Hardline is here for some of us, and very soon for the rest of us on March 17, 2015. The forums are filled with posts crying that Battlefield 4 is coming to an end, now that the new Battlefield game is here. But is this a case of a sequel replacing its predecessor, or a standalone variant or expansion game being added to a franchise?
Many players will rush to play Hardline and enjoy it. There will remain some who refuse to play it, and stick with Battlefield 4. And many will play both. For that matter, people still play BF3 and BF:BC2. But for certain, there will be far fewer BF4 players for some time as huge numbers migrate to the newest Battlefield game on the block.
Hardline offers a fresh new style for Battlefield players. Battlefield 4 is a game with a huge range of game styles and environments, and as a result some players gravitate to certain types of maps and combat situations. Sure, there are perhaps more who play all aspects of the game, but we all know that certain maps and map/game mode combinations cater strongly to close infantry actions or massive vehicular battles.
Hardline does still have variety, but the lack of heavy military vehicles makes the infantry aspect much stronger. It also has game modes which cater well to the pure infantry player, and even some which offers stealthy tactical play. For all those players who are looking for a strong foot soldier action, Hardline delivers.
It also has game modes which seem designed purely for fun action, like Hotwire and Blood Money. In some ways, it has elements of the appeal of Bad Company in its play style.
The unlock system is also designed to give players choices, rather than force them to wait and work to get the items they most want. Battlefield 3 and 4’s system isn’t bad — there is a certain satisfaction in reaching a new unlock or achievement — but Hardline offers a more flexible style which many players will strongly appreciate.
Battlefield 4 is still a work in progress, with issues affecting many who play it. And while I’ve not been hit with constant or frequent problems myself since the last patch, that doesn’t matter for those who are running into the problems more often. DICE LA and the CTE program are still working, and plans exist to keep developing the game, and to add new content through all of 2015.
For me and many, the broken state of Battlefield 4 won’t stop us from playing the game. But Hardline does give us a new, fresh, and fun choice as an alternative when we don’t want to deal with the issues, or just want a change.
Some may not look back, but I’m willing to bet that many who say they will never play BF4 again once they have Hardline will get “homesick” after a while and come back again. Especially if DICE LA can truly make solid patches which don’t have new problems.
Battlefield 4 did not have a smooth, uneventful launch. EA and DICE have acknowledged this. The interesting thing is that despite the problems, most BF4 players stuck with the game, or came back to it as things were fixed.
Six months after release, the idea of opening up development to the players — the Community Test Environment — came up, and has produced good results to improve the game. Most of the tragic, game killing problems were resolved by that time, but many frustrating issues remained.
A year later — when EA fully addressed the problems with the game’s release — the big Fall Patch made significant changes in the game play. We got that shortly after got the last DLC (Final Stand). This finally brought the game performance up to acceptable for most players.
State Of The Game
Now (March 2015), we are a year and a half past release, and received another new patch. More improvements have been made. But is the game perfect and finished yet?
Not quite.
In fact, the forums remain filled with negative comments about the state of the game. Youtubers also offer criticism about the game. It is quite common to see comments during game play about how broken the game still is.
All those people criticizing the game are still playing it, despite its flaws. So either they are masochists, or the game has something going for it which outweighs all its problems. Maybe the advice of Battlefield Friends here fits — the game isn’t perfect, but we play with our friends and enjoy it, and have confidence that the developers will make it perfect in time.
We are demanding gamers, those who play Battlefield. We don’t want a merely good functional game. We expect a spectacular game, with innovative game play and all of the benefits of new technology that can fit into it. We also want our game to work perfectly, even when it has new, untested, performance-demanding features. DICE for its part wants the same thing. They are unwilling to make a game which is just new content for the same basic engine and system.
Games requiring patches after release, and often many of them, is nothing new or unusual. Are the number of patches and the problems with Battlefield 4 unusual?
A Perspective On Patches
Battlefield 1942 came out in September 2002. Patches came out in November and December of that year, fixing numerous bugs and issues. Further patches came out in 2003, and early 2004. Much of those were feature enhancements. A bit over two years between initial release and the final patch. These went along with the two expansion packs released in 2003.
In March 2004, Battlefield Vietnam came out. It used the same engine as BF 1942, with improvements. Patches came out over the release year, fixing bugs but also adding considerable new features to the game.
Battlefield 2 arrived in June 2005. It brought Battlefield into the modern era (though mods for earlier games offered that too). This is the start of the series of modern warfare games which includes Battlefield 3 and 4. It is held up as the standard that all Battlefield games need to meet, It received 10 patches between release and November 2006, a period over a year.
But BF2 players got a big surprise in September 2009, when another huge patch came out for the game. it fixed a lot of bugs, but also added much new content to the game, including the previously released map packs (from 2006) now for free. It was a very good upgrade, but it came out over four years after the game itself.
Battlefield Bad Company 2 came along in March 2010. The game got its last patch September 2011, about a year and a half later.
Battlefield 3 was the long awaited sequel to BF 2, and was a fall release in October 2011. It also received patches, with the last DLC (End Game) in March 2013 Again, about a year and a half from release to the final version.
For all the above, the final version is generally considered an excellent game. There remain issues, but nothing which most players consider to be game breaking.
Battlefield 4 is now at about the same point in its lifespan. The Winter Patch (March 2015) has resulted in a game which behaves fairly well for most players. There are problems remaining, and another patch can fix those, but people still play it. A lot of people, and most don’t seem to be crying constantly about how bad the game is, or say that they will never play it again. Despite this, many players think that the Battlefield franchise has had its reputation ruined by Battlefield 4, and it could be the worst Battlefield game ever.
So What’s Different About Battlefield 4?
It was one of the most highly anticipated games of 2013, and was a launch day game for the new XBOX One and PS4 consoles. DICE and EA promoted the improvements in the game, and preorder sales boomed. The open beta before release was popular, and though there were some problems with it, most players were quick to say “It’s just the beta, the final game will be fine.”
Except as we all know, it wasn’t fine. It is by far not the only game to have terrible, game breaking, system crashing bugs which plagued the early days of the game release. But it was a very high profile game, whose fans were understandably upset to find themselves unable to play, or to get into a game only for it to fail just when things were going good.
Worse, DICE couldn’t fix the game fast enough. One thing is strongly blamed for this: the game was rushed to release to get it out on its scheduled date, launch day. Rather than spend a bit more time in closed testing to make sure everything worked as intended, DICE had to try to repair the game as players continued to attempt to play and enjoy themselves. It may surprise you to realize that a lot of players stuck through the first months of the game’s release, trying to play, hoping that each new fix would finally give them a stable game.
Why stick with this game? We still had (and have, it isn’t dead yet) Battlefield 3, and there are many other FPS games out there.
Before BF4 was released, many people got to play Alpha versions of the game. There were both convention and invitational game play sessions, and an invite-only online alpha. I was one who got to play the alpha. The videos of E3 game play and the live streaming showed a clearly working, dazzling version of the game.
The Alpha, though, was kind of like a hothouse flower. It wasn’t the full game with all features available. We had one map, limited ranks and weapons, and it was played in short sessions which allowed the servers to reset between rounds. The online alpha used a “white box” build of the game which was stripped down to save download time. It had issues likely related to that with map geometry (glitches), but even so, the game play was both attractive and fun despite the limitations on visual quality. We knew that there were things which we wouldn’t be able to try out, and we played a “work in progress” game which had server and game updates during the test period.
EA promoted the game intensely, supporting live streaming from play events, and active support for Youtubers to record and release videos of the live Alpha game play. Now, much of that game play came from events where every PC and the servers were provided by EA and operated on a LAN — an ideal gaming environment but not what we get with Internet gaming.
Doesn’t the video look good? The new game features also seemed solid, with improvements to the class and weapon systems, as well as some amazing graphics and physics enhancements. Plus the hyped Levolution, which despite having a marketing-based name truly added some nice elements to the game play.
Beta Blocking
A fairly short time before the retail release — October 1 through 15, 2013 — a large number of players got their chance to actually play the Beta version of the game. It used the same Siege Of Shanghai map shown in the alpha, and had many of the same limitations on weapons and tools as the Alpha. It looked very much like the videos of the Alpha we’d been shown. It had some performance issues, something which wasn’t unexpected since optimizing performance is something done nearer the end of game development than the beginning, but for the most part it played well. It did have some issues with crashing, but again, it wasn’t so frequent to make people immediately reject the game as unfinished.
Those of us who played it provided much feedback to the developers. The retail release incorporated some changes from the beta, and there was a feeling of confidence among most Battlefield fans. DICE and EA would have time to make everything perfect. We wouldn’t be surprised if there were problems at release, but no one expected them to be hard to resolve.
