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Over the weekend, the game developers launched a new playlist called Relaxed Breakthrough. In essence, this mode mirrors the standard Breakthrough setup but includes a few notable adjustments:

• Each team has just eight real players, with the rest filled by 32 bots.
• Activities done by human gamers grant full XP, while bot actions provide reduced XP.
• Only two maps are available: Cairo Siege and Empire State map.
• Features like Player tags, accolades, and stat tracking have been turned off.

So essentially, this mode lives up to its title: it offers a casual version of Breakthrough. On the surface, one could assume there's nothing wrong, since it provides more options for players looking for alternative methods to have fun with the game. But, gaming history has shown one thing, it is that you can't please everyone. Which is to say, many BF6 players are mad.

Community Reactions: Anger to Support

"People want human opponents. Avoid making the errors of your rivals," reads one reply to the mode reveal. "Absolutely shocking idea," says another. At the same time, in community forums, one user notes, "I have no idea where we are going with this game," and another lists all the issues they consider to be problematic in the game: "Fix bugs, address drone issues, correct rocket mechanics, 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 enjoying the recent addition. "It's enjoyable to practice, human participants keep it from being a total farmfest but it's very relaxed," reads one Reddit comment. "This subreddit doesn't understand that there are players who actually go outside and don't play this game all the time. Allow them to strike a balance," states a different comment. One reply on Twitter explains that as they're "a parent gamer with busy schedules, this is perfect for me," and someone else praises the mode for "not being overcompetitive."

Valid Concerns and Player Input

All that said, players have valid points to criticize the new mode. A few folks have highlighted that it could increase queue times even longer for different playlists because of the large amount of playlists currently available. On a similar note, certain regions already encounter mostly bots in the current modes. It also seems somewhat counterintuitive that the mode won't start without a minimum number of human gamers, despite it focuses mostly on combat against bots.

Finally, one of the biggest complaints is that Battlefield Portal was meant to provide complete rewards, including AI matches, but that got canned when they attempted to remove bot farms from the mode. Thus this new playlist feels like the player base compromising halfway, as per forum feedback. A different user describes this addition as the devs "dropping the ball significantly, I experienced so much fun in the initial release, what prompted them to change it?"

Future Prospects: Adjustments Be Made?

Should the development team has proven anything to date with the latest installment, it is that they're paying attention and responding to feedback. Assignments that were overly hard got fixed rapidly, as did the required Redsec challenges. Chances are that, should analytics indicates this recent mode is underperforming to their expectations, they will not hesitate to make further modifications.