DICE employee explains why BF4 is "buggy"

Many gamers have been experiencing issues with Battlefield 4, the title was highly anticipated by FPS-fans around the world. But shortly after release, many people reported that the game was full of bugs and errors. In an article on the Swedish gaming site fz.se, user HonK_sWeMoB claims to be working at the studio and explains why players are experiencing crashes and other issues.

[Goro]

Because yous rushed it?

[GarrusVakarian]

And didn't quality test it enough.

All i read in that interview was "excuses excuses excuses".

[zeal0us]

Aliens: Colonial Marines all over again. You won't get the reason why the game is in the condition it is in. You will only get handed excuses.

[caseh]

Funny you mention Aliens: CM, I was just reading an article as to why it was so crap.

By sound of things, it come down to all companies involved passing it to other devs as they couldn't be arsed to handle it themselves, too busy dealing with their own games/projects.

[GUTZnPAPERCUTZ]

Blame EA, Not DICE he even said in the article, "Needed more Time!"

[Eonjay]

Lack of testing.
Shipping before its ready.
Blaming it on the PS4 itself (on the PS4)
Trying to be there with COD.
Lack of proper leadership.

Corporate assholes who don't game. They just want you to submit you money so that the shareholders can complain about be taxed on money they "earned"

[wordthrower]

"And they didn't quality test it enough."

I have to take issue with this. I'm a QA guy myself, thankfully not at EA, and I can tell you for damn sure that the majority of the major issues and exploits present in Battlefield 4 were almost definitely documented in their bug tracker before the game released. The problem though is that they were all deemed "known shippable" by people in positions of authority way the hell over the pay grade of any QA staff, for the sake of making the release date set by the marketing department. The story is more or less the same all around the industry for other broken, buggy games: some jerk in a suit makes a giant pile of money, you get mad, and I go home and drink myself to sleep.

[ziggurcat]

@ Lukas

As a former video game QA employee, that's not true at all. I can virtually guarantee that the issues people are experiencing were found, the devs just sluffed them off.

You'd be surprised how many bugs don't get fixed by devs because of laziness.

So never blame QA, it's not their fault that devs refuse to fix things that should be fixed.

[abzdine]

it's so funny before release when they showed gameplay videos i said this game looks shit and buggy and i got so many disagrees..
now people bought the game and got owned for their stupidity.

[dantesparda]

Its not that buggy for me, sure it was worst at first. But the game is still a blast to play

[AgitatedOcelot]

Guess they should of tightened up the graphics on level 3.

[linkenski]

Yep. Just pure media spin to make as many morons believe it as possible.

[MarkusMcNugen]

@wordthrower

Yeah, you know what your talking about! I have a friend who worked on Peggle 2. He said there were 120 pages worth of bugs/glitches in their report when the game was published on the Xbox One. One of the glitches was apparently with the Game DVR.

My girlfriend and me play it a lot, and just for a few days I had to delete 60 recorded videos. They werent even cool videos. Like 20 of them were just failed attempts at beating the challenges.

[rainslacker]

I've done QA too, and I can tell you that devs have databases full of bugs. From serious ones, to ones the player will never see. Big games can have databases of tens of thousands of bugs, some minor, some very serious.

Even the best games have bugs, and I remember fondly one of my first assignment in a QA class I took while in school. We had to take a commercial game and find 10 bugs. I picked Uncharted because I felt like playing the game again. Less than 20 minutes into the game, I had 15 bugs documented by just doing things most players would never do.

Problem here is that bugs that crash the game or make it unplayable didn't get fixed because they wanted it out in time for the next gen. No big surprise there. Blame the publishers, not the devs. I'm sure the devs were there saying that it wasn't ready to ship.

