Battlefield 4 adds vehicle 'test range'

DICE is adding a vehicle "test range" to Battlefield 4, letting you experiment before jumping in with other players.

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Battlefield 4 most recently released the Paracel Storm trailer to show off its vehicle combat. The series mainstay has become a defining trait of Battlefield, and DICE has taken a step to make hopping in a new vehicle a little less daunting for players. Just like real-life, it will let you learn how to drive before putting other players' lives in your hands.

"We've definitely heard that people are afraid of getting in there [and using vehicles like helicopters] and that's not our intent," creative director Lars Gustavsson told IGN. "So what we've done is, we've added a test range, which allows you to try out all the hardware ahead of time so that if you want to learn to fly a helicopter you can get in there and you can find the settings that work best for you. And then start doing 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, so I truly hope that this will help people feel more safe about trying out the whole battlefield."

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    September 4, 2013 10:45 AM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Battlefield 4 adds vehicle 'test range'.

    DICE is adding a vehicle "test range" to Battlefield 4, letting you experiment before jumping in with other players.

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      September 4, 2013 11:13 AM

      Wow thats super cool.

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      September 4, 2013 11:26 AM

      Needs vehicle obstacle course and rings for planes to fly through Star Fox style.

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        September 4, 2013 11:36 AM

        Fucking hell yes. Why isn't there a destruction derby type mode for BF games?

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          September 4, 2013 11:48 AM

          Just play regular multiplayer as if it were!

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            September 4, 2013 3:59 PM

            Yeah, I mean it's kind of already being played like that on many vehicle servers.

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      September 4, 2013 11:27 AM

      That's a great idea!! I can't fly worth shit and everytime I try on various servers I end up getting booted cause I suck soo horribly.

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        September 4, 2013 12:13 PM

        You'll still get booted.

        Unless DICE either add more than two jets per map or nerf them to the point where pilots can no longer go 40-0 with impunity, there will always be people wanting to boot you because they think that they can do a better job.

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      September 4, 2013 11:56 AM

      Its only taken 4 games and tons of DLC to add something people have been asking for since day one.

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        September 4, 2013 1:59 PM

        DICE are major sellouts, and they gave the world's biggest middle finger to what the players wanted with Battlefield 3, wanting instead to chase after CoD's crowd. They deserve nobody's respect.

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          September 4, 2013 2:04 PM

          lol, the worlds biggest middle finger? Deserve no respect? A little dramatic are we?

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            September 4, 2013 4:38 PM

            I once tried out one of those hyperbolic chambers. IT WAS THE BEST THING EVER.

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            September 4, 2013 8:36 PM

            pizzaput makes these same posts in every Battlefield thread.

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          September 4, 2013 2:05 PM

          lol

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          September 4, 2013 7:29 PM

          go back to the front page

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            September 4, 2013 7:30 PM

            This is the front page. Look at the root!

            Remember those threads appear in the chatty now for 18 hours like everything else :O

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          September 5, 2013 2:56 AM

          lol

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          September 5, 2013 3:43 AM

          [deleted]

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        September 4, 2013 11:05 PM

        BF42, BFV, BF2 I would just start up a local game and practice on the AI bots.

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          September 4, 2013 11:28 PM

          BFV, I would get angry that the soundtrack on the loading screen would stop.

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      September 4, 2013 12:17 PM

      As excited as I am for this, it floors me that they didn't include this in their most recent games. I didn't play these on PC, but this was sorely missing in Bad Company 2 and of course BF3. There was no possible way for me to launch an online map solo and in multiplayer games it was hard enough getting a chance to use certain vehicles, let alone learning how to fly them without being pressured or harassed by other players.

      I would spend hours just flying a lilbird around Lost Village in Desert Combat and so I see a lot of potential here. Hopefully, they give us the option to just learn as we go instead of the entire thing being a tutorial we can't turn off.

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        September 4, 2013 1:05 PM

        Yeah BFV had some great flight school servers with tonnes of Hueys

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      September 4, 2013 12:20 PM

      This would have been really helpful in BF3. I never even bothered trying the air vehicles because there was no way to learn beforehand. Oh well.

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      September 4, 2013 1:58 PM

      Ok, so they did exactly what everyone was complaining about there not being in Battlefield 3 , and what you were able to do in all Battlefield prior to Battlefield 3 - except that in prior Battlefields you weren't restricted to some test range, and could play any of the maps offline and on your own to test things out.

      It seems like DICE are only making baby-steps towards re-implementing some of the content that used to always be in Battlefield, but which was cut out completely in Battlefield 3. How about Squad leaders now? How about 6 people per squad? How about spawning only on squad leader? How about truly massive maps like FuShe, where you aren't just counting the out of bounds areas as part of the maps?

