a bug where input hints were misplaced on the event pass reward preview.
- Improved UI feedback when doing friendly fire. The kill skull has been replaced with a red X in that case and the kill log will also say when friendly fire damage reflection is enabled to show when you will start taking damage if you continue damaging friendlies
Characters & Gadgets:
- Fixed a bug where the armor plate animation would loop if you tried to equip it while crouching in a CAV-Brawler open seat.
Dev Comments: “You're not allowed to use the armor plate gadget while crouching, just like you're not allowed to shoot while crouching in that open seat.”
Vehicles
- UH 60 1P Camera FOV no longer changes with Soldier FOV.
- You can no longer use zoom on 3P cam on UH-60.
- Bradley IFV now gets spotted when driver or passenger fire any of the guns.
- Adjusted vehicle radio volume depending on distance.
- Fixed an issue where players could equip armor while sitting on the back seat of CAV-Brawler and get stuck on a looping equip animation.
- RAM now uses the same repair system recharge time like the rest of tank categories, upped from 10 to 20.
- UH-60 freelock sensitivity is now consistent with the rest of All Out Warfare Helicopters.
- UH-60 repair system is now more efficient, heals 25hp in 5 seconds, from 10 hp in 8.6.
- The gravity pull when UH-60 is near the ground has been lowered to be consistent with the rest of All Out Warfare Helicopters from 5m to 0.8m.
- UH-60 miniguns have been tweaked to allow for effective burst fire, under constant fire this weapon will lose accuracy.
- UH-60 minigun damage increased from 18 to 20.
- UH-60 minigun damage drop off starts at 200 instead of 250.
Weapons
- Fixed issues where zoom level stats in the collection screen were not showing correctly on Vault Weapons.
- Improved reload sound effect on M1 Garand.
- Added M1 Garand from Battlefield Portal.
- M1 Garand has seen various changes to fit in All Out Warfare including:
- Adjustment to recoil, you will notice a much more aggressive recoil that becomes more managable on crouch or prone stances.
- Increase dispersion when firing while moving, jumping or sliding.
- Increase in total magazines that you’re able to carry with the M1 Garand.
- Adjusted damage model over distance to fit with rest of All Out Warfare weapons of the same category.
- The M1 Garand clip now ejects to sides and not towards player camera.
- Tightened the weapon alignment within center of screen during recoil and movement.
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.
