Battlefield 2042 will revive its old class system next week

Battlefield 2042's update 3.2 will arrive next week, which is notable because it will revive Battlefield's traditional class system. If you were one of the many players to be frustrated by 2042's Specialists, then 3.2 is your chance to once again don the roles of Assault, Engineer, Recon and Support.

Next week's release was confirmed via Twitter, at the same time as the lengthy 3.2 patch notes. Dice say they'd normally put out patch notes the day before an update drops, but they want to give players more of a heads-up in future.

Those notes explain exactly how the class changes work: existing Specialists have now been assigned to a corresponding class, and the previous free-for-all of equipment and gadgets have likewise been divided between those classes, both to encourage players to perform specific roles during matches and to "assist with the readability" of exactly who is shooting at you in any given moment.

Specialists were "based on Battlefield's four classes", EA say, but aside from a unique speciality and trait, their loadout was completely customisable. Players weren't pleased, so Dice announced last August that they'd bring back classes in a future update. That it has taken this long is largely because players weren't pleased about a lot of other things either, like the lack of party and squad voice chat or a traditional scoreboard.

There are other substantial additions coming in 3.2, too, including new weapons (M39 EMR, MTAR-21, PP-2000), new scopes, and a rework of Breakaway that makes the snow-covered map smaller.