As you may already have seen, there’s much chatter around the Internet, and we’ve seen fans wanting to hear more about how especially some of the Field Upgrades work. So, we asked Alan Kertz, our Core Gameplay Designer, to explain the Armor, Reduced Fall, Stealth and Quick Unspot Field Upgrades in more detail. You can find his answers below.
Armor
Unlike previous versions of Body Armor in Bad Company, this Field Upgrade in Battlefield 4 is more similar to the more limited setups in BF2 and BF2142. It does not increase your overall health, instead it makes the small upper chest hit box more resilient to damage, equal to the rest of the body. In practice, this means that snipers can’t 1HK your upper chest at point blank ranges. It also provides some small protection from shotgun burst damage, though your head, legs, arms, and stomach remain unprotected. At medium and longer ranges, the armor has no effect on how many bullets it takes to kill a player. Essentially, Body Armor is for countering CQB sniper rifles, and not much else.
Reduced Fall
Small falls will not cause damage, however, the lethal fall distance remains the same. For example, without Reduced Fall jumping from the 2nd story of a building would cause 25 damage, and jumping from the 3rd story might cause 50 damage. With Reduced Fall the damage from the 2nd floor jump is eliminated, but jumping from the 3rd story will still cause 50 damage.
Stealth and Quick Unspot
These are both minor adjustments to the spotting system. Players are spotted for about 7 seconds by default, the Quick Unspot reduces this to 5 seconds. It’s important to note it doesn’t otherwise change any spotting behavior, for example if you track a spotted player he will stay spotted even with Quick Unspot equipped. Stealth simply adjusts the speed threshold for detection in Motion Sensors. A basic player can avoid being spotted by a Motion Sensor if they crouch or prone while moving. Stealth allows you to move at normal speed, however all players will be spotted by Motion Sensors at Sprint speed. Stealth is only available to the Recon kit, and must be earned through squad play. Both of these are good tools to play in a stealthier manner, but they hardly make a player invisible.
Armor
Unlike previous versions of Body Armor in Bad Company, this Field Upgrade in Battlefield 4 is more similar to the more limited setups in BF2 and BF2142. It does not increase your overall health, instead it makes the small upper chest hit box more resilient to damage, equal to the rest of the body. In practice, this means that snipers can’t 1HK your upper chest at point blank ranges. It also provides some small protection from shotgun burst damage, though your head, legs, arms, and stomach remain unprotected. At medium and longer ranges, the armor has no effect on how many bullets it takes to kill a player. Essentially, Body Armor is for countering CQB sniper rifles, and not much else.
Reduced Fall
Small falls will not cause damage, however, the lethal fall distance remains the same. For example, without Reduced Fall jumping from the 2nd story of a building would cause 25 damage, and jumping from the 3rd story might cause 50 damage. With Reduced Fall the damage from the 2nd floor jump is eliminated, but jumping from the 3rd story will still cause 50 damage.
Stealth and Quick Unspot
These are both minor adjustments to the spotting system. Players are spotted for about 7 seconds by default, the Quick Unspot reduces this to 5 seconds. It’s important to note it doesn’t otherwise change any spotting behavior, for example if you track a spotted player he will stay spotted even with Quick Unspot equipped. Stealth simply adjusts the speed threshold for detection in Motion Sensors. A basic player can avoid being spotted by a Motion Sensor if they crouch or prone while moving. Stealth allows you to move at normal speed, however all players will be spotted by Motion Sensors at Sprint speed. Stealth is only available to the Recon kit, and must be earned through squad play. Both of these are good tools to play in a stealthier manner, but they hardly make a player invisible.
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