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Over the weekend, Battlefield Studios launched a fresh game mode called Relaxed Breakthrough. In essence, this option resembles the regular Breakthrough setup but features several notable changes:

• Every squad includes just eight real players, with the remaining made up of AI-controlled opponents.
• Actions done by real players grant complete experience points, while bot actions offer reduced XP.
• Just a pair of locations are available: Siege of Cairo and Empire State map.
• Elements like Dogtags, accolades, and career stat updates have been turned off.

In short, the playlist delivers on its title: it's a casual take of Breakthrough. On the surface, you might think there's nothing wrong, since it provides additional choices for players seeking different ways to have fun with the game. But, if video games has shown one thing, it is that you can't please everyone. Which is to say, a lot of BF6 fans are mad.

Player Responses: Anger to Support

"People want human opponents. Avoid making the mistakes of your competitors," states one reply to the official announcement. "Truly disappointing idea," comments a different user. At the same time, in community forums, one user remarks, "I have no idea where we are going with this title," and another lists all the issues they consider to be broken in the game: "Fix bugs, address drone issues, correct rocket mechanics, fix [the] bloom after sprinting bug, fix awful hit registration. We do not require this AI-heavy playlist."

However, amid the criticism, there are players sharing how much they're enjoying the recent addition. "It's enjoyable to warm up, human participants prevent it from being a complete grind but it's quite laid-back," reads one Reddit comment. "This subreddit fails to see that there are players who actually go outside and can't play this game 24/7. Let them find a middle ground," states another. One reply on Twitter clarifies that as they're "a battledad with limited time, this is great for me," and someone else praises the mode for "avoiding intense competition."

Valid Concerns and Community Input

All that said, players have valid points to criticize Casual Breakthrough. Some users have pointed out that it will make wait times more extended for different playlists because of the sheer number of playlists in the game already. On a similar note, some areas often face mostly bots in the current modes. It also seems somewhat counterintuitive that the mode won't start without a minimum number of real players, even though it primarily centers on combat against bots.

Finally, a major grievances is that a previous feature was promised to provide complete rewards, including AI matches, but that got canned when they attempted to remove bot farms from the system. So Casual Breakthrough feels like the player base compromising halfway, as per forum feedback. A different user describes this addition as the devs "dropping the ball so hard, I experienced so much fun in the first couple of days, why did they feel the need to adjust it?"

Looking Ahead: Adjustments Be Made?

If Battlefield Studios has proven anything so far with Battlefield 6, it's that they're paying attention and acting on feedback. Tasks that were overly hard got fixed very quickly, as did the required Redsec challenges. Chances are that, should analytics shows this recent mode isn't performing to their expectations, they will not hesitate to make further modifications.