Battlefield 1 Massive Shadow DLC & Game Update Detailed

Battlefield 1 has been one of the most successful games for Electronic Arts up till now, the game will receive its first DLC map today alongside a large update. You can read the full patch notes below.

Spectator Mode

With great pleasure, we would like to introduce everyone to the new Spectator mode. In Spectator, players will be able to join a live BF1 match as an observer. From there, observers can switch between first-person and third-person camera views of all the players on the battlefield through our Player View mode, get an overhead bird’s eye view of the battlefield in Table Top mode, or fly a camera through the world using Free Cam mode.

Our goal was to improve Spectator from previous versions of Battlefield. We gathered feedback from the community and focused much of our efforts on improving the usability and flow moving from player-to-player and switching between the different view modes (Table Top, Player View, and Free Cam). Another key design emphasis for us was to make Spectator a viable tool for the community to create content which includes a moveable third-person camera, depth of field, and camera filters.

New Custom Game setting–StandardIssue Rifles

A new Custom Game option has been added: Standard Issue Rifles. In SIR all kits are granted access to their faction’s standard issue rifle. For example, the British are granted the SMLE MKIII. These rifles are not equipped with optics, and are intended to provide players with gameplay inspired by the WW1 trenches. As a Custom Game option, this can be enabled or disabled with other weapon types to create a variety of experiences. SIR is not available as part of the base game experience. We feel that the ability to equip SIR in vanilla would negatively impact the combat roles of the classes. As a clear WW1 fantasy, we hope that SIR scratches an itch for our broad and diverse player base.

Soldier

Movement

We’ve made several fixes and tweaks to the controls and input handling for the soldier experience. Most of these are bug fixes that should generally ensure a higher response level for players. This includes fixing the inability to sprint out of crouch and prone in certain situations and fixing issues with toggle zoom. While we are confident we have improved the situation, we are eager to hear the community’s feedback to see if there are any outstanding or new issues that can be discovered.

Aim Assist

An update has also been made to the controller Aim Assist system in BF1. We now require the player to be actively giving aim input in order to get aim assistance. It was possible in some previous cases to get help on a target when simply strafing past them, which was unintentional. We’ve also exposed additional control options on console, including the ability to tweak the central dead zone. Please note that setting the dead zone too small may introduce unintentional aim movement. We have not made any adjustments to the snap-to-target feature of our Aim Assist. While we are aware there are players who are actively petitioning for the reduction or removal of Aim Assist, we feel that this would be to the detriment of the global player community. As this is an area of high passions, we expect additional feedback on our Aim Assist systems to surface, and we are open to that feedback. We are especially interested in appealing to those players who wish to play without assists, and are sensitive to their needs.

Vehicles

Vehicle Deployment

This update includes some new additional logic to address the problem of spawning as a Tanker, Pilot, or Cavalry soldier without your mount. We have also made some fixes that should prevent the player from getting the incorrect kit when spawning into a vehicle, for example spawning as a Cavalry soldier when spawning into a Tank. In some extreme cases, the player maybe blocked from spawning if a vehicle cannot be spawned. This can happen due to positioning of other soldiers and vehicles in the world, and should be rare. Previously the player would be spawned without the vehicle; in the new case, the spawn flow will be aborted and the player given a “spawn not available” message.

Landship

Looking at the way the game is played, the Landship is underrepresented in gameplay. We wanted to enhance the role of the tank as a teamplay vehicle, as well as give additional incentives for tank drivers to pick up and play the Landship. The biggest change here is the ability to allow teammates to spawn into the Landship directly, like they do the Heavy Tank today. This will help keep the Landship full of teammates, in a way that makes it a far more effective vehicle. We’ve also applied buffs to the driver abilities and the armor of the Landship, making it as armored as the Heavy Tank. The shape of the Landship still makes it easier to knock out treads and weapons compared to the Heavy Tank.

Air Vehicles

Several adjustments have been made to the combat experience for Air Vehicles. We’ve removed an exploit that allowed instant killing of airplanes with the Ranken Darts; these are intended as ground attack weapons, not air to air weapons. Fighter airplanes now have slightly higher damage to their MGs overall and Bombers take more damage from MGs specifically. Rockets have also received a velocity boost to make their usage more consistent. Combined with some additional reductions in overheat, this should make Fighters more viable in the air to air role without having to resort to exploits or lucky rocket hits. We’ve also reduced the damage of rear gunners in airplanes, in order to prevent players from easily switching to the rear gun and killing pursuers. This tactic is, of course, still viable, but now is more difficult to perform, making it a skill move. The damage reduction should not be extreme enough to significantly decrease the intended teamplay benefit of having a full airplane.

