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Sorry for the clickbait title.. I'd do it again in a heartbeat but still.

I've been playing bf4 for over a year now, sunk close to 900 hours into the game in both normal and hardcore in a range of classes and situations. Watched loads of videos and read tonnes of forums in an attempt to understand some of the less explained game mechanics. I play both solo and with a team and have broken this game at times so hard it's rediculous. Picture a lav/aa/tank running around together with a squad-full of repair/rpg bitches on zavod, or squads with PLD + 3 sraws instagibbing vehicles in sub 5 seconds through any defensive measure. Broken as hell.

BF4 has a competitive aspect to it, but the game mechanics itself do not lend itself to skilled gameplay. Below are a list of thought out and hopefully fully addressed flaws that I see in the game. This thread is not intended to be a 'my opinion is right! BLAH' but a basis for discussion so that going forward, we can improve the game. It is, however, a heavy-handed opinion, I'm not known for my tact or finesse, but I'll try.

Random spread

random spread

Ever had that time where you're pointing and clicking directly on an enemy and they seem to take an obscene amount of damage before going down? Chances are the spread screwed you, at least partially. When you fire at an enemy, depending on the gun, your bullets will go in random patterns around the crosshair. This sounds like a fairly standard mechanic right? There can't be anything wrong with such a staple mechanic!

Bull. It's a monstrosity to competitive, skill-based gaming.

There have been times where I've tapped on an enemy with an AR and they've dropped instantly, not through any skill of my own, but simply because the bullets randomly landed in the right spots to hit the enemy critically. Sometimes, especially at range or with DMR's, I'll be shooting in an enemies direction, but I'll screw it up and my cursor moves to the wrong spot – oh wait, spreads got my back and that person just got headshot. I didn't deserve those kills, imagine how pissed off the person on the receiving end would be? Lets put ourselves in his position here.

I'm running up to some cover, it's a really good position with minimal exposure. Once in cover I spot an enemy running along in the open, but he notices me at the same time. We exchange fire, I start firing but – bam – cut down in a split second. We've all been there, that death that makes you want to forcefully insert your keyboard into someones bodily cavities. How the hell did he do that, you wonder, he must be one hell of a player – or maybe he's hacking! No, lets see what they did.

From the other perspective, the player is for this example using a dmr, but it could be other weapons depending on the range/location. That person, while strafing sideways, snaps off two shots in the general area, it might be on target it might be slightly off. Bam – headshot/chestshot combo, dropped instantly, all because lady luck was smiling. Sure, this might not happen often, but every time it does some poor bloke is ripping his hair out wondering what happened.

An answer – There probably isn't one best answer for this, but here is an alternative.

Weapon sight moves with recoil, weapons are perfectly accurate. I quite like this, but it does of course have its downsides. If the sights move, it might feel a bit clunky, but I'd imagine it would also make it feel rather authentic, to have this weapon kicking in your hands like a mule as you full auto-into some poor bastards face. Some weapons would be seriously hard to use, and recoil would probably have to be managed in some form or another – such as a weapon specific recoil pattern or localised areas of random deviation.

The problem with this is that it would make every weapon perfectly accurate, meaning that tap fire at range would be incredible, imagine a perfectly accurate tap firing MG eating people up at any range. Some slight changes to weapon damage over more extreme ranges would probably fix the issue, but it would need more testing for sure. During hip-fire, or moving, weapons would still be perfectly accurate, and would align with the weapon model but the weapon would not necessarily be pointed at mid-screen.

What this means is that a good player will be able to place bullets exactly where they want them, assuming they can master the recoil pattern of that weapon. It takes the random out of the game and replaces with skill.

I'd love to see some more discussion about skill-based recoil mechanics, mine is in no way or shape perfect but IMO it's a leap and a bound in-front of the current system.

Random suppression

random suppression

GODDAMN SIGHT, STOP FLYING AROUND THROUGH THE AIR LIKE A BASTARD. This thought loops through my head constantly during any sort of two sided long range engagement. Look, I love the idea of a suppression mechanic, support classes get shafted enough as-is without a large portion of their strategic viability (in theory) being thrown out the window. But is a random mechanic really the way to do it?

Lets think about it, the goal of a suppression mechanic is to keep the pressure on people in cover, right? To enable machine-gunners to 'pin down' troops and stop them from firing back effectively while your team flanks. Why does this need to be a random directional change to a players aim? If you've ever played with DMR's knows the frustration of attempting to fire at range with some rapid fire twat rattling shots off in your general direction. Under automatic fire, it makes return firing at any sort of a range almost impossible, but under sniper fire, it becomes an annoying little twitch. I have however had this work in my favour – snipers twitching my aim into the right spot are a fairly good example of this, and i'm sure in conjunction with random projectile deviation it's resulted in many more luck based-shenanigans.

An answer – The objective here is to make something that allows rapid fire weapons to make return fire difficult at range and 'pin down' targets, right? Well, we can virtually take it away from sniper rifles and dmr's, or at the very least make it so that the duration after each shot is so low that they're not very effective at it. This would allow other rapid fire weapons to suppress enemies but only for a short duration until the weapon is out of ammo. Doing it like this lets support classes shine at it, I would assume something that is intended by their 'support' title.

What would it actually do? Vision impairment is a pretty good start, some sort of foggy vision would reduce their long range fire capability in acquiring new targets, but would enable them to fire back at known targets with little penalty. If you wanted to make it a little bit more powerful here are some additions.

Speed drop – targets being shot at lose a small (10-20% probably) portion of their speed for a very short duration after a bullet comes close to them. This would enable support classes to limit enemy movement somewhat, but would make people in the open even more vulnerable. It would also add a pretty cool little visual indicator that someone is firing in your direction, aside from just the sound cue – could help newer players notice they're being shot at a bit more easily.