[Gaming101]

The headline should be "Programming is really F'n hard, way harder than anyone who doesn't know code realizes, so shit happens when you release the same game on 5 different platforms"

You can only do so much with the time you have. Anyone who has ever worked a real job with deadlines knows this, and if your code requires certain timing to be just right and it won't work on 5 different platforms all with different timing, that's tough to deal with when you only have so much time to test everything and get it perfect. You can have 500 pages of glitches and only so much time and money to fix certain ones, meaning you need to recreate the glitch, and retest, and retest, and recode, it's not always possible to get all of them, as you can be working on that for years (as some games do) and still not get everything.

Gamers are broken up like this:
1. People who have had a real job and/or know coding and complex architectures; these people feel for developers every single time.

2. People who don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to making games, and have never had a real job with tight deadlines; these people are the whiny shits, self entitled, always screaming that developers are lazy and full of excuses whenever they so much as see a torn frame or dip in frame rate, or glitch somewhere.

You all know which group you belong to.

[Mikelarry]

makes you wonder if they had used that time to to improve and QA test the game instead of taking jibes at the riley the dog from cod maybe this game wouldn't be so buggy hey

[a_squirrel]

Maybe if some of you people understood on a technical level what he's talking about, then you wouldn't be saying excuses.

Yes, it was rushed, but not as badly as you might think. Games are one of the most difficult things to code, period. So many things can go wrong it's not even funny, and that's often in just a few test scenarios.

I recently fixed my own timing issue where an updated bios messed with my memory profile selection, causing quite a few random crashes, but only during complex multi-threaded applications, like Google Chrome or Red Orchestra or Medal of Honor Warfighter (I'm a sucker for that game).

I have 4GBx2 DDR3 at 2133mhz with a quad core and I run into problems. Just imagine what can go wrong with memory moving data twice as fast with an 4x2 core. That's not even accounting for the GPU clock or, (depending on the system) the different gpu memory clock.

In short, just on the hardware side, it's really easy to run into an issue, being even easier as the complexity and processing requirements go up, aside from any possible OS issues.

And the game was rushed.

[DOMination-]

Yeah games are hard to code but bf is quite a linear experience. It shouldn't be hard to test for bugs which they probably did do but then ran out of time to sort them out

Secondly, dice are a very experienced team and they are using their own engine. The game was simply not finished. They probably needed more time but ea were unlikely to delay such a big release.

[Trunkz]

No, it's EA that rushed them.

EA is the one that wants their product that they invest their money into to be out before Call of Duty.

Read the last line of that article from the DICE member:

“We needed more time.”

[nypifisel]

I would say that should be rather obvious. DICE is historically a developer which makes quality games, developers LIKES to created great games. Publisher LIKES MONEY! It's obvious that DICE is getting pushed on by EA.

[Kleptic]

but, he also said 'all of our machines at work are pretty similar, so its really hard to bla bla bla'...

So i don't think DICE is completely innocent...if the code was that complex, they would've demanded better testing to be sure the product was release ready (as in more machines)...and demanded a better beta test period, much further back in the year (not 2 weeks before release)...i think its a combination of both to some degree, but definitely more EA's fack up than any other...

Video games aren't some novelty when it comes to production...BF4 was 10's of millions of dollars to create...absolutely broken shat on release shouldn't still be a thing...

[Ace Killa 08]

@kleptic you think dice felt comfortable with a beta test then two weeks later the release. They have done beta test in the past that had at least a month to work and solve all the issues after the beta.

They ran out of time, they didn't have enough time to test the game on multiple systems and configurations. I'll be the "fool" and take their word on this. Dice has never been a company to screw people over, EA is known for that but that's something else. They worked on 5 systems, that has to be the biggest project they worked on at one time. It's not give them a break, but think realistically. Your idea of testing is awesome and great, but only in a perfect world.

[venom06]

whatever the case is, just like when BF3 was released with issues, they jumped on it (as most developers do) and ironed out the problems. Thats what they're doing now with BF4 and i gotta say, it SOOO much more enjoyable now that crashing has been addressed. At its core, its a brilliant game.

[The_KELRaTH]

BF3 on the PS3 had multiple big issues like no working mic (rather ridiculous in a squad based online game), stuttering etc which took over 6 months to fix - that's not what I call jumping on it and ironing out.

