It appears that developer DICE LA, who is now in charge of the health and well-being of Battlefield 4, is rewarding participants of their Community Test Environment with an exclusive soldier camo.

Called “CTE Specialist,” the camo appears all black. You can see it in the image below, courtesy of DANNYonPC:

The CTE has been producing some pretty positive test results for Battlefield 4 since its inception last May, a number of which have already been applied to Battlefield 4 and are event trickling over to Visceral Games’ Battlefield Hardline, launching early next year.

Currently, the test environment is now entering its second initiative with Core Gameplay Patch 16 for Premium users on the PC who decide to take part. According to “undeadpixels” on the Battlelog forums, it contains a number of weapon balance updates, as well as Battlefield Hardline beta crash fixes and system improvements that are now being introduced to Battlefield 4.

Check out the full notes below, courtesy of Reddit user pm_me_spread_legs (via @antal120):

Core Gameplay Patch 16

This is what is included in this patch:

• Preround READY state Now based on players connected, should be dynamic now. Needed players per team is now controlled by the preround player count, otherwise player can get stuck in the spawn screen.
• Visual Recoil & Sight Improvements Shrunk the red dot size a notch to match previous size.
• TEST: Added first pass CTE Camo Initial creation of the potential reward for our most eager testers we’ve now added this camo. It is currently a duplicate of the DICE camo, but will be tweaked to more clearly show what faction you are playing as – and be based on a lighter grey color instead of the black. This is not the final state of this camo, just the first step. The way to unlock this later will be announced further down the line.
• Added fix for the dual class exploit Where you are able to combine two classes at spawn
• Hainan Resort: Decreased terrain destruction along beach near US base
• Paracel Storm: Added blocks from swimming below the carrier on Paracel
• UI Triage Minimap Icons: option to set minimap icons to auto scale with the minimap scale; moved the minimap scale text slightly up so it doesn’t overlap the commander messages Hud World Icons: icons zoom support for vehicle zoom.
• WEAPON/GADGET BALANCE

Goal: With the changes to visual recoil, head flinching and netcode weapons have become deadlier and kills faster. Tune weapons to take this into consideration and find clear roles for them in doing so.

A large amount of guns had some small changes made to them. I am trying to not go too crazy at first as so many moving parts could create a problem.

I’d like to get some blind feedback on these changes so I will not be describing every tweak right now. I’m sure symthic will post the info eventually, or I will after some initial feedback.

Most of these changes are based on community/pro feedback that I thought was a great starting point. Here is a list of what has been tweaked, some buffs and some nerfs. None of these changes will be reflected in the stat bars or text descriptions as of yet!

Heavy Barrel, Muzzle Brake, MP7, P90, JS2, L85, AWS, RPK74, RPK12, SR2, AR160, QBZ951, UMP9, PP2000, A91, SG553, AKU12, Type95B1, G36C, CZ805, M60E4, 1911, HK45C, RFB, ACE21, SCAR-H, Bulldog, ACE52, DEagle, FAMAS, F2000, AUG, MTAR, MPX, CBJMS, Type88

This effort is far from over so give it a good test and I’ll be looking for everyone’s feedback. I am also still waiting for some new code jjju is working on to remove the flinch-bug and finish up the changes to suppression.

Again, these aren’t changes that will make an appearance in the core Battlefield 4 experience, but are just some of the improvements DICE LA are testing with participants of the CTE.

We’ll be sure to let you know when we hear more about Battlefield 4’s next official update.