February 17th
🔹 New Map: Contaminated
🔹 New Limited-Time Mode in order to expand Battlefield 6's narrative and introduces a new element of tactics in the fight against Pax Armata.
Coming Later in Season 2
🔸 New Map and New Limited-Time Mode where players will battle through an underground base covered in darkness.
Progression Improvements
Broader Challenge Parameters
▪️ Challenges have been streamlined by reducing the emphasis on highly mode-specific challenges, removing the daily sidearm challenge from regular rotation, and expanding criteria like allowing assists to count toward Daily Challenges. Battlefield Studios will continue to closely monitor completion rates and adjust challenge criteria where they feel too restrictive.
Faster Battle Pass
▪️ Battle Pass progression has been adjusted to be more rewarding this season. This includes recalculating how Battle Pass Tokens are earned from Career XP, allowing you to earn progress more quickly through regular gameplay and Weekly Challenges.
More Rewarding Progression in REDSEC
▪️ Career XP and Weapon XP earn rates have been increased in Battle Royale and Gauntlet, helping progression feel more balanced between REDSEC and Battlefield 6 experiences.
Career Reward Rebalance
▪️ Career and Battle Pass Boosters were added to some earlier Career ranks, particularly to better support players who focus on REDSEC. This change helps progression feel meaningful even when standard Career unlocks, such as gadgets, throwables, and loadout slots, don't provide direct benefits in Battle Royale or Gauntlet.
Weapon Balance and Recoil Improvements
▪️ Recoil compensation has been made fully consistent, resulting in more predictable and reliable weapon handling. Building on this, automatic weapons have received a broad tuning pass to reinforce role clarity and ensure weapons feel appropriately distinct across different combat distances.
Player Movement
▪️ Soldier movement has been improved to feel more predictable and readable in fast-paced combat. This includes updated acceleration curves, smoother vaulting and ladder transitions, and fixes that reduce visual inconsistencies or unexpected behavior during traversal and close-quarters interactions.
Audio Improvements
▪️ Audio has been polished to improve clarity and reliability during matches. This includes clearer cues for movement and interactions to help with positioning, better handling of overlapping sounds, and more dependable playback of critical audio in busy combat scenarios. Continued refinements and improvements are already in the works for later in the season as well.
Ongoing Development Focus
At the same time, Battlefield Studios is working on a clear set of gameplay improvements that will continue rolling out over the course of the season and beyond.
Current areas for improvement that are in active development include:
🔹 Hit registration and netcode
🔹 Ongoing recoil review
🔹 Visibility
🔹 The ping system for map locations
🔹 Additional audio improvements (i.e. footsteps)
They're targeting some of these improvements to be tested in Battlefield Labs for player-driven iteration, and will be included throughout upcoming game updates once they are validated. There are additional areas under review that they'll provide more details on as decisions are finalized.
Battlefield Labs
Battlefield Labs continues to be a critical part of how they test, iterate, and validate gameplay changes alongside the community. As we move into Season 2, Labs will remain focused on combat feel, consistency, and balance.
They recently tested the new Contaminated map together with a new gameplay feature with players in Battlefield Labs. These playtests helped them better understand how the feature impacted moment-to-moment decision-making and player comfort during combat, and based on player reactions they made a series of adjustments to ensure it's better prepared for the launch of Season 2.
They are also planning to test their Time-to-Kill (TTK) tuning, with a focus on improving combat readability and consistency. The goal of this work is to require stronger aim accuracy and firing discipline in order to achieve the fastest TTK. As part of this work, they're looking at elements such as limb multipliers, headshot damage, and the cost of ammunition types that enhance headshot effectiveness.
Golmud Railway Testing
Battlefield Studios has recently started some initial, focused Battlefield Labs play sessions on the Golmud Railway map, which will arrive in Battlefield 6 in an upcoming Season. As they mentioned in their previous blog, this version of the map is not a one-to-one copy but instead being reworked and adjusted to best fit the experience of Battlefield 6, and early impressions show that players are already picking up on the differences in this new interpretation.
Initial reactions have been positive, particularly around the overall scale and flow of the playspace. Players noted that the map feels familiar while still offering something new, including improvements to the northern town area and added cover that better supports infantry movement and engagements.
As with all Battlefield Labs content, Golmud Railway is still in active development. Some elements, such as the train that runs through the map, were not fully functional during the first session, but work is already underway to bring these features back for future sessions. They'll continue testing Golmud Railway with our BF Labs participants and aim to provide updates in the future as the map continues to evolve.
REDSEC Updates
Battlefield Studios has recently introduced a change that ensures players drop a minimum of two armor plates upon death. Building on that, they're planning to:
🔸 Increase overall armor availability in Season 2 by adding a chance for additional armor plates to spawn in Class Crates.
🔸 Make additional changes to the availability of Vehicle Keycard rewards. Tanks are a core part of what makes REDSEC unique, and they want players to have meaningful access to them. At the same time, having multiple tanks active for a single team should be rare and earned. To support this, they're introducing a cooldown on Vehicle Keycards as a mission reward after one is successfully acquired, making it significantly harder to chain tank access back-to-back.
As these changes go live, they'll monitor how they perform and will share more details on additional REDSEC improvements in a separate update.