Yesterday, the changes to Portal to prevent XP farms started rolling out in Battlefield 6. Designed as part of a progression rejig, the alterations are meant to disincentivize and prevent people using bots to circumvent typical experience gain.
One of the central complaints around the launch of Battlefield 6 was the slow XP gain. Even dedicated players were finding it hard to meaningfully rank up, making the situation worse for more casual fans.
As a result, custom servers became a lifeline, with bots to help get a leg up in your ranking thanks to manipulated settings. EA and DICE have been attacking the problem, first by making XP more rewarding, and now putting more guardrails up in Portal, including disabling progression in PvE, which drew ire from the community.
Community manager Shepard posted on Steam about what's happening. "Many of you want full progression in solo/co-op and on curated custom servers – not just in matchmade PvP," they write. "There's real frustration about expectations vs. what shipped; our messaging around progression eligibility wasn't clear."
They then outline what's been looked at, for what is an initial test period to make sure this all works as intended. Personal XP and unlocks will be enabled on a "curated list of community servers." As this is a beta of sorts, stat-tracking is frozen for participants.
Several guardrails have been put in to prevent farming, including a difficulty threshold, sweeps for in-game activity to stop people sitting AFK or going on loops, the need for mixed targeting, and caps on how much XP can be earned per minute. Any server that dings enough of these will have progression disabled until it meets standard.
To finish, they mention that whether progression is possible will be clearly visible when browsing available servers. More feedback is requested as EA and DICE gather data on what's happening and how to work around it. If all goes to plan, earning your way through Battlefield 6’s rewards should feel better and easier from now on.