Damage reduction – a small damage reduction (probably 10-20%), would change the dynamic of long range fights dramatically. Cover would be more valuable due to the additional vulnerability this gives people standing in the open, and would be more attrition focused. Enemies popping up are much less likely to be gibbed or gib you, when fire is two-sided, which makes medic bags more useful.

This would have some pretty interesting side effects, for example;

Snipers wouldn't oneshot head-shot targets at range while suppressed. Remember however that due to other changes they would much more easily land them. Some people will like this others will hate it. Enemies hit by a headshot would take like 96% or something damage, which is still a big advantage and worthy of the ordeal IMO. Headshots aren't exactly some amazingly hard thing to do, I hope you'll admit. The only time a headshot is a hard thing is when the enemy is moving, in which case you probably won't be suppressed anyway and will be rewarded with a kill for your brilliance. Leave comments down on what you think of this, personally I love it, even though I play a lot of sniper.

Passive heal reduction/elimination. Essentially, while an MG is firing at your position, even when you're behind cover your HP will not regen or will regen slower. Combined with the much lower duration it means that suppression will be a proper support mechanic, that isn't just a rehashed damage dealer variant. You keep firing on a position and they don't get health back unless they change position.

Spawn points

spawns

Hey, did that guy just split out a clone? Two? Are they freakin rabbits? Yes that's right, we're talking about quantum teleportation.. or spawning. Personally I think this is one of my most hated issues, and covers a wide range of situations. I've been in countless situations where you open up on some guy and suddenly there are three guys, your now ninja plan of taking out the enemies one by one goes poof just as fast as your ammo counter. This is crap. These situations completely and instantly change a fight dynamic in a split second, which is uncontrollable by anyone except the person doing it. Not only that, but a good squad can do some rediculously insane things. Here are some of the things I've seen.

- Squad commander on hardcore parachuting down only to split into 5 guys the moment he gets inside cover.

- Multiple squads worth of troops pouring out of the transport chopper like rain as they all spawn on their squad leaders mid-flight. Like a goddamn flying clown car. Seen similar with the LAV, but not to the same extent.

- One guy hiding in some rediculously hard to find/reach place as troops teleport onto his location incessantly back-capping without anyone actually.. getting to the point.

Now, this is one small facet of a larger problem. The problem is people being in spots they have no damn right to be, in numbers that are stupid. If one guy gets past you, fine, there should be one person behind you. Tracking down a lone guy only to find he's split into five? Every time this happens I just want to eat my keyboard in rage, such a cheap way to go, and it's virtually uncounterable. Just another instance of luck based mechanics.

Lets look at it from another perspective to showcase the luck. You're on E on Golmud from West spawn. You've cleared out the entire point and killed a few guys, good job mate! You've cleared out everyone, and no enemies are nearby. Now, instead of in a real sort of battle, where it's most likely that the enemy will not be teleporting in, you now need to watch all directions simultaneously because there's a good chance that some bloke is going to spawn out of nothingness. If someone spawns on an angle you thought you had covered, or one you've simply looked away from for half a second, often that's a death sentence. If they spawn where you are covering, you get a free kill. Luck, luck everywhere, yeahhhh!

Now, I understand that spawns are done this way to improve the speed of gameplay, get people back into the action quicker, but is random luck really a way to do it? Is a mechanic where you can have people spawn directly behind you a good one? Check a corridoor – nobody, turn away – oh crap stabbed from behind – thanks DICE.

An answer – In keeping with the games context, we want something to spawn people in action fast. However, taking away the randomness and perhaps adding some counter strategy to the system should be two design goals.

The system – On more open maps, the ideal solution to me is to parachute players in on the location. For example soldiers would be dropped from a certain height above a point and allowed to open their chute at any stage during their flight. This would allow them to position themselves where they want to be on or around the point, giving them some control over the situation and hopefully stopping those situations where you spawn in-front of a tank in the open and poo your pants.

Additionally, it allows any people to see where the spawning player is going, to potentially do some damage to them in midair acts as a guidance system for any squad spawning going on – the spawning player would spawn directly overhead of any spawned upon player. This would only happen however, if there are people looking up at the sky, and what happens when people stand around staring up at the sky? They get sniped in the face/rocketed to the chest or some other grizzly death.

What this means is that it makes it harder to defend a point under heavy attack by hoping for a lucky spawn, such as those beautiful and surely infuriating times where you spawn behind an enemy tank for an easy C4/rocket. It gives people a rough idea of how many enemies are defending a point – except for ones that move in sneakily from other points. It'll surely cut down on free kills for either side, and keep up the visual and gameplay immersion from a real war game. No more teleportation, fill the sky with paratroops!

Of course, this wouldn't work so well on maps like metro/operation locker or other building areas, so it would require some tweaking. On control points 'inside' buildings, you could lock specific rooms off/make new rooms which act as spawn rooms, the team that doesn't control the point cannot enter/exit/shoot in. There could be multiple rooms for each spawn, and players can spawn on whichever they choose to add some player choice. You could do some pretty cool things to this – like spawns where players rappell in through windows, or through air vents, glass rooftops etc.. but the main test would be making enough of them to avoid spawn camping but far enough away from the point so players capturing the point don't get gibbed from behind or need to constantly watch their backs. I probably wouldn't have people spawning on squads inside buildings, it really just kills the game-play and is so easily abused.

I'd love to hear your ideas for this, especially the inside spawns!

Vehicles attached to control points

vehicles on control pts

It seems that the objective for any game is to have close, intense, fun games, right? Why is it then that players are rewarded with powerful resources for capturing points, something that is usually a sign that a team is doing well already? Lets say two teams are playing on Paracel, one team is getting absolutely smashed – their players are probably not quite as good, it happens. Why is it then, that the team that is winning is given an extra scout chopper, attack boat, mobile AA and a gunship? If they're already winning, why do they need these things? Is it really just to beat the other team into a pulp?

