Feature - The State of Battlefield

As DICE has attempted to fix the various problems that have plagued Battlefield 4 since release, there have often been new issues introduced with every patch. Arguably, up until the launch of the community test environment (CTE) in June, it seemed as though the state of the game would remain at an unacceptable level. For me, a person whose first experience of the franchise was with Battlefield 3 on PS3 (a game that saw me sink in more than three hundred and fifty hours), the quality has not been at a level that I can accept. Battlefield 3 was known to have some netcode and gameplay issues of its own, but nothing on the scale of the most recent release in the series.

Now that I have upgraded to the PS4 for most of my gaming needs, I expected a truly 'next-gen' and seamless experience with Battlefield 4. Yes, I had access to full size maps with up to 64 players per server, but I was also subjected to an ordeal of dealing with issues that plagued other platforms far less noticeably and that were fixed considerably quicker. Arguably, PS4 players have had to deal with the greatest number of issues for the longest amount of time when it comes problems with Battlefield 4. Of course, these issues have been affecting the game in tandem with those that on all platforms. Serious rubber banding and relentless crashing are two hindrances of the PS4 version that I can clearly recall...

So, it's a good job that the CTE was launched by DICE, as it seems to have been an integral strategy pertaining to effective and efficient repair of Battlefield 4. By allowing the input of the community, particularly when it comes to testing the newest set of planned fixes, more informed decisions can be made on what is best for the game. No doubt the testing process is also speeded up dramatically from having thousands of people playing the latest build outside of the studio. These are perhaps the main reason why Battlefield 4 has seen a mammoth patch released in the past few days - one that addresses most of the biggest issues and implements some of the community's best suggestions.

Arguably the best example of a community-led idea that has now made its way onto the battlefield is the UI triage package. This is a new set of features that implement two very useful UI options, the first being the ability to alter many aspects of the 3D spotting system. Size, opacity and display distance along with a suite of other settings allow you to adjust 3D icons to be however visible as you desire. This has come from many people suggesting that much of what is on-screen isn't needed and often gets in the way. For example, objective markers and flag positions typically remain fairly static, so once learnt, they do not need to be fully opaque. Another problem that these new options address is the occasional interference between friendly and enemy icons - if stood in front of an enemy player that has not been spotted, and a squadmate is stood in front of them, the opponent can easily be mistaken as a teammate. This has led to unexpected and unfair deaths, understandably frustrating many! The second implementation of the UI triage system involves the revive system for the assault class, but more specifically the icon visible once a teammate has died. Prior to the patch, this simply showed whether the teammate was in a revivable state. But, in the newest version of the game, a timer is shown circling the icon. To the avid medics of the franchise, this change is a godsend! It prevents the annoying circumstance of running out to revive a teammate only for the icon to disappear as you reach their corpse, thus possibly leaving you in a vulnerable position.

Aside from adding, the newest patch also changes many facets of the game, the most famous and well-documented of these being the issues commonly referred to as 'net-code'. This is an problem that I have found to be particularly prominent on PS4. Severe rubber-banding was a representation of the scale of the latency, notably increasing after the release of the game's third expansion - Naval Strike. For me, it became unplayable for many months. Rubber-banding was the final strand of straw to break the camel's back - to see your character stutter in a paranormal fit as it flees from an enemy is soul-crushing, especially when it means you lose the firefight... Other problems with the 'net-code' included low refresh rate servers (at 10Hz) that limited how often the game would receive new information, and also poor hit detection (or false-positives). These two issues combined with the rubber-banding meant that many of your bullets would often miss, while the rest would land all at once, meaning that enemy bullets would also stack up and deal damage simultaneously. This resulted in a very random FPS experience including insta-deaths and a perceived lack of any accuracy, affecting the gameplay and thus the core experience.

Copying the patch notes is not on my agenda, so I'll keep this next bit brief. To meet the requests of the community, DICE removed some key design faults in the game. These only exaggerated the lack of accuracy caused by the 'net-code', and were the elements of excessive visual recoil (present on all guns) and trigger delay (only noticeable on the revolvers). The 'EVR' was artificial, and added gun movement on top of the bullet spread - weapons were actually moving independently of bullet direction! By all means, this is something very unusual that should have never been in the game. However, I may be in the minority, but when it comes the the trigger delay that was present on the revolvers, I wasn't too fussed. It seemed like a natural fit for such a weighty set of handguns, and I found that firing a follow-up shot was possible as soon as the gun returned back to its 'rest position'. For me, this led to little inconvenience when using them, and I see the reasoning behind the mechanic. I also feel that it balanced the weapons in a close quarters environment - without trigger delay spamming of the weapons is possible, leading to insane killing potential if played correctly. However, the majority disagree and it's not much of a problem for me either way, so overall the change is probably for the better (like most of what is in the patch).

Almost one year after the launch of the game, Battlefield 4 has finally received many of the changes it has needed, thus bringing the game up to a respectable standard. It seems as though EA did not only release the game far too early, but also announced it prematurely. As game delays are forming a pattern that is becoming too consistent to ignore, I question whether EA is actually worse than other publishers in their business practices - something many people like to think. They merely seem to be following in the footsteps of their publishing counterparts, which seem to be those of a company that rushes the development, announcement and release of a game, leading to a customer experience that has become far too uncertain and ultimately unacceptable. This is usually followed by the exploitation of the patching system (something that has aided this style of game release). A string of updates are rolled out normally months later that aim to fix issues that otherwise wouldn't be present if initial product development was conducted properly.

Naturally, the logical question now is whether the rocky launch of Battlefield 4, along with a similar (albeit less severe) situation with other developers, has decreased consumer trust significantly enough to have a negative impact on the release of Battlefield: Hardline. Does the average gamer still wants Battlefield? For avid players of the series, the phrase 'vote with your wallet' has perhaps never been more relevant. Indeed, Hardline may well be the game that decides whether Battlefield can still be considered as a valid franchise in the modern gaming industry.