In interesting news, DICE is introducing a new way for everyone to use their Battlefield 1 DLC maps…for absolutely *free! Sounds great right? Well, it is, kinda…I don’t want to be the bitter sod who just sees the negative in anything positive, but this idea right here does have a bittersweet taste to it.

For instance, if one of your friends in your active group has the premium edition, or any of the DLC, you’ll be able to play the new maps absolutely free, so far so good, however, you won’t be able to use the weapons from this DLC. You’ll probably still be able to pick up the dropped weapons from your disgusting dead foes littered about, but still…fair enough.

Where I think this idea gets the bitter taste is that all the XP you could earn isn’t added to your account. Instead, it’ll be saved for later and “unlocked” once you do buy the DLC, and since XP and unlocks are quite a big part in Battlefield 1’s multiplayer experience, it takes some of that edge away. To top it all of, your tracked medals and codex progress won’t count either, I can see why weapons and even XP are only available for the DLC owner, but even tracked medals?

Regardless, this should help somewhat later on when people start playing more and more on DLC maps and not the vanilla ones. It was rather difficult to find a populated server back in Battlefield 4 when you didn’t own any of the DLC. All of this is still open for suggestions though, so hopefully enough people will cry about the things I talked about and everything will be all dandy in the world.

Gamers will be able to try out this “Premium Friends” feature on March 30th, this is also when their upcoming Battlefest event will begin, I wonder if they planned that? Interesting.