Battlefield 5 is having trouble balancing for both new and experienced players

Battlefield 5 developer EA Dice has rolled back a recent change to the game’s “time to kill” (TTK) after the earlier alteration skewed the game’s multiplayer difficulty in favor of newer players a little too much.

The balance EA Dice is trying to strike between the two sides of the game’s playerbase isn’t an easy one to achieve, and unfortunately working that out is taking a bit of public trial and error for the developer. 

The now-removed changes raised that TTK, meaning that players across the board could take more hits before dying in the game’s multiplayer showdowns. While that gave new players a bit more staying power, the change drew criticism from more experienced players over how it affected the game’s meta and overall play experience.

Following that feedback, the team addressed this latest change and why TTK is now being rolled back to how it was at the game’s launch in a post on Reddit.

“Our intent with the TTK changes was to see if we could evolve the Battlefield 5 experience and make it more enjoyable for new players, whilst also making sure the Battlefield vets have a choice with a more 'core' experience suiting their preferred play-style," reads the post from the dev team. "Clearly we didn’t get it right. Veteran players didn’t ask for the change, but as game developers, we took it upon ourselves to make those changes based on extensive data and deliberation. It truthfully wasn’t an easy decision for us.”

“We have learned a lot over the past week. We’ve gained clarity on the issues you’ve shared with us around Time To Death (TTD), we’ve identified imbalances in weapons, and have recorded real-world data on how TTK changes our game and impacts our players,” continues the post. “With that knowledge we have a better idea of how to improve the game going forward, and have already begun taking steps to improve the experience for all our players, new and veteran.”