During an event last night, Lars Gustavsson said that DICE has heard the criticisms of the unlocks system found in Battlefield 3 and hopes to rectify that with Battlefield 4.
“We shipped Battlefield 3, which we should be slapped for, with probably the worst set ups ever,” Gustavsson said.

“As a pilot, you had to fly your plane and only kill other planes with your cannons. You didn’t have any counter-measures; you didn’t have any missiles. And that’s basically for the best of the best pilots; that’s what they should do to show their skills. [As a beginner], you should have counter-measures, you should have heat-seeking missiles to give you a smooth ride into the game and then from there on you should customise.

“So that’s what we’ve tried to do; the full set-ups are supposed to be quite easy to learn and to master, and from there you can start unlocking things and seeing what your preferred setup is. So, a lot of learning from Battlefield 3 have gone into making the game.”

Undoubtedly, the vehicle unlocks were a huge negative as far as the unlocking system went in BF3. If you were even a month or two late to the game, you may as well not even bother with a vehicle because everyone else already had a ton of unlocks at their disposal.

(via VG247)