Another advance was streamlining the patch process. Battlefield 3 had to suffer with some well known bugs which may have been easy to fix, but had to wait until a patch could be authorized for release on both consoles and the PC. It was easy to believe that fixes for some of the most egregious problems would be delivered quickly.
The Demand of Perfection
The Battlefield series are demanding games, in terms of system performance and the depth of features in the game. We have had a certain degree of tolerance for the issues DICE has had in previous games, because we believed they would work everything out and make a game which would deliver all the amazing elements of game play to satisfy us, a very demanding group of players.
Some people called Battlefield 4 “version 3.5” before release. Released just two years after BF3, it was hard to believe that DICE could create a truly new engine and redesign the game to be something that players could call a worthy upgrade, not just more of the same with new maps. Other game franchises have done that, some with success.
Battlefield has features which most other FPS games don’t attempt:
64 players in the same game.
Projectile ballistics, tracking bullets as individual objects.
Destructible environment.
Player operated vehicles.
Multiplayer with networked physics interactions.
A hardware-pushing visual engine with lots of realistic imagery and actions.
In Battlefield 4, some new things were added to this mix. The large scale destruction of Levolution events transforms the map during a match, and all players and objects are affected by force of the changes in the same way — that is, a networked change to the environment which takes into account the current (damaged) map state and can incorporate random forces.
The networking of the waves in the water, the forces of the wind and rain, and even the impact of explosions on the map.
Foliage physics, where the grass, bushes, and trees move in response to forces generated by player action, whether the impact of player movement, vehicles, weapons, or explosions.
Greatly increased particle effects — dust and debris in the atmosphere, fire, flames, heat, and smoke — which can persist throughout a match, rather than just being very short events.
On top of this, the whole player kit (class) and experience system was reworked, the new customization system allowed for extremely flexible configurations for weapon attachments, gadgets, and vehicle upgrades, as well as custom appearance and personal emblems.
New game modes were added, and the interface was considerable revamped to incorporate new features.
Combat on and in the water was greatly expanded, with the armed watercraft being very effective vehicles.
The Commander returned in Battlefield 4. Many Battlefield 2 fans were unhappy when BF3 didn’t have this. We didn’t get a good chance to see this in the beta, but the idea of restoring a key feature to enhance team play was very exciting.
All in all, there are a huge number of changes between BF3 and BF4. The engine produces an audio and visual experience which is significantly better than its predecessor. More impressive is that, after many patches, it does so with about the same performance (frame rates) on the PC.
The terrible issues with the release also make it clear that BF4 isn’t just a quick retouching of BF3. DICE tried to add many new things, and an amazing number of them worked pretty well even at the start. Had they been able to fix the game to a playable state more quickly, I think that most players would as happy about BF4 as they were about BF3.
Patching Progress
EA seemed to take the view that, despite the problems with the game, DICE should have no trouble completing all the needed fixes as quick patches pushed out after release. Having stuck to the schedule, they may have felt they had no other choice. It wasn’t like they could say “Hey, we released it early. Let us shut everything down and try again in six months.”
By December 2013, most of the bad crashing issues were fixed. EA began serious damage control, first suspending the DLC release schedule to focus on core game fixes, and second by offering gamers in game promotions and rewards — much in the form of free Battlepacks, but still, it was much better than nothing and the game was improving.
The CTE program began in spring of 2014, and soon brought about significant improvements with new patches. The new DLC also appeased players, offering new challenges and some pretty nice looking maps. The artistic side of the game isn’t essential for good game play, but it does make it more attractive and enjoyable, and DICE delivered this wonderfully.
Welcome To The Grand Illusion
Netcode. Lag. Tick Rate. Ping. Latency. All these things are related, but most players don’t know exactly what they mean. Nor do we truly need to, in order to enjoy the game. But it can help to understand some of the technical issues involved in playing a multiplayer game on the Internet.
Ping is one of the simplest, and one which you have some limited control over, by choosing lower ping servers in Battlefield. It is the time it takes information to go from the server to the player’s system and back, or vice versa. It imposes a delay which cannot be remedied by any means, on all actions taken in any multiplayer game. A ping of 50ms, generally considered a good low value, means that what you see in the game is based on information (actions and server results) from at least 50ms ago. That is less than a typical human’s reaction time, but it is 3 frames of 60 fps video. Higher pings put you even further out of sync with other players.
Modern multiplayer games use techniques commonly called lag compensation to give the illusion that actions happen in real time, despite these delays. The frustration of shooting at someone who is no longer where they were when you get around to seeing them (due to ping and all other internet signal delays, called Latency) and thus missing, is eliminated. Instead, the server interprets the actions of all players, and resolves hits based on what each player saw in their “reality.” Sometimes, especially for players with relatively high ping, in order to be fair the server has to rule that their shot missed, or worse (from a player’s perspective), that they were already dead before they opened fire.
When things like that happen, our illusion of being in a game with everyone in real time is broken. The more things going on in a game, the more likely that such events will happen, especially (again) for players with relatively high ping. The Internet isn’t a true real time communications system, and delays can happen at any time, so even if your average ping is quite low, there can be hiccups in the flow of time in the game.
Both the server and the player’s system also take time to process game events, and that imposes another area of delays. But that can be improved by more efficient coding for the game. CTE addressed another issue, the Tick Rate. Battlefield runs — for both the current and previous games — with a 30 Hz (30 updates per second) Tick Rate. But it also has a slower 10 Hz rate for events which don’t need as frequent input in order for the server and game to provide a smooth response which feels like real time. Increasing the Tick Rate also increases the amount of data sent over the Internet by the game, and that can result in overloading low bandwidth connections, and also can require additional processing power for both the server and player systems.
Weapons fire in Battlefield is very fast — just like it is in real life. The time to kill with many weapons is within the 10 Hz time frame (under 100ms), especially at close range. The CTE tested changing many things to the faster 30 Hz rate, and the result was a greatly improved sense of real time response for close combat actions.
The Summer Patch of 2014 brought this improvement and many others to all Battlefield 4 players, and restored the confidence of many in the game. Gamers who had stopped playing returned to try out the improvements, and the new Dragon’s Teeth DLC.
Making A Big Difference
The Fall Patch made great improvements, practically a new game. The Final Stand DLC came out, and was one of the most impressive sets of maps so far for the Battlefield series. The recent Winter Patch did more improvements, including a lot of “netcode” fixes and enhancements There are still things to fix, but the game itself works fairly well.
Ours Is Not A Perfect World
The CTE program is still going strong, and is looking at every game bug, and every issue where players believe the game needs work or improvement. Despite all the fixes in each patch, the game still has times when it doesn’t work the way it should. It fails to deliver the illusion that we are in a real time battle with other players.
If we want to play Battlefield, that is the situation we must live with. There are still lots of people playing Battlefield 4, despite the many complaints. It is, for now, the only Battlefield we have. Perhaps Battlefield Hardline will draw new life into our game playing, but I expect that fans of the modern warfare genre are still going to keep playing Battlefield 4, at least until the next one comes out.
People who don’t play enough different online multiplayer games might think that these problems are unique to Battlefield, and that no company should release games full of flaws and bugs. A bit of experience with the other FPS games out there will find them with their own problems. And nothing can truly eliminate the problem of playing with a high ping, other than having servers with a better ping available to you.
So what do we do now? We keep playing, enjoy the game for how good it can be when things work well — which is very good — and let DICE and the CTE program keep making the game better. There are many cool things in development, but the progress on fixing the problems is even more exciting than new maps or game modes.
Metallicat here, and first I’m just going to say that there is no big secret to unlocking items for kits, vehicles, and weapons in Battlefield 4. There are other games where your choice of actions can boost your rewards considerably, but for the most part, you can’t control those in Battlefield.
The Basics Of Advancement
The biggest factor besides your skill in active play are the XP boosts. You will get many of these in the course of the game, and will hit a point where using one every time you play will let you gain replacements before they expire. But in your early career, you may not have quite so many to use, so choosing when to use them requires careful planning. Double XP events are cumulative with the XP boosts, so saving the higher 100% and 200% boosts for those can be good — they give 4x and 6x XP respectively then.
On the other hand, if you are playing to explore the map and try out things, and won’t earn many points during that game, the XP boosts are wasted. Once you are above rank 10 you will start to get enough new Battlepacks to get more boosts. Rank 50 is the golden rank, literally — you get Gold Battlepacks at every rank starting here. With five items each, the odds are good of getting at least one more boost, but I’ve had some which were all boosts.
