Battlefield 4 Adds Pilot Training

[Steven Bogos]

Battlefield 4 Adds Pilot Training

One of the series' most daunting aspects will receive a "test range" mode.

Flying a plane or a helicopter in a Battlefield game is a very daunting task. Their controls are vastly different to tanks and infantry, and unless you have some flight sim experience under your belt, you're probably going to suck hard. Thankfully, DICE have announced that Battlefield 4 will feature a "test range" mode for jets and choppers, so players can learn the ropes without making their teammates rage.

"We've definitely heard that people are afraid of getting in there [and using vehicles like helicopters] and that's not our intent, so what we've done is, we've added a test range, which allows you to try out all the hardware ahead of time."

The test range will allow you to tweak your settings until you are comfortable with the vehicles, as well as allowing you to do "some stunt flights just to feel safe before you go out and get the responsibility of a bunch of other people sitting in your helicopter," said Lars Gustavsson, the Creative Director at DICE.

He also offered a few thoughts on some other features people have been asking for in Battlefield, such as "Dinosaur mode," which has sort of become an in-joke for the Battlefield community. "We definitely hear them and I like the thought of [Dinosaur mode] too, so who knows. It definitely sounds extremely sexy and sounds like something that would fit the Battlefield universe very well."

Gustavsson also confirms that you will be able to play Battlefield 4 on the PSVita via remote-play from the PS4.

Source: IGN [http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/09/03/dice-answers-your-battlefield-4-questions]


Permalink

 

[Metalrocks]

sounds good, because i suck big time flying any of these things. i never shot anyone down with a jet or heli. im always wondering how people still can follow me easily with the jet and hit me, doesnt matter how i fly, but i cant follow them and hit them.

 

[Saulkar]

They are making this game sound more and more appealing. I will wait for some post release gameplay videos to see if it is up my alley. Unlike Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 1, I was burned out by BF3 in only a couple of months. It just did not feel like a proper BF somehow.

In the meantime!

 

[Bindal]

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

 

[Doom972]

Too bad they can't just add it to Battlefield 3 as well. I probably won't get BF4 until it'll be as low as $5 since it'll probably only be good for multiplayer.

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

This isn't a Saint's Row game. There's a bigger emphasis on realism in this franchise. Long-time fans would be disappointed if they took that away. It'll also make the other vehicles useless if jets and choppers were made easier to control.

 

[josemlopes]

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

In Saints Row helicopters dont really behave like helicopters, more like flying saucers.

 

[TheEvilCheese]

They are making this game sound more and more appealing. I will wait for some post release gameplay videos to see if it is up my alley. Unlike Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 1, I was burned out by BF3 in only a couple of months. It just did not feel like a proper BF somehow.

Same here, I played the hell out of BC2 and when BF3 came out I played someone else's copy for a while as well as playing the "beta" (demo). I couldn't put my finger on it but it just felt off somehow.

Playing it again recently (humble bundle yay) to see how it had changed, I came to the conclusion that it just feels like COD4 far more than it feels like Battlefield. Now COD has it's place in the industry, but that doesn't mean every shooter should be it. Something I hope EA is learning.

---

A flight school seems like a good idea to me, but isn't the single player campaign supposed to teach you what you need to know for multiplayer in games like this? Seems odd that they wouldn't use that experience to help players get a handle on flying mechanics.

 

[Saulkar]

I came to the conclusion that it just feels like COD4 far more than it feels like Battlefield. Now COD has it's place in the industry, but that doesn't mean every shooter should be it. Something I hope EA is learning.

I lied when I said I could not put my finger on it. It does indeed feel too much like COD but I felt that unless I articulated an entire essay on why I felt that way, backed up by citations, I would receive a rebuke for making the comparison. Then again I am pretty paranoid due to every single comment I make on youtube somehow pissing someone off, hehe, classic. What was I talking about again?

OHYEAH!!!

