14 DAY TRIAL // The development team working on Battlefield 4 at DICE says that it has created an entirely new Geo-Leaderboards feature for the game in order to try and replicate the classic arcade experience that saw the same group of players constantly trying to improve their scores.
An official blog post from the studio states, “When you’re number 127,842 in the global rankings for a game, it can feel defeating. That’s why we’ve brought Geo Leaderboards into the mix, where you can set your position to compete against people in your city, state, and country, as well as the world at large.”
DICE is fragmenting the leaderboards in order to give players a chance to evaluate their performance in those categories that they believe are relevant for their own style of play.
Gamers will be able to have separate leaderboards for the weapons they use, the kills they deliver, time played and other areas of Battlefield 4.
The team is also introducing the concept of a Personal Record, which involves a player getting the best score in a single round in one leaderboard category.
Geo-Leaderboards are designed to be completely optional and all players will have to give their consent in order for their Battlefield 4 performance to be tracked.
DICE adds, “Once you have your location set with Geo Leaderboards, you can take a look at how you’re doing. Zoom in and out of the city, state, country, and world. If you find that you’re number one in the city, you might want to step it up a notch and see how you compare to people in the state or country.”
Players will also be separated into a number of Divisions, which are inspired by FIFA 14, giving them even more options to track their performance.
Battlefield 4 needs to appeal to a wide number of players and that involves systems that can make everyone taking part in multiplayer feel special so that they keep playing in the long term.