It isn’t your overall rank, though, which is critical for game play. It is your advancement in kits and vehicles, and to a lesser degree weapon classes and attachment unlocks. Because your earned XP count for both the kit or vehicle you are operating and your overall rank, you are going to complete the unlocks for your favorite vehicles and kits relatively early in your career. You can complete all kits as early as rank 25, but are likely to spend time in vehicles and may take until rank 30 or more to do that. Vehicles are dependent on both how much time you get to use them, and how skilled you are — especially, not dying and thus losing your ride. Even so, you should expect to see all of your favorite kits and vehicles fully unlocked by rank 50.
Weapon classes require you to use the weapon and gain points from kills, which do receive XP boosts. Weapon attachments are unlocked only by kills, and don’t benefit from the boosts. For both of these, you only need to kill enemies, which is after all what weapons are for. The Grenade unlocks are similar, but because you are limited in how many grenades you can quickly get (one M67 Frag per life at the start), until you have them all unlocked you should use them whenever you get an opportunity.
Playing For Score
The good news is that if you are playing the game well, this will come with no special effort. Just remember the Newbie advice and do these key things in every game:
Join and play with your squad.
Do your job – use your kit equipment to support your team. Especially medical and ammunition supply.
Spot the enemy.
Follow orders, give orders if you are squad leader.
Play the objectives. Attack or defend flags or M-COMs.
If you are the last one alive in your squad, try to stay alive. But remember that you earn XP by attacking and killing, while deaths are a mere time out with no XP penalty.
To maximize the rate at which you earn points, get into the heat of battle. Try to stick around the areas where the fighting is fiercest. Fortunately, the game objectives tend to be this, giving you bonus points.
Games with more players and areas with concentrated action will give you more opportunities to score points quickly. But almost all maps and game modes offer an aggressive player the opportunity to find intense action and kill the enemy.
Wait, There Is A Big Secret
Medals and Service Stars give a huge amount of bonus XP when you earn them. You get medals for every 50 Ribbons you earn, and you will earn many throughout your career. You get a Service Star for every 100 kills with a weapon. You get nice big ones for each kit and vehicle, every time you earn the last unlock’s XP for it. You also get them for game modes. You can see these on your Stats and Awards pages.
The “secret” part is that XP boosts apply to the bonus XP from Medals and Service Stars. So it is possible to get close to earning one of these, and then work to get another close, and so forth, then use a high XP boost and get a huge multiplied bonus score.
I have mixed feelings about this — you are earning a big bonus on something which you worked on before you activated the boost, and this encourages a degree of micromanagement which can distract you from simply playing the game. But if your goal is to get all the kit and vehicle unlocks, this method doesn’t offer any advantage since you haven’t yet earned the first Service Star — and when you get it, you have achieved your goal.
It is worth keeping in mind if there is a Double XP event or you are planning to use one of the rare 200% boosts and want to get the most value out of it. I love earning higher ranks, but they don’t give any game play advantage.
Play Well, Have Fun, And Your Unlocks Will Come
Concentrate on playing the game as well as you can, have fun, and before you know it, you’ll be unlocking new, useful things left and right. You won’t get everything overnight, but you should get the things you want most for the kits and vehicles you use most fast enough that it won’t feel like a grind.
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.
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.
It has been said by some, including people at DICE, that they don’t understand the appeal of Bad Company. Battlefield:Bad Company 2 had limitations and flaws, especially on the PC compared to previous Battlefield games, but it was and remains popular (games are still played on PC at least). The choice to make it for the consoles might have contributed to its limitations, but it opened up a lot of new possibilities for Battlefield.
For many Battlefield players, this was their first taste of the series. Is it just a matter of our memories being clouded by a good first experience?
Bad Company introduced two big new things to Battlefield. The Frostbite engine with its fantastic destruction. And an actual single player campaign, with a decent, funny, replayable story. Like a good movie, a good campaign story can be worth playing over, just to see it again and also to look for things you missed the first time.
It also introduced the Rush game mode, with maps well designed to work with it. A final, small but critical element, was that its storytelling was open to humor. This carried over to a small degree to its multiplayer as well.
The map scenarios suggested smaller actions, not critical battles but something involving regular soldiers, or even far less than elite forces, fighting just another typical small battle as part of the larger war.
War movies can be divided into two types: serious dramas and action comedies. You can mix the two elements a bit, but most fall into one or the other. If Battlefield 3 and 4 are serious war dramas, and the campaigns definitely had lots of pain and angst, then Bad Company 1 & 2 were the funny, irreverent action stories. The group of bad, misfit soldiers assigned to the worst unit, given the dirty, dangerous assignments no one else would do, who still don’t take their war all that seriously.
We get bad one liners, funny and possibly stupid actions, and all kinds of interactions and events which are, dare I say it, a gold mine (or Rush) for campaign story development. It also opens up the possibilities for the multiplayer experience to include a faster, funnier outlook on war.
Turning It Up To Eleven
Bad Company 2 has some elements of this. But it can be made even better, stronger, faster, in Bad Company 3. We can rebuild it, we have the technology…
OK, maybe not all lines should be “shout outs“, referencing movies, TV shows, other games and media. Those are quick and easy, and often quite funny, but not the only sort of humor which can be fitted into the multiplayer dialog and animations. We see some of this in Battlefield: Hardline, but Bad Company 3 could have even more.
The maps could have more strange destruction and “easter eggs” for players to laugh at. The spray tags (“Kilroy Was Here“) could fit in nicely as war graffiti done by less than serious soldiers. The vehicles could get music — as BF Vietnam had — just as Hardline has. The special, fun animations could be tossed in, just because it fits the theme.
The prevalence for lighter, faster vehicles, and environments open to more destruction, would appeal to all those who love fast action and blowing stuff up. Rush is a special example of this. Because the forces will not fight over a given region for the entire round (unless they lose quickly), there is no need to worry about the consequences of massive destruction leveling the buildings and terrain. We can afford to allow for far more devastation without impairing playability. Maps can be optimized for Rush and high destruction, or as more rigid Conquest arenas with less destruction, without having to compromise to make them ideal for both modes.
Blasting a new path through the obstacles can become part of the strategy of the game. Do you want to reduce cover for both you and the enemy and reach the destination faster, or would you rather retain structures which block line of sight and fire in order to offer paths for a stealthy approach?
That leads to another element – game modes and maps with a focus on fast action and lots of close quarters combat. Battlefield 3 and 4 do offer some maps with good close quarters engagements, but most don’t combine that with lots of small and large scale destruction. We don’t need to be able to level the structures on every map. We just need lots of things which can take damage and explode, or otherwise react in strange and funny ways to bullets and explosives. This helps create the whole high energy, action comedy movie battlefield experience. While Battlefield 4 does a wonderful job of creating intense firefights with a true war movie epic scale and intensity, the shock and power of battle is definitely of the serious, hard, gritty realism side of warfare.
The success of The Expendables (mercenaries rather than soldiers), classics like Stripes and Kelly’s Heroes, and many others shows that there is room for both comedy and serious takes on war. Allowing Battlefield to have both serious and humorous games takes good advantage of that. Plus, hey, we have another place for Battlefield Friends to hangout and contribute.
Other Elements Of Play
Could we grab the Zipline and Grappling Hook from Hardline and incorporate it into Bad Company 3? Would it fit into the playstyle of the game? It some ways, Hardline is like a descendant of Bad Company, so the new BC3 could inherent elements back from it.
One other thing we can showcase is the diversity of the military forces present in the world. Battlefield 4 focuses on the elite forces of the USA, Russia, and China. We don’t see nearly as much of the regular line army equipment even of those forces as could be shown. A more diverse, allied company could perhaps show more factions (with some shared equipment to keep resources in line). The campaign story, of course, could use even more of this.
All in all, this could open up the franchise to new fans, and help keep the old ones happy.
Is There Room In Players Hearts For Another Battlefield Series?
Battlefield: Hardline shows both the positive and negative aspects of this issue. Many people like the new concept and can’t wait to play it. Many others reject it, just as strongly, and won’t buy it or consider it to be a “real” Battlefield game. Another segment, possibly larger than both of the others, is unwilling to pay full price for an interim game installment. After all, they can just keep playing Battlefield 4 while waiting for BF5 to get here.
Right now, we have Battlefield 4. A 2013 release, which took a long time to stabilize and is still in development with new patches (March 2, 2015 saw the latest) and the Community Test Environment (CTE) working to do even more.
We have upcoming:
2015 Winter (March 17 ) — Battlefield: Hardline
2015 Fall — Star Wars Battlefront
2016 Fall — Battlefield 5
This is pretty close to one new release per game series per year. Too many new games risks saturation, where players simply can’t work up the excitement for a new entry because they are still playing the old one, and aren’t done with it yet. The Battlefield series isn’t like some games, where they are made and then abandoned once new versions become available. There are still people playing BF1942 even now, BF2 remains in play, and BF:BC2 is still popular and active. And of course, there are many players still active with BF3. Most of these also have Battlefield 4, so this isn’t just a matter of refusing to upgrade to the latest and greatest game in the series. The old games have fine maps and features, tend to have the worst bugs ironed out, and are still just as much fun as ever.
