Unfortunately, the accessories you earn can be for any weapon, including ones you haven’t even unlocked yet, so it’s too random to be useful for assuaging the new weapon issue. The workaround appears to be via “Battlechests,” which are basically briefcases you earn via leveling up (and sometimes randomly in a match) that contain XP boosts, attachments, cosmetic items, and so on. The “problem” is that there is (still) really no incentive to use the newer weapons because you’ll likely be stuck with iron sights and no other accessories (bipod, laser sight, etc). using any LMG eventually unlocks more LMGs.

Instead, weapons are unlocked linearly based on XP earned using any particular weapon in that class, e.g. It only had 4hp but STILL!įor the most part, BF4 does away with that unlock scheme. I took out an armored patrol boat with a blowtorch. In BF3, all this was shook up with the introduction of assignments/etc, which had you to unlock weapons/items via the completion of what, in retrospect, closely resemble MMO quests: getting 20 kills with gun X and doing Y twice to unlock Z. Back in BF2, you earned ranks via XP and received an upgrade of your choice for any class (occasionally there were prerequisites). What I’m talking about is how convoluted the menus and unlocks and the rest happen to be. Indeed, about the only thing that became immediately apparent in terms of differences between BF3 and BF4 is how DICE continues to lurch further away from anything resembling intelligible UI design. Well, the weather effects are pretty damn amazing too. The “levolution” upgrade to the engine makes for some nicely-done scripted destruction, but that appears to be it. “The game is too beautiful to notice the bad guys.” All of this existed in BF3 to an indistinguishable degree.

The environments are detailed, geography diverse, the physics palpable, and actually seeing people to shoot without an over-reliance on Q-spam is a study in #firstworldproblem frustration. Right off the bat, the game does not feel materially different from BF3 in any way, shape, or form.

Lens flare technology has definitely improved.

Battlefield 4 weapon unlock assignments