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        September 4, 2013 2:39 PM

        [deleted]

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        September 4, 2013 3:00 PM

        they made the infantry combat good with the bad company series. translated that into the battlefield formula, and made an awesome game.

        they couldnt make giant maps because of the console player limits. its hard to design a gold scaled map that still keeps gameplay fun when auto adjusting.

        your complains are super nitpicky. lol

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          September 4, 2013 4:32 PM

          Lol, if you call that nitpicky, then you must consider gutted gameplay to be an inconsequential inconvenience. Those things shape the entire game.

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            September 4, 2013 4:36 PM

            being able to play multiplayer on your own shaped the entire game?

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          September 4, 2013 4:35 PM

          They did improve infantry combat, but they didn't translate it into the Battlefield formula, nor did they make an awesome game. There is no excuse for why they couldn't make large maps on PC, there's nothing making them use the same checkpoints on PC as console. Also, the upcoming consoles are still not up to par with modern PCs, so then I guess we should expect once again to have a heavily compromised game on PC. Actually, looking at the videos, it's obvious that it's compromised. Those graphics are crap by PC standards, but all the console players are probably gushing their pants.

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            September 4, 2013 5:36 PM

            lol, why are you so upset? have u played bf2 lately? it doesnt hold up. id argue lots of things about it didnt hold up then.

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              September 4, 2013 7:04 PM

              Haha, what a fail post - you've never played Battlefield 2, which blows away Battlefield 3. It's easier at any given time to find a populated server on Battlefield 2 than it is in Battlefield 3, and there are more/larger/better maps to play. The gameplay in Battlefield 2 makes Battlefield 3 look like a terrible joke, which I guess it what it actually is.

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                September 4, 2013 8:02 PM

                yeah, i played it back in 2005 or whenever year it came out. it was full of broken air rape. no physics, floaty gunplay, half-broken menu systems, glitched bindings, decent graphics, lacking animations, big maps, it was fun for a bit.. im sorry that your squad being 4 instead of 6 ruined bf3... it was a super cool game.

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                  September 4, 2013 8:38 PM

                  don't bother arguing with this guy. he comes into every battlefield thread, accuses DICE of raping his childhood, and then tells anyone who disagrees with him that they never played Battlefield 2

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                  September 4, 2013 10:51 PM

                  Battlefield 2 was pretty solidly patched up within months of the release. The same can't be said for Battlefield 3.

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                    September 4, 2013 10:56 PM

                    no, you're wrong.

                    DICE notoriously released shit and barely got it cleaned up before breaking something else, and letting it go for months at a time.

                    Not till BF3 did they actually have something pretty amazing out of the gate.

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                September 5, 2013 12:56 AM

                Not going to tell you what games to like/dislike but the server stats you allude to are wrong.

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            September 4, 2013 8:36 PM

            oh the large maps...where you run for five minutes in open, deserted desert only to get instantly killed by an aircraft. good times. time to jog again...

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              September 4, 2013 10:50 PM

              You're another young'un who hasn't played Battlefield 2. The running in boring openness is Battlefield 3 trademark. In Battlefield 2 there's almost always tons of detail in the environment. If you were running for minutes, why wouldn't you spawn closer to your goal? Doesn't sound like a very smart way to be playing.

              http://youtu.be/fmNIH6SHEXA Yup, those large maps... the ones where they aren't boring like Battlefield 3's maps.

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                September 4, 2013 10:54 PM

                lol holy shit. yes i have played it. it's horribly unbalanced and unpolished. and the infantry combat sucks.

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                  September 4, 2013 11:17 PM

                  Battlefield 2 was my least favorite in the series until BC2 came along, but it wasn't that bad. The infantry combat was barely a step up from the likes of 1942 and Vietnam, and the tank and plane battles weren't nearly as enjoyable as BF42. But I wouldn't say the entire thing was any more unpolished or unbalanced than their other games, aside from maybe the air power vs anti-air. Commander mode was kind neat as was squad comms when it worked. There were some decent and memorable maps like Dalian Plant, Oman, and Highway Tampa. There were also some real stinkers like Zatar Wetlands and Operation Clean Sweep.

                  As with all the Battlefield games it was a mixed bag. Still, there was some fun in there until everyone playing the game deceided they only wanted to play the small Karkand variants with 64 players and no vehicles. Shit was that game's Metro clusterfuck and it sucked whatever fun there was to be had completely out of it for me.

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                September 4, 2013 11:14 PM

                I must have put in somewhere around 300 hours into BF2. I loved the game to death. Still, the game had some serious issues that the patience of yester-gen gamers could accept and work around.

                1. Slow map load. It was bad well into the game's lifespan.

                2. Air rape. Anti-air guns were beyond worthless in that game.

                3. No kit rez. This one always made me laugh. Seeing a guy run around like he's carrying two kegs around each arm.

                4. Key binding on options menu was never truly fixed. I could work around some of it but it was generally an annoyance. Course I guess that's better than having near zero joy support in modern iterations these days.