Activision has done this with some success with the Call Of Duty series. The releases have tended to alternate genres, but since COD:MW2, have all been modern era (or near future for COD:AW), and some have found the annual release schedule producing games which end up being, in essence, pretty much like the previous ones with very minor improvements or changes. Of course, there are differences, but not in ways which create the excitement of opening up new game styles or environments. COD 4 (MW) remains actively played, but some of the others since then have little online presence. One positive of this “same old game” is that the game engine is fairly well tested and stable.
Players of Battlefield 4 can appreciate that advantage. But we also can appreciate the appeal of a game maker trying to innovate and push the limits of what is possible for the hardware and the network, as well as to try new ideas and elements to incorporate into their games. In part, Battlefield 4 suffered from sticking to the schedule, to make it a launch day release for the new consoles. But we’ve seen with Hardline that they are not rigidly stuck to fixed release dates, and can give the developers time to make each title in the series with all the time and attention it deserves. With three series in development and a three year cycle, this should avoid the overly-rushed development issues which hit BF4.
So where does Bad Company 3 fit in? It is an alternate modern military game to Battlefield 5, and that means its release really shouldn’t overlap that very much. With a three year cycle, it could fit in around the halfway mark (Spring 2018), assuming we see Hardline resume in 2017. It would parallel the Star Wars series, but as that is Sci Fi action it wouldn’t necessarily be in conflict for players, who would either only play one in any case or have no problem having both. We should expect a good two years of active play life for any game in the Battlefield series, and this would give it space without clashing strongly with its more serious counterpart, Battlefield 5 (and 4).
In Conclusion
Does Bad Company 3 sound like fun? That is the core thing, and I believe that there is a strong place for comedic action games in our world of serious Battlefield warfare. The key is to make its identity even stronger, to make sure that it isn’t just a cheap knockoff of BF4 (or BF5), without enough character to be more than just an oversized DLC. If it is just the equivalent of new map packs, we may as well see more than 5 DLC sets per year rather than whole new games, with new engines and bugs to fix. No, it needs to be its own game, with its own style of soldier advancement and its own choices about weapons, vehicles, playstyles and game modes.
The first week of February 2015, while many of us were trying out Battlefield Hardline, CTE was running the test version of the upcoming retail version patch for Battlefield 4. It is described as a “Winter” patch, and for us in the northern hemisphere, winter has only three weeks left. With Hardline slated for release March 17, 2015, and a logical presumption that you wouldn’t want to roll out a major patch and a new release the same week, that doesn’t leave much time before everyone will get to see this latest improvement for the game.
Update: You will all see this soon, but the patch date is March 3, two weeks before Hardline.
In March, we’ll deploy what we call the Winter Patch, polishing things like netcode and soldier collision. This update will also tweak one of our competitive game modes, Squad Obliteration. Fast-paced and hugely focused on team work, this will become the lead competitive game mode for Battlefield 4.
In case you haven’t had the chance to try it yourself yet, Squad Obliteration features two five-player teams fighting for possession of a bomb on the map. Your goal is to destroy two out of three enemy bases with these bombs to win. Our ambition with Squad Obliteration is to create something fast and challenging for the players and an entertaining experience for those who watch the matches.
Now, those of us who have played on CTE have a better feel for what that “polishing” actually means. For everyone else, it is much more impressive than the short description makes it sound.
Netcode. What a confusing term, since what it means to players is anything where the game world’s approximation of reality — in terms of weapon fire, damage, physics, etc. — is mismatched between players and someone gets hurt (usually fatally) in the game when everything they saw said that they should have been unharmed. Or at least, harmed less.
The first initiative of the Community Test Environment (CTE, http://cte.battlelog.com/bf4/) was the game update rate improvements, which produced immediate results. We are almost a year later with CTE, and the amount and quality of the changes that have come from that project have been impressive. This latest patch will have the improvements made between the last patch (Final Stand, November 18,2014) and now.
Look at the change list! There is a lot of stuff there. This Winter Patch will probably have at least as long a list.
Key netcode fixes:
A very big one — the delayed HUD health update bug. If hit with this bug, the player HUD won’t show the actual health of the player, won’t show the damage indicators, and will cry when dying from minor damage when at (apparent) full health — because the player’s actual health is much lower, possibly with 1 HP remaining. From the enemy’s point of view, it can be bad as well, with a clear hit failing to produce any effect on the target — at least, until the next damage update.
This issue seems entirely fixed in CTE, and will be in the patch. One major cause of “wrongful death” rage in the game will be eliminated.
Improvement to the “burst fire” impact where network packet delay would cause a stream of bullets to be resolved (from the view of the target) as if it were one large hit. The engine should show every projectile impact in sequence, even with network delays.
High frequency updates improved for enemies in field of view.
Overall bandwidth use improved. This makes a lot of the network delay problems go away simply because there is plenty of time for the server and player (client) program to deal with them.
Lots of fixes with regard to soldier motion and environmental changes (like explosions and trees moving).
And perhaps more, as gleaning just how much was improved just from the ongoing CTE patch updates can be hard to pin down.
“Soldier collision” doesn’t sound like anything special. But the CTE developers have been trying to fix every element on every map where the game world’s physics doesn’t work as expected. Invisible walls, impassable objects, rocks that trip you to death, getting “stuck” on pebbles, and any remaining “glitch spots” where players can go to inaccessible locations. These are also sources of frustration in play. Invisible objects blocking fire can appear to be a netcode issue stopping hits from registering, but though the cause is different they are no less frustrating to “hit”.
Helicopters gain maneuverability, with improved flight handling. This is especially good for the Attack Helicopter, which should be agile. Soldier camo now persists between rounds. Footstep sounds will be much clearer, making it easier to hear enemies running near you (and add increased benefits to stealthy movement).
There will be other things included in the patch, but we will probably have to wait for details on many of them. Things tested in CTE are not always incorporated into a patch because they are still in testing. No need to inflict not-quite-working changes on everyone. That is what CTE is meant for, finding and fixing things.
But there are also game improvements and additions, as well as fixes.
First, the UI enhancements. There are a lot here, you’ll want to check them all out. The deploy screen shows more information about spawn locations and the status of your squad mates. A big one for some will be the new HUD and Optic color customization. If you find the look of your tank’s HUD hard to read, or the color of your red dot sight isn’t attractive, you now can change it. Dead soldiers show up in a different color in the scoreboard.
Squad Obliteration is improved for all maps, and should offer everyone a nice game mode for smaller, competitive matches. It is good to see new features added to the game, well after release and not as part of a paid-for DLC.
A Whole Lot Going On In CTE
The Community Map Project gives the whole CTE community a chance to help put together a brand new map for Battlefield 4. This map will be released for free to all players when it is completed.
All new developments in Battlefield 4 will be produced and tested entirely within the CTE community. That includes any additional new maps, game modes, and other new content which could be added to the game.
There are two big “Prototyping” initiatives in development. First, and one that a lot of players will appreciate, is the anti-Headglitching fix. What is headglitching? When your enemy is behind cover with only his head visible, but still able to shoot at you, making return fire difficult if not impossible. The “glitch” happens because your enemy doesn’t see the cover blocking fire, and may think that they are exposed to return fire normally. Many FPS games suffer from this, because the both player and weapon models “see” through the eyes in the head — rather than shooting from the weapon itself. In the open, this has no effect. Making it work for all weapons and circumstances is a big project, but it is active for many weapons in CTE and will be completed.
Second, and one which will affect game play even more, is the air vehicle and anti-air weapon physics model changes. There are also changes to all vehicles, in an attempt to make the game physics feel more real, and better balance for anti-vehicle weapons, especially rockets. One huge change is the elimination of the “magic” best turn speed (313) for jets. This brings it back more like in BF2, where the choice between speed and turning was much more complex, with no single, optimal speed. I personally think that the changes are great, but they will continue testing in CTE until all aspects are tweaked and balanced well.
If you want to join CTE, you must have Premium for the game, and a PC. CTE uses an entirely separate installation of Battlefield 4, with all DLCs included (thus Premium). Your soldier experience isn’t carried over from BF4, so you start over again. But since CTE has all items unlocked, the rank up is more for show (and to test the battle reports and assignment tracking) than to get tools to use in the game. The install size is a little smaller than the base BF4 game, but it still needs about 50GB of free space to be safe (28 GB download, 34 install, 3/3/15).
Sign up at http://cte.battlelog.com/bf4/. Note that CTE has very frequent patches — two a week more often than not. About 26 patches between November 2014 and February 2015 (current).