Essentially, this is a mechanic that takes games that are unbalanced, and prods the team losing, hardly sportsmanlike. Sure, in a close game, it might not make a huge difference, but any small difference in the teams is going to be heavily exposed when something as powerful as the mobile AA enters the battlefield for one or the other.

One other problem I have with this – why do tanks teleport in on the spot? Come on DICE, it means that if you're attacking a point, an enemy tank or LAV might only be seconds away from spawning, fresh with spamclicking driver, and blow you sky high. This might be a little less luck based because of the static spawn locations, but still, it can drastically change the game and really ruins the immersion.

An answer – If one team has more control points, chances are they're winning, right? Why not use this as a balance mechanism, call the system 'reinforcements'. Map specific, if a team has less points than the enemy, they receive additional resources to help them take back territory. Think again about that Paracel example. If the team that is dominating has all five points, the other team would get an extra attack boat, mobile AA and little bird – something that would make the game a lot more even, rather than turning it into a boring one-sided affair. These vehicles could spawn at a teams base or perhaps even get parachuted into a point, giving a team a heads up that a vehicle is coming down on a point and giving them some time to counter.

This would have the effect of helping to balance one-sided games, and close games wouldn't be changed that much. The only downside is which asset do you get if you're only one point down? I would imagine that it would be relatively straight forward to allow one vehicle per point down, and the first player into one locks out the other vehicles until you lose more points or the chosen vehicle is killed.

What do you guys think?

Fast kills

fast kills

I bet you're clenched real tight at the prospect of slower kills, right? I expect this is the topic that I'll get the most hatred over, but this is an issue close to my heart.

Have you ever been left staring at the screen, a single tear rolling down your cheek as you try to work out how you got killed? Have you ever shot at some guy who has instantly turned around and downed you so quickly you'd swear he's hacking? They're not, but this is how the game is made. If you're good enough, or lucky enough, you can kill enemies even in normal mode exceptionally quickly, let alone hardcore – which is land of the instagib.

For example, a G18 pistol, a lowly pistol, can kill an enemy in 0.2 seconds if stars align i.e. 3 headshots. 0.4 seconds is for all 6 body-shots.

A Scar-H can kill in 2 body/1 headshot on normal in 0.3 seconds. An SKS dmr can kill in 0.2 seconds with a body/headshot combo.

All you need to do is aim semi-well and get a bit of luck with the random spread, and you've got a kill that is likely finished before the person even knows what is happening. Even if you miss a few shots, often kills are so quick they're over before you can even work out what is hitting you in close range.

Now, you're probably sitting there, thinking something along the lines of 'man up, I bet you do that to plenty of people and love it!'. Yeah, I do, I'm sure there are a lot of people who love that feeling of getting a killstreak in quick succession on a group of enemies before they know what's happening. Killstreaks are cool as hell, look fun in frag videos and make people want to play the game. The problem with fast kills is that they're toxic in the video game community. Now you're probably really pissed, but please, let me explain.

Frustrating

The average person has about a 200ms or 0.2 seconds reaction time on, that's about the same amount of time that some guns can kill you from 100-0 in close range. Should someone getting the drop on an enemy really be that much of a death sentence? This is one of the reasons people hate snipers so damn much, their ability to instantly kill. The problem is the speed, you want to fight back, you want to have at least some sort of chance to get out of that situation and turn it around if you play it well enough. The problem is that unless the guy is pretty damn derp, he's going to win. It doesn't matter what class you are, what weapon you have, if you get caught in the open at close range you are almost certain to die, no matter how good you are.

Lets say that it takes someone a whole second to kill, so about 13-14 or so bullets from an ACE23 – something we see good players doing on a regular basis. It takes you about 0.05 of a second for your net to update and tell you that you've been shot iirc assuming 50 ping, it then takes on average 0.2 of a second longer for you to recognise you're being hit. Before any actions take effect, another 0.05 has passed. What can you do inside 0.7 seconds? You might try to jump spam away, but unless you're pretty close to cover you're probably dead. If you turn to fire, you'll need to find where the guy is by looking at minimap or damage indicators if silenced weapon, aim at them and fire enough bullets to kill them. Unless they seriously derp up, or are fairly low hp, there's a good chance you're dead.

The reason I hate this is because it makes fighting outside of cover down to whoever notices the other first. Little chance of getting out of the way, little chance of fighting back, the fight has been decided. Obviously I'm not saying that it should be an even fight, one person has a good position and initiative, two benefits that will give them some serious advantages – but should it really be all it takes to decide a fight apart from 'can hold down trigger in enemies general viscinity'? Being killed without being able to fight back is infuriating at best, especially when it happens so often in this game when combined with some other terribly designed mechanics.

Dice, you want this to be an e-sport, right? At the moment you've got a game that plays like a boxing match where the first punch wins. Wouldn't you prefer a game where people have the opportunity to – if they play it right – turn around a bad situation? What is more exciting;

Scenario 1 – guy pushes up, gets caught out and dies instantly – respawns and supports his team in taking out the enemy.

Scenario 2 – guy pushes up, gets caught out and ducks back into cover with a scrape of health, is able to work with his teammates to take out the enemy in a crossfire.

People dying too often breaks up the action, makes it hard to follow, hard to spectate, hard to be a spectator sport.

Semi-luck based

We know that at the moment generally the person who gets the drop will win at close range. What decides who gets the drop? Well, sometimes it's attention to mini-map, sometimes it's positioning, but you might not notice, but often it's simply luck. Picture this scenario.

