Battlefield 2042’s last patch of 2021 lets Xbox players turn off cross-play

Just a week since its last major patch, Battlefield 2042 is getting another one tomorrow, December 9th, and it’s targeting a few more key issues, including giving Xbox players the ability to turn off cross-play from in the game.

Developer DICE has released Update 3.1’s patch notes, and it’s confirmed that players on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S will be able to toggle off cross-play from the in-game menu. Previously, Xbox players had to go into their system settings menu, dive deep into the privacy settings, and turn off cross-play for all games. Doing so resulted in half-full lobbies (if you even got into a match at all) since most players didn’t want to put in the effort. Hopefully this change will mean that Xbox Series X/S players who don’t want to play against PC players can actually find matches now, though it also means they can’t play with PlayStation 5 users if they turn off cross-play.

Update 3.1 is also targeting non-Xbox specific issues, too. Hit registration should feel more accurate as DICE has fixed a bug that caused bullets that should have hit to miss. Likewise, weapons are seeing a lot of positive changes, with decreased dispersion over all and decreased time to reset dispersion when small-burst firing.

Skyscraper rooftop objectives on Breakthrough will be a thing of the past after Update 3.1, too, as DICE has removed the respective offenders on Kaleidoscope, Hourglass, and Orbital. Another major annoyance, the 30mm canon on vehicles, will have reduced blast damage and will overheat faster. The game’s lead gameplay designer also confirmed that a bug making it impossible for some mouse players to turn their camera horizontally has been fixed, too.

Check out the full patch notes below. DICE stated that Update 3.1 will be “last game update before the start of the holidays. That means our teams will take a break towards the end of this month and return in the new year with fresh eyes ready to go on the road to Season One.” A recent report revealed that Season One will introduce a new All-Out Warfare map called Exposure, as well as 64-player modes on current-gen and PC.

General

• Players that are not the Party Leader can now cancel while waiting in a queue
• Xbox – Cross-Play can now be enabled/disabled in the Options menu on Xbox
• Your Sort settings will now be correctly remembered when refreshing the Battlefield: Portal Server Browser
• Fixed an issue where loadouts would sometimes be empty on the spawn screen after joining a server, preventing weapon selection
• Made improvements to ensure Aim Assist is more consistent during console gameplay
• Ranger’s effective combat range and overall health has been decreased

Audio

• Made various tweaks to the overall audio experience to improve clarity, distance, and directional perception
• Fixed an issue where soldiers would not always play indoor specific footsteps

Weapons

• Removed bounce from Underbarrel Grenades when firing at short distances
• 40mm AP Grenades now properly damage vehicles
• Fixed some weapons displaying wrong ammo counts for specific magazines
• DXR-1 and NTW-50 Bolt Action rifles reload animation increased by 0.2 seconds
• Adjusted dispersion values for most weapons, which results in a faster dispersion decrease when tap firing or doing short bursts
• Adjusted dispersion increases for most weapons. It now takes slightly longer for weapons to become overly inaccurate in sustained fire
• Adjusted the recoil values to prevent over aggressive recoil jumps for the AK24, LCMG, PKP-BP, SFAR-M GL, and PP-29
• Improved hip fire accuracy for all SMGs to make them better stand-out from other automatic weapon archetypes
• LMG dispersion and recoil lowered to improve performance in sustained fire
• Additional improvements to recoil control for all weapons, more specifically automatic weapons.
• Increased close range damage and consistency of the MCS-880 when using Buckshot Shell or Flechette Shells
• Fixed a bug that caused bullets to be fired below the player’s aims for the SFAR-M GL and the K30

Vehicles

• Fixed a bug where vehicle weapons sometimes did not deal blast damage on a direct hit
• We’re reducing the Ground Vehicle 30mm Cannon effectiveness versus infantry. It now overheats faster, has a slightly reduced rate of fire and blast damage, and increased fall off damage at distance
  • Rate of Fire 350 -> 330
  • Heat Per Bullet 0.13 -> 0.14
  • Heat Drop Per Second 0.5 -> 0.475
  • Blast Damage 20 -> 18
• LCAA Hovercraft – 40mm GPL Grenade Launcher
  • Blast Damage lowered from 55 -> 35
• The 40mm Utility Pod upwards firing angle is now easier to use
• EBAA Wildcat – 57mm Cannon
  • Removed dispersion
  • Ammo 12 -> 8
  • Impact Damage 85 -> 75
  • Blast Damage 70 -> 35

Gadgets

Frag Grenade

• Increased the time to detonate a Frag Grenade from 1.1s -> 1.4s after first bounce on a hard collision
• Increased damage of Frag Grenades across game modes to deal 120 damage and guarantee a kill on armored players too
• Reduced Frag & Incendiary Grenade max ammo account from 2 -> 1

Prox Sensor

• Lowered spotting radius from 30m -> 20m
• Lowered uptime from 30s -> 14s
• Lowered amount of Prox Sensor a player can carry and deploy from 2 -> 1

Hazard Zone

• Fixed an issue that caused the roaming Occupying Forces LATV4 Recon to spawn at the wrong times or not at all

Breakthrough

• Kaleidoscope – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There are now two Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and one at the bottom in BT small
• Orbital – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There is now a single Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small
• Hourglass – Rooftop Capture Objective has been removed. There is now a single Capture Objective at the bottom in BT large and BT small. Also fixed an issue where players were spawning out of bounds

Soldier

• Improvements on back pedaling into objects when being in prone position
• Fixed a rare issue where players could turn invisible when spawning on a full/destroyed vehicle