EA Outlines 'Battlefield 1' Content Updates Leading Into Summer

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Electronic Arts released a brief glimpse at the road ahead. The company revealed a vague timeline of Battlefield 1 updates coming in May and June.

Electronic Arts' latest edition of Battlefield concentrates on the first world war, which means the developer has many battles to pull inspiration from for content updates. EA isn’t letting Battlefield 1’s potential go to waste, and the company plans to release new content every month for the foreseeable future.

EA isn’t ready to talk about Battlefield 1’s May Update except to say that the company is “constantly working on tweaking the base of the game” and that fans of the Operations mode could expect playlists for the mode. EA said that the full release notes for Battlefield 1’s May Update should be available soon. 

The Battle Expands Into New Territory

In the meantime, EA is preparing to roll out a new map called “Prise de Tahure” to the Battlefield 1 Community Test Environment (CTE). The battleground takes place in the Butte-de-Tahure region of France shortly after the Nivelle Offensive in the autumn of 1917. EA didn’t say when it would release the “Prise de Tahure” map other than to say it’s coming “shortly.” If you wish to gain access to the “Prise de Tahure” map before it reaches regular circulation, you must sign up for community test environment access.  

In June, Battlefield 1 Premium Pass holders will gain access to the “Neville Nights” night map. In Neville Nights, you’ll take cover in the muddy trenches around Malmaison and Soupir France and fight through the night to fend off the enemy.

Premium Friends Test Run Ending

EA rolled out the “They Shall Not Pass” DLC for Battlefield 1 in March, and shortly after releasing the expansion, the company introduced a new feature called Premium Friends. With the Premium Friends enabled, any Premium Pass Holder can act as a chaperone to grant a friend access to premium DLC content while they play in a group.

We tried the Premium Friends feature at the end of March, and we found that it works well. EA is also happy with the response about Premium Friends, but that didn’t stop the company from ending the current iteration of the feature. EA said that it's wrapping up the Premium Friends test run event. The company didn’t say when we could expect a replacement for the service, but EA’s Jonas Elfving said the company “can’t wait to share [its] plans for the future of Premium Friends.”

Next Update “Late Summer,” Sneak Peek At E3

Electronic Arts has a series of four DLC packs planned for Battlefield 1 Premium Pass holders. The “They Shall Not Pass” update rolled out in March, which brought the French Army into the fight. The second DLC pack, “Name of the Tsar,” brings the Russians into the mix with four new ice-covered battleground maps, a handful of Russian-made weapons, and WWI-era Russian military equipment. EA remains tight-lipped about the details regarding the “Name of the Tsar” DLC pack, but it promised to spill the bean next month.

EA plans to release the full details about the upcoming DLC pack and let people have a taste of the expansion at the EA PLAY 2017 conference. If you can’t make it to the EA PLAY event, you’ll have to wait until “late summer” before you can take the Russian side of the fight to the battlefield.

Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

10 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Realist9
    And still no anti-cheat for the PC version where cheating runs rampant. I'll stay away thanks.
    Reply
  • Fiqar_
    Ahh man can't decide whether to get the new COD
    Reply
  • Yeah the lack of anti cheat in the PC version ruined the online play. DICE's policies seem almost designed to protect hacking, and even though its the #1 issue, which if you view BF1 Forums you will see, they don't even address it.

    BF1 is a game without an anticheat looking for cheats on your PC, without the ability to votekick or voteban in game, without the ability to have admins in game to kick/ban, without even a way to quickly and easily report a hack (they force you to load Origin and go through this arcane process and fill out a report!), oh and the game defaults with Kill Feed off so that hackers aren't spotted by average players who dont go into the settings. DICE is shamefully supporting hacking with their policies, and no amount of content updates will make up for that.
    Reply
  • Faux_Grey
    Level 103, 400+ hours, haven't seen a single cheater yet.

    My only complaint would be that not enough people have the DLC.
    Reply
  • olin9
    Level 86, I see lots of cheaters, when you have players that can snipe with a hand gun from 200 yards thats cheating. When you die within 30 seconds 10 times in a row by the same person their may be some cheating. 60-70 % of the time I dont notice any cheating. But if you look at the score board and there are 20 kills vs 1 death. Odds are there was some cheating.
    Reply
  • Haven't seen a cheater in 400 hours on PC? Then you are either A. Blind, B. Cheating yourself and lying about it, C. EA/DICE Employee Lying About it, D. Insanely Lucky.

    If I played 10 rounds I'd run into at least 2 aimbots, 4 damage hacks, 10+ people running the ESP package, and a good 20+ manipulating their ping really high so shots dont register on them. My favorite is the damage hack, nothing like getting 1 shot driving your landship out of spawn by a flanker tank on the other side of a mountain. Not obvious at all.
    Reply
  • islane
    Agreed, if new anti-cheat isn't implemented then this is my last DICE game. I quit a few months ago because of the script kiddies cheating and the lack of any enforcement/fixes/updates/anything leading up to the first DLC. I just don't understand why they didn't acknowledge the problem and attempt a fix. From what I've heard, the cheating has gotten much worse recently. It sucks because Bf1 is a genuinely good game in all other aspects... I just couldnt recommend it to anyone right now since single player is the only functional part of the game currently. Even the old punkbuster system from all the other battlefield games worked better than what we are stuck with in BF1
    Reply
  • envy14tpe
    Battlefield is the game that got me into gaming and I've gone through many versions now. My computer is built for it. It sucks that I deal with hackers more in BF1 than before and dice does nothing to remedy it as they are trying to get people to join their servers instead of protecting the players that join for fair fun.
    Reply
  • TylerPlayz70
    I am very excited for the new dlc. Personally I love russia and I am glad, that they are adding this faction to the game. I have been playing on Xbox 1, and I am level 74, but I am switching now to the PC community. I used to be a PC gamer but switched to xbox, now I am back. Okay so should i be able to run it? i7 6800k, gtx 1070, 16 gigs of ram?
    Reply
  • olin9
    Yes on ultra.
    Reply