Line of Sight

We’ve added a “Head Glitching” style fix to vehicles that prevents players from shooting over objects that block the weapon’s line of sight. This is most noticeable in 3P, and is intended to fix players being able to fire their tank at targets while remaining entirely behind cover. It is our intent to provide a balanced 1P and 3P vehicle experience, and this fix goes a long way towards ensuring 3P does not become the dominant play style.

Detailed Vehicle Changes

TankGewehr now does increased damage, from 120-150 to 160-180. Change is on both the Landship and Tank Hunter. Damage against planes is virtually unchanged
Landship mortars have had their range increased slightly
The Mortar Pattern of the Landship now has 5 seats, adding two additional side LMG seats to the package
The Squad Support Pattern of the Landship now features a front firing 20mm cannon like the Light Tank Flanker Pattern, instead of an LMG
The Landship now takes the same damage as the Heavy Tank
Decreased amount of health restored by emergency repairs on the Heavy Tank from 30% to 20%
Increased the amount of health restored by track repairs on the Landship from 15% to 20%
Decreased amount of health restored by emergency repairs on the Landship from 30% to 25%
Decreased damage of Case shells against planes by 50%
Reduced stationary AA range from 400 m to 334 m
Fixed inconsistent damage of plane rockets against other planes
Reduced plane rocket impact damage from 120 to 100
Increased plane rocket initial speed and reduced time to live
Reduced Ranken Dart damage against planes
Made bombers take 20% more damage from bullets
Increased Dogfighter and Trench Fighter MG damage by 4% and slowed down the overheat
Increased Bomber Killer MG damage by 3%
Decreased Airship Killer MG damage by 18%
Decrease plane tail gunner damage by 23% (far) to 42% (close) and sped up damage drop-off slightly
Reduced boat torpedo range to approximately 400 m, matching the behemoth AA range

Weapons

Shotguns

Shotgun balance has been addressed in this update, with the primary goal of evening out the advantages and disadvantages of each type of shotgun. We noticed that some shotguns were unintentionally strong at certain distances, most obvious with the Model 10-A Hunter and Factory, which could kill a full health target at long range (for a shotgun). Players were naturally preferring these shotguns over others. To prevent this, we reduced the range for the buckshot variants of the M97 Trench Gun, Model 10-A and Sawed Off Shotgun, reducing the maximum one-hit kill distance. To make the M97 Trench gun more attractive we added an extra pellet to all variants and slightly improved the damage drop-off for the Sweeper variant. The Backbored shotgun variants had their range improved, as previously you took too big of a hit for the improved recoil. We increased the accuracy of the 12g Automatic to allow users to make use of its high rate of fire more effectively. Tweaked crosshairs will make it easier to land your damage consistently for all shotguns.

LMGs

Adjustments were made to have LMG performance much more consistent at close and medium range. We tweaked how much inaccuracy you get when you start firing an LMG while aimed. Previously, Optical configurations had a significant advantage over the rest unless a bipod was used. Now the accuracy of the second shot is the same for all variants of one LMG and just slightly above the level previously held by the Optical setups. Using a bipod will still give you a significant boost to your accuracy while firing. Additionally, we added a small bonus to horizontal recoil while aimed with Optical variants, improved reload timers to better match the animations, and made the Lewis Gun overheat slower.

Bayonets

Players may now bayonet charge while reloading or when out of ammo with their weapon. The reload will be aborted if the player still has rounds in the magazine. If the weapon is empty, the reload will restart automatically at the end of the charge.

