Battlefield 6 will be released in less than two hours, and a new, exciting chapter will begin for the competitive Battlefield community. Below you will find several topics explaining the directions we are taking and some explanations of what will come.
In this comprehensive article, we are trying to be transparent about some of our long-term goals to help players and fans understand why we will do certain things in certain ways. We hope you take the time to read the whole thing so that the bigger picture makes sense. We still have some major surprises we are keeping to ourselves, but this should give a good overview of our general direction for Battlefield 6.
The topics covered are:
- New Staff & Open Positions
- Game Modes & Formats
- Test Cups
- Rulesets & ESB Council
- ESB League & Combat Grounds
- Crossplay
- Discord Feedback Threads
We proudly welcome two new staff members: Atom, our North American Community Manager, and Mancour, our Head of Portal Development.
Atom is a very experienced competitive Battlefield player from North America. He’s been competing on Xbox for years and will now compete on PC for Battlefield 6. He’ll lead our community efforts in the region, and we can’t wait to see the North American scene flourish again!
Mancour will be leading our Portal Development efforts. He’s an experienced developer, and together, we built ESB Flashpoint in BF 2042. He’s also one of the hosts of the Portalcast, which you can check out HERE. We can’t wait to build more game modes for the competitive community!
Below are two positions we are currently recruiting for. The application forms provide a clear overview of each position’s key responsibilities and requirements. If you feel like you would be great in another domain that can help us advance Battlefield esports, please don’t hesitate to email us at contact@esportbf.com.
European Community Manager:
https://forms.gle/NnwnKV9g4FzNgnwFA
Moderators:
https://forms.gle/wZgrV9KCabzWXSUL6
The new version of Portal is already here, and with it come thousands of possibilities for the competitive community. Despite the almost infinite possibilities, we aim to focus on specific modes and formats for competitive play. Over the past few months, we have been working on two modes to kick off Battlefield 6: Squad Rush and Conquest Small.
For the 4v4 scene, we aim to offer multi-mode events, as we have since Battlefield 4. Once Squad Rush is finished, we will work on bringing back Squad Obliteration like we did in 2042. We wanted to bring back Flashpoint as a third mode, but since Battlefield 6 already features King of the Hill, we will be using that instead. While many may feel the Domination nostalgia, and the mode is great fun to play, we don’t believe it’s a very viewer-friendly and accessible mode for the casual player.
For Conquest Small, our goal is to build it around 8v8s and 12v12s. We believe that for a game like Battlefield 6, 12v12s will allow the mode to shine and make the vehicle-to-infantry balance easier to achieve, providing a great competitive Battlefield experience. However, we want to make sure teams have the opportunity to play both formats and pick the one they prefer, especially as different parts of the community will have different expectations based on their respective competitive experiences. Experienced players on PC will likely prefer 8v8s based on how the Conquest community evolved there through Battlefield 3 and 4. In contrast, based on those same games, the console community will likely prefer 12v12s and 16v16s. The console community also played 12v12s in Battlefield 1 and 8v8s in Battlefield V.
Keeping 8v8s in mind, when we start building Squad Obliteration, we also plan to develop 8v8 Obliteration in parallel. We also have some other ideas for 8v8 game modes and new scoring systems, but we’ll talk about those later.
We aim to release experience codes for maps and modes individually as soon as possible to get teams playing and used to the maps ahead of the first Test Cups in a few weeks. The goal, as always, is simple: to work hand in hand with the community to ensure these modes are as competitive and well-designed as possible. Our community is full of incredibly experienced players, and we can’t wait to get these conversations going with you all. So please share your feedback as soon as you start testing them out!
Over the coming month, we will host multiple Test Cups to test these modes together and gather critical feedback from you, the players, and the teams. Each event will have a slightly different set of restrictions, designed to help us collect important feedback in between events and before we create version 1.0 of each ruleset.
Our Test Cups use a Swiss-system tournament format, with 3-5 rounds played depending on the game mode. Unlike other formats, the Swiss-system is a non-eliminating tournament format, meaning every team plays a fixed number of rounds, regardless of how many they win or lose. It is designed to pair participants based on their current standings, meaning that as the tournament rounds move forward, you will continue playing versus teams with similar skill levels. This format ensures that all teams play the same number of matches and will therefore be able to provide more feedback on the modes and rulesets.
We will provide more details on the dates and times for 4v4, 8v8, and 12v12 next week (together with sign-up information). For 4v4, you can expect separate events for North America and Europe, while for the larger modes, we’ll allow cross-region play between the two. Our Test Cups will be available on all three platforms: PC, PS5, and XSX.
Here are the upcoming Test Cup dates:
Sunday, October 19th, 2025- Sunday, October 26th, 2025
- 12v12 Conquest
- Sunday, November 2nd, 2025
- 4v4 TBA
- Sunday, November 9th, 2025
- Sunday, November 16th, 2025
Participating in a few of these events will make teams eligible to attend the first ESB Councils for their respective modes and have a voice in shaping the rulesets.
