This is a bit of an awkward time for me. Most of the big hitters coming out at the tail end of this year — Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4 — are also coming out on next generation consoles. I want to have something to play on these consoles, so I’m waiting it out. This means I’m really having to depend on your folks for these Community Reviews!
(I guess I could play on PC but, yeah, I don’t really have a PC that cuts the muster right now!)
So I’m guessing that a whole power of you guys and girls spent a fair amount of time getting to grips with Battlefield 4. We all know the single player is most likely a ‘grand’, ‘sweeping’ tale of explody, shooty sacrifice amongst brothers in arms but let’s face facts: Battlefield 4 is about the multiplayer. What do you all think of Battlefield 4’s multiplayer so far?
Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
48 responses to “Community Review: Battlefield 4”
Haven’t started the campaign yet, I’m waiting for them to release a patch that stops the corrupt save problem.
I’m enjoying multiplayer though (when it doesn’t freeze on me).
Is there a point in getting this game in the current generation of consoles? Really seems more like a beta and everybody might as well wait until the new consoles are released, where the majority of players will immediately trade up into leaving the previous version empty.
Really seems like EA just wanted to do this as an attempt to sell more copies and finally reach their dreams of beating Call of Duty for 5 minutes.
Hardly.
The “majority” of players will not be getting a PS4 or XB1 on release. I imagine the install base for next gen is going to be minuscule for the next few years that its effect on server populations on current gen consoles will be negligible. This pattern of releasing for both current and next gen is going to happen next year as well and potentially the year after (for some games anyway). The install base is just not big enough for third party developers to justify restricting their games to next gen.
If you want to play it now get it for current gen, when you get a next gen console just upgrade it for $10 using the upgrade offer they are doing.
is it $10 or $15?
Black Flag upgrade is $15.
I was planning on holding out for the next gen but when I found out they will be doing upgrade coupons I changed my mind,
It is not a matter of upgrading the version. Sure, there will be some people who just could not wait and went ahead and got the 360/ps3 version knowing that in a few weeks they are going to pay the upgrade fee ($10-$15, whatever it is) to get it on the Xbox One/PS4. But my point was that there is only going to be a limited number of people who are even going to get the console, yet alone upgrade the game. The PS4 has been sold out for months, the XB1 “Day One” Edition sold out months ago and the rest of the stock is apparently very close to being gone so on launch day there will by a limiting factor of supply on be so many PS4 and XB1 out and then again an even narrower market for those who are going to buy BF4, and again an even narrower market who bought the 360 and is upgrading to the XB1/PS4 version.
The cool thing is, you can upgrade for 10 dollars and just use the Ps3 disc on the Ps4 rather than buy a new copy.
I don’t know if that applies to Xbox.
Majority will be on PS3/360. 80 million consoles sold for each PS3 and 360 vs 2-3 million for PS4 and Xbox One.
I’m pretty sure BF4 didn’t sell 80 million copies on consoles.
80 million CONSOLES sold not BF4 copies..
2 reasons:
– $12; and
– Progression transfer
Under the next gen upgrade scheme, you can upgrade from PS3 title to PS4 title for about $12.
Plus with BF4 at least the unlock progress transfers over, so there will be plenty of players on PS4 day 1 with many things unlocked.
Plus it is also a way to learn the new controls for BF4.
I have played 25 hours of battlefield 4 apparently (holy cow i did not realise it was that long :P) already and in that time i can count on my fingers the amount of times i have crashed (i think i am lucky. Not to say those crashes have not been frustrating but i have been through every single battlefield launch (minus 1942 which i got a couple of months after launch) and this seems to be one of the smoothest ones. Anyone saying to remember the good old days when BF games launched “finished” only need to go back to the BF3 launch…
Battlelog is MUCH improved over the last iteration, there seems to be more and more to unlock and the progression system just seems to make more sense. The levels in general are fantastic, with “leveloutions ” ranging from wide open mouth jaw droppers to small yet effective level changers. I am playing the game on high settings on PC and it just looks phenomenal. The gameplay also seems like an evolved form of Battlefield 3’s, with hit reg seeming to finally be a little better, the commander mode being a very welcome addition as someone whose job is to SOLELY command people and be a commander rather then like in 2142 where you see commanders on the ground trying to juggle fighting and commanding at the same time. While not having much effect yet, once people start to level out their kits, the field upgrade system and the upgrade path you choose i think is going to have a massive effect on your role in the battlefield and will make joining an effective squad even more important then it is now.