Detailed Weapon Changes

Reduced reload time for the Lewis MG from 3 to 2.85 s and 4.5 to 4.2 s for fast and slow reload to better match the animations
Slowed down Lewis MG overheat from 35 to 50 bullets
Increased Madsen MG fast reload from 2.45 to 2.65 s to better match the animations
Reduced tactical fast time for the BAR from 2.9 to 2.8 s to better match the animations
Increased MG15 reload time from 4.3 to 4.45 s to better match the animations
Corrected an error where LMGs and rifles zoomed in too fast when used with iron sights and 2.00x magnification
Increased the throwing velocity of the Light AT Grenade to the same value as used by the Frag Grenade
Improved accuracy and recoil of M1903 Experimental
Made revolvers and the Howdah Pistol recover faster from dispersion
Flares no longer set the player on fire immediately after firing them while looking down
Reduced the damage of mortar shells when hitting an object immediately after firing
Fixed Martini-Henry dealing too much damage to most body parts. It is now affected by a 0.9 multiplier to the lower torso and upper arms and a 0.75 multiplier to the legs and forearms, like the other rifles with sweet-spot mechanics
Martini-Henry now resupplies 5 bullets at a time
Reduced No.3 revolver reload time from 2.666 s to 2.3 s
Increased No.3 rate of fire from 150 rpm to 164 rpm
Reduced Repetierpistole M1912 aimed stationary dispersion from 0.4 to 0.3
Reduced Repetierpistole M1912 horizontal recoil from 0.8 to 0.5
Increased Hellriegel first shot recoil multiplier from 1.8 to 2.0
Increased Hellriegel horizontal recoil from 0.76 to 0.8
Reduced MP18 first shot recoil multiplier from 2.1 to 1.8
Improved shotgun crosshair size and scaling
Sawed-Off shotgun now resupplies 4 rounds at a time
Reduced 12g Automatic dispersion increase per shot from 0.3 to 0.15
Fix for dispersion of Model 10-A Hunter decreasing too quickly
Fix for dispersion of Model 10-A Factory decreasing too slowly
Moved up damage drop-off from M97 Trench Gun Hunter, Model 10-A Factory and Hunter by 1
Reduced 12g Automatic post reload delay from 0.5 to 0.3
Improved hip fire of M1903 Experimental
Changed SMGs and LMGs to use damage curves
Huot, Lewis, M1909 and BAR minimum damage increased from 21 to 23
LMG damage drop-off happens at farther distances
Reduced effect of suppression on LMG vertical recoil
Changed LMG base ADS dispersion increase per shot from -0.12 to -0.085 so they are slightly more accurate on the first shots
Reduced Lewis horizontal recoil from 0.36 to 0.34
Reduced Huot horizontal recoil from 0.32 to 0.16
Reduced M1909 horizontal recoil from 0.3 to 0.24
Changed post reload delays on Gewehr 98 from 0.4 to 0.8 to better match animations
Changed post reload delays on SMLE from 0.8 to 0.6333 to better match animations
Changed post reload delays on M1903 from 0.8 to 0.7 to better match animations

Gadgets

Mortars

We’ve reduced some of the inaccuracy added by the last update. Mortars will be more accurate when placed, and slightly more accurate during sustained fire. The damage amounts remain unchanged. We felt that it had become too difficult to hit even large targets like tanks, and the inaccuracy in combination with the damage adjustments to the airburst mortar reduced mortar effectiveness more than intended. In addition, in Hardcore players will now get the Large Map for aiming indirect fire weapons.Spotted players will not show on the map unless Minimap Spotting is enabled in Custom Games.

Syringe

We’ve added a short cool down between syringe uses and added the ability to ignore the cooldown if near an ammo crate. Together a Medic and a Support can team up to quickly revive a large amount of soldiers. The cool down is minor, and is intended to only prevent the near instant revive of several soldiers in a very short time. Reviving a single soldier is unaffected. We feel this is a good balance to prevent “revive trains” from a single Medic, while not reducing the usefulness of revive, with a bonus of additional teamplay.

Ammo & Medical Crates

Medic and Support players should find it much more reliable and useful to deploy their Large Ammo and Medical crates. We’ve added additional healing and resupply power to those crates, so they serve more teammates before being depleted and being destroyed. Additionally, we’ve added a feature that will deploy the crates at the player’s feet if the space immediately in front is blocked by an object or slope. This should drastically reduce, but not entirely eliminate, the situation where a crate fails to deploy. It is still possible for the player to occupy a space where the crate cannot be deployed, for example a very tight corner or a steep slope.

Explosive Icons

We’ve updated the in-world icons for explosives to properly reflect their team, and to fully scale over distance so they don’t unnecessarily dominate the field of view, especially at close range. We’ve also identified an issue whereby it can be difficult to determine if a nearby grenade is infront or behind the player. This update does not include a fix for the issue, but we hope to address it in the future. Finally, we’ve implemented proper scaling on the large crates for both medic and support players, so their icons are not as obstructive at longer ranges.

