To the dismay of sweaty 'movement kids,' Battlefield 6 is nerfing Call of Duty sliding and jumping to maintain a 'traditional Battlefield experience'

Duck, dive, and dodge: Following feedback from the Battlefield 6 beta that its movement was too squirrely and unpredictable, Battlefield Studios is planning significant changes for the full release.

The announcement came in an "Open Beta Debrief" blog published on Battlefield's official social channels, which, in addition to movement, touched on hot topics like map size, Rush, and weapon balance. While the takeaway from most of those topics could be summed up as "we're looking into it" or "wait and see," movement is one area that already has significant changes in progress.

"Movement mechanics have been adjusted to create a more balanced and traditional Battlefield experience. Momentum, especially horizontal speed, carried from a slide into a jump has been reduced. There is now a greater penalty for consecutive jumps, which lowers jump height when jumps are spammed," the blog reads.

That momentum change is likely more of a bug fix than a change in direction, as players figured out early on in the BF6 beta that you could consistently pull off ridiculous super jumps by exploiting small bursts of speed from jumping and sliding.

BF Studios is also targeting accuracy while jumping and sliding. Series veterans argued throughout the beta that there wasn't enough of an accuracy penalty for shooting while sliding into a room or jumping around corners—hallmark tools of Call of Duty "movement kids"—and developers agree.

"Firing while jumping or sliding will result in increased inaccuracy," the post continues. "These changes are designed to make sliding and jumping more situational, so they are no longer ideal options for engaging in gunfights, and will contribute to a gameplay pace that rewards skillful movement without becoming too fast or unpredictable."

Whether or not you liked BF6's squirrelly beta movement, it was undeniably chaotic. A top-upvoted post on the Battlefield subreddit highlights an extreme case of someone constantly chaining jumps and slides to ice skate across the map while maintaining perfect accuracy.

How much freedom of movement is considered overboard depends on the series' roots, but even FPSes known for speed struggle to satisfy everyone. In 2023, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 cranked up the bunnyhopping and slide-canceling just a year after Modern Warfare 2 deliberately slowed things down, to the delight of many and horror of CoD traditionalists. As I wrote in 2023:

This movement should not be possible in BF6 DICE. Needs to be addressed from r/Battlefield

"Players who use these slippery moves will tell you it raises Call of Duty's skill ceiling, and they're technically right. FPSes have a long tradition of adopting community-developed movement techniques until they're unofficial canon, and CoD is no different, except that I find this example of it extremely annoying… A lobby full of jumping beans distorts the horizontal, boots-on-the-ground rhythm of CoD into discount Apex Legends. It also, as I really must emphasize, looks very stupid."

It's nice to see BF Studios getting ahead of important mechanical details like this. We're still two months from launch day, but it turns out there will be another round of Battlefield Labs testing before then. The next Labs test will finally introduce us to BF6's two biggest maps at launch: Mirak Valley and Operation Firestorm.