I think that most of us would like to see more than the 4 character classes in BF4. Whether that happens or not I just had an idea to share about a class no one is talking about.
The pilot class.
In this idea, only a pilot can operate aircraft. I think the best way to implement this is to automatically switch your character class when you enter a vehicle as a pilot.
What if the pilot gets shot out? Time to bail. If you do bail as a pilot you stay a pilot until you pick up another kit or die and respawn. The pilot would only has a pistol, but a different set of abilities than any other soldier perhaps fitting escape and evasion tactics (perhaps they can’t be 3-D spotted, or have their own one-use med kit)
So why change the system in place in BF3? It should give a balance to the aspect of flying a vehicle. You can’t just use the jet as a taxi and it would eliminate people that just derp around in a vehicle with no real consequences to their actions.
In BF Vietnam and somewhat in BF2, my absolute favorite thing to do would be moving soldiers around while I piloted. Alternatively, if I was with a few friends, we’d take some engineers along and repair/attack, always remaining in the air.
Admittedly I didn’t enjoy or play BF3 as much as previous titles, so I’m not 100% sure how maintainable that concept is (from my experience it wasn’t), so anything that brings back piloting as a serious duty in the game, I’m all for.
You earn the ability to choose the pilot class through getting objective points - if you’re really helping the team out, you have a way to even further help out the team.
Choosing the pilot class can only be done a few number of times, and with a cool down/re-earning period (maybe not every time), once you’re a pilot in a game, you’re a pilot until you die.
I think changing ejection to true ejection (loss of aircraft, person in ejection seat) would make bailouts much more serious and pilots much more an important part of team play.
Oh no, I don’t mean once per game, or you have to re-earn every time.
Maybe a typical score of objective points that indicates someone is trying unlocks the ability to choose the pilot class, and they need to do that every so often in game to be able to choose to be a pilot, and right after dying as a pilot, maybe they shouldn’t just hop in again so other people can have a chance.
I agree about spawn stealing - - it’s pretty crap having to play against 4 tanks and three helicopters.
This idea has been proposed before. The notion of designated roles vs opportunities comes up frequently.
What happens when a player gets into a helicopter that was abandoned?
Do they lose their kit? That would mean that if they were an engineer, they would no longer be able repair nor could they perform the teamplay actions of the class.
Do they keep their kit? Well sounds like it would just be a punishment for spawning into an air vehicle.
In the case of a secondary gunner of a helicopter, do they keep their kit? What if you swap seats with the pilot?
While the idea of specialized roles is cool. It’s not something that makes the game necessarily better. It’s sort of along the lines of roleplaying.
One of the great things about Battlefield is the ability to seize opportunities. Snipe a heli-pilot out, jump off damavand peak and take the helicopter. Torch an enemy tank, steal it the moment the enemy jumps out. Not having thematic limitations opens up a lot of fun & interesting scenarios.
Bad Company 1 actually had ‘some’ soldier specialties. The Recon class made more noise while sprinting, the specialist class sprinted 20-25% faster than everyone else. It didn’t really keep the classes well balanced.
I agree about spawn vehicles. It seems like a simple thing to implement. Don’t allow soldiers to enter enemy vehicles in spawn until that vehicle has been entered by it’s home troops. It’s quite intuitive, too. It seems kind of silly to be able to parachute into the enemy base and “hotwire” a hundred million-dollar aircraft. Not to bring the realism debate into this, but I think it’s reasonable to restrict first-use of vehicles in spawn to home soldiers.
You could always approach it similarly to how jets currently spawn in End Game (they appear as you spawn in). Destroying vehicles in spawn is a slightly different issue, and doesn’t pose quite as much a problem in terms of balance. And, it’s arguably an intelligent strategy, although not very respectable in public matches.
Definitely… If you’re running an lmg you don’t need ammo.. Once you run out of ammo on assault class you’re Fucked.. It’s already bad enough that you have no way to defend against tanks unless you’re good with the xbow..