A Battlefield 2042 player posted a video showing them spawning and then immediately getting blown away. They were playing on the new Battlefield 2042 Spearhead map, but they did not survive long.
The Spearhead map was introduced in Season 3 of Battlefield 2042 and is a part of the Battle for Nordvik event that DICE is putting on for the holiday season. The map is set in the Swedish countryside and features some rugged terrain, as well as two sizable weapons factories. It's built for the Conquest and Breakthrough modes, and it includes a variety of control points to fight over, as well as a pretty wide spread of vehicles for players to use. These vehicles can be very effective against players fighting outdoors, even locking down some of the more open control and spawn points.
The video was posted to the official Battlefield subreddit by player Mspp01. It begins with them selecting a spawn point on the Spearhead map, and going with D1. The screen zooms in as Mspp01 spawns, then, before the player model is even visible, an explosion hits. Mspp01's character spins through the air, without any chance to even run for cover. As the post-death screen displays, it zooms in on an orange tank silhouette in the distance and shows Mspp01's cause of death: the kinetic grenade pod of a T28 tank. Unfortunately, Mspp01 did not have the chance to use one of Battlefield 2042's sniper rifles to destroy the tank.
Mspp01's instantaneous death is undeniably amusing to watch, although it was probably very exasperating to experience in the moment. It also raises a question about the placement of spawn points. It doesn't seem particularly fair for a tank to be able to bombard a spawn point and kill players before they can find cover, and it might also discourage players from playing the game. It's not fun to die immediately after spawning, especially if it happens multiple times in a row. Some players want DICE to add the spawn camera from Battlefield 4 to Battlefield 2042, which shows a first-person view of the selected spawn point.
Adding the spawn camera feature back in could help players avoid spawning at a point that's heavily contested, but it could also be very taxing for players' consoles or PCs. There might be other features that would help players avoid ending up in Mspp01's situation, but whether they're feasible to implement is another story. Of course, DICE is still regularly updating the game, with Update 3.1.0 for Battlefield 2042 being the latest patch, so some changes could definitely happen in the future.
Battlefield 2042 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