                5. Hit detection was always a bit odd in that game. Especially with anti-tank weaponry against infantry. Shotguns were a bit odd too.... then again Shotgun sniping is REALLY weird in BF3 / BC2

                6. CARTILLERY. Anti-sniping. Stupid... but fun.... but still stupid.

                7. Server hijacks. Late in the game's lifespan, griefers were able to go on any server whether secured or not and pretty much break every policy. You can mass spam voice alerts and somehow even make it rain jeeps. This would cause the server to crash. This basically made me stop playing the game for a long time. ENEMY BOAT SPOTTED (on Karkand)

                8. Nade spam was waaaaay over powered. Especially when support can replenish ammo instantly. First aid was also under powered since everyone is really fragile. It's not a surprise that the gradual replenishment was implemented on the next half iteration of the series 2142.

                9. Sniper claymores on ladders. There is literally nothing you can do about this sometimes.

                The game was flawed. Make no mistake. I loved it for its time and I think BF3 hasn't matched the overall contentment and joy that I had with BF2. I think BF3 has made some refinements here and there but lots of things in BF2 are still missed. We'll see how well BF4 fares.

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            September 5, 2013 2:53 AM

            [deleted]

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            September 5, 2013 2:57 AM

            lol dear god where did you come from

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        September 4, 2013 6:08 PM

        [deleted]

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          September 4, 2013 7:06 PM

          Spawn on squad leader only? I don't recall it having that, though I haven't gone back to Bf3 in probably a year. Was it patched in? Battlefield 2 also lets squad leaders issue commands to the squad, setting attack/defend/etc points.

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            September 4, 2013 7:12 PM

            No, it was always like that in hardcore. The SL can spawn on any living squad member, but the squad can only spawn on the SL. Or a radio beacon. Squad leaders have always been able to mark points to attack and defend as well.

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              September 4, 2013 7:28 PM

              They did, however, add spawning on squad leader as a server option and filter later in an update so non-hardcore servers could use that setting too, but none do. Same with disabling 3D spotting and other previous stock hardcore only options.

              If you enable those filters in the browser, you'll pretty much only find hardcore servers running them because it's the default. http://chattypics.com/files/beef_qdj0glhhqw.png

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        September 4, 2013 11:43 PM

        Armored Kill has some big maps. You know what? They suck ass with small amounts of players.

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      September 4, 2013 2:11 PM

      i hate all these modern games with no dedicated servers where I can't try things out on an empty map. Logged in to an empty server in Hawken. After about five seconds of trying out the controls, other people logged in and I was blown up within 10. Never started the client again.

      so this is a good thing

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        September 4, 2013 5:00 PM

        Tons of empty "learn to fly" servers. I hop on every once in a while to try my hand and flying. i still suck though.

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        September 4, 2013 5:01 PM

        Good thing Hawken is adding Offline Team Deathmatch with the next patch (vs bots)

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      September 4, 2013 2:31 PM

      despite my hatred for all things EA...man I cant wait for this game.

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      September 4, 2013 2:31 PM

      [deleted]

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      September 4, 2013 4:37 PM

      I have beta access apparently. Must be a BF3 Premium thing. I'm pretty excited for this game! I really hope they make it a little more fun for infantry, though. Not a huge fan of the vehicles...

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        September 4, 2013 5:01 PM

        Then is series is not for you. Sorry but it's true, what makes battlefield great is the mix of both.

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          September 4, 2013 5:17 PM

          Thanks for letting me know. I'll stop playing now.

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            September 4, 2013 5:37 PM

            dont listen to him, its mostly infantry combat anyways now. vehicles play a smaller role.

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              September 4, 2013 5:38 PM

              There is alot but if he says he doesn't like the vehicles they aren't going away.

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      September 4, 2013 4:59 PM

      Like Planetside!

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      September 4, 2013 8:33 PM

      they should make it so you lose points when you die, giving a sort of survivalist element.

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      September 5, 2013 12:33 AM

      Not related to the article, but I read that BF4 will support in game voice. Apparently squad based VOIP will launch with game, so it sounds like they will hopefully add commander to squad leader VOIP later. IIRC, they also mentioned team VOIP. I would love to see the option off by default and be able to select which players you would like to connect with...sort of like an invite to VOIP.

      For me, L4D revolutionized teamwork with strangers by using lobbies and effortless VOIP. I even hope to see an option to only play with other VOIP/MIC enabled gamers. Hell, maybe even a filter for competitive or fun, chatty or quiet players.

      Also, there's no reason to limit squads to 4. 6 or even 8 would be great. And def bring back dedis. I can't help but see how these additions wouldnt help the game explode in pooularity and suoport from PC centric gamers.

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      September 5, 2013 2:59 AM

      [deleted]

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        September 5, 2013 3:22 AM

        The default vehicle respawn times in BF3 were already fairly quick so yeah, it's going to be hard if not impossible to find someone smart enough to make the respawn delay on vehicles longer. Most idiots running a server would rather do instant vehicle respawn and ruin the game entirely.

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      September 5, 2013 4:04 AM

      I want an offline mode with bots, but my guess is they'll say it's too complicated.

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