CTE is testing a new version of Siege Of Shanghai — Infiltration of Shanghai. The night version of the map isn’t just a change in lighting, replacing the sunlit scene with a darker version. The vehicles are changed to fit the new scenario (and work better at night), the lights which are present are made destructible, and they added blackouts (city lights go dark) and misty fog to enhance the atmosphere. The change in visibility also requires a change in spotting distances — otherwise, line of sight and 3D spotting would make the whole “can’t see anyone in the dark” element pointless. The Pearl Market map was presented as a Halloween special event for CTE, with night lighting including additional destroyable lanterns (and ghosts). More maps will receive the night treatment, and become available for everyone to play when complete.
The Unknown Future Before Us
The current CTE projects don’t include everything which may be developed for Battlefield 4. Remember the polls about favorite maps of past Battlefield games? The possibility of a “Third Assault” set of DLC maps remaking some of these remains out there, and a logical choice to continue development. Conversions should be easier than making maps from scratch, and the art and level design team has to be kept busy.
Ranked matchmaking with stats could come to Battlelog and BF4. The new squad game modes — Obliteration and Squad Conquest — offer more room for small groups of players to get together for competition with persistent results. Even without the stat keeping, the new game modes are always appreciated.
Adapting game modes to all maps. Capture The Flag is popular but not available on many current maps. Chain Link is only on one DLC, while the game mode is a decent variant of domination on conquest-sized maps. And while Air Superiority doesn’t need more scenery, what could it hurt to have some anyway?
There was discussion of adding alternate versions of TDM and Domination game modes, which share the same smaller versions of the full map. By providing a TDM2 selection, a 2nd play area can be carved out on the existing map, adding variety for matches and doubling choices without actually requiring full new maps.
What else? Anything that the CTE community can come up with. We don’t know what will be possible until we try it.
When musicians, especially rappers, take elements from other songs to use in their own nobody calls it cheating. It is stealing, though, if they don’t give credit and pay for it. In gaming, cheating is breaking the rules, and is unsportsmanlike at the very least. But some hacking goes beyond that into the realm of cyber crime.
This new year (2015) has seen a new, larger crop of hacking cheaters in BF4. We’ve seen more blatant, obvious, unrepentant hackers than ever before. EA and DICE are working to implement stronger anti-cheat and ban methods, but so far the hack creators are still ahead. Hardware ID bans escalate the risk of hacking software use but don’t really stop it. For games which are either free or very cheap, it may be the only way to stop users from making new accounts. Battlefield 4 isn’t free, as such — but the Game Time system allows players a chance to play it free for a week, and nothing stops a hacker from just making new Origin accounts to continue play.
Hardware ID bans, even if they work, don’t address the core problem, though, which is catching them in order to ban them in the first place. Fairfight and Punkbuster seemed to be doing a decent job at stopping obvious hackers until recently. The anticheat methods may still be working, perhaps a little more slowly, but don’t do anything to deter hackers who aren’t losing any money for each new account they make. Still, if they caught them more quickly, it would make them work harder and get less use out of each new account (which would start over at rank 0 again).
In effect, hackers are stealing copies of Battlefield 4 and cheating without risk or cost. Is there anything that DICE or EA can do about while still allowing the Game Time access for free testing of new games?
I like the idea of Game Time. Like Steam’s free weekends, it gives us a chance to actually try full games, not demos, and have them long enough to judge whether we like them or not. EA just has to do something, and sooner than later, to stop them from being abused.
I wouldn’t mind if Game Time required at least one paid-for game to be on the account before it could be used. There are cheap games available, but making it cost something to get a new account to hack with might deter some people. Plus it allows the possibility to ban payment accounts too, and that might limit them even more.
Game Time accounts could be flagged (in Origin/Battlelog) so that users would be open to special scrutiny for cheat detection. An honest player isn’t going to do anything in one week to even look like they might be cheating.
Game Time could require confirmed identity for login verification. Overall, Origin’s default security doesn’t do enough to stop account hackers from hijacking accounts, or link the account to some real world ID (Phone #, credit card #, whatever else works) to ensure that user identities and accounts are linked and protected.
Short Term Defense
Game Time is the base game only, no DLC, no Premium. You can avoid any player using it simply by choosing servers with DLC maps in their rotation. This isn’t ideal, but it can save you some frustration until and if EA and DICE can remedy this problem. Servers with active admins are also good, as they can kick or ban obvious hackers before they disrupt the game too much.
I would think it would be boring to play using a program which makes the game pointlessly easy and eliminates the need for any skill, but game cheating hackers obviously don’t think that way. They don’t impress anyone with their “skills” either, since everyone can quickly spot anyone using obvious hacks. Even subtle ones raise suspicion. Part of the appeal of Battlefield 4 (and other similar games) is building up your in game achievements, and perhaps gaining a reputation on line as a good player. Or at least a fun one.
Record and report. The motto of a MW3 clan I belonged to, Ban Hackers. Even though the reports aren’t handled instantly, the EA anti-cheat team does deal with them in time and will act on them. Reporting a suspected hacker doesn’t take long.
Hijacking: Real World Game Piracy
While stealing Game Time accounts for unlimited play and cheating is bad, hijacking other player accounts — ones where we paid for the games — in order to use and abuse those accounts is even worse. This happens in BF4, but it is far worse apparently in FIFA 15 (and the earlier games), because of the transfer market. In those games, in game resources can be traded with other players, and there is a market — against EA TOS — online to purchase items with real money. EA is working to deal with that as well, and it can have fallout on Battlefield players like me. Hackers hijack accounts to make purchases with the owner’s money, and if the account has game items of value, to steal them (by trading them to other accounts).
Even without that issue, having your account hijacked risks a hacker using your game to play and cheat, and get you banned. Far better to make sure that your account is secured before that happens.
Game Accounts Never Die
A lot of players leave a game and don’t play for a time. Sometimes, we quit using an account for years — either making a new one or stopping play altogether. That account remains accessible and usable, which is fine when we decide to come back and play. It isn’t so good if a hacker gains access to it when we are no longer active, and exploits it without our knowledge. People have come back to play Battlefield only to discover that they are now banned, despite not playing for an extended time.
I hadn’t played any games on Battle.net for a few years, but this year got back into it. I went to make a new account, and discovered that I couldn’t: I already had one. I fired it up and everything worked OK, so I guess either their security works or I got lucky.
When the Battlefield Hardline Beta came out recently, I decided to try the EA.com account we used on our oldest computer with Bad Company 2. The older Battlefield games didn’t use Origin, but did have an online account. Turns out that all old EA.com accounts are also Origin accounts as well, and ours worked fine for that. No payment information was saved on it, and it had (at that time) no Origin games on it either. All the older games, even though installed on the PC, aren’t automatically registered in Origin – nor do they require it. It saved me from making a new account, and gave us one more PC to use for Origin games if we want that, so no need to clutter things up with more game accounts which will never be used again.
If you haven’t checked up a game account you once used, especially one which is from a site like Origin or Steam which has online purchases, you may want to do that, and make sure the account is still secure.
So that makes it official, the retail copies are in production. Most of us on PC are going digital download, so that isn’t as big a milestone, and patches can be expected for any online game.
There isn’t much true “new” information about the release. The developers have applied the results of the Beta and made some changes, and have the completed game ready to go for us. We will need to wait and see just what changes were made between the Beta and retail, but I suspect much of it will match the last day patch during the Beta.
What there are questions about are the Pre-Order and Deluxe bonus weapons unlocked from special Battlepacks included with either. For a Pre-Order from Origin (or any order of Deluxe), you get the Versatility Battlepack plus three Gold Battlepacks (at one per week). If you order Deluxe (pre or otherwise), you get seven more Gold Battlepacks (10 total), and the Precision and the Suppression Battlepacks. We had a chance to see Gold Battlepacks in the Beta, and shouldn’t expect surprises there. So what is in the other packs?
You also get an XP Boost and weapon camo in each of these, but it is the additional weapon which is the bigger deal. All are for the Operator kit. So here is the key question, and a possible answer:
@AsthmaBlows Those weapons are exclusive for the Deluxe edition.
Now that sounds definitive. But we know from BF3 that the supposedly exclusive weapons became available to everyone after release. Also, though not purchasable in the Beta, it isn’t unreasonable to assume that there will be a way to get them without either preordering or getting Deluxe. If there will be another way to get them, we have no clue as yet as to how hard it will be. In terms of balance, people did get to try them out during closed play sessions, and I don’t believe that any of them are going to be clearly superior to the other weapons available (four carbines and four assault rifles for Operator kit).
What we know for sure is that you will get these extra guns unlocked when you start play, which will improve your choices greatly for the Operator kit. The other kits get no special offering here, but the XP Boosts should help them too. I can’t tell you how much that will be worth, compared to waiting and earning them in game (if that is possible). But I’ll make a quick summary of your choices if you’ve decided to get Hardline.
