We have had a few days to play the latest upgrade to Battlefield 4. First, some good news.
Invisible Improvements
The improved netcode has reduced the chances of odd or impossible results from weapon fire and other attacks. Network bandwidth is handled better, making it less likely that network issues will cause problems in play. Soldier movement physics works better, with many cases of odd collisions fixed. Movement animation is smoother, a subtle but helpful effect to make the game feel more real. Overall game performance is increased, especially on PC. The serious health update bug (where a player taking damage while healing would not see the damage on their HUD health score) is completely fixed.
All of this improves game play but isn’t something that you’ll see or notice as such. Instead, you’ll just find the game playing better, with fewer strange events to distract you from the game play, and cause frustration.
New And Old Bugs
Unfortunately, not everything went right with the patch update. Two mistakes were the result of incorporating changes from CTE which were not intentionally put into the patch (and are not in the patch notes).
First, the night vision optics for vehicles got part of the update for the night maps, causing problems using the IRNV and Thermal Optics on vehicles, and on remote operated vehicles like the MAV. The bright daylight scenes on most maps are not dark enough to allow the night environment settings to work well.
Second, the bullet tracers are used on every bullet, rather than being around one in five as before. CTE added extra tracers for testing, so bullet paths could be observed and recorded more easily. It would be OK, but still possibly distracting, if these extra tracers were only visible to the shooting player.
Third, and the biggest bug issue if it hits you, is the “dead and unable to redeploy” glitch. This isn’t a new bug, but one which has resurfaced after the patch. It was not present in the CTE version of the game, at least not with the same frequency of occurrence. It appears to be a revive bug — you get revived, but the game fails to restore you to play, leaving you on the killcam screen with nothing to do but wait for the end of round, or quit.
The first two are easy fixes. The changes can be simply undone. The only difficulty is the requirement to certify a hotfix patch. Server patches are easy to do, but the user program is harder, as Microsoft and Sony must approve them as well.
The killcam glitch is harder, because it is a game bug, not just a feature change. If players record the event when it happens and submit the information to the developers, they may find a solution more quickly. It is a priority fix, and one that they’d love to get handled as soon as possible. A hotfix for the PC version may come out sooner to just fix this, as the PC patches don’t require outside approval and testing.
Less common bugs — some of which most players won’t see or hear — include some sound issues, including a “stuck steady static sound” and lack of sounds for some weapons, unexpected lag or crashes, and other problems. EA and DICE LA are tracking all issues with the patch, with the hope to get the critical bugs fixed soon.
A note for Nvidia users: The latest (347.52) drivers may have issues with BF4 for some systems. Rolling back to an earlier version may help. I haven’t seen similar advice for AMD (in fact, I’ve seen the opposite — make sure you have the absolute latest), and if you are not having driver related crashes, there is no need to do this.
Cool Improvements And Upgrades
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/battlefield-4-winter-patch.html
There is a lot of stuff in this patch, and not everything is bug fixes.
In combat status added. If a player is taking fire and is suppressed, Medical Bag healing is disabled, First Aid Kit healing is blocked by damage taken, and the biggest change, squad spawning will show “In Combat” in red and block deployment on that player. It takes approximately two seconds out of the line of fire to clear the “In Combat” status.
This eliminates two problems of spawning into combat. First, if you are winning a firefight against one player, you won’t suddenly find four more instantly appearing and killing you. Second, you won’t spawn into a certain death situation, appearing and dying without a chance to respond. The alternative to blocking the spawn, for balance, would be to remove spawn protection and impose a short delay on weapon use (as if you are deploying at the start of the round).
The latter part is a big balance issue. If you can spawn on your squad mate with any sort of spawn protection, and can fire immediately, that would make close combats frustrating and unbalanced when a squad has members ready to “beam into combat”. The logic of spawning in the game is as if the soldier was coming as reinforcement from an area near the hot action, not appearing out of nowhere in the heat of battle.
Audio enhancements, both fixes and a general improvement for the sound clarity of footsteps and soldier actions.
Helicopter flight physics enhanced. All helicopters can make loops and barrel rolls, and are somewhat more agile. This has the greatest effect on the Attack Helicopter, but all benefit from this.
HUD, hit marker, and sight reticle customizations, including custom colors. I find the different colors for hitmarkers to be a great improvement, making it even easier to see head shots and kill shots in the heat of battle.
Option to decouple vehicle aiming (turret) from vehicle turning movement. This makes it easier for tank drivers to keep the turret aimed at a target while moving around the map.
Deployment and Battlelog Enhancements
The main screen and deployment screen have new features. A small thing — your Premium, DLC, and Phantom Program status icons will be shown here. You can set options to see what rank and kit soldiers are using, separately for on the map and for in vehicles. This makes it easier to know what which kit is most useful to use when joining battle.
Weapon and vehicle mastery Dog Tags show the number of kills on the tag (as BF3 had). Mastery tags are added for weapons which were missing them before. Note: some players have reported that these new tags are not being unlocked for players who have earned them. It is possible that an additional kill is needed for it to update, or something else (or a bug fix).
Soldier camouflage should persist once set. As there are three separate factions for each map and four kits, it may take a while before you’ve set them all, but having this work will make it easier to pick an appearance that fits for each different map you play on.
Already completed assignments will not appear in the end of round status screen. This was just a clunky clutter element, but it is nice to see it fixed, as it makes it easier to know which assignments you are actually making progress on.
New Game Modes and Stuff
Squad Obliteration adds a new game mode, good for smaller fast actions with just one squad on each side. It joins Defuse and Squad Death Match as modes best suited for smaller player counts. Right now, it has a limited number of maps, which could be expanded as CTE tests more of them for this mode.
New Player Server option added for server owners. It limits them to rank 10 and below, offering a place for brand new players to play against each other.
Improved Matchmaking options. Players can choose to join Ranked servers as well as Official, if they wish. Premium players have three new Matchmaking play list selections to use.
Despite Problems, A Pretty Good Patch
We would all be happier if the patch came out without a hitch. That isn’t likely, since some problems might be specific to certain system configurations and not generalized. The three biggest issues may be quickly solved, and a new quick fix patch created to resolve them. Even so, for the most part, and for most players, the patch has made for an improved, more enjoyable game. We are Battlefield players, and will play our game with its flaws, and complain, until and if everything is made perfect.
Even then, we will probably still complain. But it doesn’t mean we won’t have fun while doing it.
