So this game was a total wreck when it launched and won such an illustrious award for it during the GOTY 2013 podcasts. 6 months later, servers are plagued with tons of rubberbanding on all platforms. I play on PS4 and get it a good amount. A server starts out fine and then all of a sudden goes tits up, and yes, I do play on US servers to reduce ping. I have friends who play on the X1 and are having the same problems as well. Now EA is coming out saying they're gonna work on the issue. With them still making rather vital fixes to make the game simply playable, do you think this game has what it takes to be the biggest mess of 2014?

What does this even matter? Millions of video game customers STILL pre-order games without checking into how functional they are or demanding respect and quality from the developers. You bought the game, right? You deserve this, I'm very sorry but you do. Are you not familiar with EA? Have you not heard about SimCity and that Aliens game? And the hundred other examples? Why did you buy this without looking into it?

I don't mean to be mean, but I think your thread and the hundred agreeing responses you'll get are meaningless when you're not doing anything about it, and half of you have bought it Battlefield 4.

In a very chill and friendly manner, I shout to you my good friend: STOP BUYING! DICE is counting your money right now, they need to stop receiving money so they can care about earning your money, how hard is this to understand?

I bet the Battlefield 5 pre-orders are through the roof..

Honestly I don't think voting with your wallet works when the culture of video games revolves around pre-ordering, the gaming press said essentially nothing in their reviews about bad performance or server problems until after the game was released, and the userbase for the Battlefield franchise and first person shooters in general is so large that smart consumers not purchasing a game because a previous one had issues is a drop in the pond. I see what you mean but honestly I don't think it can work that way.

To me your post is blaming the victim for not knowing that they were going to get swindled. Shouldn't the swindler be held more accountable?

Not really.

Some games are in constant state of being fixed. In the case of Battlefield 4, the fact the experience is so compartmentalized makes it easier to forget...

Other games has been shipped with lots of game breaking bugs, and still won countless GOTY awards. Look at Fallout 3 and Skyrim. Those games are still a mess in many ways, and they won everything when they just came out.

If you want to look at the biggest mess of 2014, look at SimCity. That game was deeply flawed and nearly unplayable for months...

What?

So what, should we just EXPECT triple A games to be broken buggy messes from now on? Who cares if it's EA? The stupid 'Hate EA' train is getting VERY old right now, and while the publisher has done some thing to deserve people's vitriol, it's nowhere near as bad as it's made to be. Furthermore, what are these hundreds of other examples? You've of course listed the most well known cases, but I'd wager that most triple A games aren't released as buggy messes, and I could name hundreds of examples of that.

After Battlefield 3 - which had some server issues, but not enough to warrant people's hatred - why would people who preordered and buy Battlefield 4 even think that the game would be nigh unplayable on release? Hell, as a triple A multi-player online shooter, who in the WORLD expected it to be as broken as it was?

I agree with the above poster - victim blaming in a case like this, when it's so clearly the developer's fault is absolutely ridiculous. You shouldn't point to the consumer and go "WELL YOU SHOULDA KNOWN BETTER!", you should point to the god damn developer and tell them not to release such a broken game! I'm positive that people's experience with this is going to hurt Battlefield 5's sales - maybe not by a lot, but you and me, and people who regularly visit gaming sites and learned about how buggy it is are going to be far more reserved when it comes to the next game. Hopefully, as a result of that, DICE learned their freaking lesson, and can somehow regain consumer trust in their damn products.

@spraynardtatum said:

Yes, the swindler should be held accountable, but in the video game industry you can't hold them accountable; public outcries are considered entitled whining, lawsuits don't go anywhere, real international press doesn't care to cover this kind of news, and game reviewers still give them high Metacritic scores that help them sell. My point is that holding them accountable is useless, not wrong. Nothing happens when you nag a publisher about a rushed or dysfunctional game, therefore you at fault for not being cautious with your purchases.

'You are at fault' doesn't mean it's YOUR fault that the game is broken, it means that you willingly pre-order games when many games come out broken. Why don't you wait and see how it turns out? That is your only option to not waste your money, that's just reality. You wanna take the risk? Ok, go for it, you're only losing your own money, man..

I'm not even talking about voting with your wallet right now. I'm talking about you and your hard earned money, as an individual. What's the point of buying the game, only to find out it's broken, and then complain online and receive no response or compensation whatsoever? Because that's what's repeatedly happening, and at the end of the day you're down 60 bucks and the game doesn't work. Now what? Why do it again?

P.S. I do personally believe that wallet voting would work if more people would start doing it.. the video game hype bandwagon is a cancer. But I'm not even including that opinion in my response :)

@random45: I agree with everything you said. I exaggerated with my 'hundreds' comment, and the EA hate train is not very constructive. And yes, you weren't even supposed to expect BF4 to be so broken after BF3 was the marvel that it was. I personally expected BF4 to be very broken and that's why I didn't buy it, but that's just me and my reasoning.

