DICE "Not Moving onto Future Projects" Until BF4 Fixed

That's not how Battlefield works. It's not the kind of game that the community moves on from. There's a Battlefield 1942 server somewhere right now, where 64 players duke it out in the El Alamein desert - and that's a 10+ years old game. There's plenty of people eager to play the *broken* BF4 right now, and there's going to be loads of 'em way past the release of BF5 or BF:BC 3 or BF 2143 or whatever comes next for Battlefield.

Seeing how there's new content scheduled to come out all year, and lots of people have bought into Premium already - you need not fear the game having been abandoned. When I broaden my server search filter, I find hundreds, if not tousands of dedicated servers full of players for PS4 alone.

The worst problems with Battlefield 4 come with Conquest 64, to my experience the other modes suffer from none of the same in-game issues as it. You can have a great time with BF4 right now playing Rush or Obliteration or Domination or what have you, if you are okay with a client crash every now and then. Conquest 64 is pretty bad with sound cutting out and occasional gamebreaking lag (which sometimes seems like a client-side memory leak to me), but even with all that it is enjoyable most of the time.

DICE is an immensely ambitious studio, and as far as online games go, nobody pushes the boundries of what can be done in the online space as far as DICE does - but that comes at a price. Battlefield games suffer from rather wonky launches, and are hampered by lots of bugs and whatnot for the first year or so. BF4 isn't out of the ordinary in that regard, maybe just a tiny bit worse than usual - it's just about time that somebody calls them out on it. On 360 and PS3, the Battlefield games have been the most notoriously unstable games of the generation. Why it only now gains infamy for it baffles me. Frankly though, most of the early day bullshit is part of the charm.

I was there!

I was going to buy BF4 this week, but I'm not any longer due to the widespread reports that no matter how much fun this game is when it works, it doesn't work often enough. By the time EA fix the broken servers & game, I suspect most people will have abandoned/given-up on trying to play it any more and will have moved onto other games instead.

That's only if it doesn't work in certification. If crashing and major network issues don't occur during the course of certification testing, however lenient or stringent it may be, and only occurs in a live game environment with a large user-base post release, EA and DICE should be the ones taking full responsibility.

ever heard of a class action lawsuit? how would you react if you would buy a car and the car just doesn't start every 2 days or so. if this would be a german publisher / game, it would be a shit show already and the Federation of German Consumer Organisations would've stepped in a long time ago, supporting the customers to get refunds or make legal advances against EA.

My guess is that Sony and Microsoft Certification processes were probably lenient because they want to have the strongest launch possible.

And if either Sony or Microsoft don't let it through, the other one will and capitalize on having a strong launch.

AFAIK, It is exactly Certification's job to reject a game if it does not work.

playing on PC. still getting a ton of crashes. can't play shanghai. after 2-5 minutes the game freezes, sometimes even when loading a server with shanghai. other maps are better but the game still crashes every hour of gameplay or so. it is super frustrating, especially when you're playing with your friends and the only thing you're doing is to reconnect.

@sooty: wait so you haven't played the game since the Dec 3 patch, but feel entitled to complain about it?

DICE doesn't have to fix a damn thing if they didn't want to. Ain't never heard about a lawsuit over The Sims being crashy. :-)

Yeah fair enough - it's like the minimum spec required to build a house or building (low). It's just with the console launches and all, now seems like a good time to get things right, as I think Battlefield 4 problems to many people make not just the franchise but the publisher and the new hardware look bad.

I see. Though to be honest, as someone that has done certification testing on console games, it honestly wouldn't surprise me if neither Sony nor Microsoft were aware of the issues present. Or even if they did know, it's not their business to care. Certification testing boils down to a checklist and is heavily focused on whether or not the game in question meets the basic minimum requirements. How the game handles errors, can it be played for X amount of time without encountering game-breaking problems, does saving and loading work like it's supposed to, what happens if you leave the game on overnight, and so on. It is not certification's job to say, "this game is a shit sandwich and you need to spend more time developing it." It is their job to say, "this game meets the minimum standards we have set for certification and release."

@crithon: yea I tried to get into bf3, but it just wasnt a good game IMO this just looks more of the same...

so glad I never gotten into these games, because all of this silliness is just wildly amusing.