Digital Deluxe Edition: $69.99 US. Get all three weapon Battlepacks and 10 Gold, whether preordered or purchased later.
Regular Edition, not prepurchased: $59.99, no bonus items.
Origin Preorder Regular Edition: $59.99, Versatility (ACW-R) and 3 Gold.
Wait until it goes on sale. Can’t say how long or what price, but you’ll trade saving money for not playing when everyone else starts.
So are you going to buy it? Here is a quick checklist to help with your decision.
Do you have the money? Can you afford it, without someone yelling at you?
Did you like the Beta? Do you want to play more?
How many hours did you play? Do you think you’ll play this game enough hours to get your money’s worth? ( I estimate this at 60-80 hours minimum, a number easy to reach if you play the game much over the course of a year)>
Bonus Value: Will you play and enjoy the single player game? For a Battlefield game, this is a bonus since multiplayer is the main focus, but if true it definitely increases the time you’ll spend playing the game and having fun.
For us on PC, we are going to have to wait an additional four weeks to get this game, The release date was pushed back from March 24 to April 14, 2015. That means that rather than having one week between Hardline’s release and GTA V, there are now five weeks. On the plus side, the new multiplayer Heists should be tested and ready by then. Based on Beta playtime, it wouldn’t be hard to hit 60+ hours of Hardline gaming during that time.
That should be enough time to see if this game will hold up as a good alternative to playing BF4 or other FPS games. And post-release, we may get more information about its future and what both developers and players will make of it.
Weapon attachments are unlocked only by kills and battlepacks. Each 10 kills will unlock a new attachment, until you’ve unlocked all the standard attachments for the weapon. After that, you’ll unlock Weapon Battlepacks every 50 kills, until you get all of those. Weapon Battlepacks will contain all of the alternative attachments available for that weapon, plus other random items, so you always unlock everything for your favorite gun simply by shooting and killing with it. Other Battlepacks can also contain weapon attachments, but you can’t control what weapon and attachment you will get.
The earliest attachments available for most weapons tend to be the most useful. That’s good, you don’t have to wait long before you get things that make it easier to use your chosen weapon.
Weapon classes are ranked up only by points earned from firing the weapon. This includes kills, of course, but also assists, suppression, and any bonus points (head shots, avenger, comeback, etc.) earned from a kill. XP Boosts also increase weapon class XP. Ranking up in general comes easier when you know what things give you extra points, but for weapons it truly comes down to simply using the weapon to kill the enemy.
Sniper Rifles have a special kill bonus, the Marksman award for a head shot kill at 50 or more meters. The longer the range, the higher the bonus score. The Marksman Ribbon requires 250 meter head shots (but you can also score it with cumulative shots above 50 meters — 5 50 meter shots would count). These reward the difficult long range shots, and can make it a little easier to rank up Sniper rifles because you tend to fire far fewer shots than with most other weapons per game.
I won’t go over each individual attachment in detail, but I will cover some quick categories which are most helpful to learn.
Barrel Attachments
Suppressors: There is one generic model and three others, one for each nationality. All work exactly the same way. This gives you three times the chance to score one from a Battlepack for a given weapon. They stop your weapon fire from making you appear on the map due to reduced sound. The weapon loses bullet velocity (to around 300m/s), and there is a 20% increase in spread for fire when hip firing while standing still.
The other barrel attachments range from simple to complex effects.
Flash Hider: Reduces the muzzle flash, both for your and your enemies. No other combat effect.
Compensator: 25% less horizontal recoil, 33% more shot spread (less accuracy).
Muzzle Brake: 10% less vertical (upward) recoil, 12.5% more shot spread.
Heavy Barrel: 30% more vertical (upward) recoil. 50% less starting spread, 7.5% less spread increase, 16.7% less moving spread penalty. Overall, improves accuracy considerably at the cost of much more recoil.
Underbarrel Attachments
Underbarrel Grips: There are six of these, but only three types. Three are standard unlocks, the others are obtained from Battlepacks.
Stubby Grip, Potato Grip: Reduces the automatic fire accuracy penalty by 15%, that is, 15% less spread increase per shot. Note that these are often paired with the barrel attachments which affect accuracy as compensation.
Ergo Grip, Vertical Grip: Reduces the moving fire accuracy penalty by 50%.
Angled Grip, Folding Grip: 33% less first shot recoil multiplier.
You are likely to choose one of these, depending on how you plan to use that weapon. Help accuracy, moving fire, or recoil?
There are two other underbarrel options: The Underslung Rail for some Assault Rifles, of use if you use either the Grenade Launcher or M26 Shotguns to speed up switching to them. Or the Bipod, which offers much lower recoil and greater accuracy when deployed, but locks you into a fixed position.
Sniper Rifles don’t use this category, but give you the choice between the Bipod and the Straight Pull Bolt, which gives you the ability to reload without having to quit aiming down the sights (and zooming your view out).
Accessories
Laser Sight accessories: All have the exact same game effect, 25% less hip fire spread unless standing and moving, when it reduces spread 33%. The color and pattern may affect visibility to the enemy, and how effectively the beam can blind them, but has no effect on weapon accuracy. Note that the laser beam can be visible at a long range and thus give your presence away. You can switch it off, then switch it on immediately when in combat and gain its benefits. The laser beam will mark exactly where your gun barrel is aimed at, which makes accurate hip fire much easier.
Optics, Lights, and other attachments don’t affect weapon performance. The effects of those are fairly straightforward. Flashlights give light for you, make you easier to see, and can blind enemies. The Tactical Light can be turned on and off, while the Laser/Light Combo switches between the two.
The Magnifier (2X) can be used on most guns with 1X Close Range Optics. It allows a higher zoom as an alternative.
Sniper Rifles get some special accessories.
Variable Zoom (14X). Adds a 14X magnification as an alternative for any Long Range Optic. Cannot be used with shorter range optics.
Rangefinder. Adds a built in rangefinder which will show the range to target, both on the attachment and in the scope when aiming down the sights.
Optics
The standard optics fall into two types of close range optics and two of medium range.
Red Dot Sights: US Reflex, RU Kobra, CN Coyote. 1x with simple red marker for the aiming point. Fast and easy to use.
Holographic Sights: US Holo, RU PK-A, CN HD-33. 1x with open lit ring for aiming point. Good for seeing the target at moderate ranges.
3.4X Fast Medium Range Sights: US M145, RU PK-A, CN PRISMA. Moderate magnification for medium range shooting.
4X Medium Range Sights: US ACOG, RU PSO-1, CN JGM-4. Highest magnification medium range sight.
All guns also have Iron Sights — the built in metal sight on the barrel. The accessory Canted Iron Sights gives any gun the option to use an unmagnified iron sight, a useful choice combined with a long range sight which isn’t as useful at short range.
There are two night vision sights available for most guns from Battlepacks:
IRNV 1X Green Infrared Night Vision
FLIR 2X Black And White Infrared for longer range.
Sniper Rifles are the only weapons which get Long Range Optics:
CN CL6x (6x), RU PKS-07 (7x), US Rifle Scope (8x) — the standard sniper optics.
Ballistic (40x) – a very long range scope available as a later unlock
Hunter (20x) – another long range scope available from Battlepacks.
Note that with all of these, the Variable Zoom (14X) attachment offers an alternate zoom, but with the same scope design for reticle marks.
Configuration Choices
Many attachments work well together, and you should always consider how your chosen attachments will interact.
The Angle Grip and Heavy Barrel work well together, reducing the first shot recoil penalty without reducing the accuracy gained with the Heavy barrel. The Stubby Grip not only compensates for the Muzzle Brake penalty, but retains some of its base accuracy advantage. It also balances the Compensator penalty well, especially for weapons with high, unruly horizontal recoil, reducing the accuracy loss while also reducing recoil. The Laser Sight And Ergo Grip work well together to improve moving and hip fire accuracy.
Overall, Battlefield 4 offers a huge range of customization options for your weapons. While changing appearance won’t affect how the weapon performs in battle, it is a nice touch to personalize your weapon. All weapons can have a choice of paint, and will be decorated with your custom emblem once you’ve chosen it.
When you start your multiplayer career in Battlefield 4, you only have one choice of primary weapon for each kit, and a single secondary weapon. These are perfectly good weapons to use, both when starting out and later, but there are secret weapons available to new players.
OK, maybe not totally secret. The single player campaign has a bunch of assignments and unlocks available within it. There are dogtags to collect during play — some will be easier to find than others. The two knives and the M412 REX pistol are unlocked early in the campaign. The last three guns sadly require you to reach the end of the campaign and win. Doubly (or triply) sad, you must play the last chapter and do all three endings in order to get them all. The chapter is mercifully short, but let’s just say that I’d rather have seen the ending only once.