Battlefield games are great fun but this level of issues should not be seen at retail - it's what beta testing is meant to be about.

[I_am_Batman]

The point is it shouldn't have been released in the buggy condition it did. I think EA is doing more harm than good by rushing their games out. They are damaging their reputation. Also the reviews would've probably been better if the game wasn't rushed out.

[oof46]

I am a Battlefield fanboy and, while Bf3 had most of it's problems ironed out after multiple patches, I still blame EA for damaging the Battlefield brand.

There are people who say DICE should have pushed EA to give them more time, but EA signs the checks and DICE is most likely contractually obligated to do what they say.

Look at what happened with Infinity Ward and CoD. The developers wanted to branch out and do something different, and what happened? Activision pushed West and Zampella out.

[bohemian 23]

They haven't ironed out all of the issues yet, that's the problem. When a game crashes on you every time you enter the same map, I would hardly call that fixed. I like the game as much as the next guy, but denying the problems, doesn't make them non existent. They (Dice) should take "Dawnbreaker" or Gamebreaker, as I like to call it, out of the rotation until it's fixed. I play on 360, and it still crashes quite a bit.

[JessiePinkmanYo]

Venom06-Not for nothing, but why do you have 38 pages of comments defending EA/Dice and or bashing CoD? You have NO comments whatsoever pertaining to anything else in the gaming world. Also, your posts of personal attacks is completely classless and base less. You've called people "dillusional" concerning the bugs this game has (or had) and have attacked any article or their source for showing favoritism for CoD. Go look at your posts and see what I mean. You've been doing it for YEARS. Are you doing damage control for EA? Why?

[Z_-_D_-_3]

All I got out of those quotations was "blah, blah, blah-blah-blah- we screwed up, blah."

Just fix your God awful game that I paid $110 for.

[Reverent]

All I got from your comment was immature whining. Try actually reading the guy's comments. He said "We needed more time." Basically suggesting that they were RUSHED. By who you might guess? EA.

This problem isn't so much DICE as it is EA, so give the DEVELOPER's some slack, and throw your punches at the greedy PUBLISHER that's trying to rape your wallet.

[Z_-_D_-_3]

Oh no, yet another person who places absolutely no responsibility on DICE, when they've been working with and optimizing the same engine/servers for God knows how long. I recognize that EA is solely to blame, but don't think for one second that the programmers shouldn't be sharing at least a fraction of the criticism EA has gotten. They're in this, too.

[Tzuno]

True.

[AuToFiRE]

Or they're shitty devs..

[oof46]

@zeal0us: Except Bf4 is a pretty good game covered in doo doo. Aliens: Colonial Marines is just doo doo.

[tristanwerbe]

Because it's a piece of shit 4/10 generic shooter game?

[boeso]

Bingo. Close thread.

[H0RSE]

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say EA rushed it? If DICE had full control, I'm sure they'd take as long as they needed, as is the case with most independent developers.

[TheDev]

Having actually worked for EA (design), I can give you the reasons the game is so buggy. The guy from DICE was absolutely right... not making excuses.

You can't know until you actually worked in a big videogame company...

Here's what they had to deal with:

- EA policies (do this like that, don't do this if it doesn't fit our model for making games the right way, so a lot of itterations to accomodate the "EA Way" some good some bad.)

- Must release for the current fiscal year, absolutely before black friday and christmas. To save a game with a lot of issues that will not necessarly sell a ton, push it next year before march (end of fiscal year) to get more visibility and time.

- Next-gen: the game HAD to make it on NG.

- Bug prioritizing. (showstoppers and major bugs must be fixed. Minor bugs are ok if they aren't too apparent and ideally occuring rarely. Cosmetic bugs matter more on a blockbuster game like BF, but usually low priority a month before launch. If the users complain a lot, you fix it, otherwise, down the list it goes.) Big games have a ton of bugs in all categories. Hundreds, even near launch.