They might get praise for this, but how about not releasing a game so broken. I can hardly play the single player without it crashing for no reason at all

Well whatever, guys, our free pistol scope should be available in the game starting today, so all's forgiven.

Oh sorry, bad word choice. I meant Sony and Microsoft. It's pretty lame (to say the least) that they would push this game through cert knowing how broken it is. I definitely don't buy the "We could never have known it was broken until now!" line.

I wouldn't say it's actually embarrassing for peeps who bought the game - but it does suck.

This is why you don't pre-order people (GTA or certain Nintendo titles can be the rare exception). EA Going for worst company a third time. This whole release is unacceptable. The focus of BF lately as well (way to many unlocks and too many weapons remove a large part of the competitive element). Even though many things are improved all previous BF titles have been completely different from each other. BF4 does resemble BF3 in many ways. I hope DICE will give us another BF that is completely different. Even BC is in a modern setting (tough it has a different feel to it). Another BF in the future would be a great and daring step.

@jasonefmonk: I loved the DLC on BF3. Close Quarters was great and totally changed the way I looked at that game. However, BF4 is problematicy because getting into a game is problematic. 1 out 3 of the people in my apartment can actually get into a game, and no one understands why and DICE's solution is wait until the next lackluster patch. I just want a working game. I'm glad they are focusing on fixes, but until it's out, I'm reluctantly moving on to other games this holiday.

Seems like a bummer for everyone who has the game. These hard dates probably contributed to the rush-job feel, it never should have been released as it is. Personally I'll be waiting a few months on a PlayStation 4 and Battlefield 4.

I will say that EA did an excellent job supporting Battlefield 3 with balances and patches for the vanilla game, and many incredible game-modes and maps with Battlefield Premium / DLC. $60 for the game and $50 for Premium is a lot of money, but over the last two years I certainly got my money's worth.

Is this the first game DICE has made? The amount of broken shit in this makes me think it's the first time they've made a big title. DICE obviously has never made anything before, especially an online shooter.

It's cool that EA would hand something so massive to such an amateur team. Go EA for really marketing this thing too. It shows how much faith they have in their talent. I know I bought BF4 because of those commercials where real gamers talk about the amazing stuff they've done in the game. It's great seeing real gamers in advertisements.

Money well spent on the marketing. This thing is a dream for the business side of things even though the game is a hot mess. Really good for the industry when stuff like this happens. The customers will deal with it.

Buy Premium everyone.

Rush was definitely my introduction to BFBC2 and its what made me put probably over 300 hours into it. However, when I'm in the mood conquest is awesome too. But I think the mode that is winning me over now is Obliteration. It is the perfect balance of conquest and rush. I would suggest to someone like you, that loves rush and enjoys conquest to try it.

As for this, it's good they are all hands on deck to finish there game. This shouldn't have happened but I haven't had too many issues other than the occasional crash. And guys, when this game works, man is it fucking incredible. It may just turn out to be my favorite multiplayer game, well once everything is running at its smoothest.

@intro: Well, since patch 1.03 quick-match on PS3 has been utterly borked. Been getting way more freezes as well.

Well, those platform owners that bought the game, anyway. I am free and clear of this stress, allowing me to bask in the absurdity of it all.

Saying that it "remains in tatters for most players" might be a bit much. After the last patch I don't think "most" players are having terrible, game breaking problems.

This is just embarrassing for all parties involved. Publishers, developers, hardware platform owners, reviewers. Er body.

Three questions crossing my mind right now:

1. How's that Aliens Colonial Marines class action lawsuit going?
2. When is Destiny coming out?
3. When is Titanfall coming out?

Yeah, the maps are smaller and obviously the player count is much lower, but the bugs are relatively rare, I've gotten into a limbo state if I go into the customization menus after dying, and then getting revived, when that happens I'm unable to select either of the Revive or Redeploy options, and am stuck lying on the ground until the round ends (or I disconnect). The crash frequency is about the same as in BF3 - happens every now and then, but not consistently and only every other day or so. What remains of the destructible environments in the PS3 version work without crashing the game or the servers.