You're in a room capping, there is two doors into the room positioned so they both can't be covered at the same time, nobody on the minimap. You're switching between both doors quickly in an attempt to cover. Someone runs into the room, who gets the drop? If you're watching the door they come in, you get the drop, if you're not there's a good chance they get the drop.

How many times do you check a direction only to see nobody there, turned around to look somewhere else and then almost instantly you're being shot? How many times do you think an area is clear just to have some random run into the room on a flank the second you break cover? All of these examples are largely luck based, if events had happened a second later here a second earlier there, you might have gotten the drop. As we know, luck is the enemy of competitive games, where skill should shine above all.

Hard for new players

BF4 for new players can be pretty confusing at times. It's hard to figure out where you're being shot from, things happen so fast and getting a bearing can be hard. By making fights just a little longer, new players can, at least, have an easier time working out whats happening. I get frustrated enough getting quick-killed when I know how it happens, for a new player when it happens so often would probably be enough to make you want to stop playing.

An answer – The current health values are good, I won't debate that, and I wouldn't want to replace them entirely. Honestly, however, having more health would make the game a lot more skill-based, allowing for comebacks and a more strategic element to the gameplay.

If we set health to 175, what changes?

Before reading on, take into account that damage is still damage, even if a kill isn't secured. Attrition should be a viable strategy at medium+ ranges, and a damaged enemy is an enemy either not shooting back or providing an easy kill – both of which are a good advantage. Having more fights end up without a casualty increases the value of medics over time, giving the class a bit more viability in a team environment, also.

Bolt action become 2 headshot to kill at anything over ~85m. Snipers become a support class at range, less able to kill enemies outright but used to heavily damage at range and assist team by keeping enemies heads down in a range conflict. In close they don't one-shot with a body-shot, so it requires some skill to win a short range conflict, and they'll be at a large disadvantage in close.

Standard AR's go from killing in 5 hits to killing in 8. While not a drastic change, the recoil after 5 shots should require most people to fire in two bursts as opposed to holding down the trigger, which should give the receiving end some chance to do something about their situation. The kill potential at medium range ~50m or more, goes from killing quite easily to actually having to control a weapon and enemies often getting away.

DMR's go from 3 shot kill to 5 shot kill. An enemy at range will surely be out-damaged, but they have a higher exposure time as recompense. They also need to aim effectively to secure fast kills at all ranges, the 'spam' tactic being less effective.

A pistol fighting against a rifle in close range is going to be in for a tough fight, the time to kill might be similar or not hugely different, but to kill an enemy in one clip will take skill.

A longer time to kill will give the different weapons much more of a chance to shine in their role, considering at the moment just about all weapons are viable in at sub50m range. PDW's will be harder to secure kills with at these ranges, but will really shine at taking out enemies in close due to high dps. The AS-Val, for example, can still kill enemies in 6 body shots in 0.4 seconds of fire in close range, but at 40m will take 9 shots, each of which will be harder to land, making it more of a damage addition rather than a killing machine at these ranges – and fitting in a lovely niche. MK11 will take 4 bodyshots in close range, which would take closer to 0.85 seconds, and be harder to land four opposed to two, but at 40m it's quite powerful compared to the ASVAL and will dps it off the field in a direct trade, especially when cover is involved.

Any other questions, or a different alternative, would be great to hear it .

Ambiguous classes dissuades role warfare

ambiguous classes dissuades role warfare

I was playing the other day, running around with recon, dmr, c4 and an unused spawn beacon as I was mostly just playing the flanks. My friend asked me why I was playing recon over support, when I could essentially give myself infinite ammo by switching and really I didn't even have an answer. I had to ask myself why I wouldn't just as easily play any of the other classes and play virtually identically. With such similarities between classes, what's the point of them? What are the differences between classes?

Assault – can heal, revive, and carry grenade launchers.

Recon – can use motion sensors, binoculars and use bolt action rifles

Engineers – repair tools and rocket launchers, probably the most specialised class.

Support – infinite ammo, mortars

So really, aside from some slightly different utility, there really isn't much difference between the classes. If you were playing a large scale competitive conquest game, why would you take anything other than tonnes of engineers backed up by a few reviving assaults/rearming supports? They fight just as well at any range if equipped well, but they can take out all vehicles with ease when used in numbers. They can also explode walls from range, do large splash damage and are the only class with anti-air. They're versatile without any real down-side. Imagine tanks trying to do anything against a team with 20 SRAWing engineers? It's not like they're hard to use.

An answer – Take DMR's away from engineers so they're limited to short range encounters and need to be backed up by other fire support for longer range engagements. Some sort of class restrictions to stop class stacking, such as 40% of the team maximum in any class, for example.

Changing the health like above increases the viability of assault in prolonged infantry fights, adding additional suppression mechanics increases the viability of support in.. the support role. Recon becomes the only class capable of high burst damage at med/long range with the health changes, but can still be used as a back-capper as now and retains that niche role.

Instant vehicle embark/disembark/change seats and giant field of view.

as above lul

I use vehicles, a lot. I've gotten fairly good at switching seats when needed, here are a few examples;

Little bird, fire a heatseaker off to take out enemy flares, fire the second to hit – shoot the enemy a bit with the minis. Enemy stops being 'stunlocked' now, and has a chance to shoot back, right? Except that you can easily switch to a side-seat and fire off a stinger for a second stunlock and likely the kill if you need to, in about 1.5-2 seconds. All it takes is pressing f2-f3, getting launcher out and a quick rocket before switching immediately back to the pilot seat, for a huge advantage in a 1v1 chopper fight.

Second example, insane fire rate tanks. Me and a mate practiced this technique for a while, while it takes away a lot of your mobility, it increases fire in a tank by over double. You may not know, but different shells equipped on your tank have separate cooldowns and ammo counters.

- One person takes AP shells, the other takes Sabot in this situation.

- You find the enemy vehicle/vehicles, and get yourself into a good position.