However, we are left with you, your broken game, your 60 bucks down, and your claim that DICE should learn their "freaking lesson." Well, they're not learning it. What will you do when Battlefield 5 come out? This is my entire point: For the common-enough chance that the game will be somehow busted, since it happens a lot (varying degrees. Sometimes there's no FOV slider and sometimes a game won't even connect online, or launch), you should wait, not believe any of these false reviews, and make sure the game works after it comes out and before you buy it.

Or you can start an absolutely legitimate thread and voice your evidently justifiable frustrations, and then nothing happens. It's your choice!

This is my take:

EA and Battlefield 4 could have taken "the shooter to have" prize in late 2013 into 2014. I think it could have become the critics choice for what to play. But, they rushed it, or so it appears. The game obviously wasn't fully cooked and it took months to even get reasonably stable. While the game sold okay, I don't think people will give the next game as much benefit of the doubt. EA and DICE will literally be starting from square one again to gain an audiance.

EA has been struggling to get into that lucrative top spot...but they screwed it up stupidly. Being first is great if you can do it well, but being broken is a huge negative. Launching so broken *could* end up being a very costly mistake.

The interesting thing is Killzone took a swing at top shooter. Battlefield took a swing. And, Titanfall took a half a swing (we'll see how TF does on XB360) But, all indications are showing everyone failed to even come close to THE WORST SELLING CoD games in years. Activision sold half of what they expected of CoD: Ghosts and still totally blew everyone else out of the water. And, that is now known, so I think tha window to push CoD off the hill has passed the point where it will be easy. I think DICE, Respawn, Bungie and others could gain ground on CoD, but now it will be years of hardwork.

ASIDE: Speaking of Bungie, I don't think they have a chance in hell of having a big hit with Destiny for the first game. The game looks cool and is very high concept, but it comes across as very dry, very serious. It is not being portrayed as fun at all by Bungie. I think that is a huge mistake unless Bungie can make the game seem fun, cool, and interesting at the next e3.

I wonder if EA thinks they came out on top by making MS take charge of the servers for Titanfall.

I don't know what the deals in place were, but I know EA likes to run their own servers, and it seems to have blown up in their faces a couple of times recently. Titanfall seems to be pretty stable so maybe EA will finally concede (or be more lenient) on the whole "we run our own servers!" deal they seem so fond of. Who knows, I may be completely wrong.

As for the topic, nah it can't be biggest mess of 2014 because 1. It came out last year. 2. It is rarely discussed on GB. 3. It's only April son, there's still 2/3 of the year to go.

Lol, this game is still not fixed? Wow.

Jesus Christ. Besides the fact that the game was broken at release, and still suffers from some minor problems ( which apparently minor problems means the game is still broken) its still an awesome freaking shooter that achieves gameplay moments incomprehensible for today's gaming scene. Quit literally dwelling onthe wrong and for once acknowledge the rights.

I doubt they will fix Battlefield 4 and then just move onto another game.

@singingmenstrual: Yes, I did actually look into it before making my purchase. I played it a good amount after it came out. The bugs that were present in the beginning were taken out by the time I decided to buy the game, and actually played well. It wasn't until an update after I bought the game that the connection worsened for lots of people on all platforms, forcing EA to address the issue on the home page of Battlelog as they try to make changes to the servers so that it vastly improves from what it is now.

The reason I even bring this up is because this is completely inexcusable by any standards. Sure, games will ship with bugs, but rarely is it ever the case that the game is in such bad shape that it could be argued that the game is close to unplayable. Little glitches here and there are fine if they don't impede on the experience, but that's not the case with this game. And yeah, on the one hand the only thing you can say is that you're stuck with the game and there's not much you can do. But there is something you can do for the next time around, which is wait to buy. Until that time comes, however, the best thing to do is keep the awareness up about how the game is performing so by the time the next Battlefield comes out, those interested will have an idea of how well it may perform and if EA is capable of fixing any upcoming issues.

It would be awesome if reviewers would check in on how a game performs over time in terms of multiplayer, but they most likely never will. They'll have other games they need to play at that point, so they won't be able to go back and spend enough time to really look into the issues. But if enough people raise their voices about it, perhaps some writers may take a look into things. Persistence is the key in situations like this, because frankly we can't do much else. If I were able to, I'd investigate exactly why this game was released when it was and the state it was in, because I feel this actually is not even a developer issue. My hunch is it has all to do with the shareholders. But since I'm not in a position to do so, all I can do is keep up with talking about how good/bad the game is doing in that aspect so people can be informed for the next time around.

I'd like to point out that ESO (a MMO with megaservers) runs better at launch than BF4 runs months into its life.