Hardcore

Thanks to the Community for their feedback on Hardcore mode, we’ve introduced some additional changes in this Custom Game. A large map is now available, as in the base game. In Hardcore the map is will not show the position of objectives, players, etc. We intend for players in Hardcore to only have UI interfaces for things a real soldier could reliably know, for example: how many grenades he has left, but not how many bullets are left in his magazine. For this reason, we have decided to continue down the path without having kill confirmations or a kill log in Hardcore. However, we have added Team Kill confirmations as a nod to the need of accessibility and player learning. In BF1 we changed Hardcore from the reduced health of BF4 to increased bullet damage, in order to retain balanced explosion damage. In this update we’ve adjusted the damage amount in Hardcore from 200% to 125% damage. While on paper this looks like a huge change, 125% damage will still create far more lethal up close damage, for all kits, but will prevent bolt action rifles from being one hit kill at all ranges vs all body types. Other weapons will retain their intended ranges, while still being far more lethal than the base game. These changes help us steer Hardcore down the path of feeling like a faster, meaner, more realistic base game

Stability & Performance

Stability and performance is always critical to us, and in this patch we’ve done a number of improvements to ensure a solid gameplay experience. Below are some of the major changes.

Fixed an issue that caused a hang when pressing J/K/L on console keyboard
Added a new Framerate Limiter option that limits the maximum framerate the game will run at to a specific amount. Limiting your framerate to a lower number can help improve performance if you are experiencing high CPU usage
CPU optimization to improve high framerate operation on high end video cards where there is no VRAM pressure
Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes crash when loading levels
Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes crash when dying in a vehicle
Fixed a server crash related to trip wires
Fixed an issue where outdated game clients could still connect to EA servers without receiving an error
PC: Forced v-sync to on during loading movies on PC to prevent screen tearing and stutters
PC: Fixed some issues that could lead to GPU hang on DX11
PC: Fixed ghosting issues
PC: Borderless full screen now works as intended
PC: Fixed an issue with full screen causing other windows to be resized and/or moved around
Xbox One: Fixed a rare VOIP related crash
Console: Tweaked dynamic resolution min cap scaling to improve GPU performance over loss of resolution

General

Below you’ll find the list of general fixes not included in the things we’ve already covered above.

Gameplay

Monte Grappa, Suez, Ballroom Blitz & Argonne Forest – Made tweaks to certain areas of the map where attackers had a very difficult time capturing specific sectors
Fixed an issue where players could get team kills when killing an enemy who has joined on a friend in your team
Netcode improvements to apply pose changes faster. Before it was only applied when standing and going from stand to crouch. Now it is applied for all pose transitions and while walking as well
Wrecked Airship parts left behind by a destroyed airship should no longer occasionally kill soldiers
Fixedrubber banding issues and non-smooth movement of airplanes in MP
Slightly adjusted the matchmaking ruleset for Operations to reduce the chance of entering an Operation that is about to end
Re-worked how the behemoth enters the map in Operations game mode. The Behemoth will no longer appear if a team is in a significant lead. This affects both attackers and defenders in Operations
Defenders will no longer get a behemoth on a new level if attackers are on their last battalion
Reduced attacker behemoths to prevent them from getting one on each retry on second and third maps
Increased score difference between teams needed for behemoth to appear
Fixed camera jitter during deploy transition to airborne vehicles
Binoculars in Single Player are now working if click-to-zoom option is selected. In multiplayer if click-to-zoom is selected, the zoom clicks are not lost anymore if happening during weapon switch or reload transitions
Added kick of player if spawning with restricted weapons to prevent usage of weapons not allowed in Custom Games
Split the click/hold-to-zoom weapon option into separate ones for vehicles and soldiers
Fixed an issue where the player was not being awarded score for capturing a conquest point after exiting and reentering the capture area
Reduced mortar dispersion increase per shot from 3 to 2.75
Prevented the possibility to spawn with the wrong class when switching class at the time of deploy
Fixed an issue where grenades didn’t rotate correctly or at all when thrown from the player
Fixed an issue with camera transitions when dying
Fixed an issue with horse twitching from explosives
Fixed an issue where trying to place a limpet charge on a door resulted in a crooked, floating charge instead
Fixed an issue where prone aiming constraints were not properly applied after respawn
Fixed an issue where players sometimes became invisible when exiting certain vehicles
Fixed an issue where soldiers would get stuck on top of vehicles
Fixed an issue where captured flags could be stretched by shooting them with shell projectiles
Fixed 3p stuttering of Behemoth when viewed from the ground
Fixed an issue with the placed collision on the tunnel ceiling on Monte Grappa
Fixed an issue where the rifle on cavalry would appear with the sabre animation
Fixed an issue where destroying turrets on behemoths with explosives would sometimes disable the wrong turrets
Fixed an issue which caused part destruction on airships to not work as intended
Fixed an issue where Elite Classes in vehicles or stationary turrets took the same amount of damage as normal soldiers
For players using the click-to-zoom option, sprint is now properly interrupted on zoom and re-engaged on un-zoom
Fortress turret wrecks now stay forever, or until a new turret respawns to prevent issues with vehicle and soldier collision
Minor adjustments to Ballroom Blitz battlement gate damage behavior
Destruction tuning to avoid floating lamps
Adjusted Sinai desert rock bridge debris damage and health for consistency
Fixed object on Ballroom Blitz that improperly caused collision damage to tanks
Fixed strange looking enter animation on QF1 AA Stationary Weapon
Added more spawn variations to the C flag in Conquest on Empire’s Edge
Soldiers can no longer enter the tower on Ballroom Blitz after it has been destroyed
Grenade throws will no longer be canceled by pressing Zoom while holding the grenade button. Instead they can be canceled with Reload
Fixed flare projectiles penetrating aircraft
Flare projectile now breaks glass
Soldiers can no longer switch to rifle grenades when they are out of ammo. The C96 Carbine now automatically switches to secondary when out of ammo
Fixed the beam reticle for the Cei-Rigotti showing the cross reticle instead
Corrected occlusion and collision issues on Ballroom Blitz
Resized the Ring Reticle for improved shooting experience
The mortar can no longer be deployed on bushes
Fixed an issue where sometimes matchmaking from recommendation did not show the loading screen
Fixed an issue where players would sometimes be taken to an earlier check point when rebooting the console while playing the campaign

