The Battlefield 6 open beta is live and tearing up the Steam charts, with hundreds of thousands of people now learning the ins and outs of the shooter’s new ‘Kinesthetic Combat.’ In short, the team-based game reformulates some of its movement mechanics with an eye towards fluid action. If this immediately brings Call of Duty to mind, you’re not alone in thinking that. But one of the consequences of this change bears down on Battlefield 6‘s ‘time to kill,’ a concept that references the speed at which a player achieves an elimination after spawning. As some players tell it, Battlefield 6‘s time to kill is now overwhelmingly fast. And how much fun can you have in a game when it feels like you die immediately?
A game’s time to kill is determined by a variety of factors, all of them intertwined in complicated ways. You’ve got things like map size, weapon power and cadence, unlockables, and team size to consider alongside core verbs like movement and shooting. In the case of Battlefield, the TTK is further complicated by unique features like destructible environments and reviving mechanics. But in terms of structure, Battlefield 6 is a return to form for the series in many ways, except for how it handles movement. As Polygon describes in its preview, you can now do things like roll, sprint while crouching, and smash through windows. Battlefield 6 also introduces ‘Flick Look,’ which allows players to turn around almost immediately, as you can see in the video below:
“It feels more like CoD than a Battlefield,” reads one comment on Steam. “Like no exaggeration every 5 seconds you killed,” another says. “You are thrown into a game that looks gorgeous but if you don’t have the reaction time of 1ms [you are] dead.”
“It feels similar to the COD ‘one frame’ deaths,” reads one Reddit thread that negatively describes Battlefield 6‘s time to kill.
One frame deaths are exactly what they sound like: when you die so suddenly, the game almost seems to freeze. Often, it happens due to some invisible shenanigans involving netcode, where one player’s connection isn’t quite receptive enough to show what everyone else might be seeing. Another possible TTK influence is the apparent existence of cheaters who can get unfair, impossible kills. But whatever is causing the TTK in Battlefield 6, ultimately some players kind of hate it.
Time to kill is a tricky thing. No matter where it’s tuned, someone is bound to dislike it. But with Call of Duty’s massive sales and influence, many modern shooters have steadily evolved into swifter versions of themselves. At least, that’s one discernible reason. Game developers are constantly weighing how to best keep players engaged, and they achieve it through all sorts of means. One of them is giving players a sense of competence. It turns out, one of the strongest ways to intrinsically motivate people is to make them feel successful. A less charitable way of describing that is that players like being in a power fantasy, except in the case of a competitive player-versus-player game, someone else presumably has to lose. With a short enough time to kill, though, everyone gets a slice of the pie. Things also move on quickly enough that players may not dwell on their losses nearly as long. Think, for example, how fast a match of Fortnite’s Blitz Royale unfolds – and how quickly most of us just mash the button to get thrown into another instance.
With Battlefield’s wavering sales numbers, the franchise has frequently found itself pitching a reinvention with each new installment. Alongside rebirth comes tweaks to the time to kill, and it’s something that Battlefield has struggled with in the past. In 2018, for example, Battlefield 5 raised the time to kill in the hopes of finding a good middle ground for all types of players.
“It’s important to acknowledge that we have a challenge bringing new players into Battlefield V and onboard them to become more experienced Battlefield players,” a community manager said in an open letter explaining the changes. “It’s been a challenge across our games for a long time.”
The intent was to make sure new players didn’t get frustrated and stuck with the game, which they are more likely to do if they’re having fun. A longer time to kill gives players more breathing room to strategize and fight back, which is beneficial for people who are still getting their bearings. A higher time to kill also threatens to bore people, especially if they’re already used to a faster-paced experience.
Now, seven years later, Battlefield once again finds itself facing the time to kill behemoth. Since it’s an open beta for a live service game, things are guaranteed to change not just for the release, but after, too. And time to kill is definitely on the radar for Battlefield Studios based on recent remarks.
“We’ve done in-depth research on TTK,” DICE’s Jac Carlsson said in early August. “In fact, in Battlefield 6 we’ll be dealing with complex gunfights and environments. TTK is typically fastest in close combat (where it’s very fast), and the scenes we’ve shown in the trailers are mostly close combat.”
As Carlsson explains, the studio will be using a combination of data analysis and player feedback to rejigger how Battlefield 6 handles time to kill.
“We’ve actually done a lot of testing on the game itself, as well as a lot of historical experience, and based on this experience, we’ve found the most enjoyable and comfortable combat situations for players,” Carlsson says. “Based on our own experience, the TTK in the dynamic battlefields of Battlefield 6 needs to be fast enough to keep up with the changes on the battlefield.”
Though nothing is set in stone, the wording alone makes it sound like Battlefield 6 intends to be a brisk experience that can match the excitement of seeing tanks blow up or tearing down entire buildings.
In a more recent community update, EA described what players can expect for the future of Battlefield 6. Time to kill is mentioned, albeit vaguely.
“Time-to-Kill and Time-to-Death have been frequent topics of community feedback,” the post reads. “With your input, we’ve balanced damage across the weapon pool and we’re eager to hear your thoughts on how these changes feel during the Beta.”
Where time to kill lands is still an open question, especially as Battlefield continues changing minor aspects of the game. The assault class, for example, has seen support-focused changes that try and encourage a bit more team-based gameplay. Abilities help teammates survive a little longer, while also helping teammates pull out of combat faster. This would suggest a greater time to kill, except it’s not that simple. An assault player can also help their team move faster, and new gadgets like the assault ladder make it easier to flank and surprise enemies. More support options also may not change the fact that players who want to focus on killing flock to the assault class.
Reading between the lines, while Battlefield Studios might keep trying to find a sweet spot for TTK, it seems unlikely that the game will slow down significantly. That’s not where the franchise has landed in more modern iterations, and the shooter landscape at large only seems to be accelerating. Sure, Battlefield may not be running to incorporate Rick and Morty, as games like Call of Duty or Fortnite do. And the focus on large-scale, team-based combat through complex modes like Conquest means that Battlefield will never fully be subsumed by those trends. But the more that Battlefield angles itself toward the Call of Duty crowd in a mobile-first world, do we lose something essential about Battlefield along the way?
“Now, there’s this constant push to turn every FPS into some ‘movement shooter’ of skill expression slide-canceling, bunny-hopping, lasering 1v5s with perfect aim,” reads one Reddit post. “That mindset is exactly why so many shooters today feel the same: The Finals, Call of Duty, Apex Legends they’ve all become hyper-competitive, movement-heavy, skin-laden games where you’re expected to be some super soldier soloing squads. But that’s not Battlefield. And it shouldn’t be.”
The COD-ification of Battlefield is particularly curious when you consider that Call of Duty as a franchise has arguably found itself in a long-standing spiritual crisis. The franchise may be too big to fail, and the newest Call of Duty is seemingly destined to top sales charts every year. Call of Duty has also seemingly spent the last few installments trying to chase or recreate its former glory. Then again, when you look at all the callbacks the developers make to high points in the series, that could describe Battlefield, too.
