Battlefield 4 Devs Go In-Depth On Vehicle Changes

[Steven Bogos]

Battlefield 4 Devs Go In-Depth On Vehicle Changes

DICE talks about changes to jets, tanks, and most importantly, boats, in an extensive guide to Battlefield 4's vehicles.

Jets. Tanks. Boats. Vehicular combat is probably the defining feature that sets the Battlefield series apart from that other modern military shooter. It will obviously play a big part in Battlefield 4, and DICE have today published a massive guide on the land, sea, and air vehicles [http://blogs.battlefield.com/2013/09/road-to-bf4-vehicle-gameplay/] you'll see in the new game, addressing multiple concerns players had with vehicles in Battlefield 3.

First up is boats. Battlefield 3 veterans will know that boats were more of a footnote than a fully-explored vehicle option in the previous game. But, DICE aims to fully flesh them out in Battlefield 4, adding multiple classes of boats from speedy patrols to powerful "tanks on water" assault boats. The biggest challenge faced by the team was getting other players in the boats with you. They fixed this by making boats serve as a team spawn point (like the transport chopper) and adding more fixed guns for gunners to play with.

As for tanks, you can look forward to having more anti-air options as secondary weapon unlocks, to help keep those pesky jets and choppers away. Furthermore, vehicles won't be permanently "disabled" like they were in Battlefield 3. Scoring a "critical hit" on a tank (IE: hitting it in the weak spot in the back) will temporarily disable it instead, meaning skilled drivers and gunners won't have to abandon their vehicle.

Lastly, jets have been split into two separate classes: Stealth Jets, which focus on air-to-air combat, and Attack Jets, which will have a set of unlocks that are all about bombing stuff on the ground.

Source: DICE [http://blogs.battlefield.com/2013/09/road-to-bf4-vehicle-gameplay/]



Permalink

 

[Metalrocks]

sounds pretty good. but today i decided to cancel my pre order and rather wait until a premium version is out. not eager to pay twice the same price when i can get few months later a premium version for the same price.
if they did it with BF3, they will do it with BF4 as well.

 

[Snotnarok]

The problem with the vehicles were the advantages were so huge often enough, helicopters would just hover over buildings and bomb the hell out of you and your squad till you're dead and it was difficult to take them out, lock on weapons they'd be able to drop flares and then take you out before you even think about reloading.
Tanks have the amazing ability to go 3rd person and see anyone sneaking up with C4, allowing them to just back over you or get out INSTANTLY without having to hop out and knife you, then resume them plowing through your team.
Disabling was the only advantage you could get and you'd have to hit the ass of the tank, not always easy.


That is unless you're THERUSSIANBADGER from youtube, then Karl yer gettin' yer sandwich taken brah.

 

[banksy122]

I was hoping to hear that vehicles would have ammo limits again and vehicle health regen was going, not staying. Worst two things about vehicles in BF3.

 

[Joccaren]

Honestly, I want vehicle survivability down. That was the ridiculous thing in BF3 - after a certain level of unlocks, it was impossible to kill a skilled player in a vehicle. Homing shells with infra-red sights, increased lock on time for enemies and flares to remove lock-on, becoming impossible to lock onto if you were close to the ground - it made vehicles broken. They weren't some tanky support for your team, they were your team. Your infantry were basically useless against a full unlocked vehicle, as were lesser unlocked vehicles.
Remove the perk or w/e for increased lockon time, leave flares, but have a limited number per flight - not an infinite amount on a cooldown - remove homing shells and 3rd person tank view, remove 'below the radar', and leave vehicles with basically the defences they had in BF2. They didn't need any bigger advantages. Giving those to them just made me stop playing the more fun maps and only do Metro because there were no vehicles that would ruin the game. That's wrong. I shouldn't not want to play the game because of certain features. Balance that shit. A squad of 4 footsoldiers should easily be able to take out any vehicle, if they're somewhat intelligent anyway.
Tank > Soldier > Engineer/Support > Tank
Not Tank >>Soldier/approx=Engineer/Support
Once they nerf vehicles vs infantry, then maybe I'll look into buying it.

 

[HaraDaya]

Yep, vehicles were more like a power multiplier than a supporting vehicle. Thermal optics, proximity scan makes it impossible to hide from them as infantry. Reactive armor lets them soak up 5 RPGs, effectively making it impossible to take it down as an engineer before he'll have figured out where you're shooting from (plus if you don't have the extra explosives perk, you won't even have enough rockets to take him down). And further add that the standard spawn time for vehicles were too goddamn fast, and it makes every session more about anticipating when the next tank is gonna roll in, than focusing on clearing out checkpoints.
Vehicles are supposed to be vulnerable up close without infantry support. Once again they're catering too much to the lonewolf playstyle.

I wish there were more servers using long vehicle spawn times, the few I have favorited have given me the best Battlefield experiences when they were full. There losing a tank is a loss for the team, because it'll be over 5 minutes till you have access to another.

 

[fix-the-spade]

I was hoping to hear that vehicles would have ammo limits again

They sort of do, you have a pool of ammunition (90 rounds for the attack chopper gun recently) that you can use like in BF3, then once it's gone you have to wait for it to regenerate before you can fire again. It's given the air vehicles especially a much lower rate of sustained fire, or else they have to sit there like a lemon unable to shoot back.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

There were huge issues of balance in anti-air. One patch, aircraft were OP as hell, the next you could lock on and take down a jet from halfway across the map. They never quite got it right. But if a skilled pilot can stay in the air, then fair play to them.

 

[Snotnarok]

-snip-

There were huge issues of balance in anti-air. One patch, aircraft were OP as hell, the next you could lock on and take down a jet from halfway across the map. They never quite got it right. But if a skilled pilot can stay in the air, then fair play to them.