- PC testing is not obvious. You can't ask a studio to buy every piece of hardware to test on every machine configuration. You test on some hardware, then it's beta testing to the public. In a videogame company everyone on the prod pretty much work with the same PC configuration so variety is not the reality. So many employees, you buy in bulk and the same item over and over. IT departement also prefers having to deal with the same hardware on a daily basis.

- Public beta testing: DICE weren't given enough time for that. I played the beta, just a few times and it was already over a few days later.

- We are currently still in "public beta testing". The beta just got removed from the game title... Why the double XP week at the beginning week? Exactly for that reason. So people don't stop playing because of major bugs.

- Working in a big videogame company on big titles has a lot of advantages (big talents, big vision, a lot of resources), but also many inconveniences like stated above.

[BelkingOfSony]

in other words... 'we tried to do what activision are experts at doing, and that is to release a battlefield every year. But we failed and that's why the game is a buggy mess'

[dcj0524]

The last battlefield game was in 2011. That's biannual.

[BelkingOfSony]

oops, too late to edit now

[filipakos]

and activision has two different teams working on COD and they release one every two years

[BelkingOfSony]

infinity ward and treyarch

oh crap the disagrees i'm potentially going to get for the one mistake is going to hurt badly

(not as badly as what just happened, i lost a bubble for no reason)

[The_KELRaTH]

And using the same engine!

[Everlastingfate]

Fact checking FTW

[lastofgen]

I've given this game enough chances.
Sold it off, never looking back.
I know it's a huge game with mp that sports gigantic warfare with a ton going on, but at this point, things should be stable by now. I've never been so disappointed in a bf game.

[Crazyglues]

Yeah, sadly, I couldn't agree more...

I'm a huge Battlefield fan, but I've never been so disappointed with a game as I am with this one...

-Since when does the beta play better then the final product, I mean wow, the PS4 version has been a complete slap in the face to gamers..

It's filled with bugs and problems like I've never seen in a video game.

-and EA/DICE had the nerve to offer a double XP weekend to make up for the epic fail of the game, just shows how clueless these game companies are/ as if that makes up for countless crashing and a complete filled with glitches and problems game...

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[Z_-_D_-_3]

And what's funny to me is; How is anybody supposed to take advantage of that double XP if the game is broken and unplayable? Lol.

Thankfully, the game is moderately stable now.

[NeloAnjelo]

So rushed and not tested enough... We all knew this anyway.

EA deserves what it gets. Stop supporting them.

[DCfan]

lol, you wish. 2 years from here you'll hear the same moaning, buggy game, yet people buy it

[NeloAnjelo]

I know pple will still buy it. They refuse to speak with their wallets!

This is the only way EA will listen.

[thricetold]

what's worse is these same people laugh at cod fans while doing the same exact thing.

"oh this version will be bigger and better than the last"

the deaf laughing at the blind is all I see.

[01animeking]

EA going for the wost company of the year three years in a row

[Rich1631]

Last patch on PS4 was excellent. Fixed most of the issues. There is some bugs left but atleast it is playable now and it was a huge improvement.

[kB0]

Lack of development. End of story.

[venom06]

the point is the game is FUN AS HELL and a whole universe better than it was at release now that the crashes have dramatically decreased.

[famoussasjohn]

It would be best to have little to no crashes at all. The first month and a half the game was a pain in the ass. It's gotten better, yes. However, the game shouldn't have been released with that many issues. We're 2 months in and the game has 17 patches.

[sAVAge_bEaST]

Is this the first battlefield you played?- serious, that's the only reason I can think of, as to why people would be ok with it...

DICE, has gone down hill, with each release. Single Player mode, is killing the MP...

DICE should just release a BF MP only (along with a co-op, and training mode), with 12 maps, then 4x4 throughout the year, for 60$- I think that would be Ideal.

[NeloAnjelo]

The SP is not the reason... Testing and finishing before the release is, with EA's corporate agenda. If it's multiplayer only then the game should be cheaper.

