Battlefield 2042 patch removes Breakthrough rooftop objectives, nerfs proximity sensors and vehicle cannons
The last Battlefield 2042 patch for the year brings some welcome balance changes to carry us into the holidays.
As promised, DICE has released one final Battlefield 2042 update before the year is out. Today's patch is small, but full of welcome balance changes and further fixes to hopefully get the game into a better shape ahead of the holidays.
The new patch, version 0.3.1, is a companion to last week's massive 0.3.0 update. Available now on all platforms, 3.1 chiefly tweaks the rooftop objectives on Kaleidoscope, Orbital, and Hourglass in Breakthrough.
Those objectives have been ultra-difficult for attackers to capture, because there aren't usually that many ways to reach the top. Of course, defenders would usually block the elevators as attackers continue banging their heads against it. DICE's solution is to simply move those objectives to the bottom of the buildings.
On the subject of balance, the update nerfs proximity sensors, reducing their uptime, radius, and limiting the inventory to one rather than two. Frag grenades, on the other hand, got a buff to take out a fully-armoured player, but the downside is that you can only carry one now.
DICE also brought a number of balance tweaks to ground vehicle weapons, particularly the 30mm cannon, which has been making the Bolte light tank supremely annoying. Their rate of fire and blast damage have been reduced, and they now build up heat faster. The Wildcat's 57mm cannon, too, got a nerf so it's less effective against infantry.
Another important change in today's update comes in the form of some tweaks to the game's audio, which DICE said should improve clarity, distance and directional audio. Battlefield 2042's much-maligned weapon spread has been updated yet again. The new changes make it so weapons don't become inaccurate as quickly as they do now in full-auto. Recoil patterns should also be more consistent and not jump aggressively.
Read on below for the full 0.3.0 change log:
General
- Players that are not the party leader can now cancel while waiting in a queue.
- Xbox - cross-play can now be enabled/disabled in the options menu on Xbox.
- Your sort settings will now be correctly remembered when refreshing the Battlefield: Portal server browser.
- Fixed an issue where loadouts would sometimes be empty on the spawn screen after joining a server, preventing weapon selection.
- Made improvements to ensure aim assist is more consistent during console gameplay.
- Ranger’s effective combat range and overall health has been decreased.
Audio
- Made various tweaks to the overall audio experience to improve clarity, distance, and directional perception.
- Fixed an issue where soldiers would not always play indoor specific footsteps.
Weapons
- Removed bounce from under barrel grenades when firing at short distances.
- 40mm AP grenades now properly damage vehicles.
- Fixed some weapons displaying wrong ammo counts for specific magazines.
- DXR-1 and NTW-50 bolt action rifles reload animation increased by 0.2 seconds.
- Adjusted dispersion values for most weapons, which results in a faster dispersion decrease when tap firing or doing short bursts.
- Adjusted dispersion increases for most weapons. It now takes slightly longer for weapons to become overly inaccurate in sustained fire.
- Adjusted the recoil values to prevent over aggressive recoil jumps for the AK24, LCMG, PKP-BP, SFAR-M GL, and PP-29.
- Improved hip fire accuracy for all SMGs to make them better stand-out from other automatic weapon archetypes.
- LMG dispersion and recoil lowered to improve performance in sustained fire.
- Additional improvements to recoil control for all weapons, more specifically automatic weapons.
- Increased close range damage and consistency of the MCS-880 when using buckshot shell or flechette shells.
- Fixed a bug that caused bullets to be fired below the player’s aims for the SFAR-M GL and the K30.
Vehicles
- Fixed a bug where vehicle weapons sometimes did not deal blast damage on a direct hit.
- We’re reducing the ground vehicle 30mm cannon effectiveness versus infantry. It now overheats faster, has a slightly reduced rate of fire and blast damage, and increased fall off damage at distance: rate of fire 350 to 330, heat per bullet 0.13 to 0.14, heat drop per second 0.5 to 0.475, blast damage 20 to 18.
- LCAA Hovercraft - 40mm GPL grenade launcher blast damage lowered from 55 to 35.
- EBAA Wildcat - 57mm cannon: removed dispersion, ammo 12 to 8, impact damage 85 to 75, blast damage 70 to 35.
- The 40mm utility pod upwards firing angle is now easier to use.
Gadgets
-Proximity sensor
- Lowered spotting radius from 30m to 20m.
- Lowered uptime from 30s to 14s.
- Lowered amount of prox sensor a player can carry and deploy from 2 to 1.
-Frag grenade
- Increased the time to detonate a frag grenade from 1.1s to 1.4s after first bounce on a hard collision.
- Increased damage of frag grenades across game modes to deal 120 damage and guarantee a kill on armoured players.
- Reduced frag & incendiary Grenade max ammo count from 2 to 1.
Hazard Zone
- Fixed an issue that caused the roaming Occupying Forces LATV4 Recon to spawn at the wrong times or not at all.
Breakthrough
- Kaleidoscope - rooftop capture objective has been removed. There are now two capture objectives at the bottom in BT large and one at the bottom in BT small.
- Orbital - rooftop capture objective has been removed. There is now a single capture objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small.
- Hourglass - rooftop capture objective has been removed. There is now a single capture objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small. Also fixed an issue where players were spawning out of bounds.
Soldier
- Improvements on back pedalling into objects when being in prone position.
- Fixed a rare issue where players could turn invisible when spawning on a full/destroyed vehicle.