Since 2012, we have been building our rulesets directly with the community. Player feedback is at the core of our rulesets, but decisions must be made with knowledge and facts to back them up. This is why we host ESB Councils regularly throughout the year.
The ESB Council is a periodic group voice meeting with active team leaders. Its purpose is to discuss and vote on significant changes to our rulesets, from crafting the first version of the rules to updating them with each major game update. Eligible teams are allowed to send one representative each, and established tournament organizers who would like to use ESB rulesets in their upcoming events can also sign up to participate in the conversations. Team eligibility comes from being active in our events, with Test Cups being a vital place to start when a new game launches.
Throughout these meetings, we introduce various topics and ensure they are addressed in depth and constructively with everyone involved. We want teams to make informed decisions when voting on rules that affect thousands of players. Once topics are discussed, all team leaders must complete a detailed questionnaire to cast their final votes and submit it before the meeting ends. After that, the results are generally published in an article on our website after a couple of days (example), and the changelog is updated on the respective ruleset page.
In the coming weeks, we will have more detailed information to explain how it all works in more depth, as well as the date of the first Battlefield 6 ESB Council.
Our most popular event series, ESB League, will arrive in Battlefield 6 in January. After 15 seasons in the book, having new modes, formats, regions, and divisions will be great. It features single and double Round Robin formats with additional single-elimination playoffs for the top teams. We can’t wait to showcase top players and teams and what top competitive gameplay can look like. We’re hyped to bring back detailed player stats, ESB Allstars, Player of the Week awards, and more!
Combat Grounds is a new narrative-driven 32v32 event series in which four factions compete in weekly matches to conquer and control regions on a strategic real-world map. Over six weeks, they battle to dominate the most regions and claim victory. It uses our own tournament format, called the “Combat Map“. We suggest checking it out!
Compared to the hyper-competitive formats we usually build, this is a more accessible and less restrictive format that will be a perfect stepping stone for new players. We are incredibly hyped to see large-scale matches return to competitive Battlefield, and we hope seasoned veterans are as well.
Players can sign up alone or with a friend, ensuring that everyone gets to meet and play with new players. If you are curious about how it works, the Combat Grounds website has an in-depth “How it Works” page that explains the format in detail.
Below is the promo video we made for our test 2042 season. Combat Grounds will return with a new story and four new factions later this year.
There will also be other events; this is just a small preview.
Crossplay between PC, PS5, and XSX has been a hot topic on our Discord lately. Some players want to play with their friends, and cross-play gives them more chances to do so, while others want to avoid it as much as possible.
We believe in creating a competitive and even playing field for anyone who wishes to compete, and we don’t think that full cross-play allows us to achieve that. We have always loved that Battlefield games on console had a weaker controller aim-assist than other FPS games in the market, even going one step further and banning auto-rotation through settings for many of our past events. This also means that Mouse and Keyboard will always be the superior input for Battlefield, and that’s perfectly fine. On top of this, if you add performance differences, most pc players play at 144+ fps, and most console players play at around 60+ fps, creating an even bigger gap between the two. This creates an unfair environment for console players, benefiting only specific teams.
Input-based cross-play could also be a theory, and while Battlefield 6 natively supports MnK on consoles, before launch, we currently have no information on whether we’ll have the tools to make this happen (e.g., showing input on the in-game scoreboard).
We believe full cross-play is a short-term vs. long-term goals issue. In the short term, everyone on experienced teams will get to play with their friends. It will be fun, and it may alienate a few teams, but the testing process will go well, and we’ll have a few successful events through the first six months or so of Battlefield 6. It will likely help kick the scene off more quickly. In the long term, however, new console teams will be alienated because having MnK players will become somewhat of a requirement to compete at a certain level. New players will also be alienated. This will either lead to people wanting console-only events on the side or some players not wanting to compete because we haven’t created a fair environment for them. The PC scene will be fine, but the console scene will suffer because the crossplay aspect will make it less accessible.
We believe that the long-term benefits of doing this the right way outweigh the short-term benefits of doing full cross-play from the start, but we are willing to try it and let the community tell us how they feel about it (and maybe even prove us wrong).
Remember, from our point of view, full cross-play means fewer events to manage simultaneously, and an easier time sponsoring certain events (ultimately making our lives easier). However, if this comes at the cost of competitive fairness, then we’d still rather do more work and have it split up.
Since we have Test Cups coming up, the first few will feature full cross-play, with PC, PS5, and XSX all competing together. The remaining Test Cups will feature console-only crossplay, with PC playing alone and PS5 and XSX playing together. This will allow the community to provide clear feedback on their preferred direction.
Starting this weekend, you will find new feedback threads in the Support Channels section of our Discord server. This Battlefield 6 Feedback Topics section will provide an early way to start collecting feedback and constructively discuss the various aspects of the game (weapons, gadgets, vehicles, modes, etc) ahead of the first Test Cups. Please don’t be afraid to get the conversation going. We can’t wait to hear and read your thoughts on the game.