[ATi_Elite]

Why BF4 is buggy!

Simple Math

EA + 5 platforms + EA rushing DICE to release before COD = BUGGY MESS!

[Drumsmasher]

EA ruined Mass Effect, and now this. Excuse me if I never buy an ea game again.

[NeloAnjelo]

And Dead Space, and The Sims. No word yet but I think Titan Fall will have micro transactions.

Watch this space and EA's strategies.

[djplonker]

So it was the games code and nothing to do with ea wanting to beat cod's release date... sure.

[oof46]

You could say that because EA rushed DICE to beat CoD to the market, DICE was unable to optimize the game code and iron out all the bugs.

[windblowsagain]

EA - Should own up and give a map pack away for free.

[famoussasjohn]

EA should provide refunds (perhaps a portion of the games price or something. I doubt that would happen, but they sold us a broken product, and patches shouldn't be the thing that should appease us.) Doubt they'll put DICE LA back to work for additional DLC since that's already been planned out.

[Gore-Content]

Keep your excuses for yourself. I pay for the game, the game should work! Period!

[bromtown]

"This game is a buggy mess because we wanted as much money as possible by launching for the holidays and the actual game came second."

FTFY

[mymehdi]

As a software dev, i can tell that test plans was not well done. You can not assume as a test team that all final users will have the perfect environment. Test plans must be well written an cover at least 80% of all possibility. Maybe management team pushed all resources to validate builds as quick as possible... and here we are... buggy code and lot of excuses.

[RegorL]

Enough with 80%

Did you notice they actually ran an open Beta?
While I had problems starting the game on PC, once the patch came out I had less problems than with BF3. (But one of the things DICE did was further optimization - to be able to run on dual core CPUs. Optimizing is often the opposite of stabilizing...)

On PS3 I had no issues with BF4 (but I do not play around the clock)

I am also a software dev, 80% is not enough in this case. Sell 20% of 5000000 is 1 000 000 users with potential problems. At the same time you can not reach even 80%

I think we will se automatic crash report tools used a lot more on Betas and released games.

On the positive side; Frostbite 3 has soon passed through the purgatory of massively multitreading. ALL game engines will need to do this unless they were written with this in mind, I wonder if any are? Unreal?

Interesting article
http://blackhole12.blogspot...

[Kidmyst]

Dice needs to get away from EA, they'll be able to put out better games then. Or should I say good games when they are ready to release not rush and have it fall apart. Sadly DICE will go out of business before EA.

[AgitatedOcelot]

You don't get away from EA, you get bled dry till you get shut down and they buy yet another studio, or three.

[GROTSTOMPA]

None of this makes sense, just stop making excuses, it makes people more and more mad because anyone with common sense can instantly counter saying - It was released too early, it's literally your decision as a publisher/developer to release a game that's completely broken, no item producing company on the planet is supposed to release something that doesn't work, so you CAN'T make any excuses, it's impossible. Not to mention everyone was flat-out lied to about the status of the game, "Pre-order now!", "This game will and does run better than the BETA!" This is just 1 tiny example.
-
I like Dice and all, but certain people working for EA need to grow some balls and man up including Rickard Svensson. Anyone who supports an immoral company while making excuses for something that is 100% their fault needs to think twice about where they are in their life. This is why we have so much trouble with our Government/Cabals/Military Complex's today, is because people like Rickard won't stand up for the right cause and say NO regardless of his job status, "Sir yes sir, I will Chem-Trail the nation without thinking". When something is wrong, or someone is telling you to lie, or do something immoral, you say NO and don't do it,maybe even spread the word if you are in the position. Stand up for whats right and be a man. Thanks

[dyret2000]

Chem-trailing?? Oh, you're one of those tinfoil hat guys..

