Battlefield 2042 update 3.1 throws out a few grueling rooftop capture points and makes it easier for Xbox players to turn off cross-play

The last update before the holidays rolls out on December 9, and here are the highlights

The third update for Battlefield 2042 will be the last one released in December before DICE regroups in the new year, and it’s squeezing in some notable fixes and changes that should make for a better experience as players settle in for the holidays. If you’ve struggled with cross-play on Xbox or found Breakthrough’s nastier rooftop objectives to be impossible to capture, you’ll want to peek at the 3.1 patch notes for Battlefield 2042.

To quickly bounce off those two highlights, while it was easy enough to enable or disable cross-play in the PlayStation versions of Battlefield 2042 with a simple in-game Options toggle, for whatever reason, Xbox players have been forced to go out of their way to not be matched up against PC players, which has led to this bad ripple effect. With the update, it’ll be consistent across the board, so Xbox players can easily turn off cross-play.

As for rooftop capture points in Battlefield 2042‘s Breakthrough mode, Orbital’s hard-to-safely-reach rooftop point, in particular, can be a grueling nightmare for attackers to take. While it seems like a heavy-handed approach, the developers have opted to just remove that slaughterhouse point — and other, similar points on the Hourglass and Kaleidoscope maps — in update 3.1. In their place, there will be objectives to capture at the bottom.

Here’s a funny demonstration of the pre-patch Breakthrough experience:

There are a few changes that should impact the overall flow of matches and lower spam: frag and incendiary grenades, as well as the prox sensor, have a lowered ammo count (from two down to just one), and the prox sensor has been nerfed with a reduced player-spotting radius and uptime. Aim assist on consoles has also gotten “improvements.”

I’m personally glad to see that the “missing loadout” bug — the one that stops you from changing weapons — has gotten a fix. And update 3.1 also has balance changes for bullet dispersion, recoil, and ground vehicle cannons vs. infantry. “Improvements” were made to bullet hit registration, but this seems like one of those hard-to-nail-down issues.

And with that, I’m pretty pleased — these back-to-back updates have done a lot. Battlefield 2042 shouldn’t have even been in this mess, and it’s frustrating to relive these sorts of launches again and again, but at least the teams hit the ground running.

Battlefield 2042 update 3.1 patch notes

Fixes, Changes, and Improvements

General

• Players that are not the Party Leader can now cancel while waiting in a queue
• Xbox – Cross-Play can now be enabled/disabled in the Options menu on Xbox
• Your Sort settings will now be correctly remembered when refreshing the Battlefield: Portal Server Browser
• Fixed an issue where loadouts would sometimes be empty on the spawn screen after joining a server, preventing weapon selection
• Made improvements to ensure Aim Assist is more consistent during console gameplay
• Ranger’s effective combat range and overall health has been decreased

Audio

• Made various tweaks to the overall audio experience to improve clarity, distance, and directional perception
• Fixed an issue where soldiers would not always play indoor specific footsteps

Weapons

• Removed bounce from Underbarrel Grenades when firing at short distances
• 40mm AP Grenades now properly damage vehicles
• Fixed some weapons displaying wrong ammo counts for specific magazines
• DXR-1 and NTW-50 Bolt Action rifles reload animation increased by 0.2 seconds
• Adjusted dispersion values for most weapons, which results in a faster dispersion decrease when tap firing or doing short bursts
• Adjusted dispersion increases for most weapons. It now takes slightly longer for weapons to become overly inaccurate in sustained fire
• Adjusted the recoil values to prevent over aggressive recoil jumps for the AK24, LCMG, PKP-BP, SFAR-M GL, and PP-29
• Improved hip fire accuracy for all SMGs to make them better stand-out from other automatic weapon archetypes
• LMG dispersion and recoil lowered to improve performance in sustained fire
• Additional improvements to recoil control for all weapons, more specifically automatic weapons.
• Increased close range damage and consistency of the MCS-880 when using Buckshot Shell or Flechette Shells
• Fixed a bug that caused bullets to be fired below the player’s aims for the SFAR-M GL and the K30

Vehicles

• Fixed a bug where vehicle weapons sometimes did not deal blast damage on a direct hit

• We’re reducing the Ground Vehicle 30mm Cannon effectiveness versus infantry. It now overheats faster, has a slightly reduced rate of fire and blast damage, and increased fall off damage at distance
  • Rate of Fire 350 -> 330
  • Heat Per Bullet 0.13 -> 0.14
  • Heat Drop Per Second 0.5 -> 0.475
  • Blast Damage 20 -> 18
• LCAA Hovercraft – 40mm GPL Grenade Launcher
  • Blast Damage lowered from 55 -> 35
• The 40mm Utility Pod upwards firing angle is now easier to use
• EBAA Wildcat – 57mm Cannon
  • Removed dispersion
  • Ammo 12 -> 8
  • Impact Damage 85 -> 75
  • Blast Damage 70 -> 35

Gadgets

Frag Grenade

• Increased the time to detonate a Frag Grenade from 1.1s -> 1.4s after first bounce on a hard collision
• Increased damage of Frag Grenades across game modes to deal 120 damage and guarantee a kill on armored players too
• Reduced Frag & Incendiary Grenade max ammo account from 2 -> 1

Prox Sensor

• Lowered spotting radius from 30m -> 20m
• Lowered uptime from 30s -> 14s
• Lowered amount of Prox Sensor a player can carry and deploy from 2 -> 1

Battlefield Hazard Zone

• Fixed an issue that caused the roaming Occupying Forces LATV4 Recon to spawn at the wrong times or not at all

Breakthrough

• Kaleidoscope – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There are now two Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and one at the bottom in BT small
• Orbital – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There is now a single Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small
• Hourglass – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There is now a single Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small. Also fixed an issue where players were spawning out of bounds

Soldier

• Improvements on back pedaling into objects when being in prone position
• Fixed a rare issue where players could turn invisible when spawning on a full/destroyed vehicle