Battlefield 6 Fans Aren’t Happy With New PvE Mode Casual Breakthrough

Shortly after launch, Battlefield 6 completely nerfed Portal Experiences, as players were exploiting bots in custom servers for huge XP gains. Granted, challenges are painstakingly grindy, so it’s hard to blame anyone for trying to find a workaround to get better attachments and gadgets. But Battlefield studios did also tweak several challenges, arguably overcorrecting on some, to compensate.

Still, fans were outraged that Portals had been nerfed and demanded that the changes be rolled back to allow for bot farming. So, Battlefield Studios introduced Casual Breakthrough, populated with 16 real players and 32 bots, allowing you to earn reduced XP and still complete challenges. Problem solved, right?

Not exactly. The community is now outraged for a whole bunch of different reasons, complaining that Battlefield Studios is wasting its time by “adding pointless modes”, arguing that anyone who likes Casual Breakthrough should “just go play a different game”. Some even called it a “participation trophy for Battle Dads” – as if it’s an insult to… have a life outside of the game?

Numerous commenters also noted that they “had Portals for this sort of thing” already, completely ignoring the fact that custom games weren’t just used for bot farming, but major “infinite XP” exploits – seriously, one Google search shows countless videos on how to pull these off with hundreds of thousands of views. As u/Runonlaulaja put it, “What people were doing in Portal was outright cheesing the game. Like they didn’t even try to play”.

Casual Breakthrough offers a way to bot farm by actually fighting against bots, rather than using custom games built around exploits where you could just stand still to reap the rewards.

It even addresses one of the core issues that players had with custom Portal servers: bot farming counting towards your career stats, significantly inflating K/D, kill count, total score, number of revives, career bests, etc. Casual Breakthrough won’t influence any of these stats, ensuring that your profile is a more accurate representation of your skill level.

Really, when you lay it all out step-by-step, it just goes to show how bizarre the outrage is, and how hollow some of these complaints are:

• Players farmed bots to such a point that Portals were nerfed.
• Players demanded bot farming be added back.
• Battlefield Studios adds a new mode that allows for bot farming.
• Players cry that it’s not true Battlefield, and too “casual”.

The only criticism that really holds water is that a new mode risks spreading the player base too thin, given that RedSec and Strikepoint have only just launched. This is exactly why so many are clambering for an official server browser.

Thankfully, Not Everyone Is Outraged

The negativity might be overwhelming, especially if you’re excited to get stuck into Casual Breakthrough, so it’s worth keeping in mind that, on the internet, this kind of outrage stems from a vocal minority who have been given a Reddit-shaped megaphone; the game is still pulling in concurrent 24-hour peaks of 500,000 players, and there are plenty of posts and comments between the backlash celebrating this update. Here are just a few examples:

“I think this is a great move,” @geekypastimes said. “Make the game more accessible for more people to enjoy it.”

“Win,” @Lovelea8818 wrote. “There is clearly a need for more casual players to be able to play casually. Gaming should be open to everyone, fun & enjoyable for everyone.”

“So many people angry about bots. A lot of my memories from playing with friends have been because of strictly PvE modes–especially with Rainbow Six’s terrorist hunt back in Vegas,” said @Kazooaloo. “Honestly, would love to see BF6 add more to a dedicated PvE”.

So, it’s not all doom and gloom. After all, this is exactly what the community wanted, right up until they didn’t. But hey, it wouldn’t be Battlefield if there wasn’t outrage over every update, eh?