Battlefield 6's Relaxed Playlist Ignites Intense Discussions Over AI Players, Experience Points, and Wait Times

Over the weekend, Battlefield Studios launched a new playlist called Relaxed Breakthrough. In essence, this mode mirrors the regular Breakthrough format but includes several notable changes:

• Each team includes only eight human participants, with the remaining made up of AI-controlled opponents.
• Activities performed by human gamers grant complete experience points, while bot actions provide lower rewards.
• Just a pair of locations can be played: Cairo Siege and Empire State.
• Elements like Player tags, accolades, and stat tracking have been turned off.

In short, this mode lives up to its name: it's a laid-back take of Breakthrough. At face value, you might think there's nothing wrong, since it gives additional choices for players looking for different ways to enjoy the game. However, if video games has shown one thing, it is that not everyone will be happy. Which is to say, many BF6 players are mad.

Player Responses: Anger to Support

"Gamers prefer real players. Avoid making the mistakes of your competitors," states a response to the official announcement. "Truly disappointing idea," comments another. Meanwhile, on the Battlefield subreddit, one user notes, "I have no idea where we are going with this title," while another details everything they consider to be broken in Battlefield 6: "Fix bugs, fix drone glitch, fix IVF rockets, adjust aiming after sprinting, fix awful hit registration. We don't need this AI-heavy playlist."

However, for every complaint, there are players explaining how much they're liking the recent addition. "It's enjoyable to practice, real players prevent it from being a complete grind but it's quite laid-back," says a forum post. "The community doesn't understand that there are gamers who actually go outside and can't play this game 24/7. Allow them to find a middle ground," adds another. A response via social media explains that as they're "a battledad with busy schedules, this is great for me," while another praises the mode for "not being overcompetitive."

Constructive Concerns and Player Feedback

Despite the support, players have constructive reasons to complain about the new mode. Some users have pointed out that it could increase queue times even longer for different playlists because of the large amount of playlists currently available. Similarly, some areas already encounter mostly bots in the current modes. It also seems somewhat counterintuitive that the mode does not begin without a required amount of human gamers, despite it focuses mostly on combat against bots.

Finally, a major grievances is that a previous feature was meant to offer full XP, including AI matches, but that got canned when they tried to remove bot farms from the system. Thus Casual Breakthrough feels like the player base meeting them in the middle, as per a Reddit comment. A different user labels this mode as the devs "dropping the ball so hard, I experienced so much fun in the first couple of days, why did they feel the need to change it?"

Looking Ahead: Adjustments Be Made?

Should the development team has proven anything to date with Battlefield 6, it is that they're listening and acting on feedback. Tasks that were overly hard got fixed very quickly, as did the required Redsec challenges. Chances are that, should analytics shows this recent mode is underperforming to their standards, they will not hesitate to change it again.