Trouble On The Battlefield

[ronbo613]

Looks like the problems with Battlefield 4 are pretty serious.

 

[AznAnarchy99]

Looks like the problems with Battlefield 4 are pretty serious.

Bad announcement for investors, good for consumers though.

 

[ronbo613]

As an owner of Battlefield 4, I hope it means that Dice is going to fix the problems with the game quickly. Not so much that they care about the people who have already bought the game, but if they can't offset all the bad publicity due to the game's many issues before Christmas, they are going to lose a lot more money.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Good. Maybe EA will finally learn their lesson. Quality matters. So the next question is, will EA let DICE do what needs to be done and see it through, or are they looking for the first opportunity to say "good enough," at which point DICE gets yanked back off BF4 and shoved into overdrive to play catch-up on the others?

 

[slag]

I beat the game on single player and it was very very fun, much more fun than the COD series. There were no single player problems.

 

[ronbo613]

Most of the problems I encountered were with multiplayer; the game freezing the console requiring a hard reboot, dropped from games and game server issues.
I hope they get it fixed up soon, the game has a lot of potential.

 

[BikeJunkie]

The Xbone version sorely needs an update, as it's WAY behind the updates the PS4 has received. I've actually not had many problems since the first week on PS4. Xbone continues to suck.

 

[EightySix Four]

Yeah, the X1 version is rough. Supposed to get an update this week but I won't touch it until it does...

 

[lupi]

I've only played these a SP only since COD2, so happily going to wait till the price comes done and have plenty of time to wait for the bugs to get cleared.

 

[FallenHero]

Yeah, the X1 version is rough. Supposed to get an update this week but I won't touch it until it does...

Its tough going on there. Random drops, crashes and good luck playing more then 2 matches in a row without doing a reset.

I'm wondering if they even tested the damn game at this point. It's pretty obvious the game was buggy within 30 minutes of me playing and crashing twice in the timespan.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Its tough going on there. Random drops, crashes and good luck playing more then 2 matches in a row without doing a reset.

I'm wondering if they even tested the damn game at this point. It's pretty obvious the game was buggy within 30 minutes of me playing and crashing twice in the timespan.

Yeah, earlier this week it surprised me to hear they were releasing another PS4 patch (that addressed the one-hit-kill bug). Given the state the Xbone version is in, I would think they'd have every resource possible pointed in that direction. The PS4 version has only crashed on me a couple times since that first week or two, and only when I'm exiting a server. There's nothing happening on the PS4 version that I'd classify has critical. Meanwhile, the Xbone version is borked six ways from Sunday.

 

[nephilim2k]

Yhe game was never designed for the PS3 or XB360, and given the sheer volume of crashes and such like prove this. Crashes for the most part on those 2 are due to the GPU not handling it properly

 

[ronbo613]

The game was never designed for the PS3 or XB360, and given the sheer volume of crashes and such like prove this. Crashes for the most part on those 2 are due to the GPU not handling it properly

I have it on the Xbox 360, I've had a few noticeable graphics blowouts, mostly on the single player game, but I think the main problems with the multiplayer game have to do with the game's netcode and network connectivity protocol.
I don't think I've played it more than a few hours when it first came out and there hasn't been much from Dice and Microsoft addressing the problems. EA stock is down, the price of the game with big online vendors like Amazon is down, Steam is giving a seven day refund and all the negative reviews have hurt sales. They are bleeding money big time on this one, doesn't seem like they care.

 

[Arkaign]

I had a tough time with it in Win7, but after putting 8.1 on a spare raid set of 840 Pros, I've had a flawless experience with it (aside from some wed sound bugs from time to time, nothing game-breaking, but odd for sure). I haven't played the console variants, but I do see they are having some serious problems.

I think they should have waited a bit more to make sure the launch was smooth. The trend of releasing games in beta form is really irritating. I blame the public-traded corporate business model of the modern US standard. All they care about is profit NOW, and it looks like it really bit them in the ass this time. The long view is seldom taken. Contrast that with Nintendo, who seems to really play the game with a focus on quality and building trust with people. Their hardware is reliable, and their AAA titles are not buggy crap that needs tons of patches.

 

[CPA]

You'd think EA would have learned it's lesson with SimCity, but nope.

