Today, we're excited to start outlining our future vision for the Class System in Battlefield.

The gameplay mechanics of classes and aspects that players have enjoyed most have evolved throughout the history of the Battlefield franchise. Our goal within Battlefield Labs is to test and refine the best aspects of the Class System from our history, and to evolve them into a cohesive vision for the future.

As we begin testing these class-defining systems, we invite you to either play, test or read along with what's to come for classes in Battlefield.

Let’s begin!

OUR DESIGN PHILOSOPHY FOR CLASSES

We envision the future of Battlefield classes to be a series of interconnected systems and fundamentals that shape your role on the field, while granting you the freedom to customize how you execute that role. Through Battlefield Labs play sessions, feedback, and data gathering, we aim to strike a balance between defined roles and player choice.



The Class System is defined by two main components: Customizable and class-defining.

The customizable components empower players to explore and push the boundaries of their roles within their chosen class while also still adhering to the expectations of the class.

The class-defining components are designed to enhance "pick-up-and-go" playability and reinforce the expectations of your class identity.

CUSTOMIZABLE:

• Weapon Loadouts: Fully customizable weapon loadouts allow you the freedom to play the way you want. Play to the strengths of your class by using your signature weapons, or easily switch to any other weapon to meet the needs of your squad.
  
  
• Class Gadgets: You'll have the option to carry two gadgets onto the battlefield, tailored to each class and its specific role. Recon aficionados specialize in intelligence and counterintelligence, with class gadgets including Deploy Beacons, Anti-Personnel Mines, and Laser Designators.
  
  
• Training: Our philosophy with Training is to offer a series of traits that can be unlocked during play to enhance your ability to perform your role. As you engage more in a match, you'll gradually earn flat-stat bonuses and more to support the effectiveness of your role further.
  
  
• Throwables: Our approach to throwables prioritizes enabling each class to effectively fulfill its role by providing tailored throwables.

CLASS-DEFINING

• Signature Weapon: Each class has a Signature Weapon category tied to their class identity, which, when used, enhances their role on the battlefield.
  
  For example, using our same ongoing test subject, the Recon class, if you select a weapon from the Sniper Rifle category, you will benefit from increased breath-holding duration. In contrast, an Assault player choosing from the same category will not receive this bonus.
  
  DMRs, Carbines, and Shotguns remain viable options, no matter your class, but don’t benefit from any Signature Weapon bonus.
  
  
• Signature Trait: Each class features a unique Signature Trait, providing passive bonuses tailored to optimize your role on the battlefield. For instance, a Recon player automatically spots enemies while aiming down sights, encouraging the use of weapons that complement this specialization.
  
  
• Signature Gadget: These gadgets are unique and singular to each class with an aim for you to always have access to a tool that fulfills the role of that class.Separate from what you may choose as gadgets within your loadout.
  
  
• Default Weapon Packages: The default weapon package is a pre-set combination of attachments and visual customization for each class to be combat ready, with the option for further progression and personalization.

What’s Next
The Class System and its individual components will be available for testing within Battlefield Labs in the coming weeks. Participants will be able to go hands-on with these features, discuss, and provide feedback.

Following further play sessions, we'll be back with another Community Update to unpack class components in more detail, and share learnings based on participant feedback.

Get Involved
Sign up for Battlefield Labs now if you’re interested in helping us validate the future of Battlefield. Read our FAQ if you’d like to learn more, and join the discussion on Battlefield Discord.

As a reminder, Battlefield Labs is a closed environment, and attendance is limited, but we’ll make sure to share to keep everyone updated!

Thank you for joining the discussion. We look forward to connecting again soon - see you on the battlefield!

This announcement is related to content in development through Battlefield Labs, and may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing the next Battlefield title and beyond. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.

In February, we announced Battlefield Labs as our most ambitious community collaboration in franchise history to validate the future of Battlefield. Today, we'll update you on our initial learnings and how we'll continue to scale testing into the future.