- The driver turns, using the tank as a wall between them and the enemy tank to block shots to anyone jumping out.

- Gunner turns out and can either repair or fire off a rocket immediately, pilot takes the first shot, switches into the gunner seat and then jumps out of the tank.

- Driver, after taking a shot, switches to the gunner seat first very quickly and then jumps out of the tank. He enters the gunner seat so they can leave the tank in the direction they want to without having to change the tank barrel direction.

- As soon as the driver is in the gunner seat, the second player jumps into the tank and fires off their own shot – then themselves jumping into gunner and then out.

Doing this repeatedly, not only allows you to double the rate of fire of your tank, but also gives time for the guys on the side to repair or fire off a rocket if they need to. Use of macro's makes this so much easier to do, but how is this not broken? Between the two of us with some creative button pressing can sacrifice our mobility for the ability to destroy an enemy tank in 6 seconds, without any rockets being fired, opposed to the normal 12. It's absolutely broken, and I'd imagine that if competitive gameplay ever came to a battlefield game (5v5 isn't battlefield, imo), this sort of thing would get abused so hard.

Vehicles are powerful, in the right hands. Should they really be this powerful? If you manage to get up to an enemy tank, you pretty much deserve the kill right? Oh wait, the gunner just jumped out of the tank the second you moved out of their field of fire and gunned you down while you were c4'ing. They're powerful but good players can address their weaknesses easily by seat-switching. Can't see what's behind you? Set up your gun seat to be looking behind and do a quick tap back and forth to give yourself a rear view camera! Tanks and other vehicles become killing machines, without the need for infantry support, with very few weaknesses.

Why is this a problem? It dissuades team-play, enables tanks to go off on their own, over-extend and have little reliance on their team.

An answer – Switching seats and exiting or entering a vehicle shouldn't be an instant thing, by giving them a short animation time, it stops people from just popping into and out of their vehicles every 2 seconds for a repair or to snap off a rocket etc.. Jeeps/quads would have a very small time, they don't really need any more weaknesses, but things like the AA/tanks etc.. could have 2-3 seconds of embark/disembark time. If you want to repair your tank, you need to take the time to jump out which puts you at a disadvantage in a fight. The amount of times I've just jumped out of my tank and spam repaired while the enemies get repair tanked and run out of shells, it's such a cheap tactic. It also means that if you see a guy outside his tank he's actually vulnerable for a second or so, instead of just being able to teleport inside at the first hint of gunfire. I've been sitting there repairing my tank, only to hear the rocket noise close-by, jumping into my tank a split second before the rocket hits me on the side – which should have killed me, but instead I now know where the enemy is, and have taken very little damage. That bloke should have won that fight, but no, I abused a cheap mechanic and now they're a puddle.

Secondly, decreasing a drivers field of vision in armored vehicles makes them more vulnerable to enemy infantry infiltrating your position with c4's or getting on flanks with rockets. It means that instead of being able to easily push off on your own, you actually support your infantry so they cover your back.

Both of these changes incentivise infantry and vehicles working together, covering the others' weakness, and generally getting people to work together more often. A tank without a gunner/infantry support should be easy to take down if done right, they're just one person, remember. This is supposed to be a battlefield game, right?

Locked SRAWS being broken

locked sraws being broken

Flying around in a chopper yesterday, get locked on from one source, a sniper sitting at the top of a building in the distance. I have two options, I can charge or fall back. I try to fall back, but a second lock comes in and instantly fires. Popping ECM, the enemy loses lock, I run back behind a building and wait out missile hitting the building when suddenly.. SMASH.. OH FUN IM ON FIRE. What the hell happened? Turns out that SRAW's, once fired on a laser designated target at anything closer than a couple hundred meters, will hit the target regardless of whether they break the lock or not. It will also go over buildings and other cover due to the top-down trajectory involved with laser guided missiles.

All in all this situation took about 5 seconds before the missile was fired, and perhaps 8 before it hit me. I popped my defensive measures and took cover behind a building – out of line of sight of both enemies, yet it still hit? Is this really a good mechanic?

If battlefield was competitive, do you think this would be a balanced mechanic? You'd never see choppers around except at super-long range because they'd get locked/srawed the second they go close to a fight, with absolutely nothing they can do about it. The only reason we don't see this more often is because in pugs you can't rely on your team for laser designation, but in an organised team it would be frequent. Hell, I've been in squads that abuse this mechanic, and it doesn't produce a fun or balanced environment – it takes the choppers completely out of the game. It doesn't really do good things for enemy vehicles, either, as the rockets will often hit through any protective measures they use also. Infact, three laser locked rockets will instantly kill any vehicle through any protective measure available, they'll even hit through flares remarkably often.

An answer – test your damn game dice, this sort of crap shouldn't have even made it through Alpha. At least, I'm assuming that this is a bug, because really, what sort of person thinks that this is a good game mechanic? Fixing it should be relatively simple, if a lock is broken, it should stop the missile hitting it's target, no question. Defensive measures that don't work are frustrating enough against stingers, let alone a situation where you get instantly hit for 90% of your health and mobility killed. It's a skill-less mechanic, with very little counter-play involved. Not something good for an e-sport, or even a balanced game.

Randomness of flares/ecm, due largely to poorly explained mechanics

randomness of flares and ecm

So you're in a duel with an enemy chopper, 150m away from each-other and you both launch a heatseeker and pop your defensive measure. What should happen here, is that each player avoids the first missile and the fight is even due to both players doing exactly the same thing, right? Sadly, probably 10-15% of the time, a missile will simply ignore the counter-measures at close-ish range and hit the enemy, giving one side a random bonus which quite often will spell death for one side or the other. You already know what I think of random mechanics, especially ones that almost certainly spell death for the receiving party, but is this mechanic really fully random?