Improvedoverall UI performance and stability
Fixed an issue of Medics not seeing 3D revive/minimap death icons of team mates who died behind them until they look at the body
Hardcore now shows team kills in the score log
Made it simpler to report offensive emblems by adding reporting functionality in the EoR scoreboard
Improved latency in End of Round when scrolling through the scoreboard
Fixed an issue where vehicle crosshairs would disappear in Hardcore when using the Armored Train or Dreadnaught
Gadgets now take priority if pressing dpad up and dpad left or right at the same time
Fixed an issue with the Operation Outcome screen that caused it to display the wrong information about the result of the Operation
Crosshair visibility can now be adjusted in the gameplay options
Fixed an exploit where a player could steal Squad Leader status from an active squad leader
Fixed anissue with the number of service stars always showing as zero in the customize screen
a gas mask in stationary weapons and other vehicle seats where it was previously hardcoded
Fixed an issue where customization submenus would automatically close while selecting equipment
Fixed an issue with the current soldier not displaying in the squad screen in Team Deathmatch
Squads with players in a party now stay unlocked if there are only two players in the party
Prevent squads having too many players when running map rotations with mixed game modes
Joystick now works without setting the controller layout to Custom
Fixed an issue causing delays in game chat
Fixed an issue where hints would get stuck on the screen
Skins unlocked from Battlepacks now properly indicate they are for all patterns of a specific weapon
Fixed an issue where friendly mortars would sometimes appear as deploy points
Player can now select squad spawn points with the dpad
Fixed an issue where a tech hang was caused by joining an Operation’s session while in progressive installation
Fixed an issue where no error messages were displayed when accepting a Multiplayer invite during progressive installation while playing Singleplayer
Fixed an issue where joining a multiplayer game invite resulted in a black background
Fixed an issue where no queue information was provided after accepting an invite to a full server, while on another server with the option menu open
Fixed an issue where the round bonus score bar in EoR personal tab was counting up and then disappearing
Fixed an issue where spamming the options button in EoR lead to a technical hang in the next round
Fixed an issue with Model 10-A Slug that was tracked as Artillery kills in the EOR screen
Fixed an issue where the EoR countdown stopped when quickly navigating through tabs
Fixed an issue where a tech-hang was caused after selecting the shovel and bayonet in Weapons and gadgets
PC: Added server info in the “…” menu
PC: Pressing “ESC” while in customize now properly takes you back to the deploy screen
PC: Exposed Gas Mask key bind in vehicle section. This allows you to rebind the button to put on
PS4: Fixed an issue where User Created Media Restricted users were able to see server names created by other users
Xbox One: Fixed an issue where the LB/RB buttons had no functionality in the news menu

Audio

Fixed so that master and music volume fades nicely to the saved settings when starting the game

Fixed an issue with in-world sound heard briefly when going into the Deploy Screen

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