Across our four initial play sessions with a small group of core Battlefield players across Europe and North America, we’ve completed thousands of hours of gameplay, had hundreds of thousands of player spawns, and seen over a million environmental objects destroyed, including walls, windows, crates, and buildings your squad crashed the helicopter into. The players in these sessions have helped us successfully validate the following areas:

• Establishing a solid foundation for smooth, low-latency and high-performance gunplay.
  
• Finding the right balance in movement speed for functionality such as crouch sprint, combat rolling, and vaulting as part of our combat pacing initiatives.
  
• Using destruction to create fun and lasting tactical gameplay across rounds and experiences.

Exploring new ideas for the future and receiving direct player feedback continues to be a crucial aspect of the Battlefield Labs process. Even if some ideas never reach release, it helps us understand and refine elements that resonate most with players as we continue to build Battlefield together. It's been a valuable and exciting experience for our team and community so far, and we're looking forward to continuing that collaboration alongside you!

WHAT'S NEXT
Now that we’ve wrapped up initial server performance and stability concerns, we’ve validated a solid foundation for a core Battlefield experience. We’re now ready to continue scaling Battlefield Labs testing globally.

Throughout May, we’ll be inviting more players across Europe and North America, and will start to include select areas of Asia.

Alongside testing new content, we'll continue to iterate on our initial focus areas, such as balancing the different weapon archetypes and damage values, as well as movement and combat pacing mechanics.

Destruction also remains an ongoing topic across our play sessions. We’ll continue to test destructible objects across a variety of maps and fine-tune damage levels of surfaces.

Following Community Updates on gunplay and destruction, we'll be back in the future to talk more about classes and the all-out warfare experience.

GET INVOLVED
If you're excited to help us validate the future of Battlefield then you can still sign-up now. Read our FAQ if you’d like to learn more, and be sure to join the discussion on our Battlefield Discord.


Battlefield Labs continues to show us what is possible when our community comes together alongside us to collaborate, and we thank everyone who has joined us on this journey so far.

We’re looking forward to what’s next with you!

//The Battlefield Team

We’re back with another Community Update focused on destruction, and a summary of our initial learnings from previous Battlefield Labs play sessions.

Let’s start with a preview on how we’re designing and testing destruction for the future.

Our goals for destruction are centered around adding further gameplay depth by allowing you to reshape the environment and transform your surroundings toward a tactical advantage. For example, barging through walls to surprise your enemies, reshaping the battlefield to create new paths into the capture zones, or taking down a building to take out an attacking squad.

We're designing destruction around easily identifiable visual and audio language that lets you understand what can be destroyed, altered, or transformed through gameplay.

We aim to make destruction an integral part of your Battlefield experience to create an intuitive, fun, and rewarding environment where you feel empowered to shape the world around you.

Let’s take walls as an example of the new destruction language. Once a wall takes enough damage from an explosion, smaller impacts, such as bullets, will also contribute to its destruction, allowing you to shoot your way through the wall. Audio VFX will help you not only see, but also hear whether your attacks are successful.

Different surface types now also visually degrade before breaking down through persistent surface damage. Buildings “apple-core” as they start to break down, leaving their core exposed as destroyed parts create rubble and debris on the ground around it.

New mechanics allow you to create more destruction-related opportunities during gameplay, as well as being able to influence your surroundings through the use of different weapons or vehicle types. For example, rubble caused by destruction now remains on the battlefield, and allows you to create and use new opportunities for cover and protection.



Above is an early pre-alpha example that showcases the ability to destroy a wall to quickly traverse through the building and reach the other side - without this tactical impact, you would have to either run around the block or navigate through staircases to get to the other side.

Be careful in how you use destruction to your advantage, as one advantage to you would also be an advantage to the enemy, and this exposed flooring could now be used by them to counter this new route.

Insights we’re gathering range from everything between destruction as a tactical element to you as a player being able to differentiate between non-destructible and destructible environments.

