Battlefield portal explainer reveals absurd amount of customization

EA and DICE have provided an in-depth look at how the Battlefield Portal works, the tool for creating your own Battlefield experience that will be available in Battlefield 2042. The details reveal just how flexible the system is, from allowing faithful recreations of fan favorites like Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3, to Frankenstein-style mashups that feature weapons, rules, and maps from multiple different legacy games.

Battlefield Portal will use a web browser interface, allowing custom modes to be easily configured. The Portal is accessible even if you don’t own Battlefield 2042, which means you can still create games and share them with friends who do own the game.

Creating an ‘experience’ in Battlefield Portal requires completing a variety of steps, starting with choosing a game mode. Portal offers the classic list of Battlefield modes; Conquest, Conquest Large, Rush, All Against All, and Team Deathmatch. These can be played on a variety of classic maps, and you are not limited to the “right” number of players for each one; For example, Noshahr Canals: Container Area can be played with 128 players (on PC and next-gen consoles), despite being designed for far fewer combatants.

Portal has 13 small maps and 13 medium maps, in addition to 7 large maps that can only be played on PC and next-generation consoles. Among them are fan favorites like Arica Harbor, Caspian Border, and Battle of the Bulge. The full list can be seen below.

Small maps

• Disposal: Recycling Yard
• Hourglass: Al Salam Park
• Getaway: Platform
• Kaleidoscope: data center
• Manifesto: Caju Operations
• Orbital: Crawlerway
• Renovation: Campos
• Battle of the Bulge: St. Vith
• Port of Arica: Town
• Valparaíso: Town
• El Alamein: Axis Aerodrome
• Noshahr Canals: Container Area
• Caspian Frontier: Gas Station

Medium Maps

• Discarded
• Hourglass
• Break away
• Kaleidoscope
• Manifest
• Orbital
• Renewal
• Battle of the bulge
• Port of Arica
• Valparaiso
• El Alamein
• Noshahr canals
• Caspian border

Large maps

• Discarded
• Hourglass
• Break away
• Kaleidoscope
• Manifest
• Orbital
• Renewal

With mode and map locked, Portal allows for much more granular adjustments. Game modifiers allow you to toggle items such as friendly fire, aim assist, stationary weapon emplacements, and weather events, while soldier settings allow you to choose whether players can go face down, shoot while running, have health regen, slip in and revive team members. These switches help recreate legacy game experiences, where things like squad revival weren’t part of the rules.

There are also modifiers on how vehicles are spawned or summoned, and what UI elements will be present for players; this means that you can disable items like the compass, minimap, and allied identification icons for a more “realistic” type of gameplay.

Battlefield Portal also supports bots, which can be configured as PvE or PvP enemies. In PvP mode, these bots will be replaced by humans when they log into the server, but PvE bots cannot be replaced. Since the player-to-bot ratio can be decided manually, and the sides are made up of odd numbers, it means that you can set up a PvE game where some human players face dozens of AI bots.

Completing the basics is the Restrictions section, which allows you to determine which Battlefield eras will be present. This setting means that you can configure a team to use characters and teams from Battlefield 1942, and have them play against a team configured to replicate Battlefield 2042. This can be adjusted to fine-tune the experience, with the ability to restrict which of the More than 75 weapons teams have access to, what accessories and gadgets are available, and what vehicles will be present.

Ambitious Battlefield Portal users can also use a set of Rules Editor tools to program very specific parameters. EA and DICE have not provided any concrete examples of what can be done in the Rules Editor, but rules can be programmed with conditions and actions and, at least for what little has been shown, can be used to affect things in the Inventory. elements to general factions.

For more Battlefield 2042, check out the 10-hour free trial coming to EA Play and Game Pass subscribers. And despite fan criticism, DICE has doubled over the Battlefield 2042 specialists. You can also take a look at Hazard Zone, the new game mode for 2042.

Matt Purslow is the UK news and entertainment writer for IGN.