BATTLEFIELD 2042 UPDATE #7.0.0

Season 7 introduces new maps, weapons, vehicles, and more!

Welcome to Season 7: Turning Point!

Season 7 brings the battle for Earth’s most valuable resource to the Atacama Desert in Chile. Aligned with a new enemy, the Thousand Petals Coalition, Eastern forces launch an assault on the desert mining town of El Alicanto, to seize control of a massive subterranean water reservoir vital to Western and US forces.

We truly cannot wait to see all of your clips and reactions to Haven when Season 7 arrives, and stay tuned in the future to learn more about what has changed with Stadium, arriving in a later season update.

See you on the Battlefield!

//The Battlefield Team

Here is an overview of the new content, alongside highlights for changes and improvements:

Haven

Haven, is the return of urban warfare that features a mixture of infantry and vehicle combat set in familiar territory, the Atacama Desert.

This map has been inspired by great favorites from Battlefield’s long history, including Arica Harbor (Bad Company 2), Strike At Karkand (Battlefield 2), and Amiens (Battlefield 1).

If you’d like to learn more about our new map check out our dedicated Haven blog, where we dive deeper into the construction of the map.

Stadium - Arriving later in Season 7

Stadium, an area from Hourglass, will be making its return as a standalone map; this highly requested location from the community has been significantly reworked and adapted for intense, infantry-only close-quarter battles. Stay tuned for more details on the work that has taken place with Stadium, as we get closer to its launch later in Season 7.

It’s time to step up and load up with this season’s new additions to Battlefield 2042’s arsenal.

• AK 5C - This assault rifle offers an excellent balance of firepower and accuracy, making it the perfect partner for close-quarters combat.
• SCZ-3 - This deadly submachine gun is a devastating option for close-quarters combat that stings, especially when equipped with a drum  magazine to give you even more time before your next reload. 
• DFR Strife LMG – Get the best of both worlds. Equip the DFR Strife with belt-fed ammo, giving you an LMG’s magazine size and suppressive quality, while retaining the mobility of an Assault Rifle.
  • The DFR Strife LMG will debut in a later update during Season 7: Turning Point.

A classic staple from Battlefield’s history returns. This anti-vehicle launcher’s wire-guided missile will help you disable and eliminate both land and air vehicles.

Keep your eyes on the sky with this cutting-edge  remote-controlled aerial bomber featuring advanced precision-guided ordinance – including EMP bombs and air-to-ground weaponry.

• The XFAD-4 Draugr will come in a later update during Season 7: Turning Point.

You’ll need to be fearless and do whatever it takes to come out on top. A new Battle Pass featuring powerful weapons and useful gadgets will help you gain an edge in battle where every advantage is a necessary one while this season’s cosmetics will let you intimidate foes.

• Visual Weapon Recoil Improvements for all weapons, providing more visual impact and immersion when aiming down sights.
• Headshot Multiplier Rebalancing for all Weapon Archetypes such as SMGs, LMGs and Assault Rifles.
• Infantry and Vehicle Rebalancing for Vehicles such as the Wildcat and providing further Class Identity to Engineers.
• Body Armor Improvements, Sidearm Rebalancing, Casper Drone alterations and more.

Update 7.0.0 deploys between 09:00 and 10:00 UTC on Tuesday, March 19. Season 7: Turning Point* and its Battle Pass progression starts at 12:00 UTC on the same day. 

With the deployment of the 7.0.0 Update, 24/7 playlists for Haven will immediately be available on both Conquest and Breakthrough.

Follow us on Reddit and @Battlefield to stay informed on the latest news, and on @BattlefieldComm for the rollout of updates and other live service changes. 

Check out the Inside Battlefield Podcast if you’d like to listen to the team talking about the new content!

DEV NOTE: State of Weapons for Season 7

Season 7 brings changes and improvements that will permeate across the whole weapon arsenal in different ways. Season 7 includes a shift in META balance between weapon categories and raising the lowest time-to-kill to a healthier level, to a revamp of the visual recoil system to liven up the shooting experience alongside many more balance improvements.

Visual Weapon Recoil Improvements

As mentioned on BattlefieldComm at the start of this month, your weapons are about to feel more impactful on a visual level with Season 7. 

We wanted weapons to feel more unique and powerful when it comes to firing them, as such we have made changes to how visual recoil is handled within the game and tuned them to the vision for each weapon.

It's an effort to create a more vivid firing experience, which will provide more visual emphasis on the weight and power of a weapon as you fire whilst aiming down sights.

Of course, this visual improvement will not compromise your aiming experience, as our main goal is always to provide you with fluid, reliable and high-quality gunplay. Feeling and controlling recoil while bursting will be more intuitive and visually rewarding without affecting your accuracy in artificial ways.

