Battlefield 6 has millions of players jumping between its main multiplayer and its RedSec Battle Royale spin-off. However, this isn’t the only mode available to players with the game’s impressive Portal mode also hidden within the main game.
Battlefield Portal is a very powerful map making and game mode creation mode that allows players to craft unique experiences similar to Halo’s Forge mode. Unfortunately, just like how Fortnite XP maps clog up UEFN, BF6’s launch saw Portal ravaged by XP maps that have since been removed.
In a discussion with PC Gamer, studio design director Justin Wiebe explained that the collection of studios working across Battlefield 6 have failed to push Portal as much as they should’ve. Right now, fans are creating fantastic game modes, but no one is actively playing them.
“What we’re not doing a good enough job of right now is surfacing [Portal experiences] for the rest of the community to play,” the designer explained. “And there’s actually one technical issue we’ve been waiting to fix in order to be able to do that, which is painful, right? I just want these community creations to be shared. I want them to go wide. And so I’ve just been checking in every day asking ‘Is it done yet? Is it done yet?’ Because we really want to roll this stuff out, because the creations are fantastic.”
It doesn’t help that Battlefield Portal servers are situated near the bottom of Battlefield 6’s annoying Netflix-like UI. An absolute pain to navigate on all platforms, it’s understandable that players don’t want to spend minutes attempting to find a Portal match when they could just jump into an always-entertaining match of Conquest.
Wiebe believes that Portal has the “right ingredients” to create viral game modes similar to games like Roblox or Fortnite. While the designer didn’t reveal what the exact technical issue is stopping this virality behind-the-scenes, the designer hopes that it will be “resolved really quickly” to “help Portal thrive for the community”.
Nevertheless, the designer explains that Portal is currently in a much better place than it was during the series’ last game. In 2042, there were some fantastic experiences, but without any persistent servers, they wouldn’t get any reach with the designer saying “there was almost zero chance for something to go viral”.
Hopefully, Battlefield 6 devs will find a way to make the game’s Portal offerings more playable for the game’s absolutely massive player count. With every publisher wanting their new Roblox, could Battlefield 6 be that for EA?
