Battlefield 4 Guide: Multiplayer Tricks, Insane Kills, Crazy Stunts
The campaign is too serious. Multiplayer is too competitive. But who says war can't be fun?
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Now that Battlefield 4 has been out for a week, you're probably up to your neck in unlocks and more paint jobs than you know what to do with. Crazy and memorable things can happen at every turn in Battlefield.... but more often than not, you're probably just seeing the same skyscraper fall on Siege of Shanghai and squaring off with the same enemies in the same prison halls on Operation Locker.
It can get pretty old, but there's still a way to keep things fresh by pulling off even more insane and unorthodox shenanigans. Warfare requires sound strategies, well thought-out plans, and great ideas. Today, we're not talking about any of those. Sometimes you just need to have the right amount of crazy -- to do something so off-the-cuff that it leaves your enemy bewildered and humiliated in defeat. Welcome to the true Battlefield.
Trolling rooftop lurkers
Boop enemies with your helicopter
With elevators and tall buildings everywhere, rooftops are practically infested with soldiers all too focused on getting kills on the ground or across the map. See this as an opportunity. While they're all preoccupied with sniping whatever, it's the perfect to go bowling with a chopper. Chopper Pilots have been road killing hapless campers since forever and now it's even more fun because everyone's just lined, ripe for the pickings.
Take the elevator up to roof with an ATV
Tired of getting killed every time you come up on the elevator? Surprise the enemy with an ATV bursting onto the scene. Hopefully you'll roll over the heads of your enemies before they even know what hit them. When you're done you can make your exit in dramatic John Woo fashion, as you crash through a window with broken glass and white doves flying all about. Well, maybe not the doves.
How to get around faster
Rocket Jet Skis
Crossing the choppy waters on Paracel Storm takes a long time, especially if a storm is brewing. One quick way across is to have a fellow teammate strap C4 onto the bottom of your Jet Ski and detonate to launch you across the map. It's an even funnier tactic you can use it on Siege of Shanghai because you're blown sky high, way above some of the map's taller skyscrapers.
Launching Quad Bikes
Rocketing stuff up into the air isn't reserved to Jet Skis. You can also lay a nice bed of C4 around your teammate's ATV to send them into the wild blue yonder. It's a perfectly sound strategy if the enemy has taken over every objective on the map and formed an iron curtain of armor around your base. Just remember to "eject" and pull your chute before you land.
The quick getaway
When you have the bomb in a game of Obliteration, you're basically Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Running Man. Everyone wants to kill you and you don't talk a whole lot. Did I mention everyone wants to kill you? Once you grab the bomb you're going to want to haul ass. One of the best and spy-like ways of getting away is having a buddy waiting in the wings underneath a bridge with a Jet Ski. Most of the levels in Battlefield 4 have bridges over water and Jet Skis, or at least land and ATVs. Feel free to hum the 007 James Bond song while you do this.
Use waves as cover
Bullets don't do so well in water and neither do explosive shells, so use this to your advantage. If you're on the high seas and an enemy Attack Boat is harassing you, you can avoid it by riding between the waves to go faster and use the water as cover from its explosive cannon. Heck you might even be able to get up close and C4 it to hell.
How to kill a tank without a tank
Troll Tank Drivers
Tired of jumping up and saying "ermahgerd tank" every time a surprise enemy armor rolls up on you. Well then strike back. Even if you're on foot there's more than a few ways to take it down. Engineers can repair torch tanks to death or even steal it if the driver is dumb enough to jump out. If your running around with mines, you could also sneak up and throw them on the ground around the vehicle. Even if the tank does not move to trigger your charges, you can just shoot them with a revolver, slug shotgun, or just toss a grenade on the pile and boom!
Both the Support and Recon Class can take out a tank single handedly with a few well-placed C4 charges and some sneaky ninja skills. Hunting tanks is actually easier than you think. Just watch where its turret and gunner are facing and move quickly but strategically. That said, you're likely to be spotted as you're prowling over or just before you hit your explosive trigger. So this is really a strategy for players that don't care about their kill/death ratio.
The C4 Bus
If driving is more your speed, the C4 bus is a strategy that dates all the way back to Battlefield 2. Just stick an obscene amount of plastic explosive onto an ATV, Jeep, Chopper, Tank or whatever you have on hand that will make its way to the piece of enemy armor the fastest. Then smash the bombed up vehicle right into the enemy and blow the whole thing into kingdom come. You can also swap out those C4 charges with mines—or even claymores for some infantry road kill trolling fun. Again you're pretty much an easy target roaming around with explosives. Even hitting a tree the wrong way can be the end of you, so expect a quick death when anything goes wrong.
When enemy air is just too good
The jet ram maneuver
This tactic is a bit shunned by the Battlefield community as a cheap tactic against better air pilots, but hey, whatever works! It's also a totally valid tactic if you're steamed about that tank rolling outside your base and you want it blown up lickety-split.
The Bait-and-switch
Extremely seasoned pilots can completely demolish everything in the air but like sharks, they're pretty easy to fool. Nothing screams multi-kill quite like a harmless and fat transport helicopter. It's practically irresistible to them. So just fly one into their view and lead them back to your spawn where you can ambush them with your Anti-Air tank or enough stinger missiles to blot out the sun.
When you're bored
Set up ridiculous challenges for yourself
Using the best weapons can make you very successful in battle, but where's the challenge if you're doing well all the time. Pick something slightly more "hipster" and less mainstream because it doesn't have low recoil or a fast rounds per minute. Who knows, you might actually like it.
Alternatively, try putting together weird attachment combinations to make things real interesting. A FAMAS with a 7x scope is not only challenging to use at long range, it will also confuse and probably get a laugh out of you and your opponents when you put them down.
There's more?
Buy a custom server
And that's just the fun you can have to a regular, normal server. There are even more shenanigans you can start with a custom server. While Battelfield 4 does not, and probably never will support modding, you can rent a server and make up whatever wacky rules you want. Classics include certain weapon only servers for anything from knives, pistols, and bolt action sniper rifles.
There are also more than a handful of servers that are for fun and machinima projects owned by people like Doom49 and Robert Stoneman. If you're looking for some more classic death race action, Golmud Railway is a giant map with plenty of vehicles and winding rally roads. There are still a lot of mysteries to solve in Battlefield so start searching servers with Mythbusters and you're more than likely to find the folks from Pixel Enemy on the case.
How do you keep Battlefield 4 fresh and fun? Share your favorite things do in our comments below.