ETA for BF4 fixes when the BF5 expansion comes out :)

Personally, I've just come to realize that I prefer Rush over Conquest 64 by a mile. It's what made fall in love with the Bad Company games and Battlefield in the first place.

I've only played each of the new maps once or twice. It's really too soon to tell, but overall it looks like a great batch for both Conquest and Rush players. As always, some maptiers take brazen ballsy attackers, which is sadly quite often not the case - that's frustrating, but other than that, these maps offer varied and rich gameplay.

My clear favorite thus far is the one with the caves. It's also flippin' great in Conquest 64. Great infantry centric map. Rush on that mountain range map is pretty epic.Crazy lines of sights, lots of open space and lots of hard cover - great athmosphere.

They outdone themselves this time around thou.

This game is utter shit. They've done nothing to improve the core problems that existed in BF3. All the did was slap on more graphics effects and ship the same garbage code that was in BF3. DICE fucking suck. They've had two years to make basic shit like net code better and they've done nothing to it. The fact that they can't move on to fix problems that are four years old in unforgivable. They are a dead studio as far as I'm concerned because they released the same shitty product but with one version number higher.

How about making the game work on the day it's released? It seems like they were working on the DLC instead of optimizing the game like they should be doing. You're just making excuses for them now. This shit would not have flown 10 years ago.

Man I always wondered about that one hit bug. Felt like I was dying too easily some games. Glad they cleared that up.

I waited to buy the game until it was on sale for half off. That was like a month after it was released. I thought the problems would be fixed by then. I am an idiot. I can't remember the last time a game froze my computer to the point that I had to hit the power button to reboot... could have been years.

I haven't been having issues since day one, when the single player kept crashing, but its fine now; I've never been booted from a game or even had it crash to desktop. I've honestly had more issues with Metro Last Light which blue screens my PC every time I start it. It is good that they are doing this though. Andrew Wilson seems like he was a good choice for CEO, letting them do this.

Crashing, lag, and few servers populated on most of the maps are getting super frustrating on Xbox one, which from the sounds of it is the least broken version.

How are they in Rush? I've played a couple of them in Conquest and all of them in TDM, but have yet to play a Rush match. Actually, I haven't played Rush in BF4 at all...

@missacre: you probably still will. When the game works, its fantastic. I hardly have any problems on the 360. They are clearly focused on fixing the product and I'm not exactly sure how you want them to handle this if pledging to get the game right isnt enough for you

EA needs to put more money into marketing I think. Battlefield 4 didn't have enough marketing and that's why it's so sloppy.

yeah i thought the game was more stable after the 12/3 update for me, crashed on the first game i tried to play last night. Didn't even try to play another game.

Today's patch included these fixes:

• Fixed the "one-hit kill" bug where damage from a single bullet sometimes was applied multiple times. This could lead to firefights where normal rifles sometimes dealt one-shot kills, which is not as designed.

• Fixed a crash that could occur when having a very large amounts of Friends

• Enabled audio in PS4 video captures

So any other fixes you're noticing are most likely a coincidence. Today's patch was minor, mainly focusing on the one-hit kill bug.

Today's patch on PS4 made things better. Haven't tried Conquest 64 yet, where most of the troubles lie buried. Playing Rush on the new China Rising maps went down without a hitch today. No crashes or disconnects or lags.

Hopefully it's all sorted now. Will have to check out some Conquest later tonight. Would be great if that pesky sound bug has been done away with.

Need for Speed Rivals feels so flippin' unpolished as well. EA should really budget for more polish time before it launches its games. I love many of their franchises, but I feel like they've gotten worse in the QA department for years now.

The audacity of EA to release DLC and expect people to pay for it while the game is completely broken on the ps4.

@adderall_admiral: man fuck thise 1887s when the game launched. Being able to snipe from the across the map was ridiculously insane. Actually looking back MW2 multiplayer was the reason I stopped playing CoD online in general.

Maybe I'm part of the lucky minority but I have only had one crash since I started playing on PS4. Oh and my premium membership not showing up but I can still play the normal maps. Glad to see they are devoted to fixing it though.

Buy premium so DICE can afford to fix their beta.