The campaign takes about five or six hours to play through. It is moderately enjoyable itself, isn’t a bad introduction to the game mechanics and gun handling in the game, so it can’t hurt to play it in any case. But doing so opens up your weapon choices for the start of your multiplayer games.
Before I go over the merits of these available starting weapons, I’ll mention that there is another way to get weapons unlocked early: Shortcut kits. Pay money, get things unlocked immediately. My advice on these is DON’T waste your money. It doesn’t take that long to do either the kit or weapon unlocks during normal play. None of the starting weapon choices are bad, and you can do well with any of them. And for weapons, a better option which only takes a little time is to get Premium and unlock the DLC weapons. You must reach rank 10, but that doesn’t take long at all if you play much, and you get all the DLC maps and other bonuses, a much, much better deal for the money. If you are just starting Battlefield 4 now, you will have a lot of easy assignments to complete with the DLC which will give you more than enough options in each weapon class.
The Secret Weapons Of The Campaign
So, back to the weapons you will have just starting out.
First, the Assault kit.
QZB-95-1 Assault Rifle – Chinese standard issue assault rifle, the Type 95 is an easy to use bullpup (magazine behind trigger, thus shorter and easier to manage), alternative for the Russian AK-12. The AK-12 is the latest incarnation of the Russian Kalashnikov assault rifle. At the time of BF4’s release, it was slated to be the replacement for the older AK-74, but it is on hold for budget reasons. It remains open for the future as the new standard infantry rifle in Russia. (Update: As of early 2015, it has been accepted for trials by the Russian Army).
Better at shooting on the move and from the hip than the AK-12, the QZB-95-1 has the same RPM as it (per symthic.com) at 650, higher bullet velocity, and lower vertical recoil. The first Optic unlocked for it is the Chinese Coyote red dot sight, a broad, open-framed sight well suited for fire while moving.
Note: There are three different national variants of each basic Optic type in the game — American, Chinese, and Russian. Weapons are provided with only one nationality for its normal unlocks achieved by kills, with the others available in Battlepacks.
The AK-12 is more accurate when aiming down sights (ADS) while standing still, and reloads faster. It also offers a hidden fire rate boost, when you fire in burst mode rather than full auto: the RPM increases to 750. In Battlefield 4, burst fire also negates the first shot recoil multiplier during the burst, making it easier to keep all the bullets in a burst on target. Its carbine cousin, the AKU-12, also shares this feature. The first sight is the Russian Kobra red dot sight, which is well suited with its open inverted T reticle for precise longer range shots.
Support kit gets the M249 LMG, the US version of the Belgian FN minimi. A fine LMG, previously known (and still popularly called) the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon) by the US army. Alternative for the U100 MK5 Ultimax, and a very different sort of weapon. 200 round magazine vs 45, higher fire rate (800 RPM vs 590), far worse moving and hip fire accuracy, more recoil, terribly long reload time (6.2 seconds vs 2.75 for the U100 with rounds remaining). The M249 does have a nice advantage of no first shot recoil (shared with most open bolt LMGs), making tap fire great for increasing accuracy. The first optic unlocked is the US 1x Holo sight, which has a clear red ring to highlight the target, good for medium range shooting.
The Ultimax 100 (U100 MK5) is a Singapore-made light support weapon, with the advantage of very low recoil for a weapon of this class. Even better, the recoil is equal left and right, so in practice you only need to compensate for the vertical rise. This makes it easy to keep on target at moderate ranges. It comes from the start with the Chinese HD-33 holographic sight, which is a nice touch.
These two weapons are near the opposite scale of the LMG types. The U100 MK5 favors aggressive action, acting much like a somewhat larger assault rifle. The M249 is harder to use for accurate close range combat, but has so much ammo you can fire all day (almost) without running out.
The Engineer kit gets the P90 PDW, made by FN Herstal from Belgium. It uses the same ammo as the FN57 (FN Five-Seven) pistol, a unique type of light but powerful ammunition. It is the alternative for the MX4 Beretta Storm PDW. Bigger magazine (50 vs 30), faster fire rate (900 vs 830), lower damage per bullet (21 vs 24 up close, 11.2 vs 12.1 at range) and thus very slightly slower to kill up close, but better at medium and longer ranges. Has much better muzzle velocity. It is very much better at hip fire accuracy, and is among the best PDWs to use fired from the hip, especially using the stop, stand and shoot method, where you stop moving briefly to fire but don’t aim down sights. It is an unusual looking, compact boxy weapon. It is the weapon chosen by the Stargate SG-1 team and used throughout the series, and also the weapon of choice for Karrin Murphy in the Dresden Files.
The MX4 (Mx4 Beretta Storm) PDW is a more conventional compact PDW, and is slightly more accurate than the P90, kills a bit faster up close, and its recoil is a bit easier to manage, especially with burst or tap fire. This makes it excellent for close range, run out and shoot engagements. It starts with the US Reflex red dot sight for its optic, which is very nice. If you can score head shots at short ranges, its higher bullet damage will reward you with even faster kills than the P90. Like most PDWs, superior fire rate and good damage coupled with decent hip fire accuracy will let you defeat most other automatic weapons in close quarters combat.
For sidearms, you get M412 REX Pistol — a 6 shot .357 magnum revolver, built by Russia for the export (R-ex) market (as the MP412 REX) but was barred USA sales and thus few were made — as alternative for the Sig Sauer P226 pistol (15 bullets in magazine plus one in chamber, for 16 rounds available). The high damage and potential for one hit kill headshots makes this a satisfyingly threatening sidearm, but if you miss you may not get a chance for a second shot.
The M412 Rex does 56 damage up close, and its ammunition gives it the damage multiplier of the bolt action sniper rifles. That means that head shots are much more effective, and you can score one hit kills at up to 25 meters, and two hit kills with body hits up to 20 meters. It can score a kill with two head shots at any range, making it (and the later unlocked 44 Magnum) a potentially alternative long range “sniping” weapon for any kit, if you are accurate enough. The heavy ammo has another advantage: it will more easily detonate explosives like C4 and mines, and can be used as an “Engineer’s Remote Trigger” to set off explosives for traps. As a side bonus, the kill card will show the pistol as the killing weapon, not the explosive. The M412 has a unique reload style, with the revolver breaking open to extract and insert the new cartridge. It just looks cool.
Revolvers have a number of disadvantages over other pistols. All currently in the game hold only 6 shots, and reloads are not faster if rounds remain so reloading is slower than with magazine fed weapons. The fire rate is relatively slow, making followup shots especially hard in close combat. Last, the open frame makes suppressors impossible, so you cannot operate on the map without the sound of the weapon making your presence known — as in, audio spotting will mark your position on the map when you fire.
The P226 Sig is a widely used 9mm semiautomatic pistol. It does 27 damage per bullet, and so takes four hits to kill up close — or two head shots if you can manage that — but damage drops off quickly with range. It is fairly accurate with low recoil, and much easier to keep on target for successive shots than the M412 REX. You have enough ammo to take out three opponents with body hits, and may have some left over. Its faster reload makes it a much safer sidearm to use in close engagements, where you may get 1.25 seconds of safety to pull that off. It is used by Frank in the movie Red, and also Sarah’s personal weapon in Red 2.
My Thoughts
I played the campaign when BF4 was initially released, in part to unlock these weapons, and also to deal with the early release downtime issues which hit multiplayer. As I’d played both the Alpha and Beta, I was also curious to try weapons I hadn’t used before in Battlefield 4. So, of these weapon choices, I went with the AK-12 first, but still used and enjoyed the QZB-95-1 later. The AK-12 was rebalanced from the Beta so I wanted to try it out again, and also I just jumped into play using it and wanted to continue.
I’d used the U100 MK5 in the Alpha and wanted to see how the M249 handled. I really liked it in other games, as a large magazine, high fire rate, decently accurate LMG. Both are fine weapons, but they play so differently that it isn’t a comparison between near equals but rather more like cousins.
With the P90, as an SG-1 and Dresden Files fan it is hard to resist in any case. It is a fun gun to use in most games, and BF4 is included. Again, using the alternative in the Beta meant I had a chance to try something different.
The revolvers in BF4 were changed from BF3, and I wanted to see the changes. I and many others didn’t like some of them, but fortunately, if you play now you don’t have to deal with that. The handling is closer to BF3 and they still retain the sharp balance choice between high power and sustained fire. I like the advantage that the M412 REX gives you with precision fire, and also like revolvers in general for sidearms for Engineer and Recon kits (to detonate explosives and supplement their primary weapons).