[GROTSTOMPA]

This makes you a Fox News Enthusiasts right? We could point fingers all day. Regardless, even though the entire nation is at a turning point and pretty much everything that was said to be happening has become true/proven in public and the majority of people want it to stop based on actual evidence, you're saying I'm a tinfoil enthusiasts? Grow up, or rather wake up, you're conditioned beyond belief. You're doomed to never progress if you keep this mentality up.
-
Hitting disagree to the entire post just "because".. is insane. Not a single word I said was incorrect, I only repeated what happened on paper with EA and their game, while pointing out that blindly following anyone and everything doesn't do anything good regardless of tinfoil hats. Yea man, "we want immoral business practices, deception in the gaming industry, companies lying to us for money, and people blindly protecting them right?" Clearly I'm a tinfoil enthusiasts for wanting morality. It's not a discussion when it's the truth, and considering Chem-Trailing is actually real .. and not a conspiracy, it's actually talked about and defended by our Government all the time in the OPEN which shows me how incredibly sheltered you are, it's not even a secret, there is court case after court case because they are poisonous experiments to the environment.. farmers want it to stop because it ruins their crops as well. How do you not know this in the freedom information age? I hope you're disappointed where YOU are mentally in life because I certainly am, we need unity, not random ill-willed mindless zombies pointing fingers saying it's all conspiracy theories.
-
This is my last reply, be a man/lady and question your little confined, pretend world you live in. Even worse is I have to tell you to actually look at whats right in front of you.. and yes as my "tinfoil hat" radar goes off - 9/11 was absolutely an inside job as the evidence to support this would convict any criminal in the court of law. You act like when there is a truth to be heard, people are supposed to just be quiet, because people like you will ridicule them. You're literally contributing to suppression of actual information, congrats. Thanks

[Angerfist]

I bought the Game because i had too much money apparently and it was horrible on launch, absolutely unplayable.
They spend too much money on advertising and promo goodies.

[Gh05t]

This only explains pc though. Why would my Battlefield 4 crash all the time on a closed environment like X1 or PS4? I mean really it's not like PC is the only one having crashing problems. This all just sounds like BS to me. Had they developed the game to run how they wanted with at least the min specs than they should have been fine.I get the threading issue from the days I took software engineering classes but this still seems like BS. This could have easily been tested out through beta and the information they received should have told them to wait. So if he is telling the truth that no one really said f-it release it anyways then they are incompetent and are even worse off.

[SITH]

Exactly. Consoles should be less susceptible to bugs and crashes. Should be. The fact we have them is the nature of ports. I have not experienced one single crash with XO exclusives. Only BF4 crashes.

[RegorL]

If they have these kind of races on PC they probably have them on PS4 and Xbox One too. And PS4/Xbox One did not take part in the Beta...

If you have 100 PS4s and no more than one crashes each day.
How big is your problem? (1%) [The reason for a crash could be anything - like other players lined up like a Christmas three balancing on Chuck Norris head]

Scale this to 2 000 000 concurrent gamers it will equal 20 000 crashes each day...

[Gh05t]

The complaint was that they had to deal with multiple different hardware configurations. Xbox and play station are considered closed systems. What you are saying isn't necessarily incorrect you are just way out of context.

[inf3cted1]

Can you explain why it was released then?

[esemce]

Dice should not of made themselves EA's b1tches. Yeah EA are evil but Dice are to blame also.

If we are going to have a new BF every year then to workforce needs to expand or we have a 18 month cycle.

[bligmerk]

The latest patch fixed a lot of things, at least for the PS4. Also, with BF4, it really depends on the platform. There is no way to patch the resource hog BF4 is on the PC. It's just going to take a really high-end PC to be satisfactory, or crank the resolution and graphics down like it is on the XBO to play very crappy. On the PS4, having 64 players on a console is really crazy. The water craft are actually bobbing around on rolling waves. That is crazy to think about the calculations to do that. It is a buggy game but the destructibility, vehicles and nature effects are very next gen on the PS4.

[KratosSaveUs]

"Because we rushed it out so it can release before COD and because we work with EA so that means we don't care about the quality of our games we're just in it for the money".