At this stage of testing within Battlefield Labs, our main focus points are:

• Understanding which environments can or cannot be destroyed and which type of firepower is required for different material types
  
• The impact of collateral damage from debris and destructible elements
  
• Tactical use of destruction to create new pathing or persistent environments
  
• Balancing the ecosystem of damage through firepower and destruction

Our goals for our initial Battlefield Labs play sessions were to test server performance, gunplay and movement, and for participants to get an initial understanding of what's next for Battlefield. Participants have now played through multiple sessions, and offered up thousands of pieces of feedback. As we start testing other topics such as destruction, we wanted to share some of our initial learnings and next steps coming out of those play sessions.

We encountered some initial issues with server stability and performance, which provided valuable data for us to adjust their configurations. We've already seen that follow-up play sessions offered a smoother gameplay experience for participants, and that we are on the right track to start scaling further testing with more participants in the future.

For gunplay we've learned that while gunplay feels in a good spot, there's further balancing to be done to the different weapon archetypes and their damage values. Feedback on movement suggests that we need to continue iterating on finding the right balance in speed, namely for functionality like crouch sprint, combat rolling, vaulting, and more. Be sure to check out our previous Community Update if you are interested in learning more about our design philosophy and goals for gunplay and movement.

Lastly, as we move our focus back to destruction, we have seen feedback around the balancing of destructible objects across the map and the fine-tuning of damage levels of surfaces. Destruction will be an ongoing topic within our playsessions, and we’ll continue to test these and other areas of destruction throughout upcoming playsessions.

Sign up for Battlefield Labs now if you’re interested in helping us validate the future of Battlefield. Read our FAQ if you’d like to learn more, and join the discussion on Battlefield Discord.

We’ll be back in the future with new Community Updates to keep you informed on ongoing testing and learnings within Battlefield Labs.

We look forward to seeing you in action, hearing your feedback, and chatting Battlefield with you!

// The Battlefield Team

This is the first of our regular Community Updates to keep you informed about features we’re testing in Battlefield Labs. Today we’ll focus on elements of gunplay and movement.



We've continually evolved our gunplay and movement mechanics throughout the Battlefield series. Now, within Battlefield Labs, we're focused on refining the best elements from past titles, modernizing them, and validating if they feel fun and rewarding, and have the right balance between intuitive control and dynamic combat.

We're designing the combat experience to ensure players of all skill levels can enjoy our gunplay and movement systems. Our goal is to offer gameplay that rewards skill with precise weapon feedback and movement options for veterans, while providing an intuitive experience for new players to learn and enjoy.

For gunplay we're exploring designs centered on helping you learn and develop skills and muscle memory through action, as weapons naturally signal their recoil direction. This feedback loop allows you to understand and adjust your aim, making it easier to handle different weapons. This system not only adds variety but also enhances each weapon's unique feel and play style.

Movement is also deeply integrated with gunplay, as your actions and targets are all part of the same cohesive combat experience. We aim to make movement both feel intuitive and rewarding to move within the world and during combat, but also when playing against someone using both the gunplay and movement systems to their maximum potential.


Initially we’ll test select but important areas that create the foundation required to create a fun and rewarding Battlefield combat experience. We’re making focused efforts to create consistent and optimized millisecond-to-millisecond soldier combat, and we’ll share some key examples of changes that will be available during our initial playsessions.

We’ve reduced the time it takes for bullets to appear on your screen from when you press fire. This change decreases input delay, makes shooting feel more responsive, and helps you better track and hit moving targets.

We're optimizing for a 60Hz tick rate, ensuring the game server more frequently updates the positions and actions for all players. This results in responsive gameplay across all platforms and inputs. You'll notice more precise shooting and movement, enhanced damage feedback, and more accurate representation of other players' positions and combat outcomes.

We've adjusted the recoil system to make the different weapon types feel unique when firing them. Through enhancements to gunplay recoil, camera shakes, and firing settles, each shot’s recoil direction now matches its gameplay angle. The weapon visually stabilizes the more accurate your handling is, making you feel like you're actually firing and controlling it.

