Battlefield 4 details new Battlelog, including in-game overlay and user-made missions

The latest DICE dev post on Battlefield 4 focuses on the latest iteration of Battlelog, the virtual scribe that extensively tracks your soldiering career. The big news of this revision is the addition of an in-game overlay, allowing players to access important features - like the game's menu - from inside the game. You wouldn't think it'd be possible to announce that as an upcoming improvement, but then, Battlefield 3 was a weird experiment in having part of your game actually be a website.

Other improvements include synchronisation between web, game, and tablet version of Battlelog, and a "remote joining" feature that I'm not entirely convinced is as innovative as DICE would have us believe:

"Remote Joining is another really cool game-connected feature. Perhaps you're playing on a server, but you'd like to join a different one or you want to join a friend somewhere else. Usually, you'd have to exit the game you're currently in and then search for your next server in the menus. Now you can pull up the list of servers on Battlelog, find the one you want to play on, and press “Join”. It'll pull you right into that server. It's extremely fast and fluid and a whole new way to find games on both console and PC."

Er, guys, I think you've mistaken "fixing things that Battlefield 3 did badly" with "a whole new way to find games".

One of the more interesting uses of the new Battlelog is the new mission system, that lets friends create specific score-based challenges that can be tied to a specific map, across a set duration of time. This gives players a chance to add a secondary, asynchronous competition, that can play out across a group of people, regardless of when they play during the mission window. Of course, that doesn't stop DICE from making it sound a little bit creepy.

"You'll get a notification on Battlelog when you are invited, when the lead in the mission has been taken from you, and when you or someone else wins. Notifications will be shown on Battlelog on all devices, including in-game notifications and even push notifications on mobile. We'll make sure you won't miss any of these important events." Is... is that a threat?

Check out the rest of the Battlelog feature laundry list here .

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.