Battlefield 6 finally answers the $1 million question facing its biggest feature

Battlefield 6 is already making waves in the shooter space, finally providing proper competition to the juggernaut that is Call of Duty. Its recent beta saw players flood its servers in their droves, and EA's using the litany of feedback at its disposal to hone its offering. Despite promises to improve gunplay, movement, and more, the talk of the town as of late has concerned itself with the custom search functionality utilized by the beta. Specifically, with how lackluster it is in comparison to the old school server browser everyone's clamoring to see return. Of course, this is only the opening salvo, and the Battlefield team has much more in its locker. Now, it's not only offered up its vision for the latest iteration of its map creation tool, Portal, but how it'll mesh with its server browser system. It's all well and good having custom servers, but it's pointless going to all that effort if they're not persistent. Whether or not EA's giving total freedom in this sense has been the big question on players' lips. With this latest update, we finally have our answer.

Battlefield 6 isn't even out yet, and it's already making a strong case to become one of the year's best FPS games. It might still be lacking some basic functionality, and the beta threw up several issues with the Battlefield 6 weapons, among other elements. EA's post-mortem includes major changes that will effectively kick the CoD out of Battlefield, distilling the experience into something more consistent with the series' heyday.

One crucial element that still has a question mark hanging over it is the inclusion of persistent, player-hosted servers that won't disappear once the lobby has emptied out. Battlefield 2042 fell foul of this, and this only hampered player retention as micro communities weren't allowed to form. As Ken notes, the custom search feature for official games is a big step forward, but it's only "the next best thing" to a full-fledged server browser, especially one with persistent instances.

In its latest community news post, the Battlefield team delves into its plans for Portal, which will let you make everything from a horde mode to "a top-down 2D shooter." Its comprehensive toolset certainly sounds impressive, but the really interesting bit comes after, as it turns its attention to how you'll get to interact with these 'Community Experiences.'

The first thing to note is that you'll get full XP when playing 'verified' Portal experiences, which are effectively modified instances of standard BF6 modes. The second, and more important, tidbit the post specifies is that Battlefield 6 will not only have a proper server browser to parse through Community Experiences, but, "included with game purchase, players will also have the ability to make their hosted servers persistent, so it's always listed in the browser for easy access." Gang, we are so back.

A limited version of player-hosted servers is set to be privately tested in Battlefield Labs soon, so I suspect we'll get a much better look at its final form ahead of launch. As Battlefield turns back the clock and harnesses its golden age, it finally feels like the final piece of the puzzle is slotting neatly into place.

The Battlefield 6 release date is still a short leap away, so keep your skills sharp with some of the best multiplayer games you can slide into right now.

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