Battlefield 4

    I've tried and... I just can't. I simply can not get into this game. Despite all it's flaws, I really, really enjoyed BF3. 350~ hours logged public. 50-100 clan games on top of that. You get the picture. Part of the problem might be that I was so heavily invested in BF3. Who knows. So far I've managed to articulate a few things that I think drag the experience down in BF4.


    Gunplay and movement

    BF4 seems far more lethal than BF3. You and your enemies die a lot faster. I've checked the damage values and they appear to be roughly the same, so it probably has to do with the netcode or the increased controllability of weapons. Either way, this makes fight a lot shorter and makes movement far more costly. If someone got the drop on you while you were pushing in BF3, it didn't mean the fight was decided. You could jump into cover or simply out-aim them if your reflexes were good enough. This isn't realistic by any means, but it was fun. It's hard to describe, but BF3 infantry combat was just more flexible and enjoyable.


    Maps

    My beef is primarily with Siege of Shanghai and Operation Dawnbreaker and those kind of maps. Running across 6-lane motorways without much cover isn't fun. Neither is the "all or nothing" approach to verticality. You're either at street level or way above the ground. This creates awkward, angled sightlines between ground troops and rooftop huggers (Zavod 312-something comes to mind). Compare this to maps like Kharg Island or Gulf of Oman that featured 1-3 story buildings that had easily accesible staircases. This kind of verticality felt more tied into the actual battlefield and storming those buildings was actually one of my favourite activities. They were also very destructible and not giant, invulnerable monoliths.


    Post-processing and art

    The maps look absolutely incredible, but are very often very contrasty and blasted with a bunch of effects (blinding lights, sun of doom etc), which makes them hard to read a lot of the times. This also creates a very big difference between an un-spotted enemy which can easily blend into the very darkened foliage of a stormy Paracel Storm and a spotted one, which shines up like a christmas tree. This means that, a lot of the time, you will be firing at orange doritos instead of actually aquiring targets. This was not at all as bad in BF3.


    I do like a lot of the tweaks and changed features, but as long as the infantry experience isn't fun, they are of little importance (to me, this is all subjective).

    I'll also weigh in my view on the sp campaign even though I doubt anyone here really cares given it isn't at all what people buy BF for. None the less, I shall say that the sp campaign is just.. awful. The story makes no sense and seems like it was written by a 3 year old, nothing is really explained properly and half the time you don't know where you are or why you're there. It's so bad that it actually manages to make BF3's plot seem pretty decent. It's so God damn terrible that it should be packed into a rocket and launched into LV-426 and then nuked from orbit, because it's the only way to be sure...

    Very good post Puddy!


    It's such a shame that you die faster now, i think it's them trying to pace it all up and trying to be a non stop fast paced experience like CoD, I understand that and I respect that to a certain extent but it really makes games frustrating.

    If i'm getting shot at, I wanna be able to demonstrate my roxoxors skills, do a 180 and kill the motherfucker and t-bag his face. Not being shot on the back, and shoot other people in the back, THAT SHIT AINT FUN.


    In quake 3, you need 3 or 4 rockets in the fucking face to die if you have full armor!


    Quote from Puddy

    The maps look absolutely incredible, but are very often very contrasty and blasted with a bunch of effects (blinding lights, sun of doom etc), which makes them hard to read a lot of the times. This also creates a very big difference between an un-spotted enemy which can easily blend into the very darkened foliage of a stormy Paracel Storm and a spotted one, which shines up like a christmas tree. This means that, a lot of the time, you will be firing at orange doritos instead of actually aquiring targets. This was not at all as bad in BF3.


    As an artist myself, this is what really fucking bothers me about shooters nowadays, specially MP FPS's that put art and pretty pixels on top of fun gameplay.

    Who the fuck thought blinding a player with a sun of doom or thousands of god rays was a good idea? Keep that shit in SP experiences where people actually want to gaze at the art, not when they're trying to focus on winning a match.

    At least CoD has an incredible bright rim lighting on the characters, they stand out nicely from the environments, even though the environments are a noisy crazy unreadable mess.


    God damn, i'm on a ranty mood today. It's all good i swear, it's just that... things man.

    puddy is right with all he said, but infantry combat isn't that hard to master but it's different than BF3. My main isse is with vehicles and choppers, it just isnt fun now. ONE rocket will make you crash in to a fucking tree or land in a water. A guy with 50cal will shoot your ass. if you have bad luck and a chopper will lock on to you and a chopper at the same time you are fucked, but not like BF3 fucked when you could take one rocket in the ass, and outmaneuver those fucker and with a skill take down the chopper, no this time one - ONE - 1 ! rocket will make you crask in the fucking ground (if you are flying relativly low) 9 out of 10 times this will happen. The choppers are much stronger this time if you have 90% aiming accuracy, you will take down full healthy tank with just one fly over. Man i was such a big pilot in BF3, now it's just fucking sad. The last issu i have with chopper is that they are very less maneuverable , they are fucking slow and 180 will take you 2or3 time longer than BF3.

    i'm still waiting for ps4 version so i play ps3, and if you are saying about handeling chopper, than on consoles it's fucking much easier (at least it was with BF3 and with me)

    At least you guys can play. I've been trying every single suggestion on the forums and while it has improved a bit, it's still unplayable. Luckily I'm not alone in this and it's not an issue on our end, but still, some form of acknowledgement from Dice would be nice. It's impossible that they don't see the vast about op topics being opened every day complaining about stuttering.

