Not to brag, but I'm really good with jets and helicopters in Battlefield 3. By which I mean: I'm terrible at flying them, so I don't bother trying. I could attempt to learn, but that would mean taking a valuable asset from my team, and then crashing that asset into a lake, or windmill, or enemy rocket. That's why it's nice to hear that, for Battlefield 4 , DICE are planning to include a "test range" to make such airborne humiliation less public.
"We've definitely heard that people are afraid of getting in there [and using vehicles like helicopters] and that's not our intent," says DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson in an interview with 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."
"If you want to learn to fly a helicopter," he continues, "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."
It's a great (and some would say staggeringly obvious) idea. Now you can practice away to your hearts content, build up the needed confidence to show off you skills, then choke under pressure, clip the tail of your helicopter on a building, and kill your entire squad. Or, if you're not a nervous multiplayer pessimist, you could help win a key location that's integral to your ultimate victory.
Check out the full IGN interview for more design decisions, and Gustavsson's admission that a dinosaur mode "sounds extremely sexy".
Thanks, CVG .