Ultimately it felt too closed in, too manufactured, too... toooooooooooooooo, soulless. If I were to summarise how I best feel when playing and the design of the levels it would be like a robot imagined them. They were made for a purpose, they wanted you to play it a certain way with little deviance. Even the largest levels somehow feel claustrophobic as if every hill was placed in a certain location to ensure that you played the game their way. It sounds strange, I know, but that is how I feel playing it.

 

[Danny Ocean]

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

Because that's nothing like how planes or helicopters function.

Playing it again recently (humble bundle yay) to see how it had changed, I came to the conclusion that it just feels like COD4 far more than it feels like Battlefield. Now COD has it's place in the industry, but that doesn't mean every shooter should be it. Something I hope EA is learning.

BF3 had maps that were too small because "People don't like running from point to point." That's also why they removed the sprint meter. It's all to cater to people with short attention spans. Such a small change completely flips the pacing of the game. TTK seems to be lower too.

So I spent most of my time in vehicles. Especially jets. Much to the chagrin of the people I played with/against.

 

[Bindal]

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

Because that's nothing like how planes or helicopters function.

So? It's a game, who cares?
If I want simulated planes and choppers, I get the Microsoft Flight Simulator and a Joystick - I wouldn't play Battlefield for that.

 

[Danny Ocean]

So? It's a game, who cares?

A lot of people care.

It is not a dichotomy between ridiculous saints row controls and flight simulator X controls.

In the middle is battlefield.

You do not need a new input device and the controls are not horrific. You're hamming up the difficulty as if it's like trying to play flight simulator X without a joystick.

It's really not that hard, and the extra realism and flexibility of input facilitated by the mildly more complicated control scheme allows for more complicated and precise manoeuvres.

If you can't figure it out then stick to ground vehicles.

 

[Matthi205]

Better idea: Make the things intuitive to fly in the first place. It's sad to see that games like Saints Row got choppers ANYONE can fly instantly despite that you barely need to, yet Battlefield, where it's almost a requirement, you have to either get an entirely different input-device or have to deal with pretty horrific controls.
Seriously, is the following system too much to ask for:
WASD for moving
Jump for accending
crouch for decending
Mouse to turn and aim

Good idea, valid for Planetside 2, too. There's one thing left unnoticed, however: in BF, you can rebind the controls to your liking (not completely since the STUPID IDIOT CONTROLS EDITOR doesn't allow binding things normally, but you can - in Planetside 2, you can not rebind the mouse axes, which is incredibly annoying).

Anyway, that's a good idea. In BFBC2, I can't be trusted to fly anything but a Blackhawk or the russian transport chopper (for which I can't ever get as many to crew it as I'd need), just because I can't amass the necessary experience with the Apache or equivalent (I suck at aiming and piloting something at the same time, even Tanks, but they're easier, thanks to movement not being extended to the third dimension).

Because that's nothing like how planes or helicopters function.

You probably thought that this would make aeroplanes fly on different 2-dimensional planes. This would not be the case. Space would be "accelerate", with CTRL being "decelerate".

If I can't control the bloody thing, I can't do anything against others using it against me. See Planetside 2 for that: You're capturing a small outpost together with 2 or 3 people. Nobody has yet invested 1000 certification points into an Anti-Air rocket launcher (because it's useless against anything else). An enemy in a Reaver comes along and pounds you into the dirt, without you being able to do literally anything against it (take an aircraft for yourself = crash, try and pull a MAX unit with an AA Burster gun and he'll fly away, repair, and Hellfire rocket pod you into Oblivion). Same in BF. You want to do anything versus an Aerorplane? No such luck I'm afraid. The only things that can effectively do damage to an aeroplane is another aeroplane or another helicopter. Only if the pilot is stupid enough can you shoot him out of the sky.

 

[Oskuro]

Here's an idea.... Why don't you guys at DICE implement all the features that were already present back in BF1942 (and the insanely popular Desert Combat mod) and stop pretending stuff you took out of the game and put back in is an innovation?

