Hello everyone,
As we mentioned last week, we are in the process of addressing some known issues that are affecting Portal's Community tab and the availability of servers and experiences there.
Update on Community Experiences
Recently, we shared that we’re making changes to reduce the number of XP farm servers appearing in the Server Browser and Community Experiences. These servers have made it harder for players to discover the kinds of experiences Portal was created for. We have organized a series of changes to emphasize our commitment to highlighting the player community and making this a space where you can celebrate creativity, find unique experiences, play with friends, and build communities.
As part of this effort, we’ve rolled out several backend updates to support healthier matchmaking and better overall experiences in Portal. This includes resolving unintended systems that affected XP progression and balance across experiences, and for now, removing bots from Verified Experiences to help improve the overall quality of matches.
Further updates that were made today:
Verified Experiences with “Bot Backfill” disabled continue to grant Full Progression and XP.
Custom Experiences will continue earning reduced progression, regardless of whether bots are active. This keeps creative freedom and allows you to express yourself within Portal while maintaining progression balance.
To pick up these changes properly and have an experience earn full XP, any qualifying experience would need to be unpublished, have “Bot Backfill” disabled, and then republished. Servers, including persistent ones, may occasionally need to be restarted. These brief interruptions may continue until ongoing improvements are fully implemented.
At an initial glance, we’ve started to see a decline in PvE servers with fewer active players, while PvP servers, where players compete against one another, are becoming more active. PvE options are still available through Custom Experiences, but Verified Experiences with full XP are starting to better reflect our focus on player-versus-player gameplay. Also, we’re still exploring potential solutions that address current issues that would allow us to reintroduce bots in the future while continuing to deliver a great player experience.
Regarding Challenges
We wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that we have seen the discussion that these farming servers are necessary due to the difficulty of challenges or issues affecting them. We are actively working on updates for challenges and will share details as progress is made in this area.
What’s Next for Portal
We believe the best Battlefield moments happen when players connect and compete in shared, player-driven experiences. The kind of experiences that capture the unpredictability, teamwork, and intense moments that define Battlefield. These updates will move us closer to that goal.
We’ll continue to monitor, adjust, and refine Portal and Community Experiences as issues are resolved. At the same time, we want to recognize the incredible creativity and passion within the Portal community; it’s been truly inspiring. From faithful recreations of classic modes to completely original ideas, your imagination continues to impress us, and we’re committed to fostering that innovation moving forward.
We have also seen a few questions about Verified Experiences and official servers. The “BattlefieldOfficial” servers are legitimate, official servers created and maintained by the Battlefield team. You’ll see them listed in the Server Browser under the BattlefieldOfficial or BFPortalOfficial account; both names refer to the same verified source.
These servers host persistent, official Battlefield experiences, like Conquest, Breakthrough, and Rush, with standard “vanilla” settings. Currently, multiple persistent servers are hosted under BattlefieldOfficial, so players can reliably find populated matches without needing to rely on bots or random matchmaking.
We also maintain a variety of Verified Experiences, such as Hardcore, Infantry, and Closed Weapon variants, that appear in the Featured Experiences section or through the search function. These experiences are intended to rotate regularly to keep the gameplay fresh and reward full XP.
How to Join BFPortalOfficial Experiences/Servers:
Go to the Community tab in the main menu.
Select an experience such as Hardcore Conquest.
Click View More by Creator in the bottom left corner.
From here, you can see all of the BFPortalOfficial modes and can choose a mode you and your friends want to play, like Hardcore Conquest.
Browse or host a server, and share the name and host with friends so they can easily join you.
Season 1 is Almost Here
We have other updates and changes planned for Season 1 based on your feedback. We are actively finalizing these details to share with you, and thank you for your continued feedback.
//The Battlefield Team
This announcement may change as we listen to community feedback and continue developing and evolving our Live Service & Content. We will always strive to keep our community as informed as possible.