Turns out, through a lot of digging and testing, that flares/ecm work slightly differently, and both have their weaknesses. I'll do my best to explain.

Flares drop down from the chopper and get the attention of the enemy missile if the missile passes close by. The problems with flares are that;

- If it diverts the missile to a flare with a path still directly through the chopper, it will still hit. This means that flares popped at close range will often lead the enemy rocket into you anyway.

- If the flares go through solid terrain, they fizzle and stop working early, allowing relocks and sometimes even missiles to reaquire.

ECM creates a cloud around the helicopter which when missiles pass through they divert their course. It also stops lockons during the effect. The problems with ECM -

- If a missile doesn't go through a cloud it doesn't change direction and will often still hit the chopper. This means that missiles coming from multiple directions (i.e. laser guided vs heatseeker) are virtually impossible to defend against, nor is there any sort of user information to let you know which of these two is actually locking short of seeing the people locking. It also means that to deflect a missile, you need to know which angle it's coming from to do it correctly. A chopper flying along the ground will often be hit by a stinger fired from a rooftop simply but how can you tell if it came from a rooftop or ground level if you're not facing them?

- Missiles often 'wrap' around the chopper and will clip the tail at times if you get unlucky, even if they've gone through a cloud. This is seemingly a completely random mechanic, absolutely stupid and can be an absolute game changer through no fault of either pilot.

Both of these mechanics have a seriously luck based element. Not just through the actual random mechanics (flares leading rockets into you, ecm spinning rockets into your tail), but through them both being more or less effective at certain ranges and distances, without actually giving you the information so you can effectively counter.

An answer – I see two logical answers to this. You could either make it really simple or make it more complicated.

Keeping it simple.

- Change Flares to instantly dissipate any missiles currently locked on target, stop all lock-ons for 3 seconds. Flares would then be a 100% reliable counter to missiles at any ranges, for a definitive time frame.

- Change ECM to 7 seconds where missiles will hit for 25% damage, and not critical hit the rotors. Gives them a different feel to flares, you can still be taken down while using ECM but it's going to be a lot harder.

Neither of these mechanics has a luck based element, they are controllable, skill-based mechanics that do their job consistently. These numbers could be easily tweaked for balance.

Making it more complicated.

Obviously you'd want to take out ECM wrapping missiles into your tail, that's a no brainer, it's an broken mechanic that has no business making it past alpha – shame on you Dice.

To make it more complicated you need to give players the information they need to deal with it. This information would need to be;

- What is locking me.

- What direction exactly is it coming from.

- What range is it at

The only way I can see to give this information easily would be to build two visual resources for air pilots. The first would be a 3D radar, that gives some form of visual indicator of enemies and hostile lock-on weapons. An easy way to do this would be to leave terrain absent from the map, and just have enemy positions in relation to your own position as blips. Secondly, having a visual list stating the range and type of lock that is currently on attached to you. For example, if you've got a stinger locked at 300m this list would say exactly that.

These two assets give players the information they need to deal with enemy locks in some way, increasing the skillcapp of pilots. I'd like to say that this information is available anyway to someone skilled enough, but you're only human, the camera doesn't move that fast and you only have a small field of view.

Lastly, giving players the full story of how their defensive abilities work, is always a good idea to making the game more clear and easy to play. There is nothing more infuriating than getting killed and not knowing why.

Unexplained nature of AP.

unexplained nature of ap.

Like flares/ECM, AP is another mechanic that is very poorly explained. In battlelog, the information we are given is as follows – 'When this system is activated it will sense incoming missile and rocket threats and detonate them before they reach the vehicle, the system will enter a cooldown state after a threat has been neutralised or no threats have been detected for a short time'. First off, this is not how this system works, and is terribly written to boot. The system actually works like this;

- activate the system, for the first ~1 second, you have a chance to still take damage, but sometimes you'll block it. Huzzah for more random chance crap.

- It will block any and all missile threats for the duration.

- A hit that would have caused a critical hit, will de-activate the AP system immediately, causing any further hits to damage the vehicle again.

What this means is that if you get locked by three laser guided missiles with a laser designation, they will instantly kill you even though you pop AP. Consider this situation to show just how broken it is;

Situation 1 – lav without reactive armor is being locked by 5 javelins simultaneously. They pop AP, the first javelin eats the AP (as it would have caused a critical, and the next 4 slide through to instantly kill the vehicle.

Situation 2 – lav with reactive armor is being locked by 5 javelins simultaneously. They pop AP, none of the javelins would have critically hit, and therefore all 5 are absorbed by the AP.

Considering that the text has absolutely no indication that this would happen, this really is just an absolutely poorly designed/explained mechanic. That reactive armor is so powerful when combined with AP, but AP is close to useless without it against any sort of critical hit, but none of this is explained anywhere!

Why is it that Dice feels the need to make such unexplained, overly complicated mechanics in place of something that should be simple and reliable? I've seen some serious rage from people simply because it isn't explained anywhere that TV missiles go through AP, for instance. Once you understand these mechanics it's so easy to break the system. In an attack chopper for instance, in an attack run you might think it's a good idea to TV from range and take out an enemy with a hydra run, right? Nope! Now that you know how to bypass AP, all you need to do is get 20 or more damage with your first missile volley, and then double TV missile to kill, and there's almost nothing they do to do deal with it! Once a pilot/gunner can work together and dumbfire TV missiles, it becomes easy to kill people without any form of counter, huzzah!

An answer – Change AP to absorb ~100 damage worth of missiles over a ~4 second duration. Simple, easy to understand and explain, and works consistently. It becomes easy to change for balance issues, and people know the limitations. You could also just.. explain the existing mechanic to players instead of keeping them in the dark and raging at seemingly random deaths.