Seriously this game sucks and I really wish I would've never wasted 60 dollars on crap. I'm done wasting my money on "modern day war shooters" like BF and Cod they're all the same year after year. I deleted BF4 off my PS4 and it won't be going back in my PlayStation ever again.

[il-JumperMT]

How about you did not waste resourced on a crappy SP and focused on MP only, just like BF1942, BF2 and BF 2142

[kryteris]

my experience with the game is mostly negative with the corrupted files during single player, that and single play being a bit lame. They should of did what Arma did, and released slowly with an explanation as to why. The game already is the most discounted with sales so no biggie if was incomplete.

[sovietsoldier]

yeah blame frost bite because 3-4 is such a hugh leap that it totally wrecks you're game, get the fuck out!

still say the worst i have ever seen for a game is ro2 that has to be in history the worst launch i have ever had next after that would be sim city<---yeah another ea game.

[Vicks9945]

they rushed it to compete with cod... end of history, the game had a huge potential in the long run, but they wasted it to be "there" in launch... imagine in this time a good next gen battlefield polished and ready to play... simply awesome but instead, another crappy mess fps to pacth for a full year

[Vicks9945]

and now the new mirrors edge suffers from this crap... if they release mirrors in the same state we can bury the franchise for good... please DICE learn from this and bring us a finished game.

[SkullBlade169]

Game developers sure do a lot of explaining these days...

Just shut up and fix the damn game already!

[PurpHerbison]

A rushed multi-plat game. And this is multi-plat at its worst! PS3/360/PC/PS4/X1. That is just begging for an onslaught of issues.

[younglj01]

Ok I'm confuse I thought that Frostbite 3 was next-gen ready?After reading so many articles on N4G about how PS3/360 was holding them back.Now its confirm that it wasn't the hardware but the developers.

I blame both EA and DICE for the problems that BF4 is going through.People we be really dumb if they really think DICE had nothing to do with the state of this game at release.

[kevnb]

Not defending it, but this is one of the first game engines that can actually take advantage of more than just a few cores. I don't think most people here even know what thread safe is, he gave reasons not just excuses.

[GasTankKiller]

The majority of customers don't care if its a fact or excuse base. They paid for a product thinking it was in full working order or they would have never purchased.

I can't wait to see what happens Christmas day. All the extra people hitting the servers. Its going to be release week all over again.

[N2NOther]

I'm not reading the article but I highly doubt it says "Because EA is jealous of COD's money so they made us rush to release a game that wasn't ready" or something to similar effect.

Anything other than that is a bold-faced lie.

[LetoAtreides82]

Agreed. I think it's someone from EA who knew BF4's issues and is trying to blame Dice.

[V0LT]

Because you wanted to get it out before the end of the year because your sales would have sucked otherwise.

[fullmetal297]

Because DICE were playing real life version of their game mode "rush" agaisnt Activision and won. Except it cost gamers millions of dollars of regret in the process and Activision actually set off the last mcom at 5 tickets remain and won.

[GasTankKiller]

I'll be honest here. I could care less about why. I want to know when. When will it be fixed?

Hell, Destiny had a release window of spring 2014 and now its late summer / early fall 2014. I'm guessing Watch Dogs needed more time as well for testing. As much as the consumer hates having to wait. The consumer hates wasting money on broken products more.

If something needs more testing then do it. Rushing something out the door will always cost more later, and I'm not just talking about money.

[cyclindk]

Crashes are one thing... this hit detection and "lag" is ridiculous, it wasn't present in BF3 to anywhere near the degree to which it infects every corner of BF4.

I was only going to boycott the DLC, but unless they "fix" this new, netcode, or whatever to bring it in line with BF3 and other FPSs, this WILL be my last BF game until they regain my confidence in them.

I already ditched CoD years ago, since after MoD war 2, not afraid of ditching BF either, sad as it would be to have to.

[SirBillyBones]

I'm glad someone mentioned the hit detection and lag! I just had to rage quit because it was getting past a joke. The PS4 version is still a mess.