Overall i am really enjoying it and i think it is great that finally consoles are getting 64 player servers with graphics that look close to what medium settings might off on PC.
BF3 was unstable for about 3 months after launch I reckon – good to hear this one is better
I disagree with the parent comment. I am up to 36 hours played and have seen many technical issues.
I have not crashed once yet however if you play on big 64 player servers the odds of you completing a match without the server crashing are slim to none. Some maps are worse than others.
It just kicks you back to Battlelog saying “Something went wrong” then if you try to reconnect it says server no longer exists.
The hit detection is worse than ever, one of the biggest things in this game is kill trading. So often 2 people will walk around the corner point blank and kill each other. This barely happened at all in BF3.
I have noticed that there seems to be some sort of lag when you die, I have heard my gun fire and gotten a kill AFTER I have been killed.
Youtube user LevelCap also pointed out that when he fired a rocket to detonate an IED the bomb would explode right after the rocket was fired even though the projectile was still in flight.
If playing on an obliteration map when you kill someone standing in water instead of the bomb just falling into the water it will fly way up into the air and get stuck for a few minutes until it resets back to the start.
It makes completing obliteration on maps like Floodzone very difficult.
There is a good game in here however right now its broken as hell.
Sorry have to disagree with you on your first point. I have mainly been playing on 64 player servers and i have probably completed at least 75% of my matches. Even that % is not ideal but it is more then chance that i will finish my match. Plus although there are normal crashes, generally you can tell a crash is coming when it starts to rubberband and you can quit while saving your score. I am sorry to hear that you are having a less then ideal experience however.
I don’t know what you are talking about regarding hit detection? Compared to BF3 i find it much more reliable. Sure it is nowhere near perfect but i think it is an improvement on BF3. In regards to the kill trading, yes it has happened to me a few times but what is there to complain about? It happens?
In regards to the obliteration bug – yes this is VERY annoying. Could not agree more.
However, from someone who has played them all i think this is one of the most bug-free battlefields to date on launch.
Its mostly on certain maps that it crashes, Operation Locker is uncompletable on 64 player where as Zavod 311 I have not had crash once.
People have said its due to the grenade spam you get on the more enclosed maps.
Finished singleplayer over the weekend, was ok but nothing special. kept having NPCs spawn in locations I had already cleared out.
I’ve given up on Multiplayer until they fix their shit. Haven’t been able to finish a round without losing my progress as a result of the game crashing. I continue to receive the “timeout to EA servers issue” which has been around since BF3 and they still haven’t fixed it. I’m amazed at how they still haven’t fixed this issue?
I also was stuck for about 5 minutes yesterday in a round where I was floating mid air in a buggy. I had the enemy walking right past me (couldn’t see me), and I was jittering all over the place. Everyone around me was playing fine. Eventually managed to escape from the weird jittery world, It was triggered when my buggy ran over a prop, then it went messy.
No way will I be buying premium.
For all the game crashing in multi player I am still having a blast which I guess says a lot about the game. Have only touched single player for 3 minutes. Heard the opening song ran through a corridor, game crashed not bothering to go back.
im loving it so far. Yeah, its more of the same but it feels like a premium version of BF3.
I played the “beta” last month. Bought games I’ll never play to get in it (three days earlier than everyone else – I missed that part when buying MoH).
I was throughouly uninspired to keep playing.
I guess it’s just modern war shooters. I prefer WW2.
I played the beta and to me it felt too much like Call of Duty. I even stopped spotting players because it was always better to just shoot them. Also doesn’t help that they increased aim-assistance to allow quick scoping.
