Update: And here are the patch notes, breaking down the many, many changes the fall update has brought to the game. High points include an increase in the effectiveness of the attacking team in the Operations game mode, and a rebalancing of the Suez Conquest map that will make flags in the village areas easier to recapture after they've been lost.
"Going forward we are addressing the balance issues with the Operations game mode. It’s clear that attackers need a boost. To increase the effectiveness of the attacking team, we are increasing the overall tickets for both Operations & Grand Operations," the patch notes state. "In addition, we are also making it somewhat easier to capture sectors as an attacker by reducing the amount of time it takes to capture a flag in Operations & Grand Operations. We’ve also increased the minimum tickets regained in grand operations to from 30 to 50, as well as increased the amount of tickets regained from killing retreating defenders. This will give more of a fighting chance to capture the next sector after previously capturing a sector while having very few tickets left."
Regarding Suez Conquest, "We will be adding two more flags to the layout, this should result in one team not being able to capture and lock down all flags as easy as before," EA wrote. "In addition, we also noticed that it was very difficult to re-capture flags within the capture areas located in the village areas. To solve this we’ve reduced the capture size of these areas to include less buildings. The result of this should make the flags somewhat easier to capture and make sure that a team that has lost and been pushed out of the villages can easier re-capture them and get back into the fight. In addition, to help a team that has been pushed back all the way to their HQ, we’ve added an armored car that players can use to break out of the HQ and flank the opposing team."
Numerous other "general" changes and fixes follow for lower-profile aspects of the game, such as, "If the current squad leader issues an order, then the queue for the squad is cleared," and "Prone soldiers can no longer be pushed by other friendly soldiers." Maps, the UI, weapons, and gadgets have all undergone a multitude of changes (LMGs should now be more viable as mid-range weapons), vehicles have been updated in various ways, and of course there are all sort of bug fixes as well.
Also probably noteworthy, although the actual note is buried several lines deep: You can now rent servers through the Rentable Server Program tab. You can find out more about the Battlefield 1 RSP here, including that it costs $150 to rent a server for six months, which seems to me like an awful lot of money for something we used to do all by ourselves.
Original story:
EA has announced that the Battlefield 1 fall update will be rolled out tomorrow, which means that the multiplayer servers will be going offline. Fortunately, unless the process goes sideways in some unanticipated way, they should only be down for an hour, on a schedule staggered by platform.
- PC: Multiplayer will be offline for 1h starting 08.00 UTC / 12.00 AM PT.
- PS4: Multiplayer will be offline for 1h starting 10.00 UTC / 2.00 AM PT.
- Xbox One: Multiplayer will be offline for 1h starting 12.00 UTC / 4.00 AM PT
Patch notes haven't been released yet, but will be posted in the Battlefield 1 "Game Updates" forum after the update is live. In a "Road Ahead" post that went up earlier this month, however, EA said that Hardcore Servers are on the way, discussed planned changes to the Suez map, revealed the new Fog of War custom game, and promised other "tweaks to matchmaking and server balancing."
Thanks, VG247.
