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Over the weekend, Battlefield Studios introduced a new game mode titled Casual Breakthrough. In essence, this option mirrors the regular Breakthrough format but features several key changes:

• Each team includes only 8 human participants, with the remaining made up of 32 bots.
• Activities done by human gamers grant full XP, while bot actions offer lower rewards.
• Just a pair of maps can be played: Siege of Cairo and Empire State.
• Features like Player tags, accolades, and career stat updates are disabled.

In short, the playlist lives up to its title: it offers a casual take of Breakthrough. At face value, one could assume it's a good idea, as it provides more options for players looking for different methods to have fun with the title. But, if video games have taught us anything, it is that you can't please everyone. In other words, many Battlefield 6 fans are mad.

Player Reactions: Anger to Support

"People want human opponents. Avoid making the errors of your rivals," reads one reply to the official announcement. "Truly disappointing concept," comments another. At the same time, on the Battlefield subreddit, a player notes, "It's unclear where we are going with this game," and another details everything they consider to be problematic in the game: "Fix bugs, fix drone glitch, correct rocket mechanics, adjust aiming after sprinting, fix awful hit registration. We do not require this AI-heavy playlist."

However, for every complaint, some gamers sharing how much they're liking the recent addition. "It's very fun to warm up, human participants prevent it from being a total farmfest but it's quite laid-back," reads one Reddit comment. "This subreddit doesn't understand that there are gamers who have lives and don't play this title 24/7. Allow them to find a middle ground," states another. A response via social media clarifies that as they're "a parent gamer with busy schedules, this is great for me," and someone else praises the mode for "not being overcompetitive."

Valid Concerns and Player Input

All that said, players have constructive reasons to complain about Casual Breakthrough. Some users have pointed out that it will make queue times more extended for different playlists due to the large amount of options currently available. On a similar note, certain regions already encounter AI-filled matches in the existing playlists. It also seems a little backwards that the mode won't start without a minimum number of human gamers, despite it focuses mostly on combat against bots.

Lastly, a major grievances is that Battlefield Portal was promised to provide complete rewards, even against bots, but that got canned when they attempted to eliminate XP farming from the system. Thus this new playlist feels like the community meeting them in the middle, according to a Reddit comment. Another describes this addition as the developers "dropping the ball so hard, I had so much fun in the initial release, why did they feel the need to adjust it?"

Looking Ahead: Adjustments Be Made?

Should Battlefield Studios has demonstrated something to date with the latest installment, it is that they're paying attention and acting on player input. Assignments that were overly hard got fixed very quickly, as did the required Redsec challenges. Chances are that, if their data shows this new playlist is underperforming to their expectations, they won't be shy to make further modifications.