Now that Battlefield 2042 has gotten its class system update, developer EA/DICE is looking to add additional features to the futuristic military multiplayer game. One of those is a squad management system, which has taken different shapes in previous Battlefield games but has offered additional bonuses and options for coordinated squad play.
During a recent Q&A episode of the official Inside Battlefield podcast, lead producer Nika Bender explained that while squad management has been one of the most-requested features, the team needed to finish and deploy the new Battlefield 2042 class system first.
“Squad management is something that our players have been asking for, we know it’s one of the features that players [expected] to have when we launched the game,” Bender says. “We are looking into it – the thing is, we wanted to get the class system out, there are other things we wanted to change and release before we jump on squad management.
“We have to pick and choose; that’s the challenge, you can’t have it all at the same time,” she says. The discussion about squad management begins at about 33:40.
Bender wasn’t ready to go into further detail on what Battlefield 2042’s version of the squad management system will look like. At the basic level, squad management has included the ability to kick members out of squads and has offered XP bonuses for sticking together and fighting effectively as a team.
In Battlefield 4, squad leaders could request special orders from their side’s commander, and then could either accept those orders or ask for new ones. Squad leaders could also ask for supply drops or UAV support from their commanders.
Squads that worked well together in Battlefield V could unlock the V-1 and JB-2 rocket barrage abilities for their squad leader, as well as smokescreens, special vehicles, and supplies.
How this might look in Battlefield 2042 is anybody’s guess at this point, and the new system will have to work with the new hybrid class-specialist system that EA/DICE has landed on for the current game. The ETA for this feature is also unclear – Bender’s comments suggest that it won’t be coming up right away, but that it’s far enough along in development that it might be sometime this year.
If you’re working on completing the Battlefield 2042 specialist skin challenges, we’ve got a handy guide that’ll let you know how to finish each one and round out your near-future war-drobe.