BF6 Practice Range

A leading indicator to me on whether BF6 will be a critical success is the humble Practice Range. BF5 lacked a PR at launch and the one that was subsequently included was, no exaggeration,  a huge step back from BF4's and a disgrace to the series. Someone missed the entire point of the PR which is to provide an exhaustive and comprehensive sandbox where any weapon, class, gadget, vehicle, vehicle weapon/spec, call in etc. can be experimented with. Aside from providing an ideal environment away from live games where someone can master flying a helicopter for example, it is also invaluable for testing and validating game mechanics. Is that spec actually reducing your reload time by 25% or did a dev make an error and there's actually no benefit? 

Instead BF5 limited you to a handful of vehicles (whose armaments and specs you could not adjust), weapons that could not be customized, vehicle ammo that could not be replenished and a map that ill suited for sandboxing. Someone in leadership decided it was more important to have a driving game in PR rather than provide you with the freedom and control normally synonymous with a PR.

While other game genres like fighting games have expanded the functionality of and nearly perfected  "Test/Practice Modes" Battlefield seems to have regressed. This is all the more disturbing given how much BF needs a solid testbed mode. While BF is not a sim by any means it is still an incredibly complex game mechanically with aspects like round velocity, gravity, penetration, armour angles, blast radius and so on. And with the return to modern age that brings with it missiles and counter measures, it is even more critical that BF6 not only meets the standard of Bf4 but adds upon it substantially. I am encouraged to hear rumors that single player will not be included in BF6. I hope that at least some of those resources will instead be redirected towards elevating PR which I consider essential in refining BF and finally seeing it ascend COD which it should have done long ago.

Here is what I consider MUST HAVES for BF6 PR:

• Ability to deploy with ANY vehicle including ones normally limited such as “call-ins” or special vehicles like the AC-130 in BF4
• Ability to customize vehicle configuration (upgrades like special shell types, armor, engines, optics etc.) before deployment with any configuration usable in normal play (even if player has not yet unlocked it)
• Ability to deploy multiple instances of the same vehicle in either the same or different upgrade configurations (For testing purposes)
• Ability to spawn infantry bots anywhere on the map (including inside vehicles so that vehicle damage points would show when you shoot at them). Obviously, if you want to test weapons against soft targets we need to have the ability to spawn soldier dummies. These don’t necessarily have to have AI but we should be able to control if they are standing, crouching or prone to test the effects weapons (especially explosives which are impacted by soldier orientation) on them.
• Long or no expiration (self destruct) timers for vacant vehicles (10+ minutes). This allows one player to designate a vehicle as the target vehicle and then fire volleys at it from a distance and then hop into the target vehicle to evaluate numerical and systemic damage. A short expiration timer makes this hard/impossible to do.
• A map that is large and contains a varied landscape consisting of flat land, elevated areas, sea, and buildings
• Map contains all stationary weapon types that are available in game. (Machine gun and anti tank launchers for example)
• Ability to spawn as any class of infantry (including special ones if those are included) with any upgrades/specializations (even those you have not yet unlocked)
• Ability to customize your weapon upgrades and deploy with said weapon upgrades even if you have not unlocked them.
• Ability to instantly activate “call-in” special attacks like artillery and missile strikes so that damage and effects can be tested and evaluated.
• Unlimited ammo toggle or instant ammo replenishment. For long sessions of testing against various materials it would be nice to not have to worry resupply dynamics.

These items are not essential but would be really nice to have:

• Freeze/unfreeze mode for aircraft. This would allow you to freeze the movement (but still allow you to rotate aircraft in any orientation) of any aircraft for the purposes of testing air weapons (kinetic, explosive and locking missiles). Currently testing aircraft weaponry is really cumbersome since you have to land them and position them just right in order to have the proper orientation.
• Ability to spawn vehicles at designated spots. For example, if I am one player and want to test tank damage in BF4 I have to spawn, drive my tank out of the “safe zone” and then run back or respawn and then drive the other tank to a location outside of the safe zone. This takes even longer if I want to test vehicles from different factions. The ability to simply spawn any vehicle, multiple times, from any location on the map would save a ton of time!
• Ability to select ANY map in the game to test on
• Damage indicators even on empty vehicles. This can be as simple as the current ingame system where it shows the points earned for damage or it could be more technical like it is shown in a fighting game test mode for example. This info would of course be adjusted for a Battlefield game and could show the target vehicle’s health and systemic damage, how much damage was inflicted in the shot, along with the amount of consecutive hits recently landed, as well as possibly its angle in relation to you which would be useful when testing angle based modifiers.

A final note: PR needs to be in game AT LAUNCH - not some afterthought that gets tossed in 6 months later in order to tick a box on the features list. If I see some tweets from BF about PR: Coming Soon™ then I suspect BF6 will suffer a similarly disastrous and shameful launch as its predecessor did. 

TLDR: BF hasn't realized its full potential because, in part, it's been plagued with bug and balance issues that could have been identified, articulated  and fixed earlier if BF had a proper practice range.