Spam jumping

spam jumping

I do this, most good players have learned to do this, because it's so broken. If you're under fire, the best way to survive is to jump around, change direction in midair and generally be a buggy little bastard. Is this really a good mechanic though? It's something only good players do, which gives them an additional advantage over low experience players – like they need another.

It's unintuitive – a real person trying to pull this sort of crap would probably get exhausted really, really quickly especially while carrying so much gear. Nobody would think that this would be a useable strategy unless they were actively trying to break the game, or saw someone else doing the same.

It kills immersion - seeing some guy doing twenty hurdles in ten meters is a little silly, for the most part this is a gritty, battlefield game, and then this arcade crap comes along.

There really isn't a downside to it – you can land your jump, turn and be accurate within the blink of an eye. You don't slow down much from spam jumping, if at all – and I've even read some people saying that well timed jumps actually speeds you up. A mechanic that gives such big advantage to dodging, that has very little drawback? Do you even mechanic, bro?

An answer – One jump every few seconds, this wouldn't apply to climbing over obstacles, but just normal jumping to dodge projectiles. This would stop the spam jumping crap, and make jumping a timed beast, used at the right time much like a defensive cooldown. Increases skill, stops new players being destroyed by more experienced ones, and still keeps the game fast paced.

Of course, this would mean that it's very hard to survive if you get caught in the open – so I would suggest increasing longevity of players across the board (such as under the fast kills tab, and suppression mechanics).

Jerkiness of movement

jerkiness of movement

You might see this as a bit petty, but honestly by this stage I was on a roll and just wanted to rant a little bit more. I see it as a small issue, but something that could change for the better.

Get out of your chair, hold a pretend gun at a point on your wall, and make sure you have some space around you. Now, try strafing back and forth quickly side to side while holding your gun on that point. Not that quick, is it? You see, momentum is an actual thing for people in real life, and you need to slow down before you change direction. There is some indication that you're going to move the other direction, your leg pushes down on that side, you tense certain muscles and you can be seen to slow down before you change direction.

Now, go into a game and get into a firefight, notice the enemy strafing back and forth? They instantly change direction, and give off no indication of an impending directional change. The speed of movement of infantry is rediculous in close, and predicting movement is almost entirely a psychological thing instead of something that could be skill-based by noticing subtle differences in the enemy movement.

This is again another huge difference between a good and a bad player, with bad players standing still or strafing in a single direction, as opposed to good players who will generally strafe back and forth.

An answer – Give soldiers a small amount of momentum. Sprinting forward? It'll take 2/3 of a second for you to come to a full stop. Strafing sideways? You'll be stopped for half a second changing directions though.

Side-effects – if used in conjunction with other mechanics, firefights will be much less likely to be decided in an initial confrontation. Strafing back and forth from the same location will be much more easy to hit, so hit and run tactics where kills are not always the objective are more common. Guerilla warfare and prolonged fights are more important at all ranges, winning the war of attrition and keeping pressure high win fights, as opposed to dropping enemies super quick. At range, especially, fights become more about wearing enemies down before pushing in, giving it a more strategic element.

3D spotting mechanic/wallhack minimap

3d spotting mechanic/wallhack minimap

Teamwork is a good thing, right? Sure, of course, but should it really give you a partial wall-hack for a press of a single button/use of a utility item? 'You dickhead, it's not a wall-hack!' I hear you cry, and you're right, I am a dickhead. I'm right too, it is a wall-hack though. You know exactly where that enemy is moving for the next few seconds, and it even goes to the trouble of highlighting them in the actual world.. if that's not a wall-hack I don't know what is. Spot is a cool mechanic, but is the press of a single, spammable button, really give you so much of an advantage?

I spam Q, constantly. I have it set so that it spots whenever I fire, whenever I go down scope. It's simple to do, and gets me a tonne of points and gives my team the advantage. Have I really earned such power though? I don't even need to know an enemy is there, half the time I just spam Q on a piece of terrain, and bam, the guy hiding expertly in the bush is suddenly incredibly visible and now a free kill. He had a good position, and became a free kill due to a poor mechanic. My homage to you, mr ninja, you have been treated too harshly.

We all know the advantage we gain from knowing the enemy position, we can get ready for a fight, get the drop on the enemy and generally react faster than if we hadn't. As we've ascertained earlier, getting the drop on an enemy is almost a certain kill at the moment, is this really the advantage we get from watching our minimap when a friendly has pressed Q? It makes stealth virtually impossible against anyone with a brain, or against a team with a competent commander, and disadvantages this style of play.

Now, think about this, is spamming a single button repeatedly really something you think should be getting you free kills and thwarting stealth efforts? I hope you said no, even if you're one of the many people who gets free kills on new players because of this bullcrap, because you know it's imbalanced – I do.

An answer – A spot mechanic is a cool feature, enabling team-play and encouraging communication without the need for a microphone. Hats off you to you dice, for making such a cool system. It's a pity it's the monstrosity that it is today.

You want a mechanic that provides a small advantage, alerts team-mates of impending peril without giving them the free kill. It shouldn't ever give you a kill you haven't earned. How can we do this?

Spotting an enemy should require the cursor to be on the actual enemy or within a very small arc. If you can't actually see the enemy you shouldn't be able to spot them, simple as that, the game shouldn't be handing you targets because you spammed Q on an area. It should be 'I see an enemy, spot to relay position to team', not 'spam Q on a hill to highlight enemies to shoot at'. You are the soldiers eyes, they shouldn't be spotting enemies for you haha .

No doritos. Again, if you're spotting an enemy you should already know where they are, which means you shouldn't need the dorito. Enemies shouldn't just appear on your screen because someone else spotted them, knowing the enemy is on a certain area of the map is enough of an advantage. You have eyes and they're generally good enough to see the enemies.