Agreed. It’s following the Call of Duty mould now. I haven’t played the multiplayer yet but the campaign is crap. It’s just Call of Duty with ballistics.
Disappointing.
It may just be the downgrade for current gen but the graphics look crap to me. Everything is so pixelated.
The sound is good though. Ricochets and the crack of bullets flying over your head is great.
The controls were good in BF3, why change them?
Overall it’s another Call of Duty clone. Will not recommend it to any friends.
It has been a very rocky launch. Everyone seems to be experiencing crashing and server disconnection left and right. This made me pretty frustrated at the game. However, since yesterday the game has become more stable and I have been experiencing less crashes and disconnection. When the game works. It is awesome! People may complain that this is a battlefield 3.5, but hey battlefield 4 is an improvement over 3 (game mechanic wise). Sure its not a totally different game, but they have changed some mechanics to make the game feel fresh. For instances:
– 5 man squad and the rewarding perk system where you have to earn it. It makes it so your squad must play the objective and keep each other alive. If you go rambo carelessly, you’d be punished.
– Obliteration mode is heaps of fun
– Changes to class, recon now has C4!
– Revives … hmmm what can I say, you can’t spam revives nomore. To me its a double edge feature. First I cannot revive my whole entire team or squad instantly like BF3, but that means the enemy can’t do that either.
-Graphics wise, it does look better. But not to the point of WOW THIS IS A HUGE LEAP! I would say 15% better than 3.
– Map wise, It has been a mixed bag. I enjoy most maps. But some maps to me seem frustrating as a lot of people would just camp on top of building where it is hard to access (Lancang Dam)
Single player was rubbish, was tedious for me to finish. The only reason I finished it was because it unlocked multiple guns for the MP.
I’ve enjoyed it to a reasonable extent so far. Allow me to break it down for you:
What I liked:
– Graphically as pleasing as you’d expect – I was actually blown away at one point when a map was overcome by a storm and I saw the pretty waves. 😛
– Variety in combat (land/air/sea), customisation of kit/class and weapons. I like being able to personalise my own kits.
– 64 player servers! Brilliant.
– More destructibility than in the previous entry. Oh, and I like when massive destructible events reshape major parts of the battlefield.
– Working elevators!!! And buttons and shit. It’s the little distractions that matter. 😛
– The return of commander mode and an improved squad system.
What I didn’t like:
– Here and there the game will disconnect and I’ll lose all of my stats for the round. Teething issues, I know.
– Airbursts and grenade launchers are still ridiculously user-friendly given their power.
– Lancang Dam seems rather buggy (or at least it did for me). Frequently I would lose sound, or the map’s textures would stutter. The other maps seem fine. Thankfully I’m not particularly fond of the map to begin with.
– The auto-deploy for the bipod is rather sketchy. Whenever I’m near a window with a slight step on the floor nearby, it forces my character to dive down and lock in with the bipod facing the wall, instead of placing it on the sill. Or rather plainly it’ll screw with my intended down-the-sights whenever I’m near a surface, as if it’s magnetised to dickish objects of tom-foolery. I bound the Bipod key elsewhere on my mouse to solve this, but still – I don’t recommend using it with the default mouse 2 (shared with ironsights).
Oh aye, I thought I was alone with the sound dropout in Lancang Dam! Also server-side it seems to be really laggy.
Yeah, they havent fixed bipod deployment yet: as a recon I’ll still go from standing behind a hill to suddenly lying down (and staring into said hill) when I right-click (with the intent to ADS).
I do like the environmental interactions; anytime I see that gray circle show up I basically stop and press it to see what it does xD
Campaign: If you want one of the weapons then play it if not DON’T.
Multiplayer: From what I’ve played its been good. Servers are crap and when your on a streak with 10-20k XP then you better quit or else you will most likely lose it all.
Maps: Are okay not a lot of variation (been playing more TDM since it’s quick) so I guess the major features of each map are locked out for conquest. Too many vehicles in some maps. Respawns are the worst in TDM. I’ve respawned infront of emenies over 10 times already.
