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Party up like Charlie Sheen: Battlefield 4 ‘Platoons’ feature will allow pre-game grouping

Battlefield 4 has been out since October, and its team is currently devoted to Making It All Work.

“Right, men. Whatever happens, we stick together.”

Those were the last words I heard our Tim say before the PCGN we-don’t-need-a-parachute regiment sallied forth into the Titanfall beta last week. I watched haplessly as a perk-boosted Nick sprinted off into the undergrowth, and only caught fleeting glimpses of my colleagues thereafter.

The same won’t happen for much longer in Battlefield 4, at least. Players will soon be able to join up with other players before joining a match, rather than during.

Despite similar systems at work in contemporaries like Call of Duty: Ghosts – and especially bewildering given the Origin infrastructure the game is built into on PC – Battlefield 4 launched without any way for friends to group up pre-game.

DICE had “no plans” to implement a solution even a few months ago – but a sustained bombardment of player requests since seems to have changed their minds. ‘Platoons’ will be a Battlelog feature that allows players to form official groups. These groups will tie them together both in and out of matches.

The developers promised more specifics “very soon” – and are planning a closed beta.

“We want to give early access to a smaller group of players to test certain parts of the system before a full rollout and get some even earlier feedback,” they wrote.

“Please bear in mind that the early access will be for just a small amount of players, but it won’t be for a long period, so everyone will be able to enjoy Platoons soon.”

That’s nice, isn’t it?

Cheers, CVG.