Spotting sends out a map/minimap ping for a second or so with a directional arrow – spotting an enemy shouldn't relay their locations on your minimap, think about it. What sort of information would you get from a spotted enemy in real life.

- position

- direction

- type of enemy

You could incorporate this information onto map/minimap quite easily. When an enemy is spotted they show up as a ping with an arrow for direction of face, with the correct vehicle symbol if that is the target spotted. This gives information relevant to the time of being spotted, not turning someone spotting into being some sort of psychic brain-meld. It doesn't work like that, bro.

Voice cue. In hardcore, spamming spot is often a good idea when using sound even if you don't for some reason use your map – although you should be . When you spot you get a voice cue telling you exactly what is in that direction. Spamming spot over a hillside and hearing a voice tells you that there is someone there, giving you an important advantage over your enemy, and all for spamming a button. This really needs to be taken out, as the soldier shouldn't be the one spotting, and while unrealistic that you wouldn't hear your own voice, it takes away the advantage associated with a skill-less mechanic. Voice cue for allies is a great idea though Dice, great job.

Essentially, these changes would stop the wallhack, while maintaining the positives associated with spotting. It would allow flanking/stealthy gameplay to be viable against a decent team, as you would need constant spots to keep track of them, and their exact position wouldn't be instantly visible to everyone in the area. It still provides a sizeable advantage, but has counter-play by changing directions after a spot etc.. and reduces the power considerably.

Importance of control points compared to value of life

importance of control points compared to value of life

Look, an objective based game is great, it forces people to play aggressive, hold position when they should have retreated and leads to some sweet situations. It's a great idea, but where should the balance be between death and control points? When does a control point become less valuable than the soldiers defending it?

Soldiers aren't infinite, they are a valuable resource in their own right. Why is it that 90% of people that c4 me in a vehicle kill themselves at the same time as me? Why are players so avid to rush out in the open to die in a hopeless situation? Why is there so little value for life?

Lets look at some of the math behind this. According to data I've found/tested myself, if there is only one difference in control points, you lose one ticket every 4 seconds. Down to a minimum of one ticket every 2 seconds with less flags. If you're behind, your only course of action is to attack – but attacking is almost impossible on some maps, right? Take operation locker (one of the most terribly designed maps of all time, imo, but thats for another conversation), the choke points are so small that on a 32v32 game it will almost always be decided by the first team to capture the middle point. You can't attack choke points without any other sort of advantage.

So you're attacking, while bleeding out tickets, surely that's going to really throw out the game-balance out the window right? Right, you're in a bad position, and forced into a bad position to get yourself out of it. Sure, you might get lucky and push through, but the larger the game the less likely this is to happen. Lets try to think of something that might balance the game out a bit, perhaps make it more likely to bring the game closer, something that promotes close games – which is what everyone wants, right?

An answer – Supply lines. The more control points you control, the longer the respawn time of your team. This means that for a winning team, death is a little bit more of a detriment, giving the attacking team in a bad situation a much more likely chance of making it even again. You could even combine this by saying that the more control points you hold the more tickets you lose for a death, so you need to make a concious decision to pull back out of a position if taking too many casualities – introducing an entirely new aspect of strategy to the fore.

It could go something like this;

One control point more – 15 second respawn, 1.5 tickets per death.

Two control points – 20 second respawn time, 2 tickets per death.

Three – 20 second respawn, 3 tickets per death

Four – 20 second respawn, 4 tickets per death

Five – 20 second repsawn, 5 tickets per death.

Combine this with the vehicle mechanics for reinforcements above, and you've got yourself a great balancing mechanic, leading to closer, more intense games on a regular basis. Lets showcase this with an example.

Paracel storm, being 5 capped. Currently, the team that is winning is giving you 0.5 ticket/second bleed, they have three extra powerful vehicles, and they have the shoreline defensive position. It's a whitewash, your team is virtually screwed, and it won't be a fun game for anyone.

Introduce the mechanics. Suddenly, the losing team is given three powerful vehicles to help them push in with, the defensive team loses 4x as many tickets for lost troops, making it more likely for them to pull back in retreat if taking too many casualties, and the spawn timers prevent them from quickly defending a point. You've got yourself a game again! You need to make sure you explain this mechanic, in plain language, or people with 5 control points might just suicide themselves into oblivion and cry into a corner.

A secondary mechanic you could introduce, to stop people wasting vehicles, could be to introduce a ticket drain for their death. Each time a vehicle respawns it drains a certain amount of tickets from the reserve. Do you take the vehicle and possibly lose a larger chunk of tickets, or attack with less resources and be able to hold on for longer? More strategic depth can never be a bad thing, surely.

Soldiers yelling out that their friends are down gives away their position

soldiers yelling out that their friends are down gives away their position

Anyone with surround sound headsets will tell you that they love this mechanic, but really, it's broken as anything. When you kill someone, any friendlies in a general area around them will yell out something along the lines of 'a friendly is down!'. So basically, you kill an enemy and you get rewarded with the positions of all other enemies nearby? Who made this garbage, why, what was the purpose, to be a dick?

I've gotten so many kills using this it's obscene. Suddenly that guy hiding in a corner like a ninja has just been punished because some derp got himself killed rushing through the open? Is that really a good mechanic? It's so loud sometimes you can even hear it inside a bloody tank... getting me accused of being a hacker when I shoot into a corner to get kills I had no damn right to. It's another mechanic that gets you killed because of something outside your control. The worst part is, you don't even know when it happens, as you can't hear your own character yelling this out..

An answer – Switch the way the sound works, you should hear an update that a friendly is down near to you, but the enemy should not. Easy, nobody gets killed or reveals their position, you get a second notifier on friendlies going down close to you and it goes back to being a skill-based game, under some level of personal control.

Now I'd be happy to help, Dice. ;P