To evolve the moment system we've revamped animations and reintroduced movement features such as crouch sprint, combat dive and landing roll, and added visual indicators to make it easier to understand when movements such as vaulting or leaning are possible.


At this stage content within Battlefield Labs is pre-alpha, and playsessions take place within a closed dev environment focused on testing small chunks of a larger array of features. Some gameplay features are placeholder, work-in-progress and with bugs and performance not being representative of the final experience. However, even during this early stage of development you'll get a good sense of our new design approach.

During our first playsession our teams will be validating the systems and stability of Battlefield Labs such as server performance, while participants will be able to familiarise themselves with what’s next for Battlefield through testing the gunplay and movement experience, focused on:

• Feel of the different weapon archetypes
  
• Improvements to aim and control
  
• Weapon balance and fun factor
  
• Look and feel of movement
  
• Moving and interacting within the map
  
• Combat pacing.

Lastly, a reminder that while our playsession will be within a closed environment, and we can't invite everyone to every session, we'll make sure to keep you informed on ongoing Battlefield Labs playsessions and learnings through these regular Community Updates.

Sign up for Battlefield Labs now if you’re interested in helping us validate the future of Battlefield, and read our FAQ if you’d like to learn more.

We’ll be back in the coming weeks to talk more about our learnings from our first playsessions, as well as another feature focused Community Update.

//The Battlefield Team



Please keep in mind that everything related to EA Playtesting is STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. This means no posting or sharing details of this Playtest, in person, on social media or anywhere else. Acceptance of the Pre-Release Game Program Policy, EA User Agreement, and EA Privacy & Cookie Policy are required to participate.

Battlefield Labs is a brand new exclusive development environment connecting a selected number of players directly with the newly minted BF Studios. Together, we’ll collaborate to make the best Battlefield possible.

Welcome to Battlefield Labs.

We'd like to invite you to join us for our most ambitious community development collaboration ever. This is an opportunity to provide feedback, validate the future of Battlefield, and have a direct and lasting impact on the next generation of Battlefield games.




Our {LINK REMOVED}collective Battlefield Studios teams have been hard at work and are now entering a critical phase of our development cycle, where your feedback is crucial in helping us know what to prioritize, improve, and refine before release.

Battlefield Labs is a place for us to test concepts and experiences we’re excited about with you, our players. We want our community to play a key role in the future of Battlefield and this is an opportunity for many of you to do just that.

We will test (almost) everything but not everything you see will be complete. To ensure that your feedback has impact, players will experience, under NDA, different pieces of an unfinished puzzle so we have time to incorporate your feedback into the final product.

Even in pre-alpha, we are proud of where the game is at. We tirelessly playtest, but your feedback will supercharge our development as we strive to hit that perfect note between form, function, and feel.

This is an unprecedented moment for Battlefield. We will start by testing the pillars of play, like core combat and destruction. Then transition to balance and feedback for our weapons, vehicles and gadgets, ultimately leading to where all these pieces come together in our maps, modes, and squad play.

And yes, we will be testing Conquest and Breakthrough, the heart and soul of our all-out warfare experience, but BF Labs will also be a place to explore new ideas and fine-tune and improve Battlefield pillars like our class system (Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon) to create deeper more strategic play.



Sign up now. To form an accurate snapshot of our community we need a variety of players - veterans and new recruits - ready to play and feedback on our vision for the future of Battlefield. Initial invites will be limited to a few thousand participants with servers located in Europe and North America. Over time we’ll invite tens of thousands more with support for further territories.

Regardless of your level of participation, we want all Battlefield fans to be a part of the process. We’ll be posting work-in-progress public updates from our community team where you will hear directly from developers at Battlefield Studios.

Visit http://battlefield.com/labs for more information on how you can sign-up.

There will be ample opportunity to play and converse around the next Battlefield ahead of its launch. This is just the beginning.

Until then, join us on the {LINK REMOVED}official Battlefield Discord as it’s our prime way to stay up to date on all things Battlefield!

Let’s build Battlefield together.
//The Battlefield Team

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.

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