Just comparing two weapons at a time highlights the diversity and balance that BF4 gives us in our choices in the game. As you continue your career you’ll find many more choices to make, and often it can be hard to appreciate the advantages of different weapons without trying them yourself.
The Other Early Weapons
The Recon Kit has only one starting weapon option: The CS-LR4 is a Chinese bolt action sniper rifle made by Norinco. It comes with the 14x Variable Zoom accessory attachment and a Bipod, and the Chinese CL6X 6x Sniper Scope as its starting optic. It has a moderately slow fire rate, but excellent bullet velocity. Overall, this makes it a very good weapon for learning how to snipe in Battlefield 4.
The weapons available for early unlocks don’t offer you a clearly superior alternative. The first one you unlock is the US M40A5. It has a much lower bullet velocity (480m/s vs 630m/s), but can be fired quite a bit faster and is faster to reload. This makes it a bit easier to use in close combat where the follow up shots are more critical. It comes with the US 8x Rifle Scope. The higher magnification scope can be easier to use at long range, but as the CS-LR4 comes with the Variable Zoom, that isn’t an inherent advantage. Plus, the Variable Zoom is the first attachment you unlock for the M40A5 (and many other Sniper rifles as well)
The next rifle unlocked is the Steyr Scout Elite, the first of two lighter scout snipers in the game (the other is the FY-JS). It also comes with the 8x Rifle Scope. The Scout Elite shoots faster, has much better hip fire accuracy. It reloads faster but has a much smaller magazine (6 vs 11). Most critically, while the bullet velocity is fast the damage drops over range much more quickly, and will not score a one hit kill headshot at long range. And the bullet itself is subject to more drop from gravity over distance. The scout snipers are optimized for closer range action than other sniper rifles, and are a poor choice for long range engagements.
Note: Sniper Rifles all come equipped with a Long Range optic at the start. The Chinese CL6X 6X scope, the Russian PKS-07 7X scope, or the US 8x Rifle Scope. Each has a different reticle (lines and crosshairs) design, and a different outward appearance, but most importantly, they have different magnifications. The change in magnification can be the hardest thing to get used to when changing between optics. All gain the same 14X magnification when used with the Variable Zoom attachment, but they retain their reticle designs. There is also a 40X Ballistic Scope available as a later unlock for all Sniper Rifles, and a 20X Hunter Scope available from Battlepacks. Either one also works with the Variable Zoom, but otherwise, the high magnification is very difficult to use at anything other than very long ranges.
Your other alternatives are the weapons unlockable from the DLCs. The good news is that the CS-LR4 is a very good sniper rifle, and you may feel no compulsion to quickly change to another one right away. But there are other options, in the form of the All Kit Primary Weapons.
The All Kit Weapons
The second kit unlock in Engineer, Support, and Recon kits is a new weapon class which any kit can equip. You will reach this early in your playing career, and this can open options for your soldier when the standard weapon(s) for the kit are unsuited either for the map situation or your current play style or goal.
Carbines are unlocked by playing Engineer. These are shorter versions of the assault rifles, and are suited for combat at all ranges. They are better as a class at moving fire and hip fire than assault rifles, but are worse at longer range. Their versatility makes them a good choice when you don’t know what range you will engage at. For the Engineer, they offer a range advantage over PDWs, but are inferior in close quarters combat.
The Swedish AK 5C is the first Carbine you get, and it is an excellent weapon. It is the Ak 5 or Automatkarbin 5 – not a variation of the Russian AK Kalashnikov rifles, but instead a development of the Belgian FNC. It is the standard issue Swedish assault weapon. It fires at 700 RPM and is accurate with easy to control recoil. The first optic you unlock is the US Reflex red dot sight, which suits its precision well. You may find this (and other) carbines to be a good choice to use for Support and Recon kits, whose weapons are not as well suited for close quarters combat.
Shotguns are unlocked by playing Support. Shotguns work differently from other gun types in Battlefield 4. They can use different types of ammunition, and both the amount of damage and how it is applied is greatly affected by the ammo type. You start with Buckshot. The shotgun fires a group of large pellets, which will spread in a cone (or a deformed cone if using the Duckbill attachment). Up close, all may hit a single target, but over distance you will lose damage not just from the drop in projectile power, but because the pellets will outright miss the target you aim at. They may hit targets standing in the area, and are thus good at doing some damage to a group of enemies at any range. The number of pellets and damage done varies between different shotguns in Battlefield 4.
The QBS-09 is a semi-automatic combat shotgun made by Norinco, and is the Chinese standard issue combat shotgun. It uses 11 pellets in its shells for Buckshot and Flechette (also known as DART) ammo. If all pellets hit up close, it can do 169 damage, more than enough for an instant kill. It only has 5+1 rounds in its magazine, and it fires at up to 230 RPM, but with reasonable aim you can clear a small room of enemies before you have to reload.
Shotgun Slug rounds shoot a single large bullet, which does considerable damage but not enough to kill in one shot unless you get a head shot. They do greater damage (2.35x normal) on head shots.
Flechette rounds do less damage than Buckshot, but are more effective at longer range (both in damage and projectile speed). The Defensive Armor upgrade reduces shotgun Buckshot damage greatly (0.85x multiplier) to chest and arms, while Flechette rounds are not affected at all by the Armor.
The last ammo type are Frag rounds. These do a single hit for relatively small damage — only 20 for the QBS-09 up close — but also create an explosion which does up to 25 damage at any range, in a five meter diameter. These will not score kills without multiple shots unless the target is already wounded, but are good for suppressing an area and damaging closely grouped enemies at range.
The QBS-09 is, like the AK 5C, an excellent weapon in its class and easy to use. Support players will find it another fine choice for close range combat. Buckshot is not easily lethal at longer ranges, but it can still do damage at up to 300 meters. For any kit, shotguns offer a good close quarters battle weapon which is excellent at taking out enemies as you round corners or enter a room.
DMRs (Designated Marksman Rifles) are unlocked by playing Recon. These offer very accurate semi-automatic fire, using Battle Rifle ammo (and often are classed as that type). You can kill a target in three hits at any range, or two shots if one is a head shot. While only the Sniper Rifles get to use the Long Range Optics, the 4x Medium Range Optics available (usually quite early) for these are more than good enough for the typical 50-200 meter ranges these weapons are designed for.
The Kel-Tec RFB is the starting DMR. It offers good hip fire accuracy and bullet velocity, making it a decent choice at all ranges, especially for a new user of DMRs. The US ACOG 4X sight is the first optic unlocked, and is a good choice for long range shooting. Because DMRs all do similar damage over range, the differences between these weapons is subtler and comes down to preference and play style.
For the Recon player, this offers a weapon still suited for longer range fire but easier to use in closer combat situations. The RFB can fire fast enough to kill with hip fire at close range, but will not beat full automatic weapons fire. They offer all kits a precision medium range option if they wish to fight from a distance in combat. Engineers, with the short ranged PDWs, benefit most from this alternative, but any soldier can get good use of this.
Sticking To Your Guns
When you start using a new gun, it can often feel like it will take forever before you will get good at using it. You may even blame the gun for your inability to get kills reliably with it. Plus it takes a little time to unlock the attachments which best suit the weapon. This tends to lead to two reactions.
First, you decide that the gun is bad and switch to a different one as soon as you unlock it. Hey, maybe that is the best thing to do if you really are having a hard time learning to use it.
Second, you decide to keep using just one gun (of a class) even after you’ve scored over 100 kills and have received the nice reward (2000 XP for the service star (every 100 kills) plus a Gold Battlepack for the first star). Why change a good thing?
Both of these choices are suboptimal if you are trying to rank up faster in the game and develop your skills. It really can take a while to understand how to best use a gun, and the satisfaction of making an unruly gun work for you is pretty good. Sticking with a gun until you get the first service star at 100 kills gives you a chance to improve your skill in gun handling, making it easier to pick up other new guns and do well with any weapon. The reward for achieving that is also nice, especially the Gold Battlepack. Earning those more quickly gives you more XP boosts, which makes it easier to advance in the game.
Going above 100 kills with a weapon does unlock other good things for a weapon, and that isn’t a bad thing. You get more attachments, Weapon Battlepacks which will include XP boosts as well, and at 500 kills you get the Weapon Mastery Dog Tag for that weapon. When I go for this, I try to also get the last Weapon Battlepack too (at 510 kills for many weapons) before changing guns.
Going for mastery — over 100 kills — means giving up the earlier access to more Gold Battlepacks, which give greater XP boosts than the Weapon Battlepacks. I’d rather change weapons and rank up faster, but you won’t suffer too much from sticking with a weapon for 410 or so more kills in order to get the rest of its good items. Plus there are some attachments which only come from Battlepacks, and if you really want access to them this is the best way to get them for your favorite gun.