    Quote from Puddy

    Maps

    My beef is primarily with Siege of Shanghai and Operation Dawnbreaker and those kind of maps. Running across 6-lane motorways without much cover isn't fun. Neither is the "all or nothing" approach to verticality. You're either at street level or way above the ground. This creates awkward, angled sightlines between ground troops and rooftop huggers (Zavod 312-something comes to mind).


    Zavod is one of the few maps where you can actually play and do stuff as Infantry, like rotating between C and D, and have the occasional excursion to cap B or E. You have at least a chance to take shots at vehicles that dare to drive into the interiors and you have a lot of Infatry engagements. That being said, think Zavod really, grew on me, even tho people complain about visibility, but the playermodels all wear camoskins and it's hard to balance the fact that it's supposed to conceal you and being able to still see enemy infantry. I don't know if it really helped to take out the tracer fx from the sniperrifles, that was present in the beta, but I guess people complained about that too much.

    Quote from xfckup

    Zavod is one of the few maps where you can actually play and do stuff as Infantry, like rotating between C and D, and have the occasional excursion to cap B or E. You have at least a chance to take shots at vehicles that dare to drive into the interiors and you have a lot of Infatry engagements. That being said, think Zavod really, grew on me, even tho people complain about visibility, but the playermodels all wear camoskins and it's hard to balance the fact that it's supposed to conceal you and being able to still see enemy infantry. I don't know if it really helped to take out the tracer fx from the sniperrifles, that was present in the beta, but I guess people complained about that too much.


    I was specifically referring to the rooftops on Zavod in this case. I like the map in general, albeit a bit unreadable.

    Yeah, but at least the rooftops are relatively easy to reach with ladders, compared to the highrises in some of the other maps, where a lot of players parachute/heliride in to snipe from there. My impression about these lines of sight you mentioned was, that they were left in on purpose, because "it's realistic" and you just have to deal with it. Just sayin

    Quote from Chimeray

    There has been plenty of communication from DICE, although only on the forums and not in an official press release if that's what you're wondering. Anyhow: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/forum/thre…65670132493039/


    I'm pretty sad/embarrassed that we can't get it right on each launch but at least shit's getting fixed. Mail just did the rounds that another patch is in the works that will solve more issues. Biggest thing seems to be server instability that's causing a lot of what people like to call "netcode" issues although it's not really related to that at all. That being said, besides that there definitely seems to be something wonky going on with some of the netcode as well. Once the servers are in better shape I suppose they'll look more into that but it's expected a lot of the "netcode" complaints will be resolved with server fixes... As far as I understood. Fyi I don't work on BF4, just reading the mails that go around the office, no idea what I'm talking about


    I'm referring to acknowledgement of our specific problem (stuttering in SP and MP even when idling). I think Dice is doing a great job supporting the game. It only worries me that this problem has not officially been listed yet. I should have been more clear.


    Thanks for sharing that!

    BF4: Second Assault maps confirmed:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQPEqjOySDs


    Metro, Caspian Border, Gulf of Oman and Operation Firestorm.


    I'm kind of sad that Grand Bazaar didn't make the cut, which in my opinion is a MUCH better infantry map than the meat grinder that is Metro. Perhaps with it being updated they can sort out some of the stalemate problems.


    Anyway, I've played BF4 for over 40 hours now in the multiplayer and got through the single player campaign and in my opinion it's not as great as BF3.


    In the single player campaign I had no idea what was going on since things moved so fast. I feel it is actually worse than BF3's campaign which is saying something. Visually it was nice with some awesome explosions, weather effects and locations. Overall though, I was bored throughout it.


    Multiplayer wise... there is a LOT to unlock which is good. I'm just scratching the surface after 40 hours so there should be plenty for me to go at. The guns take a little while to get used to, but once you learn not to spray unless it's very close quarters you should be ok.


    The vehicles are your standard fare of tanks, choppers and jets with a few changes to how things work. They have limited ammo now which replenishes over time, which for the most part is not a hindrance. BUT if you find yourself in an extended battle with a few opponents it can be very annoying when you run out of ammo. All you can do is sit there and watch them pound you. It's really frustrating when I die because I run out of ammo in a battle I probably could have won.


    Levelution isn't really all it was made out to be on most maps. There are a few maps where the levelution does change the flow of the battle (Operation Locker, Flood Zone, Paracel Storm and possibly Hainan Resort) where a capture point is basically completely changed. On these maps if one team is stomping the other and completely owns said point the levelution event will often see that point change hands which is really nice.


    However, on the other maps the levelution stuff doesn't really change all that much. It might block off a road which doesn't really get used or put a hole in the floor for infantry to use but that's about it.


    Also, some maps are very hard to play if you are just infantry. Because they are so open you just get sniped or shot by a vehicle before you can do anything. I know people complained about the BF3 maps having the points pretty close together, but at least infantry stood a chance getting between points.


    Perhaps with the expansions and patches to fix the lag things will get better. But at the moment I feel it's a bit of a let down in some areas.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!

Register Yourself Login