Hey Shithead, In my experience so far quitting has not saved my stats if the server crashes before the round ends 🙁
Played it on a mates Xbox 360, glad im waiting for Xbox one, I thought BF3 looked better tbh, at one point the blood coming out of an enemies body looked like minecraft.
PC for me, the odd crash, but nothing I can’t forgive. The clan and I are having a lot of fun with it so far.
I have yet to try the SP, but I’m really not sure if I will to be honest. Battlefield has always been about the MP for me.
This sounds mighty tempting, but I actually have a copy of BF3. I was thinking about spending a couple of hours playing that to see if I like what DICE is doing before plunking down on BF4. Is this a good/bad idea?
Depends, are you also talking about single player and co-op? Because those two modes are just as pointless as they were in BF3, so you could play it to get a feel on how flacid it can feel.
No – I mean just get a feeling for whether I like Battlefield before forking out the new one, which I assume has the active player base?
Haven’t played it yet, hopefully ozgameshop will be sending my code late tonight so I can play tomorrow evening!
From what I’ve heard it’s great, and we all know about the server issues.
Question for you guys, if you quit during mid-match, will it save your exp? BF3 didn’t, and I’ve heard mixed reports on whether the server saves your progress or not?
If you initiate the quit then yes, all your stats from that round should be safe. If the server craps out or you crash then no it doesn’t save.
General rule of thumb atm is that if the server starts to rubberband, it is time to quit and move to another server. Although DICE have said that fix for the server crashes and rubber-banding is coming very soon.
Thanks for the heads up shepard, waiting, still on my email code for BF4 from ozgameshop. Sounds like a definite improvement over BF3’s “Screw you for daring to go have dinner!” mindset haha
Really enjoying it so far (multiplayer only, haven’t bothered with single player and if I do it’ll be on PS4 whenever I get around to that). I’m honestly surprised at how stable it is… normally these games take a few months before they get patched to the point where they’re worth playing. But I’ve been pretty happy with this from the outset.
The stuff I’m NOT happy with is things like changing the controls from BF3 for no good reason (especially some of the vehicle controls), server queuing being broken and no party functionality which is a major pain in the butt.
BF4 is like sitting on a toilet and breaking it, then buying a new toilet but keeping the lid/seating. It looks different, it even smells and some what taste different (initially) but you like the familiarity of the predecessor which is what makes you feel comfortable with it.
The unfortunate circumstance with BF4 is the inability to work at certain times of the day but fear not their service is impeccable during the day time where everyone is at school or at work.
Impressions so far are really good.
Sp: i found is a more interesting story arc then others in the series although I have not finished the campaign. I have not experienced a save game prob and I will prob hold off finishing it till that is patched. Little things like command of your squads and the points system for each level is extremely welcome and are little editions that make a big impact.
MP: graphics are not a huge leap over bf3 but noticeable (playing on high pc settings) I have played a bit of conquest mostly and the level design so far seems to be outstanding. Changes to how you cap a point are welcome too. You still see a bar when capping but it slowly allocates points based on how long you capture the flag up to a point cap.
when you get killed your enemies are clearly painted orange to identity their location. Classes seem well balanced at this stage. If you have a second monitor you can display the map you are on in real time and shows squad mates from memory.
When selecting a squad mate it gives a helmet cam of what they are seeing which is useful.
I have experienced the stability issues others have but reading known issues this morning they are patching servers from this point forward but may take some time to get them all.
Had a very solid play through of SP and MP over the weekend. Played through SP twice just to find collectables and the such, story line is pretty lame but otherwise I had a fun time playing it through. Multiplayer is where the game really shines, the maps are lush and detailed. Had the occasional crash here and there, nothing to stop me playing altogether. I’ve had a few mates have some serious issues with MP though, cant even play 3/4 minutes without it crashing…
10/10 would buy again
I’ve done about 30 hours of the MP so far. It could be really good. I think there’s a lot more here than BF3 on launch. I still feel I haven’t scratched the surface on a lot of the maps, modes and game.
However the netcode is horrible. This is way worse than BF3 and can be game breaking. You can die before the enemy who killed you even walked around a corner on your end. You can be shooting right into people and not hit a thing.
