EA’s Battlefield 6 is the most popular entry so far, and a whole wave of newcomers are struggling to take flight.
Battlefield 6 has had a very successful launch so far, with a record-breaking 740,000 concurrent players on Steam, yet based on video evidence, only a fraction of those have managed to successfully fly the game’s helicopters or jets.
The Battlefield series has always had bafflingly obtuse controls for its aerial vehicles, ever since it started over 20 years ago. Battlefield 6 is no different, and following the game’s launch last week (and its earlier betas), many players have woken up to that grim reality in real-time.
One of the most amusing videos comes via X user Squid G, who narrates someone’s chaotic fight with the controls like a nature documentarian watching a young bird take flight for the first time.
After almost a minute of ping-ponging between buildings on the game’s Manhattan map, the inevitable finally finally happens when the player scrapes across the floor and explodes into an opposing building.
‘I just witnessed a Bro fighting for his life in Battlefield 6,’ the video caption reads.
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If you look on Reddit and other social media sites, and you’ll find a heap of other videos in a similar vein.
For example, Reddit user Bankstandinglife is tested by an electrical pylon during his ascent. ‘That pylon was definitely placed there to troll new pilots,’ one commenter wrote.
The difficult flying has come as a surprise to some former Call Of Duty pro players. Seth ‘Scump’ Abner had a promising start, catching some air with just a few knocks, but he soon got into difficulty when it came to the art of moving forwards.
‘I think I’ll stick to the ground,’ he captioned the video.
Other former pro players and streamers, like Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek and Timothy ‘TimTheTatman’ Betar, have witnessed the struggles first-hand. ‘I mean, he’s kind of gaining control,’ Shroud optimistically notes, before the laws of comic timing strike again.
If you’re wondering, there are ways to make the flying controls in Battlefield 6 less of a death sentence. If you navigate to the ‘Controller’ tab in the settings, you can alter the mapped buttons for the various controls.
For helicopters, we’d recommend changing from the default controls to the alternate buttons scheme. This makes it so the left and right steering is no longer tied to the same stick as the throttle, with the latter moving onto the triggers instead, if you’re using a controller.
As for the jets, you can make a similar adjustment, but you might want to experiment to see what works first. Criminally, there’s no testing ground for vehicles offline, but you can try setting up a custom server (or accessing someone else’s) filled with bots, through the community-driven Portal.
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