Battlefield 6’s Biggest Misfire: Glacial Weapon Progression Is Driving Players Away

Battlefield 6 pulled off the unthinkable and actually toppled Call of Duty. The twist: in a few key ways, it also feels like it wants to be Call of Duty. And that is exactly where the shine is wearing off, fast.

Great shooter, lousy grind

Moment to moment, BF6 absolutely slaps. Big, chaotic battles, smooth gunplay, the whole Battlefield spectacle. The problem is what happens between those moments. Weapon progression is painfully slow, and because weapon mastery is how you unlock attachments, playing the game starts to feel less like a war and more like a part-time job.

Across the community, the vibe is the same: the grind is sucking the fun out. If it stays this sluggish, people are going to drift.

Why the progression feels off

• Attachments are locked behind weapon mastery, and mastery takes ages. The reward loop feels stingy instead of satisfying.
• Players keep unlocking new guns but skip using them because they would be stuck running a bare-bones, stock setup for too long.
• BF6 clearly nods to Call of Duty-style weapon variants, but it is not nearly as fluid in practice.
• One widely shared community breakdown estimates you need around 3,500 kills per weapon to fully master it. Unless you live in Team Deathmatch 24/7, you will be waiting a while for your ideal build.
• Class players who do more support work than slaying (think Medic and Engineer mains) are especially punished by kill-heavy unlocks.
• Daily and weekly challenges lean sweaty, which chips away at the Battlefield flavor and nudges the meta toward chore lists.

We have been here before

Battlefield has its own identity: destruction, scale, sandbox chaos. Then DICE chased a more Call of Duty-shaped experience with Battlefield 2042, which felt weirdly detached from what made the series, well, Battlefield. The BF6 reveal and beta calmed a lot of those fears, but the full release has laid bare how grindy the progression really is.

EA, please stop COD-ifying Battlefield

If Electronic Arts wants to keep the surge of players BF6 brought in, it needs to fix the slog. Speed up mastery. Uncouple a few crucial attachments from grind walls. Give non-slayer roles a real path to progress. In short: build on Battlefield’s legacy instead of chasing someone else’s.

Because right now, the game that beat Call of Duty is starting to feel like it is borrowing all the wrong homework.

Bottom line

BF6 is a great shooter being dragged down by a joyless grind. Tweak the progression, and this thing flies.

Do you think BF6’s progression needs a rework? Does the grind feel a little too Call of Duty right now? Drop your take in the comments.