I remember a time, when Battlefield was Battlefield, and Call of Duty did its own thing when it comes to multiplayer. Battlefield didn’t care what CoD was doing, because, well – it didn’t need to. One was a loud, and very cinematic shooter that needed you to have pitch-perfect reflexes, and prioritized quick kills; the other was a sprawling, tactical sandbox that rewarded patience and teamwork.
You didn’t play Battlefield back in the day, because you wanted to play Call of Duty, you played it, because you wanted something bigger – grander. Now, however? I’d argue that Battlefield 6 seems to be forgetting where it came from. While Battlefield’s vastly improved multiplayer is still let down by its campaign, fans have complained of unnecessarily small maps, tighter corridors and faster pacing. Sound familiar?
These are all buzzwords you’d expect from Activision, but not DICE, right? Well, sadly, that is not the case. It’s like the studio took one glance at Modern Warfare 3 and thought, “Yes. We should absolutely do that instead.” The problem? Battlefield isn’t meant to be CoD. And trying to be both, being a jack of all trades, as it were, will leave you pleasing no one at all.
Battlefield 6 Maps Are Too Small
Scale, scale, scale – that used to be one of Battlefield’s biggest selling points, the key selling point, one might argue. They were the ones who didn’t necessarily do it first, but they definitely made it palatable. Battlefield introduced ground, air and sea fairing vehicles to make their big maps traversable, and had massive open environments, where dozens of players duke it out in spectacular fashion – so why is Battlefield trying to be CoD so badly?
DICE seems to abandon a lot of what made the series unique. Of course, I’m not saying that Bf is going to go small entirely, but the shift into this direction, especially since EA is involved, is truly not what I wanted for Bf6. If Battlefield 2042 was a learning curve, DICE has taken the wrong lessons from it.
Let’s be clear – the issue with Battlefield 2042 wasn’t that its maps were too big. It’s that they were empty. DICE appears to have overreached, forgot about design balance, and left players trudging through vast wastelands. That was a design flaw, not proof that large maps don’t work. Fine, lesson learned. Right? Wrong.
Instead of fixing that, and listening to precisely what the community is saying, Battlefield 6 just overcorrected in some areas. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction – Battlefield 6 maps are too small, simplified objectives, and action that’s more linear than tactical. What we lost in the process is the sense of freedom and unpredictability that defined the franchise for 20 years.
A good Battlefield map doesn’t just contain a healthy dose of chaos, it lets you move through the destructible map and create the chaos. It’s the feeling of cresting a hill in a tank only to see two jets dogfighting overhead while infantry scramble for cover. You can’t recreate that on a condensed, corridor-filled map no matter how polished your graphics are.
Battlefield 6 vs Black Ops 7 Shouldn’t Be a Contest
If you’ve played Battlefield 6 for even a few hours, it’s clear what DICE is trying to do; make the franchise more accessible. And in doing so, they’re threatening to undo everything that made it distinct.
Tight respawns, faster time-to-kill, smaller maps, limited vehicles – all of it feels like it’s been designed to appeal to Call of Duty fans who might never have touched a Battlefield game before. That idea might win a few short-term converts, but it alienates the core audience – the ones who’ve been here since Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, and Battlefield 4, the ones who were begging for Bf6 to go back to its roots.
Those games arguably had the Battlefield identity, and they did it right. You could feel the rhythm of combat shift across massive maps, with frontlines forming and collapsing organically, rather than the map-design forcing you into certain paths.
In Battlefield 6, everything happens everywhere at once. There’s no breathing room, no pacing, no sense of a larger war. It’s a highlight reel stitched together from CoD’s playbook, and – yet again – that’s not Battlefield.
CoD has been inching ever closer to Battlefield. Just look at Warzone – which Battlefield 6 will adopt with its upcoming Battle Royale mode – and Modern Warfare, they both now have bigger maps, semi-destructible cover, and larger modes that DICE at the very least popularized back in the day.
Battlefield 6 will almost certainly prove to be a better game that Black Ops 7, but DICE could well be shooting themselves in the foot with this new approach.