It's not just being skilled, jet pilots just need to go fast and past a building or any can drop flares or smoke then repair themselves in mid air. Making 1 set of people rule the map because of perks they have vs skill. The only time you can take them down easier if you have the recons lock on thing, and good luck getting someone to do that. I can barely get the support players to drop ammo half the time.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

I agree that air was OP, but I was just trying to highlight the weird swings back and forth the patches had around the issue. The SOFLAM is good if you have a team oriented recon, but the simple fact of what the recon class is means you're never in a million years going to get that. I used to do it with some friends, where we would javelin planes from the skyscrapers on Gulf of Oman. It was good fun then, but the rest of the time recons are just barrett kids with 12x opticals and no motivation to actually play the game.

Really, the array of vehicles is what BF has over CoD. It has to really push those, or it will get accused of being a CoD clone. I guess this is why they're not backing down from making vehicles OP. I just want there to be modding. Give us mod support, and we'll be happy, because we can make the game how we want, then.

 

[Snotnarok]

-snip-

I agree that air was OP, but I was just trying to highlight the weird swings back and forth the patches had around the issue. The SOFLAM is good if you have a team oriented recon, but the simple fact of what the recon class is means you're never in a million years going to get that. I used to do it with some friends, where we would javelin planes from the skyscrapers on Gulf of Oman. It was good fun then, but the rest of the time recons are just barrett kids with 12x opticals and no motivation to actually play the game.

Really, the array of vehicles is what BF has over CoD. It has to really push those, or it will get accused of being a CoD clone. I guess this is why they're not backing down from making vehicles OP. I just want there to be modding. Give us mod support, and we'll be happy, because we can make the game how we want, then.

Oh I'm not suggesting we remove them or we take away focus, but make it easier for teams to take them down, offer the soflam earlier on, or as an inital unlock and give them decent points for it, make there tricks for ground units to be able to try to get around the flares themselves, helis have the advantage of flight,speed, flares and auto repair, so why not have maybe a perk that allows for engies to reload a second shot slightly faster to try to beat out the flare recovery in helis.

I love BF3, I've been frustrated by the game sure and I don't have any experience with game balance professionally, I'm just saying it'd be nice to see some sort of slight counter to help.

 

[Yuuki]

Tank and attack heli agility is lower in BF4, speed & momentum is a lot more realistic. One of my gripes with BF3 was how tanks/APC's could scoot down an alley, obliterate everyone and then scoot back out in the blink of an eye. Putting C4 on a moving vehicle was a big gamble. That combined with the RPG/SMAW's stupidly slow (exaggerated) velocity made moving vehicles pretty difficult to hit unless you were very close to it or had pro judgment/luck...and the vehicle kept moving in a straight predictable line at a constant speed...

Not only are vehicles less agile, but they have limited "heavy" ammo which means that one guy can't single-handedly control entire zones/areas and wipe out infantry like ants without ever leaving his vehicle.

The 3rd thing is that you can now throw/slide C4 a lot further, plus two classes/kits have C4 now (Support & Recon).

All this should come together to make ground vehicles weaker and give infantry a better fighting chance.

On the flipside, I have no clue how balanced the boats will be. Putting C4 on them will be borderline impossible since they're in the water (duh) and also appear to move quite fast, so taking out boats will be a job mostly for lock-on weapons, using your own boats vs theirs, and jets/heli's. Infantry may be able to get RPG shots off if the boats are very close to the shore and not moving too much.

Also in the latest news, Little Birds seem to have been buffed quite a lot with higher agility and bulletproof front glass (i.e. you can't simply shoot the pilot from the front now), look at this:


No idea what can be done to stop pro Little Bird pilots other than grabbing Stingers and hoping for the best. Or equipping a boat with anti-air stuff.

 

[the doom cannon]

The only thing I can think of after this announcement is: battleship, carrier, submarine battles from BF1942. I want that style of game back with an updated scenario and graphics. It may not have been in DICE's best interest to announce updated boats. Now if their updated naval combat is anything less interesting than in 1942, it will be disappointing. But hey, if they do deliver, I will totally rethink my decision to not buy BF4.

 

[tdylan]

My experience with BF has been that DICE is not good at balance, often times over-correcting, messing with things that did not need adjusting, or not addressing the things that needed to be. I still have a hard on over how overpowered the Voss is from BF2142.

Also, "the squeaky wheel gets greased." Even if things are balanced, enough people will complain enough times to get things changed and we're right back to the cluster ****.

I think vehicles should be a game changer. As infantry you should see a tank rolling down the street and thing "oh ****! It's going to take a combined effort from my squad/team to bring that down. I don't have that so instead of complaining about not being able to single-handedly take it down, I'll fallback until we can."

Unfortunately they also have to balance the game so that 1 guy in a tank does not completely swing the balance in his team's favor. Atacama Desert in Bad Company 2 when one team had both gunships comes to mind. Or Sharqi Peninsula in BF2 when the US was spawn trapped in the TV station. On the one hand I think:

"If the other team is able to back you into a corner, they deserve to keep you there."

On the other, there is validity in the argument that you should always have a fighting chance. I don't know how you balance:

"This guy's spent a lot of time getting good with jets so it shouldn't be easy for a rookie to autokill him," vs "jets shouldn't be so difficult to bring down that newcomers are discouraged to play because the vets are too well armed."

 

[rasputin0009]

I never thought the vehicles were OP. I play on hardcore servers so that might be why. (Takes 2 RPGs max to take down a tank) Helicopters would be the closest thing to OP (even though it's really easy to shoot the pilot), but it's a steep learning curve so you should be rewarded somehow.