Roll of the DICE.

Season 5 launched in Battlefield 6 this week as planned, and though most of the new additions - new maps, weapons and vehicles, and gameplay changes - were well received, the season began on a low note due to accusations of generative AI use and because of a major hit to XP gain.

Upon launch, Season 5 players discovered they weren't earning as much XP as they used to. To make matters more confusing, Battlefield Studios did not communicate any change to XP earn rates prior to the patch's release. The developer has now said the change was "unintended" and reverted XP earn-rates to their previous values.

"Following the launch of Season 5, backend configuration changes resulted in an unintended issue affecting XP earn rates across modes and hardware progression (such as weapons)," the official Battlefield Comms X account said. "These backend changes have now been reverted, and our team is actively monitoring telemetry to ensure earn rates return to intended levels across all experiences. Thank you for your patience and reports while we continue to track this."

Based on some testing, players could only earn a maximum of 300 XP per minute, which was well below the pre-patch rates. In the two days it took Battlefield Studios to respond, many assumed the amount of XP that could be earned had been quietly nerfed because the cuts coincided with the launch of Battlefield 6's Ultimate Shortcut Kit, which was made available to buy alongside Season 5's launch.

The Ultimate Shortcut Kit is a $30 / £25 purchase that fully levels up all classes (including gadgets and Training Paths) as well as 28 weapons and eight vehicles. In one click, you can unlock all of the weapons and vehicles' associated attachments and upgrades, not to mention skins and other level-gated customisation options. The Battlefield series has had similar shortcut packs in the past, but the proximity of this latest release to the unintended XP changes made players assume the worst.

It also didn't help that the season launched with a major returning exploit, and that some content caused suspicions of being created with generative AI, such as the Audacious Breach character skin. The arm patch of this skin spells 'Secuty' rather than 'Security".

Battlefield 6 has had issues with XP earn rates before - especially weapon XP. BF Studios spent months changing how XP and score were earned across the game, culminating in another boost at the start of Season 4.

But the game continues to run into unintended errors every so often in this regard. In June, BF Studios told players it changed XP Boosters to count down in-match, and not in real-world time. Players celebrated, only for the change to be reversed - and a similar thing happened again in the same month. A few weeks later, rival series Call of Duty announced that double XP tokens in Modern Warfare 4 and Warzone would only count down in matches, to much player celebration.

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