The Big Issue: Battlefield 4.

It’s fair to say that on the release of the Naval Strike DLC for Battlefield 4 the game was in the worst position it had been in, in its already quite controversial history. Now this is saying a lot, we’ve had bugs of all shapes and sizes be it the one-hit-kill bug or the overriding issue of what is colloquially known as the game’s netcode. So, to say the game was in its worst state is quite a strong statement.

Firstly, on release for PlayStation 4 the new maps were virtually unplayable for most players due to an issue commonly known as rubberbanding where, from your view, you’re moving fine until you’re teleported backwards to where the server assumes you to be. To make matters worse the people getting these maps early were also the people who had paid an extra amount for the Premium Edition of the game, so their immediate and loud complaints were, frankly, valid. But it isn’t just their extra money that made the complaints valid but a previous update given by DICE to its player base, promising that the developer would concentrate on making the game stable before releasing any new DLC.

Now, it’s up for debate whether it was the lag, the delay for other systems because of the PS4 complaints or the fact that DICE had clearly lied, straight up, to its players that caused the worst backlash since the game was released. What is for sure is that the community didn’t let DICE sit easy. I personally went to EA’s Customer Service and asked what exactly they were doing to fix the game and why it had been delayed. I even asked if I could obtain a refund for the game and premium seeing as they weren’t fit for purpose. All of these questions were answered with company lines and I was offered a 15% code for Origin and a Silver Battlepack for my troubles. I said thank you but then stated that I didn’t need a Silver Battlepack, I needed the game to work so that I could obtain my own Battlepacks. To which I was again met with the standard, “We’re sorry” and “We have our team working on fixing the game.” So, no luck there.

Before I continue, who am I to be talking about this and telling you guys about it? Why should you care about my opinion? Well, to start with I have played every single BF game since Battlefield 1942 and written all the Battlefield 4 reviews here at GameGrin. I have also been a lifelong FPS enthusiast and there are a lot of people out there now who claim to know a lot about this particular genre, due to its huge popularity since CoD 4, but I have been playing them since I was able to and consider myself quite the knowledgeable fellow. While for some that still won’t be enough ‘cred’ I feel more than qualified to call Battlefield 4 the worst title in the series so far.

Say what you will about Call of Duty being repetitive but it always delivers what it promises: a six to eight hour Michael Bay-esque campaign and a solid multiplayer mode. While, maybe, Ghosts wasn’t the best in the series and some even whisper about the series’ decline from the state of that title alone, it’s a juggernaut that isn’t set to stop any time soon. BF, on the other hand, while a big franchise with a large publisher behind it is nowhere near as large when it comes to sales figures. This obviously then equates to how large the fanbase is in comparison. Can DICE afford to make these kinds of mistakes? The answer isn’t clear.

With the news that the Medal of Honor franchise was to be axed and with it the two year rotation of FPS that would include BF as well, all of the weight is on DICE and its newly founded LA studio to deliver an FPS experience every October/November to combat Activision and Call of Duty. There have been rumours of a Battlefield spin-off title being produced by Dead Space developer Visceral Games, based on a police theme. Could this be the new biannual release EA is pushing for? If so, we’ll most certainly find out at next month’s E3 event in Los Angeles.

Another preconception is that this is all EA’s fault and that they pushed the game to be released too early in turn not allowing the game to be tested fully before release. There may be a small amount of truth to this, there may not. The gaming world’s hatred for EA seems to consist of a lot of blinkered, uneducated people which doesn’t help the situation one bit. I have seen comments stating how ‘Since EA started publishing Battlefield games, they have become worse’ or that ‘EA is the reason the series has declined.’ I feel I must address something that some people seem to forget and something I can’t believe I have to say, but EA has always published Battlefield. Always. Not at any time in its life has the series ever been published by anyone else.

EA have also been the publisher behind all of the best Battlefield games that people love and remember fondly. I think this is important to remember: in the grand scheme of things this is a blip on the radar. This the first main game in the series’ history to have any huge backlash levelled at it. I hope that educates at least one person who otherwise thought that EA has always been the scum of the games industry.

What are DICE actually doing to improve Battlefield 4 and their image though? Well, to be totally fair, I haven’t experienced any rubberbanding on any maps since the introduction of the new ‘high-performance servers’ and so I can say that has improved the game considerably. Also announced was a new ‘Community Test Environment’ for PC Premium players. This opt-in service allows the player to download a new BF4 client that will be updated with new patches before they roll out to consumers, allowing an almost endless beta test with feedback from the very people who will be playing the game.

A lot of the game has been fixed but the one huge bugbear that still exists is the previously mentioned netcode. If you don’t know what netcode is, it’s the various operations that allow your game to show you what is happening on the server at any one time. I’m not going to pretend to know what this includes - I’m not that smart - but I do know what these combined systems cause. Ever been shot when you were clearly behind cover? Ever been killed by a guy who runs around a corner about two seconds after you die?  Ever had the sound of being hit by a single bullet and died? Well these are all things that can be attributed to netcode issues.

At this point, honestly, I believe that these systems are too embedded into the core game to be fixed. If they were fixable, my belief is that they would have been the first thing to be fixed. DICE’s almost adamant ignorance of this complaint at the beginning of the game’s life makes me believe it’s very complex to fix and that it may just be something that we have to live with for the future of the game.

Lastly, people are still playing this game and with all the issues being fixed regularly, not to mention DICE’s new found community interaction and conversation, there seems to be hope that, if not BF4, at least the next big BF game will be better than ever. But what cannot be overstated enough is how much of a chance Battlefield 4 was to capitalise on the lack of interest in Call of Duty on the release of Ghosts. Many more fans could have been made, but instead now we have a divided community that isn’t sure they can trust the company that has, for so long, been their saviour from the drab copy-and-paste, close-quarters, military shooter, twitch fest that comes out every year.

When Battlefield 4 works, it’s the greatest Battlefield yet. It’s just a shame those moments have come eight months into its lifetime.