Battlefield 6: The New Water Map Is Great—Now DICE Just Needs to Take One Last Big Step

I got to play the new map for Battlefield 6’s fourth season, and I’m really looking forward to its release, but there’s still one downside.

You have to give DICE credit for one thing: The new maps the developers have delivered forBattlefield 6so far have almost always been great, aside from outliers like Blackwell Fields. That’s why, when I tried out Tsuru Reef, I wasn’t surprised that the new map is another home run.

Now they just need to make sure I can play it without any hassle.

Finally at the beach!

I was already a bit disappointed when Battlefield 6 was released. Ironically, the weak campaign delivered one of its best moments—an amphibious assault on the beaches of Gibraltar—and yetthere’s virtually not a single drop of water in the entire multiplayer mode.

For a shooter that likes to advertise thefull scale of war, that’s definitely a flaw—one that many other fans, besides myself, have complained about.

But now the dry spell is finally over: OnJuly 21, July2026, Season 4 launches, bringing with it the largest (and wettest) map in Battlefield 6 to date: Tsuru Reef. I’ve already had the chance to play about three hours of Conquest and Escalation modes, and I would have loved to book a room right away at the beach hotel that’s also the site of the battle.

For the first time, we’re getting trueAll Out Warfare: with vehicles, tanks, helicopters, jets, and, last but not least, boats. There’s a small four-seater rubber dinghy with a bow-mounted machine gun—a simple means of transport.

I also pilot larger patrol boats that can only accommodate two soldiers but are packed with even more weapons: In addition to a 30mm cannon, there are rockets and torpedoes, as well as a sort of turret that fires mortar rounds. I either let them sail in a high arc toward the battlefield or fire them directly at nearby enemies.

But hitting a target isn’t that easy:Out on the open ocean, the waves are rough, and the boat is tossed back and forth by the surging water. If I want to fire on distant enemies, I have to navigate the narrow channels between the islands or lie in wait in a harbor bay.

Conveniently, this also prevents sailors from simply hanging around the edges of the map and firing at enemies only from a safe distance.

There’s certainly plenty of space:Tsuru Reef is a gigantic map and by far the largest battlefieldin the game. A total of 9 capture points are spread across 4 large islands and one small island. Among other things, there’s an airport, a village, and a beach hotel (which will look familiar to fans of Battlefield 4). So there’s no shortage of space, which sometimes makes the battles less intense than in the alleys of Iberian Offensive or other small maps.

It’s still exciting, though, and a bit less chaotic than when two entire teams rush to Control Point C in Siege of Cairo. You’ll get that kind of fighting in Escalation anyway when it comes down to the last three control points.

But there’s plenty of action elsewhere as well, and lots of variety: The individual islands with their capture points almost feel like their own small maps and are almost completely separate play areas. I like the island layout just as much as I did back in Battlefield 4 on Paracel Storm—it’s just a shame that Storm is no longer available.

Now there’s just one thing missing

I’m already pretty sure that when Season 4 launches, I’ll be playing the new map over and over again. Just like with previous seasons, there will surely be dedicated playlists for the new map, but that’s exactly where the problem lies for me.

Even the Season 3 newcomer, Golmud-Bahn, is one of my favorite maps in the shooter—it really brings back that classic Battlefield feel. But after the map was no longer available as its own playlist, I’ve probably only played it once or twice.The reason for this is the lack of servers with fixed map rotations.

In Battlefield 6, I have three options:

• I choose a playlist likeAll Out Warfare. Then, after each round, the game randomly places me in a suitable match, but I can also end up playing the same map three times in a row and never get my favorite maps. Still, playlists are the easiest way to play.

• I can also filter by specific maps and game modes. Then I end up on my preferred map, but only for a single round. And searching for a suitable match after every round—one that’s often already started—isn’t a particularly practical solution either.

• Finally, there are the Portal servers, which have now almost completely died out—partly due to some ill-advised measures by DICE. Finding a full server here with my favorite maps is nearly impossible.

Fans have been calling for a solution ever since the release of Battlefield 6:A proper server browser like the one in Battlefield 4 or 5.I, for one, would be satisfied with even less: Just give me proper map rotations. I don’t necessarily want to play Golmud Railway all day, and I like variety. But I at least want the guarantee that I’ll get four different maps over four rounds.

At least the server browser is coming—albeit quite late. DICE announced the feature for 2026, but it won’t likely be ready until Season 5 at the earliest, since there’s no mention of it in the Season 4 roadmap. All I hope is that the developers learn from their mistakes as consistently as they did back with Battlefield 2042.

For Battlefield 7, I’d like to see naval battles, really large maps, a server browser, and everything else that belongs in a Battlefield game right from the start.