Battlefield 6 lead producer comes back from vacation and immediately addresses a storm of feedback: 'Need to go action on a bunch of this now'

When I come back to work after a nice long vacation, I open my email client with the sort of dread usually reserved for month-old leftovers at the back of the fridge. Not so for Battlefield 6 lead producer David Sirland, who recently returned from some PTO and immediately asked the entire Battlefield community an irresistible question: "What irks you with BF6 right now?"

The X post attracted over half a million views and 2,000 replies in just over 12 hours. Sirland didn't respond to everybody, of course, but he did comment on a lot of the issues gnawing at players—maps, recoil, dispersion, and that laser targeting bug that's ruining the lives of heli pilots, to name a few. He also noted what fixes we can expect from the next big BF6 patch, which will arrive in the "near future."

Below is a recap of Sirland's impromptu AMA, broken down by topic.

Bots

A lot of folks complained about bots in Battlefield 6, to the extent that Sirland wrote a secondary thread outlining exactly how bots are used in the game. None of this is stuff we didn't already know—bots are used to seed servers as they're spinning up and are supposed to be replaced by real players—but he acknowledged that this process might not always work as intended.

Drone hammer exploit

The bug that lets players climb aboard drones and smash them with a hammer to gain infinite height will be fixed in the next patch. ETA "soon."

Server browser

One of the hottest topics in Sirland's replies was the server browser and its mediocre state as a browser of servers. The lead producer acknowledged that they haven't done a great job at highlighting the stuff people are actually playing, and mentioned plans to host official servers that can be backfilled by matchmaking (similar to how matchmaking worked in numerous previous Battlefields).

4-player squad limit

DICE will one day let us matchmake with parties larger than four players. Considering this is a longstanding feature of Battlefield, it's disappointing this wasn't always the case.

Hitreg issues

Sirland says the team has recently identified a bug with hit registration and is working on a fix.

Aim assist

Aim assist for controllers will be getting some sort of overhaul soon, but no specifics.

Terrible UI

DICE knows everyone hates Battlefield 6's UI, and while Sirland doesn't make it sound like an overhaul is a big priority, he did say there are "several things in play" to improve it.

Bigger maps, and map improvements

Sirland touched a little bit on the community's burning desire for bigger maps, but his responses on this topic weren't particularly urgent. More maps are coming, and they might or might not be "moving in a direction" of being larger? Not exactly confidence-building rhetoric.

Recoil and bloom

Recoil and bloom/dispersion came up, of course. Sirland reiterated that a major pass on bloom and dispersion is a part of BF6's next major patch, and added that it's important to have varying recoil patterns so that guns actually feel different (something that he feels Battlefield 4 failed to do back in the day).

Footstep audio

Footstep audio, especially in Redsec, is being looked at.

IFV laser targeting bug

Apparently it is indeed a bug that IFV tanks can mercilessly bully helis and jets with lock-on missiles they simply can't avoid—you'd think this would be a big enough deal that the whole vehicle would be disabled for a while, but Sirland says the team is aware and working on it.

Vehicle ecosystem

If you can decipher what Sirland means by improving BF6's "vehicle ecosystem," I'd be happy to hear your thoughts.

Time-to-death

Sirland says the netcode that governs time-to-death is being "actively improved," so that's nice.

SBMM

A player complained that their close quarters matches (TDM, Domination, king of the hill) feel incredibly unbalanced, and Sirland says this is somewhat unavoidable because BF6 doesn't have strict SBMM.

Solo queue in Redsec

All you solo Redsec players will like this one.