You see an enemy, duck behind cover to reload. Die. There’s a massive delay. This is on low ping servers, everyone with low pings.
Yes crashes are a problem. However we know it’ll get fixed. This net code is something that has to be fixed. Yet no idea if it’s a problem or the way the games built. it’ll die if this doesn’t improve. Now it’s fun, new and shiny, but there’ll be no long term competitive play.
B3 had some shitty netcode, not this bad. If it went back to that, it’l be ok.
PC here btw.
I’ve played about 20hrs of MP of PC and am loving it. I’m about to give the Campaign a try.
It feels like theres be less issues than with the BF3 launch. The game crashes a fair bit, but I’m putting that down to graphics drivers. Which AMD, the video card company that have put their name behind BF4, are slow to release updates of.
I logged about 300hrs in BF3 and I’d say I’ll at least double that with BF4.
Im pretty sure it is graphics drivers, I am using a 680 and haven’t had one crash, my 4 friends with AMDs get crashes several times a night.
I was going to buy a 290x for the game but PC Case Gear had sold out so I had to wait, hopefully by the time I get it they have fixed it 😀
Somethings are excellent, some are good, some are OK, some are a bit “meh,” others are bad, and then there are some appalling changes compared to BF2 and BF3.
GOOD:
1. Levolution
2. Kit changes for the classes (Hopefully we won’t see server after server, full of medics and engineers)
3. Boats are now fun and useful!
4. Swimming under water, knifing whilst swimming, pistols whilst swimming (Flood zone was hilarious last night).
5. Scout & transport choppers are a bit easier to fly (they feel quicker and more maneuverable)
6. Counter knifing.
7. Faster parachute deployment
8. Visible weapon stats in Battlelog
9. Battlelog in general seems more intuitive.
9. Commander Mode.
10. They have removed the move grain filter from the graphics.
11. More weapon customization.
BAD:
1. Game/server crashes
2. Graphics are good, but I was expecting more of a step up like form BF2 to BF3, which is due to console limitations I’d imagine.
3. The HUD is extremely low resolution (and I’m playing at 2560×1440); From the minimap, to the loadout customization screen. This is probably my biggest gripe, and – again – probably for the consoles.
4. Hard to differentiate between teammate and foe due to colour schemes (or maybe I’m just an old noob).
5. Still get stuck in stupid things like rocks or railings, etc.
6. Still no kill cam replay of your death. With the amount of hackers I experienced in BF3, and the level of competitiveness there is in Battlefield, I would’ve though this feature would be a given.
Overall, I think what DICE have done has brought more balance to the vehicles and different classes, sped up the gameplay, made it more accessible to the non-hardcore players, and last, but not least catered to the consoles and console players.
‘M’ will maximise your map, although I’m sure you already know that.
The campaign is indeed quite short, managed to finish it on the first day. That said, I don’t think making it much longer would have really benefited the game.
Was I the only one who found it amusing that Irish completely changes his attitude about Hannah just based on one sob story (that frankly I wouldn’t have been too surprised to find it to be made up)Enjoying the multiplayer a lot. Still finding it fairly frustrating going around on foot. I suspect it’s probably more a testament to my skill and reflexes but I swear the bullets I shoot are just bending around my intended targets. So many times I’ve emptied a clip into an enemy only to have them off me with a pistol… but this is offset by the wonders of vehicular combat.
Already maxed out the MBT, Boat and AA. For the life of me I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use the aircraft with any competence. Good thing I get much more enjoyment shooting them out of the sky instead. Gave commander a bit of a try as well which was interesting but on public games essentially you’re just dispensing UAVs and supply drops with the occasional cruise missile. Hardly anyone stays in their squad, much less actually goes for the goals you set.
Having a great time with it on the PC, even though the maps are still far smaller than BF2’s maps, although that’s because of the console versions. Here’s hoping the next generation of consoles doesn’t hold it back as much.
As in next next gen, or this one coming in a few weeks? 😛
The one coming in a few weeks, haha