In this first iteration, we have implemented different archetypes and tried to have as many different handling characteristics as possible, pushing the system to make the most of it and we will tune and polish wherever necessary to give you the best possible experience.

Headshot Multiplier Rebalancing

One of the other big updates coming in Season 7 is a rebalance of the headshot damage multipliers. These changes will bring a rebalancing of our weapon categories, particularly SMGs, Assault Rifles and LMGs, and how they perform at different ranges.

We are compressing the headshot multipliers, which results in the characteristics of these weapons mattering more and with this change we anticipate seeing a better equilibrium between them when it comes to usage rates and competitiveness.

As an example of these changes, with the above red line, the RM-68 is using High-Power Ammo with the old 2.15x Headshot Multiplier from Update 6.4. The difference in optimal TTK at close range is shown here, versus the same RM-68 build now showing the updated multipliers in blue and PP-29 in yellow.

SMGs

This weapon category will now benefit from a 1.55x headshot multiplier. They are now stronger in Close Quarter Combat and at performing headshots due to the higher multiplier and improvements to their Aim Down Sight movement speeds. Their optimal efficiency will stand toe-to-toe against ARs when it comes to pure firepower under 30-50m with the same potential 3-headshot-kill range.

It needs to be pointed out that the PP-29 has received less improvements this update, since it was already a high performer and belongs to a different archetype than most other SMGs. This weapon will still benefit from the headshot multiplier changes. On the other hand, Vault SMGs have also received extra improvements to their bullet velocity.

Even with this increased headshot multiplier, SMGs should not outperform other weapon categories at longer ranges due to damage drop-off, bullet velocity and accuracy.

ARs

Assault Rifles will now benefit from a 1.9x headshot multiplier. This means that, in general, they will no longer have a 2-headshot-kill range in Close Quarter Combat and instead require 3 headshots. Which we anticipate is going to be less likely to take place within a single full-auto burst due to the nature of recoil and dispersion.

This change will raise the lowest possible TTK in that Close Quarter Combat area, which was previously too low and leading to frustration by our players, as well as putting too much balance in favor of Assault Rifles. However in most cases it will not affect their performance at mid or long range, where the archetype of Assault Rifles naturally sit.

LMGs

LMG’s will now benefit from a 1.9x headshot multiplier. Similar to above, this now removes a 2-headshot-kill scenario across the roster and addresses instances of extremely low TTK.

This will drive LMGs away from Close Quarters Combat and more into the mid and long range, but will remain at a similar power level when compared to Assault Rifles. In addition, dispersion has been slightly reduced for the following Vault Weapons: M240B, M60E4 and Type 88.

And there are many more changes taking place across several weapons and archetypes, which you can find out by scrolling down.

Before we hand things over to the Vehicles Team to share what they’ve been changing for Season 7: Turning Point, we wanted to thank you for your continued feedback in regards to weapons.

Keep it coming and we’ll continue to tune and polish where possible in future updates!

// Battlefield Weapons Team.

DEV NOTE: State of Vehicles for Season 7

Alongside the work that our Weapons Team is doing across weapons, we are also making changes to how Infantry and Vehicles interact with each other in Season 7: Turning Point!

We’re aware that Ground Vehicles currently face too many threats both from infantry and other vehicles, and due to this it automatically encourages defensive gameplay which takes place from a large distance.

It has always been our aim to encourage and empower vehicles so that they feel able to engage with objectives and be alongside their fellow infantry team mates as such with this update we are aiming to lessen the amount of threats towards ground vehicles in order to give them breathing room, while also ensuring that infantry are capable of engaging too.

To achieve this, we are increasing the time before a vehicle can be hacked, and we are also removing the EMP functionality from Casper’s OV-P Recon Drone, going forward this will now be focused more towards spotting infantry and vehicles.

We’ve continued our work with the Gadgets Team to lower the amount of C5 from 3 to 2 on Assault and Recon Classes, while Engineers will have access to 3 C5. Anti-tank mines will now take 2 seconds to activate upon being placed, so they can no longer be used in the same fashion as C5. 

All of these changes are about alleviating some of the active fire that vehicles are undergoing through the course of a match, however to offset these changes we are increasing the cooldown of flares to encourage a more aggressive downtime window which contributes to healthier air and ground balance.

The engagement between the Wildcat and our Air Vehicles is not where we want it to be and can often result in very lopsided gameplay loops for either side, in order to help with this we are lowering the range of the main default cannon which will create a window of opportunity.

We are removing the lock-on that exists on the Y-axis, as well as removing the 40MM Cannon on the Wildcat in order to fully commit this vehicle towards ground to air duty.

