Battlefield 5 is getting custom servers next week, though not without a few missing features
DICE has finally detailed Battlefield 5's version of custom servers.
Community Games is what DICE is calling private servers in Battlefield 5. Beginning Monday, December 9, players will be able to run their own games with desired settings.
There are, however, a number of limitations, missing features, and a few unanswered questions that remain. First, while you'll be able to earn soldier, weapon and vehicle XP, you won't be able to progress your Tides of War ranks/chapters while playing on these servers. If you decide to password-protect your server, no one playing there will earn any sort of XP.
Server admins will be able to save different configs dictating the number of rounds, maps and so on and switch between them. By the same token, players will be able to edit filters in the game's server browser to find games running specific maps/modes and settings.
At launch, you'll be able to start 16, 32 and 64-player servers with your choice of map and mode, even including out-of-rotation modes. You'll also be able to kick and ban, though only within the same session. That's about what you can do at launch.
So far, there doesn't appear to be any cost associated with running these servers. Everything will run on EA's backend, so servers will be offline when not enough players are on.
A number of other features are in development, with DICE promising an update on these sometime in 2020. Here's what could arrive in 2020:
- Set custom name for the server
- Set description for the server
- Control what classes are available
- Control what weapons are allowed
- Control if vehicles are allowed
- Control if the kill cam will be displayed
- Turn friendly fire on or off
- Turn regenerative health on or off
- Change soldier tags as visible or not
- Enable or disable third-person camera view
- Enable squad leader spawn only
- Enable or disable aim assist auto rotation
- Enable or disable aim assist cooldown
- Control bullet damage scaling
- Control game mode ticket scaling
- Control soldier and vehicle respawn timers
- Turn the mini map on or off
- Enable or disable the compass
- Manage list of moderators
- Manage list of VIPs
- Apply an authored pre-set config to a Community Game - Vanilla, Infantry only, DICE-authored etc.
- Have your name highlighted in chat if you’re the owner of the server
- Administer and manage server settings in the main menu or via our Community Games web portal
- Have the description of your Community Game presented on the loading screen
- Manually switch specific players between teams
- Report Community Games in the advanced search screen