Weapon Customization Deets - 240,000 Variants Per Gun

Sure, it ain't quite Borderlands yet, but hot damn that's a lot of gun customization. The number is quite inflated due to tons and tons of camos (it's like 10+ camos per environmental type like woodland and urban). DICE released a little video to help visualize the process of Gun Customization. The menu looks a lot better than what we had in BF3. Hopefully it will work well with the gamepad too.

I'm a bit disappointed that suppressors are available to all kits though. I find suppressors to be detrimental to online multiplayer games, because they mess with overall feedback, and make gameplay feel a whole lot more random. In BF3 they were handled especially poorly, because not only did it mask the audio profile of guns, but it also reduced pretty much all visual feedback to zero, as well as adding even more benefits (less horizontal recoil), whilst the downsides are negligible on most maps (slower flying projectiles, more drop, less hip accuracy - I believe). With 3-4 hits to kill and high speed bullets, it just didn't feel like a game anymore. Reactive gameplay? Forget about it.

At least I can still hope that they'll handle suppressors better in BF4. Despite me disliking the concept in the first place, that's still in the realm of the possible.

That's good and all I guess but can you customise stuff in battlelog yet?

They added that feature to Battlelog about a year ago for BF3, and it works quite well by now - though it's still kinda funky from time to time. Guess BF4 will be bigger better more badass in that regard too. One certainly should hope that Battlelog integration is better than it was with BF3. Wonder how it'll work on PS4 and Xbox One though.

Oh they did? I haven't played BF3 in ages. And this amount of customisation just seems unnecessary

Can I customize my weapon to stop firing, allowing me to finally negotiate a peace that gets us away from this horrific, unending Battlefield?

That's DLC.

That's Heretic for you. I believe it's an ID joint.

I disagree with the suppressor thing you posted. While it added a lot of benefits to guns, majority of toe to toe fights guy with suppressor lost, unless you were using some high RoF gun against low one.

I also am against the BF2 diehard fan's idea, who think the game would be better with more classes than 4. Their only valid argument for it seems to be "Because it was like that in BF2 and there was more teamwork in BF2". That wasn't because of more specific roles and higher amount of classes, it was because the playerbase was uhm, (with all respect to console gamers and gamers in general now days) more intelligent.

The 4 classes still have their roles, but have enough customization to make up different playstyles for every class. Limiting more and more equipment for different classes would limit the creativity and customization options.

I'll admit, this did impress me. It looks pretty deep.

Hey, all I'm saying is, that I like to hear it, when I get shot at. Giving anyone the possibilty to suppress that feedback doesn't seem like a wise design decision to me. And as far as my tastes go, boundless suppressors have certainly proven to be in bad taste in BF3. Guess enough people do disagree with that notion though, since it actually made it into BF4. Ultra-deep customization has mass market appeal for sure. Or at least focus groups say so, or something.

Ugh. I'll have to arrange myself with that.

How much of this stuff is going to be drip-fed to you through a progression system? I really don't want to spend 2 hours with a gun just so I can get that one attachment I like.

The progression system seems to be *Mystery Box*-driven to some degree (stuff like camos and dogtags and XP boosts, I believe weapon attachments too). Depending on how it's handled, it's going to be the most infuriating experience ever. As long as there aren't any redundant unlocks, we should be fine though. They should really make a blog post about that sooner rather than later. This whole mystery box thing will come close to causing a shit strom for sure, if I know die-hard Battlefield fans at all.

*Mystery boxes work like booster packs for Trading Card Games. Random shit in a box. Bought with some form of in-game currency. Optional microtransaction purchase with IRL-cash.

I've played a whole lot of BF3, personally I rarely use suppressors, they really bring the lethality of a gun down IMO, unless you're played TDM.

You can't be serious. That sounds a lot like the ME3 system. Would be fine for cosmetic unlocks but if they put guns, or worst, attachments for specific guns in there DICE might be burned to the ground.

Yeah, 240,000 seems more like Borderlands "zillions" of guns that actually numbers closer to 200 but change stats at different levels. Customization is nice, I suppose, but isn't the point of offering different firearms so that you can, you know, have a choice? If that guy uses an AK and I use an M4, but they're both specced the same, what is the point? Realism?

This ain't your daddy's Gun Smith.

It's actually a Raven joint built on the Doom engine. Also, I'm a sucker for camos, and look at how many there are...

I'm absolutely serious. Pre-order now to receive 3 Gold Battlepacks for free. Go and see for yourself. Though rest assured core progression will remain level and or kill or quest dependent - as in unlocking weapons and such, though I'm pretty sure I've read weapon attachments get unlocked via Battlepacks.

Oh, just found an official page to the Battlepacks. Looks like I've been right about the weapon accessories.

GEAR UP WITH BATTLEPACKS

Battlepacks contain a combination of new weapon accessories, dog tags, knives, XP boosts, and character customization items. The packs are designed to add an all-new layer of multiplayer persistence with an exciting degree of item variation in each pack, and are awarded during gameplay.

My guess is that weapon accessories is either something else than attachments or you still can unlock them by using the gun, you just can get "shortcut" by getting one from battlepack. I highly doubt the actual "main" attachments are locked behind battlepacks, it's more like different looking sights and so I'd guess. (Every faction has their own red dot and holo sight for example)

I wish we could unlock first 3 attachments to guns by choosing them. Seriously, for example 7x scope in BF3 was satan's creation. I don't know a single person who actually preferred to use it, but some weapons still had it as "starting" scope.

I just gotta get those Battlepacks.

I'd love to hear how much money EA made with those ME3 mystery box microtransactions. Must be a shit ton if they managed to get DICE to comply with a similar scheme. DICE is usually rather conservative when it comes to these kinds of things. Just hope DICE manages to keep these Battlepacks from being skewed towards the exploitative, which sadly was the case with ME3's mystery box scheme. The more you unlocked in ME3, the more redundant the *rewards* became, to the point of being slapped in the face by a dickwolf's johnson for playing the game at all, respectively paying for extra mystery boxes. Unsavory.

I got 240.000 variants, but skill ain't one?

Sounds like a lot but watching the video, it still looks fairly basic especially when compared to Blacklight: Retribution where you can customize pretty much anything on the gun.

@seppli: if you need battlepacks to unlock each attachments for every single gun individually shit will be fucked.

Indeed.

As an *all guns equally* kind of player though, it's not the worst of news for me, just more incentive to play different guns. If I wanted to unlock everything for one gun though (and I just might get compulsive about that at some point), dang! Especially down the line, the potential for unsatisfaction is great with mystery boxes, and really has no place in a premium paid game.

Just hoping it won't suck too much on the tail end, so the excitement of getting cool random shit at the beginning balances it out somehow. Though hundreds of hours into the game, I can't see it going that way. I'll likely start to resent it, then hate it altogether. If it's as exploitative as ME3's mystery boxes were set-up, making rewards increasingly redundant, and real satisfaction increasingly rare, to the point of non-existence - damn, I'll be one angry Battlefield fan.

As long as sniper rifles start with 8x instead of the awful 7x, I'll be fine. I can manage without straight pull bolt but I'd rather unlock it by killing people with the rifle instead of winning it from lottery.