First-Person Sensitivity on Ground Turret Vehicles

Up to this point we had aggressive sensitivity constraints on aiming systems on our ground vehicles in order to make sure players cannot necessarily turn the turret at very high speed and there was always a catch up phase for the turret to match your input unless the player was zooming in with these vehicles' primary cannons.

With this update, we are changing that. You will now have a similar experience to zooming, when driving around unzoomed. This sensitivity rate can be changed within the options menu. Please note that there will still be a threshold to prevent extreme cases of sensitivity. We have also increased the turret speed on all ground turreted vehicles to complement this change, except the EMKV-TOR.

One final note…

Finally, there are many more changes taking place around vehicle play within our changelog below. 

We wanted to indicate that these changes are aimed at reshaping how Infantry and Vehicles interact with each other. They are not aimed at giving one side an advantage over the other, but balancing so that they can coexist and if you want to counter one or the other you can do so successfully.

As part of the necessary balance changes that are taking place with this season, we are now in a position to provide further emphasis on the Engineer class as being the main anti-vehicle role. As such, in an upcoming update we’ll be increasing the available RPG, Recoilless and all other era-equivalents by 1. As well as in a later update, revisiting the System Repair balance and Irish APS changes. Crawfords trait will also benefit from these changes in a future update.

Naturally, we’ll continue to assess feedback following all of these changes and act accordingly, thank you for your continued feedback and we’ll see you on the Battlefield!

// Battlefield Vehicles Team.

Progression

• Players will now get “Squad Wipe XP” after successfully killing the last remaining member of an enemy squad.

Maps and Modes

Spearhead

• Fixed an issue causing the zipline next to the D1 objective to be invisible.
• Fixed an issue causing players to be able to go under the map. No more digging too deep, you never know what waits down there.

Redacted

• Fixed an issue causing a spawn point not working as intended under certain circumstances.

Exposure

• Fixed an issue that could cause no vehicles to be shown in the call menu while vehicles were available.

Hourglass

• Fixed a rare issue where players could not spawn vehicles.

Kaleidoscope

• Fixed an issue where players could spawn out of bounds when deploying with a vehicle.

Battlefield Portal

• Squad Spectator Modifier: Fixed an issue causing the Squad deploy to appear as available when the squad mate is outside of the combat arena.
• Fixed an issue where the SPAS-12 could have achieved too high a rate of fire in semi-automatic mode.
• Fixed several headshot multipliers on 1942 weapons, Thompson, Sten, STG 44, P38, and M2 Carbine.
• Improved reliability and responsiveness when firing the BC2 Mortar

AI Soldiers

• Fixed an issue that could cause the AI Soldiers to not properly switch between gunner seats under certain circumstances.
• Fixed an issue causing AI Soldiers to get stuck under certain circumstances on Exposure.
• Fixed an issue that could cause AI Soldiers to become stuck on a Capture Point on Battle of the Bulge.

UI & HUD

• Fixed an issue causing the stats displayed on the left side of the scoreboard to show inaccurate data.
• Fixed an issue that could cause UI elements to not correctly spawn after dying and causing players to be stuck in the deploy screen under rare circumstances.
• Fixed an issue where weapon icons would not load properly in the pre-round lobby.

Gadgets

• Fixed an issue where the Recon Drone could exit map boundaries.

Vehicles

• Lowered explosion damage of Jet Anti Vehicle Rocket Pods to Ground Armored Vehicles by 15%. This change does not affect Transport Vehicles.
• Increased the damage Air Vehicles receive when colliding with certain objects.
• Increased flare reload time from 12 to 14 seconds.
• Increased the damage regular bullets deal to Light Air Vehicles.
• Improved instances of Anti-Vehicle Rocket Pods not registering damage to other vehicles
• Increased the time before a vehicle can be hacked again from 10 to 12.5 seconds
• Increased turret sensitivity on all turreted vehicles except the EMKV-TOR

EBAA Wildcat

• Increased engine power on low speeds to allow for better acceleration and more power climbing uphill.
• Increased Turret HP from 250 to 550.
• Removed 40mm cannon to fully commit this vehicle to anti-air capabilities.
• Lowered default cannon range from 700m to 550m.
• Lowered delay for turret recovery from 10 to 5 seconds.
• Lowered duration of turret recovery from 10 to 8 seconds.

Audio

• Minor sound fixes when downed and hearing a Dozer shield bash an ally

Specialists & Gadgets

• Vertical spotting distance of T-UGS has been decreased.
• Lowered the amount of C5 the Assault and Recon class can carry from 3 to 2.
• Casper’s OV-P Recon Drone will no longer be able to EMP Hack.
• Anti-Tank Mines now take 2 seconds before they activate and detect vehicles.
• Incendiary Grenades thrown through smoke will no longer be disabled if they haven’t yet started burning.
• Fixed an issue that would make the UI icon for SOFLAM lock-on disappear too early, even while the lock-on was still valid.
• EOD Bot can now kill enemies that are using Crawford’s Mounted Vulcan. Nowhere left to hide!
• Fixed instances of projectile inaccuracies when using the RPG-7V2 against fast moving vehicles. 

