After months of waiting, it’s finally here. The Battlefield 2042 beta is right around the corner and I, for one, can’t wait to see what it has to offer.
The same is likely true for Battlefield fans around the world. With three years since the last mainline entry (and eight years since the last good entry), the expectations for 2042 are set extremely high. Despite the hype train, many fans might find themselves out of practice when it comes to playing a Battlefield game. Even the veterans might need a refresher as Battlefield 2042 adds new mechanics and revitalises old ones.
So, here are five things you should know to get ahead in the Battlefield 2042 beta.
Conquest has changed slightly
Conquest is the staple game mode that Battlefield is known for. It sees several capture points, denoted by flags, scattered across huge maps. It’s up to the two teams to capture as many of these flags as possible to drain the enemy’s supply of respawn tickets. Don’t worry, I’ll explain how tickets work shortly.
In previous Battlefield games, the capture points stood by themselves – as long as you held the majority of them, you would have the advantage. That changes slightly in Battlefield 2042. Now, the map is split up into different sectors. These areas now contain a collection of flags, usually between two and three. To gain an advantage over the enemy, teams must capture all of the flags in an entire sector before they move onto a new objective.
The change is to discourage ‘zerg rushing’, a tactic where teams would group up and move around the map as one unit. In previous games, this resulted in boring matches with few fights happening between map traversals. Hopefully, this change encourages teams to fight harder for one area before moving onto the next.
Let’s recap on tickets
Tickets are the way that Conquest matches are scored in Battlefield games, and it hasn’t changed much at all in 2042. The term ‘ticket’ refers to how many times a team can respawn a player. Every time that a player dies and spawns back into the game costs their team a ticket. While this encourages teams to go for kills, the number of available tickets is more drastically affected by acquiring flags and sectors.
When a team captures a sector, that causes the enemy team to ‘bleed’ tickets. The more sectors that a team owns, the faster the enemy will drain tickets. For that reason, it’s more important that players focus on capturing objectives than they do kills in Conquest. It’s not enough to rack up kills while attacking an objective – it also makes sense to stick around and defend when necessary too.
Don’t forget to heal and revive
This one seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many medics fail to remember how to place down heals. True Battlefield 3 and 4 veterans will know this pain. Because dying can cost your team valuable tickets, it’s imperative that you try and stay alive for as long as possible in a match of Battlefield 2042.
The easiest way to heal is to simply wait it out. 2042 features an auto heal function that kicks in when you remain out of combat for long enough. This will heal you back to full health if you wait long enough, though taking damage will reset this timer.
The quickest way to heal is via some help from a team medic. Healing crates can be carried by any player thanks to the class system changes in Battlefield 2042. Standing next to one of these crates will quickly heal you while in the vicinity. There’s a cooldown timer on when players can place down these medical crates, so be sure not to spam them unless you really need to.
Last up is Maria Falck. She’s the support-centric Specialist that carries a syrette pistol. This can be used to quickly heal herself, but also her teammates from afar. Fun fact – this syrette pistol used to be able to revive fallen players from a distance. However, this was tweaked to only allow remote healing as the revive function proved overpowering in early playtests.
If you do go down, squad revives return from Battlefield V to get you back on your feet. Any squad member can perform a revive for squad mates, but this will only return them back with a small amount of health. Falck players can revive anyone from the team, and will do so with a much larger health pool.
Call in support
New to Battlefield 2042 is the call-in system. It operated similarly to the Commander system in Battlefield 4, but without a real person on the other end. At any point in a match, you can call in support from above.
Pressing ‘B’, or the right bumper on the controller, brings up a small tablet on which you can choose a vehicle to drop into the battlefield. There are options for transport vehicles, or something more heavy like a tank.
The maps in Battlefield 2042 look to be some of the largest the series has ever seen. There’s nothing worse than getting stuck out in the open with no means of transport back to the nearest flag. Hopefully, this new system will prevent that from happening.
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome
In previous Battlefield games, if you wanted to make changes to your weapon loadout, you’d have to wait until you returned to the spawn menu. That’s no longer the case in Battlefield 2042. The plus system allows players to make minor modifications to their weapons without ever leaving the Battlefield.
Holding down the ‘T’ key, or left bumper on a controller, will see your soldier hold up their weapon and a little plus menu appears. From here, you can choose to swap out the scope, barrel, underbarrel, and ammunition attachment in an instant.
This will be especially useful if you’re transitioning between completely different environments. For example, a 4x ACOG sight might be perfect for picking out targets in the underbrush, but a coyote red dot sight is much more preferential when engaging in close quarters combat. Get used to how the system works and you’ll be a lean, mean, adaptive machine when the full release of Battlefield 2042 comes around in November.
The Battlefield 2042 beta opens for early access on October 6th, but can be accessed by everyone on October 8th. It’s expected to run until October 9th, so make sure you make the most of the weekend!
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[Featured Image Credit: DICE/EA]