BF4 on PC/Xbox One continues to be troubled. The Naval Strike expansion has been delayed to address some issue that popped up. Meanwhile on PS4, Naval Strike is actually out. First impressions?

I've played a bunch of Carrier Assault last night, and it's great. It starts out as a round of Conquest, where-in the enemy's Carrier gets damaged at a higher rate, the more objectives are held in the field. At 50% durability, the carrier's hull is breached, and it's ready for boarding. Once on board, the invading team has to blow up two objectives to destroy the carrier early. Kinda like a mini-round of Rush. Of course, one could just try and hold all objectives out in the map and blow the carrier to bits from afar.

This creates a pretty interesting dynamic. To chose wisely between playing the field, attacking the enemy carrier, or defending one's own. I've been in matches where one team beat the other in the field very clearly, then failed to overcome the carrier defenses, just to have their ship been blown up by a tiny strike team, once it was breached. Good stuff!

The maps are all huge, full of detailed architecture, very pretty, and a lot of fun. Most capture points are big enough to feel like proper little deathmatch arenas. I absolutely adore how DICE finally increased the average size of capture zones to allow for more active gameplay with BF4, rather than having PTFO players be forcibly exposed. It's a great change to the BF formula that's sadly not been properly publicized.

Dunno which map is my favorite yet. None of 'em stands out as bad at least. The submarine base sure is the most immediatly memorable, but the others are no slouches either. Time will tell.

What about you guys? Disappointed because it's delayed on your platform of choice? Or if you're already playing it, how do you like it?

Can't wait to play it! I'm trying to power through Second Son before I take the plunge into BF4 premium.

Carrier Assault sounds awesome but the game isn't fixed. EA said they wouldn't release more DLC until the game was fixed. The last few times I've played the rubberbanding has been atrocious.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I keep going back and forth on picking up a ps4. This along with BF4 makes it more intriguing.

Rubberbanding is a server-side issue occuring when the Battlelog servers can't quite hold up with all the traffic coming their way - I believe. Outside of peak traffic hours, BF4 is amazingly smooth. Peak traffic hours are longer around the release of expansions, and harder to avoid (if at all possible depending on personal circumstances).

In so far, I'd not qualify *Rubberbanding* as an issue with the game per se, but rather with the service supporting the game. I guess EA/DICE would have to heavily invest into more servers, or a different concept for servers, in order to eliminate server-side lag completely. Pretty much all online experiences buckle under stress. It's either not economic, or technically impossible, to eradicate peak traffic server issues.

Just for shit and giggles, try playing BF4 at like 3 AM or during the day on a weekday. Smooth as butter. Not that that's a valid solution. Obviously the service should be better at peak traffic hours. Just for reference, BF4 isn't really broken, at least in regards to rubberbanding. It's just the servers don't hold up.

BF4 is broken if the servers don't hold up. That's inexcusable for an online focused game. I also still get kicked out of games quite a bit too and the sound in the beginning of matches is always missing.

It's much more playable now but by no means is it fixed in my eyes. If this is "fixed" than I consider BF4 to be the most fundamentally buggy and janky games I've ever bought... The servers aren't supposed to be sticking out like a sore thumb at any point of the day.

If this is fixed than that's a real shame.

I wonder if they put in a megalodon easter egg in the game, since everyone was talking about it a few months back.

What's great is that they said they wouldn't release expansions until the game was fixed. Then they just did anyway. And now they're continuing to do so for one half of players, but going back to their initial standpoint for the other half.

My best guess is that Naval Strike just straight up didn't work on PC. Like you spawned inside a jet engine and died instantly every time a round started.

@seppli: @spraynardtatum: what rubberbanding are you guys talking about? I only know that term from racing games.

As someone that is playing primarily on PC these days I can say the thought of buying BF4 hasn't once crossed my mind. I remember all those hours trying to get BF3 to work and launches like these make me feel like I made a sound decision

Kinda like stutters. Sticky feet. Being held back for a split-second whilst the server tries to synchronize.

Erm... name one popular online focused experience that doesn't suffer from heavy traffic induced issues occasionally. Battlefield always had rubberbanding lag at times. It's nothing new, and it has been a lot worse in the past, than it is now. Inexcusable is taking it too far. It's a shame, but to a certain degree there's only so much that can be done.

I don't think anybody at EA/DICE says, let's cheap out on servers so our game is less responsive during peak hours. I'm sure they're doing everything they can do, within given economic and technical boundries, to make the game experience as good as possible for everyone. Servers are fine 80% of the time of the day. It's just the remaining 20% of the time, when everybody wants to play, that offers a somewhat diminished experience. Sure, if you can only play then, you might think the game is totally busted. It's not.

Dunno man, either you live with it until the traffic thins out some, or you stop playing. It remains playable, even if there's some rubberbanding lag going on. Of course the dream is that there never are any issues. But it's the internet, and there always are issues. Just look at how busted the GiantBomb forums are of late. Still better here than most anywhere though, at least for my tastes.

I've played my fair share of online games and Battlefield 4 has the most stuttering of any of them. Hands down. There's definitely an accepted amount of server lag that comes with any online game but BF4 is far and away the worst I've experienced. It's every time I play conquest and every once in a while on obliteration.

Yeah, it's been waffling between "basically unplayable" and "plain old unplayable" since it came out. For me, at least. Really sucks, too, because the little bit I have been able to dink around in has been pretty fun.

My impressions:

I'm really liking both the new mode and all of the maps. I always felt like boats were underutilized in these games so it's nice to finally have an expansion that focuses on them.

I gotta say though, the amount of lag on most of these servers makes the game nearly unplayable. I haven't played for a little over a month and coming back to it now, the rubberbanding is way worse than I've ever experienced it. Hopefully in a week or so this won't be a problem, but holy shit is it ever aggravating to deal with.

Maps seem pretty good. They added the new hovercraft vehicle to get around easier on the archipelago maps. The new mode they added seems like a good addition but the part when you get to the carrier is a complete cluster fuck because you have to attack two objectives rush style and funnel down a hallway to certain death. Helicopters are also super clutch in this exspansion because the maps are so large and you have to cross all the water and negotiate the islands that just flying to an objective to capture it makes helicopters super useful again. Overall its a nice package that lets you do some pretty cool stuff and have alot of fun but if you were hoping for an expansion that brings new options to the on-foot experience then look elsewhere.

I just started playing it (out today on PC, with a nice big patch alongside it). As far as the quality of the maps, this is the best DLC yet. I've got to play some more to give more detailed impressions, but I'm loving it so far.

When I was playing there was some horribly rubber banding and lag. I did play really late one night and it ran smooth and it was a ton of fun. Absolutely the bet dlc so far and if you aren't into the premium pass this is the dlc to get.

The maps are good and the new mode is good but the rubberbanding is worse than ever. Every single match I played over the weekend. I started playing at like 9am on Sunday too so it isn't due to playing during peak traffic.

BF4 is still a damn mess.