Weapons

• Updated Visual Recoil on Primary AOW Weapons
• Headshot damage multipliers have been updates for SMGs, Assault Rifles, and LMGs
  • SMG: 1.25x -> 1.55x
  • Assault Rifle: 2.15x -> 1.9x
  • LMG: 2x -> 1.9x
• Increased move speed during ADS by:
  • 10% for K30, MP9, P90 and AC9
  • 5% for PP-2000 and PBX
• Improved hip fire accuracy for P90, K30, MP9, AC9 and AKS-74u
• To bring dispersion reset when bursting in line with other SMGs it is now a bit faster for AC9 and P90.
• Bullet speed increase for AKS74u, P90 and PP-2000
• Bullet speed decreased for PP-29 by ~10% (520 to 450)
• Dispersion reduced by 10% for M240B, M60E4 and Type 88
• M5A3 dispersion has received some changes in the way it’s calculated and biased within the dispersion circle. It will result in approximately 10% better accuracy, most noticeably when dispersion is high.
• Reduced CQC damage for LMGs and ARs from 28 to 26, to reduce the occurrence of 2-headshot-kills. This affects SFAR-M GL, AK-24, LCMG, RPT-31, M60E4, M240B, AC-42, RM68, GEW-46, ACW-R
• Fixed clipping when using the Fusion Holo sight on M44
• Minor third person animation fixes when reloading LCMG
• Iron Sights realigned for MP9, PP-2000, AM40, PKP and VHX
• Improved location of scope glint for multiple scopes and weapons
• Fixed minor issues in collection screen for Vault sidearms when selecting extended magazines
• Fixed pros and cons of Close Combat / Extended magazines for: G57, L9CZ, M93R and MP433
• Fixed an issue where recoil penalty was not active when using NTW-50’s High-Power ammunition
• Fixed an issue where going into ADS with the T4 Thermal scope could affect Reload / Low ammo / No ammo prompts
• Made the firing modes information in the Collection screen more consistent
• Fixed instances of clipping in third person on the VHX-D3 when using different ammo types
• Improved lock-on when a soldier gets in the line of sight - lock-on acquisition will be less affected by it
• Fixed pros for several suppressors in Collection screen
• Fixed a issue where enemy Laser Sights could cause the screen to turn black when pointed directly towards the player
• Fixed Muzzle Flash being present when using Suppressors on Shotguns and certain ammo combinations

AC-42

Dispersion has been reduced for the first burst, but dispersion reset has been tweaked so that it doesn't fully reset between bursts when firing at close to maximum RPM. When firing in controlled bursts and compensation for recoil, it will be possible to hit with higher accuracy over longer ranges. It now behaves closer to other burst firing weapons and should provide a good boost to usability in all ranges.

• Damage curve tweaked:
  • Reduced damage from 26 to 25 for 0-30m (for High Power, Standard Issue, and Subsonic ammo)
  • Standard Issue: damage reduced 22 -> 20 between 50-75m 
  • Subsonic: damage increased 18 -> 20 between 50-75m
  • High-Power: damage increased 18 -> 19 for 100-149m and 15 -> 17 for 150m+

G57

• Damage reduced from 28 to 24 between 0-30m (Close Combat ammo) and 0-20m (Subsonic)

MP28

• Damage reduced from 28 to 24 between 30 and 74 meters

PF51

• Hip Fire accuracy +30%, ADS accuracy -15%

M93R

• Hip Fire accuracy +30%

12M Auto

• Tweaks have been made to the Shortened Barrel attachment. When it’s equipped, pellet dispersion will increase by 25% horizontally, reducing its effectiveness at range and 1-on-1 engagements

• Body Armor:
  • The Body Armor gadget will now add extra protection against buckshot and flechette ammo. This effect will only apply when the projectiles hit the torso, and not the limbs or head

• AP ammo:
  • Base damage on GVT was too low and has been increased across the board:
    • 0-29m: 35 -> 60
    • 30 - 49m: 28 -> 60
    • 50 - 150+m: 28 -> 35

Scope glint removed from 4x scopes:

• All scopes with magnification 6x and above will still have glint

RPT-31

• LS-1 Laser and STNR Laser beam VFX alignment improved

M416

• Fixed an issue that could cause suppressor to disappear when activating certain underbarrel attachments

SPAS-12

• Fixed the amount of shells reloaded

Avancys

• Fixed the icon for T4 Thermal attachment

P90

• Rate of fire in single fire mode was too low and has been fixed

PP-2000

• Fixed magazine size shown in Collection Screen