Welcome to ESB Flashpoint

Over the past three months, we have been hard at work with one of the top Portal creators, Mancour, to build a new game mode for the competitive Battlefield community. Over the years, Domination has always been a fan favorite and a mode many love. Unfortunately, it was never as fun to watch as it was to play, but it made us want to shift our focus slightly away from Rush for now to build something that felt more familiar to certain players. Here at EsportBF, we are huge fans of King of the Hill based modes such as Hardpoint, and we wanted to bring this style of game mode to 2042 thanks to Portal.

With Mancour, our staff (a particular shoutout to Brett & Jordy), and an internal group of testers, we have spent countless hours in empty servers, running 4v4 scrims, making changes, and trying to break things to bring a KOTH-style mode to 2042. Through all our work, we are making sure that the game mode is both fun to play and accessible and fun to watch.

We are proud to introduce ESB Flashpoint.

Together with the 4v4 competitive experience codes you can find in the rules, we will also release a few 6v6 experience codes. These 6v6 variants will be used to have persistent servers up for everyone to play in when not in scrims and hopefully allow more players to discover the mode and get into competitive Battlefield.

With this in mind, we created a total of 11 maps for the mode, and while some of them will be better suited for pubs (hello orbital) and not our 4v4 competitive events, we wanted to ensure enough variety to allow players to see what they preferred.

It’s been a while since we last updated our 4v4 rules while we allowed 2042 to heal throughout all these past updates. With update 3.2 being around the corner and bringing the much-needed class rework to the game, we wanted to get a head start on fine-tuning the mode before it happened.

We have implemented an updated set of weapon and gadget restrictions for Flashpoint that we believe will keep the playing field reasonably balanced while we wait for the new update.

Once it arrives, we’ll make sure to revisit these rules, and ask for your opinions like always.

The maps of Battlefield 2042 have not been designed with esports in mind. We’ve felt it wise to remove specific areas on maps that were detrimental to competitive play.

If a player enters one of these areas, the game will kill the player and display a message to ‘stay inside the play area’.

The current banned areas are:

  • Battle of the Bulge: the church rooftop.
  • Exposure: the three rooftops of the hangars.
  • Discarded: the rooftop of the hangar and the highest point on the ship.
  • Manifest: taking the rope up to the top of the tower.
  • Noshahr Canals: on top of the yellow crane.
  • Stranded: the top of the ship.
  • Kaleidoscope: the top of the data center.
  • Spearhead: the top of the square building.

Not all of these areas are easily accessible, especially with the removal of Mackay, but we felt it would be better to be safe than sorry.

The design team will keep an eye out for feedback from the community regarding the current banned areas and make changes to them accordingly.

Note: You can also see a visual representation of the banned areas by clicking HERE.

The base spawn system sometimes causes issues in a competitive setting. The design team has made several additions and restrictions to the base spawn system:

  • The first spawn of the game will place players from both teams equally distant from the first flashpoint to ensure a fair start to the round. The code uses the teleport function in the logic editor to achieve this. However, this function is currently bugged on Battle of the Bulge and Manifest until DICE/Ripple Effect fixes it (hopefully by the end of the month). On these maps, we’ve chosen the first flashpoint to be equally distant from the base spawns the game gives both teams.
  • If a player spawns within 10 meters of an enemy, the spawn is blocked, and you must redeploy again. The redeploy will be instantly available to minimize time lost.
  • If a player spawns within 20 meters of a flashpoint and there is no teammate within 15 meters, the spawn is also blocked. This restriction has been added to ensure the game does not spawn a player on an uncontrolled flashpoint, which would give that team an unfair advantage. The redeploy here will be instantly available as well.

Feedback, feedback, and a few test cups! We’ve decided to release the game mode because we are pleased with its current state. However, there’s only so much internal testing we can do, so this is where you all come in.

We will be hosting our first Flashpoint test cup on Sunday, February 12th, 2023 (more info on this in the coming days).

Play the mode, talk to us on Discord and help us perfect the game mode for the future. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts.

Click HERE to visit the ESB Flashpoint HUB for all the latest information, rules and events.

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