Weapon Restrictions for Classes and Combat Roles in Battlefield 5
Ever since the conclusion of the Battlefield 5 Open Beta, several weeks ago, DICE has been going out of their way to explain to fans how the game will change before the November release. They have detailed the key areas which they are working on; they even went into greater detail during the second episode in their Dev Talks series, and laid out their upcoming schedule. In a recent Reddit AMA, three developers answered fan questions about classes. For instance, they explained how the Tanker and Pilot classes work in Battlefield 5. One aspect which they clarified in particular was how the Battlefield 5 weapon restrictions will work.
How the Battlefield 5 Weapon Restrictions Work
Anybody familiar with the Battlefield franchise should know roughly how weapon restrictions work; essentially, each class has several categories of firearm from which they can choose their firearms. They cannot choose weapons outside of these categories. In Battlefield 5, this is no different. However, the new Combat Roles system appears to have confused some fans about whether they introduce additional restrictions. For example, the Support class’ Weapon Categories are Light Machine Guns and Medium Machine Guns. One of that class’ Combat Roles is “Machine Gunner”, which appears to be designed to use MMGs. As a result, fans began wondering if Combat Roles could further restrict a class’ weapon choices.
Andreas Morell, a Senior Producer for Battlefield 5 and one of the developers who ran the recent Reddit AMA, addressed this question during the event; “The weapon restrictions sits on your class and not on the combat role,” he explains; “so if you play Support and pick the Machine Gunner role you will be better suited to handle MMGs with the passive traits you have, but you are not limited to MMGs – you can play with any support weapons you like.”
So while the different classes will each have their own Weapon Categories to choose firearms from, their individual Combat Roles won’t restrict that. Of course, as Morell points out, some Combat Roles may make players better suited to wielding a particular type of firearm. A Support with the Machine Gunner role could well be better with an MMG than other options. Whether that’s the case or not, it will be up to the player’s prerogative whether to take advantage of that.