 

[zerocool84]

You'd think EA would have learned it's lesson with SimCity, but nope.

Ehh this is on par if you've been playing Battlefield games for a while. Battlefield 2 was even worse at launch but damn that game was fun to play.

 

[KentState]

The SimCity 5 launch IMO was much worse. At least this game is playable, albeit for a round or so before a crash. Most of the promised features are in the launch version and the first expansion came on time. Overall, Bioware, Maxis and Dice have all gotten black eyes under their new overlord EA.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Ehh this is on par if you've been playing Battlefield games for a while. Battlefield 2 was even worse at launch but damn that game was fun to play.

Sad but true. EA's hands are just as dirty as anyone's, but this is also very much a DICE problem. I don't know if it's a lack of coding talent, a lack of a good development pipeline, a lack of competent QA, but something has always been seriously wrong at that house.

 

[nephilim2k]

Problem is...EA rushed the development. Dice did say that bf4 shouldnt have been released until around January/February as there were too many bugs. It was EA that pushed them for the release, so they did. Now they are getting the flack. EA pushed Dice for a pre christmas release to maximise sales, but in doing so, they forced Dice to release a product that wasnt ready.

Dice said that BF4 had problems with levelution, in that aside from shanghai, every map lags with the levelution being done. Example, operation locker, you bring down the gun tower in the game, and you lag out no matter where you are because it causes issues. Other issues were clipping issues (eg running to a fence panel, or not showing up but still stops you from moving forward), frame issues (1 hit kills registering a bullet over 2-3 frames causing a 1 shot kill) among others.

They also said about the veterans pack which should have registered immediately but had to be pulled because development wasnt done on it. EA knowingly pressed the issue and now Dice, not EA will get the blame.

I kind of hope dice do throw in the towel with EA and release their own titles. They clearly can do great work Bad company 1, 2 and BF3). They just need to not get pushed.

 

[zerocool84]

Problem is...EA rushed the development. Dice did say that bf4 shouldnt have been released until around January/February as there were too many bugs. It was EA that pushed them for the release, so they did. Now they are getting the flack. EA pushed Dice for a pre christmas release to maximise sales, but in doing so, they forced Dice to release a product that wasnt ready.

Dice said that BF4 had problems with levelution, in that aside from shanghai, every map lags with the levelution being done. Example, operation locker, you bring down the gun tower in the game, and you lag out no matter where you are because it causes issues. Other issues were clipping issues (eg running to a fence panel, or not showing up but still stops you from moving forward), frame issues (1 hit kills registering a bullet over 2-3 frames causing a 1 shot kill) among others.

They also said about the veterans pack which should have registered immediately but had to be pulled because development wasnt done on it. EA knowingly pressed the issue and now Dice, not EA will get the blame.

I kind of hope dice do throw in the towel with EA and release their own titles. They clearly can do great work Bad company 1, 2 and BF3). They just need to not get pushed.

Don't get me wrong, Battlefield is one of my favorite series but EVERY Battlefield game is horribly buggy on release, every single one. So they can blame EA on this because they say they rushed them but then they must be rushed on every game release they do because it takes them months after release to get a fully stable game.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Good points. I didn't realize DICE had pleaded with EA. Not surprised though. Just EA being EA. And zerocool is right. This happens every single time (BF3 being a minor exception. It was stable relative to the others, especially compared to BF2 - NIGHTMARE)

 

[nephilim2k]

Dice has admitted that they release buggy games. If they had their way it would be a 3 year release cycle. But instead EA want a 2 year cycle so as not to "lose fans". Also over 3 years, they can release maps/dlc every 6/7 months instead 4 months which end up rushed again.

Ideally they would have 2 years spent on pre dev and dev of the next version of frostbyte, whilst simultaniously working on DLC for current games. Then 1 year building the new games. Instead they are on a 2 year cycle forced by EA, which in turn means massive amounts of bugs happen. I personally would be happy to wait that extra year to have a game that works out of the box.

 

[ronbo613]

Unfortunately, it seems the marketing department, not the developers, decide when these games are released.

 

[BikeJunkie]

Unfortunately, it seems the shortsighted executives trying to appease stockholders, not the developers, decide when these games are released.

Fixed