Battlefield 1 has taken a promising step to reunite its player community despite releasing paid map DLC. The new Premium Friends system, which goes live today, lets anyone partied up with a Battlefield 1 Premium Pass member play on all of the expansion maps starting with They Shall Not Pass. Because if anything is going to split up friends it should be the cruel randomness of war and not DLC differences, dammit.
If you or one of your buddies owns the pass, your party should automatically become "Premium Enabled". It doesn't give the whole party complete access, however. There are still some restrictions for players who don't personally own the Premium Pass:
- You can't earn XP from DLC maps if you don't own the associated expansion or Premium Pass. However, the game will remember the XP you earned and award it retroactively if you do ever make the purchase.
- You can't spawn into the match with weapons or vehicles that were added as part of the expansion. You can still pilfer them off of dead players once your boots are on the ground.
- You won't gain progress toward any medals or codexes introduced in the expansion. Unlike XP, it doesn't sound like it's awarded retroactively.
The developers say they plan to tweak the Premium Friends program in response to player feedback. So if it sounds interesting to you, get in there, try it out (ideally by talking a friend into buying the Premium Pass instead of you), and let DICE know what you think.
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