WARDOGS Press Conference 01: Every Season 2 Answer

Bulkhead held its first pre-season press conference on 9 October, the same day it published the Season 2 preview. Press and content creators sent in questions while the team answered on camera. The full patch notes, with every balance number, were held back because the team was still changing the update. This recap pulls out what each answer means for how you play. The Season 2 guide has the full change list and the numbers from the preview notes.

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The four new guns, from the people who built them

Season 2 adds one weapon per main infantry role. The answers explain where each one is meant to sit.

The biggest scope news is the Mosin. It now takes only its original PU scope at 3.5x, so the 6x setups are gone. The team did this on purpose: a one-shot bolt action on a low-power scope pushes players to fight at medium range, where the rifle is meant to be used. Iron sights are still an option. Wider optic choice is waiting on a future gunsmith system. If you run a scoped recon build, check which scopes can still zoom before you buy.

They also said SMGs have been underrated since tier 4 armor took over. The weapon designer's advice was blunt: run an SMG loaded with hollow points and shoot the legs. Hollow points do almost nothing into tier 3 and tier 4 plates, which is why a full magazine into someone's chest can show single-digit hits in the damage log. The damage and armor guide explains why legs beat plates.

Rain: what it does, and why it never changes mid-match

Rain went further than the team planned. It darkens the map and cuts view distance, fogs windows, and leaks through roofs you blow open. Thunder masks footsteps for everyone on the server at the same moment, much like the jet flyovers did in Season 1. Moving under a thunderclap is a real tactic. Shorter sightlines favour SMGs and close-range kits, and one developer said rain made them lose track of where they were on a map they know well.

Weather is chosen when the match starts and stays for the whole match. Changing it mid-match was ruled out on performance grounds: the game has to run on Xbox Series S when it reaches consoles. Nobody is working on dynamic weather now, and snow is on hold until it adds something to play beyond looks.

How long will Season 2 last?

The target is about six weeks, and the team said it can change that. Seasons follow the development work, not a fixed calendar, so a season ends when the next update is solid and the data says it is time. The developers admitted the dislike for wipes is partly their fault, because the long-term systems meant to soften them are not in yet. They also want to rotate content, taking some weapons out for a season and bringing them back later.

Molotovs will not kill vehicles

The Molotov's damage against vehicles is low. It is built to clear buildings and deny an area. It does not set buildings or dry grass alight. That idea came up and was turned down for now.

Squad intent instead of a party system

Queueing with friends before you join a server is the most requested feature, and it is not coming in Season 2. The stopgap is squad intent. A squad leader picks an icon on the pause menu that shows what the squad is doing, such as building, attacking FOBs or welcoming new players, so you can join an open squad that plays your way. Custom squad names were built and then cancelled, because players would put offensive names in the UI.

Why Lonestar keeps losing, and what changes

The blue team's problem started with the map. Bakurani was always skewed: green wins most often, red gets the most kills, and blue takes the beating in between. The developers recalled a split of roughly 50/40/10 at its worst. Then perception made it worse. About 80% of people picked blue when the Discord opened, and new players still go blue first because it is the first icon on the left. After a week, experienced players learn to avoid it, so blue fills up with newcomers and loses even more.

Randomising teams was rejected as boring. Instead, every faction spawn on Bakurani has been rebuilt with new routes into the objective. Several of the new spawns sit higher up the mountains, and helicopters lose speed at altitude, so the team timed every route to keep them roughly even. Lonestar also gets a cash and XP bonus this season. The developers called it an experiment, and they want to see whether it pulls in new players or the stronger ones who want the payout. They noted blue was already winning more in the last ten days of Season 1 as better players joined it. Do factions change anything else? No, the choice is still cosmetic.

The MGL Little Bird and other exploits

Helicopter bench-gunners moved from RPGs to the MGL, so the MGL gets more sway, worse accuracy, slower rounds with more travel time, and a smaller outer blast radius. Throwing explosives out of an enclosed Humvee seat was a bug and has been fixed. The team is considering letting community servers disable power weapons like the MGL, with lower cash and XP on those servers so official play stays the main data source. They did not commit to it. If helicopters ruin your matches, the anti-air guide covers what counters them.

Is WARDOGS still between Battlefield and a milsim?

Yes. The team said it is sticking with that positioning and will not bend to whichever group wants it pushed towards one side. Commander roles and a strict squad-leader hierarchy were named as requests they are turning down, because the game is built around a flat structure where everyone plays the way they want. Any future commander-style features would come through things you build, as a support or logistics role. They pointed to the infrared rangefinder as the line they will not let an item cross: it was pulled from the vendors on 2 October for being too strong, and it returns in Season 2 running on batteries.

Player skills and the new Intel system

Skills are not in Season 2, but the developers said they are "not a million miles away" and will land in a near-future season. All XP from each early access season is banked and will turn into skill points to spend across the roles. The point is to reward the role you actually play over a long time.

Skills come with a bigger change. Unlocks will move away from XP to a new currency called Intel, which everyone earns at a steady rate. Right now the players who put in the most hours progress fastest, which feeds the rank gap. Intel lets the team plan how quickly anyone reaches content in a season. They called the current XP system the minimum viable version, kept in place until the real one is ready.

Team switching and stream sniping

You can still switch freely right at the start of a match. Once a team is more than 10 points ahead, a switch carries debuffs: your map stays hidden and the spawn vehicle stays locked until you reach the control zone, and you cannot switch again for 15 minutes. It targets players who hopped teams to read the map, call positions to friends on Discord, or steal the enemy APC and drive it off.

For streamers, the server name no longer shows in the in-game UI, which is one way snipers tracked them down. The server browser itself can expose servers, and that is hard to close completely. Blocking specific players is on the list at low priority.

Is the Havoc overpowered?

The Havoc is meant to be a flying tank, bigger, slower and more armored than the two transport helicopters. A patch the week before toned down the CIWS, which was killing a Havoc in about seven seconds, so after the fix it felt tougher than players had come to expect. The developers admitted they handle damage feedback badly. Vehicles do have weak spots that take extra damage, but the game does not show you when you hit one, so an RPG on the rotors can look like it did nothing. On the panel, two RPGs was their best recollection of the kill count. A hit on the tail rotor takes the tail rotor out.

NVIDIA Inspector, potato mode and cheating

Forcing low-detail "potato" settings through NVIDIA Inspector or edited game files to strip shadows and foliage is being worked on, with no date given. On bans, the developers said every appeal they personally checked turned out to be cheating. The usual culprits are recoil scripts and aimbots, often blamed on a sibling or a shared family library.

Why they asked for negative reviews

The closing ask was unusual. With around 70,000 Steam reviews on 3 million sales, Bulkhead wants more players to leave an honest review, negative ones included. Review scores help unlock investment, and the team runs every review through analysis alongside Reddit, X and Steam discussions to decide what to fix.

What this means for your first week of Season 2

• Pack for the Bizon. If you start as medic, budget for a bigger backpack, because its magazines will not fit the small bags. Then rebuild cheap while the wipe settles.
• Into tier 4, use hollow points and aim at the legs. Do not empty magazines into plates.
• Re-plan scoped recon kits. The Mosin is a 3.5x rifle now, so take the fights it was built for.
• Pick your team at the start. A late switch blinds you and locks the spawn vehicle.
• Expect slower FOB play. The preview notes raise mortar and drill costs a lot, so bases that keep supply runs going will hold the Hot Zone.