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Battlefield 5’s competitive 5v5 mode has been canceled, EA DICE announced. The studio said that their ongoing efforts in quality assurance and new content delivery are more important.
In a post to Electronic Arts’ website on Thursday, senior producer Ryan McArthur noted that the game already has competitive modes of play, which suggests that combat at a much smaller scale than the Battlefield franchise is known for wasn’t that important to players, either.
“Not creating this mode was a tough decision, but vital for us to more quickly reach our bug-crushing and content goals,” McArthur wrote. “We know that there’s already an existing competitive gaming experience in our community, and we’re helping build features to support these communities.”
Battlefield 1 launched a 5-on-5 mode called Incursions that lasted from August 2017 to April of this year. DICE said back in April that a 5v5 squad conquest mode would be coming in the fourth chapter of Battlefield 5’s DLC schedule, which launched in June. The next chapter, Awakening the Giant, is coming soon this fall.
McArthur noted that Chapter 4 “also introduced some issues to the overall quality of the experience,” that developers have worked to address since June. The next update will deliver improvements to address those problems, as well as add two infantry maps and increase players’ maximum ranking tenfold, from Rank 50 to Rank 500.
The problems introduced by Chapter 4’s launch also vexed some game types on the Al Sundan map, which is currently limited to Squad Conquest and Team Deathmatch modes. DICE hopes to have “this vast desert map” ready for playing much larger modes with the 4.6 update scheduled for next month, but can’t promise that just yet.”We first want to make sure the fix is working properly and won’t create problems elsewhere, which has been the case with some past updates,” McArthur said.
Update 4.6 will also bring Conquest, Team Deathmatch, Breakthrough and Squad Conquest game types to the Operation Underground map. Rush will also be playable on the map but only for a limited time. “This is our reimagining of Operation Métro,” a multiplayer map in the modern setting of Battlefield 3 and 4, “and it’s something that we’re having a ton of fun playing internally,” McArthur said.