There were planes in BF1942, and a helicopter in the Secret Weapons expansion. Desert Combat had modern helicopters and Jets. There were Battleships, Carriers and Submarines. There were helicopters and jets on BF:V and BF:2.

And there was no need for a training mode, when you could just fire up a single player map (with or without bots) and train all you liked.


Turns out in videogames that old phrase is also true: "They don't make them like they used to anymore"

 

[Thedutchjelle]

So? It's a game, who cares?

A lot of people care.

It is not a dichotomy between ridiculous saints row controls and flight simulator X controls.

In the middle is battlefield.

You do not need a new input device and the controls are not horrific. You're hamming up the difficulty as if it's like trying to play flight simulator X without a joystick.

It's really not that hard, and the extra realism and flexibility of input facilitated by the mildly more complicated control scheme allows for more complicated and precise manoeuvres.

If you can't figure it out then stick to ground vehicles.

This, I played both BF3 and SR3 and I really wouldn't want the Sr3 heli controls in BF3. Chopper movement in BF3 feels far more fluent and faster paced than the choppers in SR3.

 

[Matthi205]

This, I played both BF3 and SR3 and I really wouldn't want the Sr3 heli controls in BF3. Chopper movement in BF3 feels far more fluent and faster paced than the choppers in SR3.

I felt that, when using the "advanced" flight controls setting, flying in SR3 was pretty fun and much closer to how it should be. Mind you, I haven't used the default setting at all.

 

[fix-the-spade]

sounds good, because i suck big time flying any of these things. i never shot anyone down with a jet or heli. im always wondering how people still can follow me easily with the jet and hit me, doesnt matter how i fly, but i cant follow them and hit them.

<spoiler=Watch this video><youtube=Kf29HmwA1P8>

Believe it or not BF3 is much, much more user friendly than BF2 was when it comes to air combat. BF2 jets required a joystick/throttle set up, in BF3 I play using only the keyboard and I'm up to SS27 for jets. You still need to know the basic rules of dogfighting beforehand though, I died horribly until watching that and a bunch of other tutorials, then it's practice, practice, practice.

 

[Metalrocks]

sounds good, because i suck big time flying any of these things. i never shot anyone down with a jet or heli. im always wondering how people still can follow me easily with the jet and hit me, doesnt matter how i fly, but i cant follow them and hit them.

<spoiler=Watch this video><youtube=Kf29HmwA1P8>

Believe it or not BF3 is much, much more user friendly than BF2 was when it comes to air combat. BF2 jets required a joystick/throttle set up, in BF3 I play using only the keyboard and I'm up to SS27 for jets. You still need to know the basic rules of dogfighting beforehand though, I died horribly until watching that and a bunch of other tutorials, then it's practice, practice, practice.

thanks for that but i did watch it as well and im still struggling. sure it helped more then before but i still coulndt aim and hit the target. so i stayed on the ground and drove tanks or just simply play TDM which is more to my liking.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So? It's a game, who cares?
If I want simulated planes and choppers, I get the Microsoft Flight Simulator and a Joystick - I wouldn't play Battlefield for that.

In all seriousness, the default flight controls in Saint Row 3 are horrible, the Battlefield layout (and to an extent the advanced layout in SR3, but I still ended up remapping them) offers a good degree of flexibility and precision so that you can make use of the aircraft's maneuverability.

It does require a degree of knowledge and commitment on the player's part though, you need to learn and understand the basics before you can even hope to be effective. If that's not you, then fine, but deliberately neutering the system is not the way forwards. We've already seen it to an extent in BF3/BC2, compared to Vietnam/BF2 Choppers in particular are much simplified, it hasn't particularly changed the balance as the players who invest time into tactics and communication still destroy everyone else. If anything simplifying controls has made the choppers even more effective.

 

[Zhukov]

Thank you!

It was really no fun at all how the only way to learn to fly choppers in BF3 was in a live multiplayer game with a bunch of other people who would lose no time in yelling at you when you crash into a tree three seconds after take off because the controls sucked six flavours of arse.