Everyone is focusing on the crashing problem (and rightly so) but the general lag issues are much worse in the long run.

Taking cover in this game is completely useless. While I was playing earlier, I walked into a sealed container to take cover, 2 whole seconds later I was shot by someone way out of the line of sight. I checked their profile.. Canadian. I'm a European player and after a certain time of night the game becomes unplayable due to the ping conflicts. The larger ping, the greater their advantage. A lot of the issues would be solved by having the option to play on region locked servers.

The other big issue is the Quick Match on console. It throws people from opposite sides of the planet together into a big bucket of lag. When I see someone from America etc I often ask them why they're on the European servers... the huge majority of them reply saying they had no idea they were on them, and most didn't even know there were specific servers for different regions.

I see that there are supposed to be Ranked servers that dont allow people using quick match, but those servers don't exist.. along with regular Conquest servers. I mention that because it would be nice to play conquest without all the rubber banding and horrific lag that comes with Conquest Large.

Lag was bad enough in BF3, but this is a whole new level. The recent patch to fix the kill trading seems to have made it worse. I'm being shot by people who aren't even facing me. It's disgusting. What dismayed me is that going into next gen I thought we would see some PC server functions appear on the consoles.. at the very least display each players ping. But they couldn't even manage that. Until consoles have ping filtering and a working server browser, they will always be a complete mess.

/Rant.

[cyclindk]

I hear you, some things which HAVE seemed to help me:

Under gameplay, network smoothing set to "0."

Dont use quickmatch, use only server browser with filters for your ideal region.

Also select servers by the "connection bars" that show the strongest for you.

I have gotten MUCH improved hit detection although not perfect

[Aleithian]

Was this written by a high school kid? "He explains that the coding is very different from BF3 (Frostbite 2) and BF4 (Frostbite 3) and that one of the reasons for the big changes are that they want to use the new hardware better by squeezing out the maximum capacity of multi-core PCs and nextgen-consoles." What?

[DJ]

I laughed out loud too.

[DJ]

Eh, even the best testing can't catch crazy bugs. Like the one from Killzone 3 which only happened every 200 times a specific game combination was chosen from the lobby.

[LetoAtreides82]

Do you even play BF4? The issues BF4 had at launch (and still having some of those issues btw) could have been discovered in less than an hour of testing, in fact the issues were already tracked on their bug tracker before they launched.

At launch you'd play the campaign and it crashes and corrupts your save data. Play multiplayer and it randomly disconnects you and sometimes somehow corrupts your campaign save data. These aren't exactly hard to find bugs.

[KarrBOMB]

The user claims that they were not prepared for all the issues with Battlefield 4, and that no one EA or DICE has ever said “F*ck it, let’s release it anyway.”

Annnnd yet they did exactly that with the release. Sounds like a bunch of excuses for rushing a game that they thought could be fixed with early patches.

[LetoAtreides82]

This anonymous person claiming to be a Dice employee is essentially blaming BF4's launch disasters on Dice. We've already had an anonymous person claiming to be a Dice employee blame BF4's issues on EA forcing Dice to release the game unfinished.

So who to believe here? I think it's far more likely that EA's to blame. This new anonymous person is probably someone from EA.

[RegorL]

Read the original message, it is in Swedish. Not many within EA write Swedish - autotranslate is EASY to detect.

Do you have any reference to where a DICE employee claimed it to be EAs fault?

[LetoAtreides82]

EA has people in all parts of the world, even Sweeden. Here's EA's Sweedish office in Stockholm, capital of Sweeden:
https://careers.ea.com/loca...

And here's an article of a former Dice employee blaming it on EA.
http://www.craveonline.com/...

[RegorL]

That he wrote in great Swedish on fz.se made it more legitimate.
'Svenska är mitt modersmål', BASIC was my third language,
but the first I mastered...
His writings makes ALOT of sense.

* FB2 rewritten to FB3 to utilize more cores.
My take: Needed for relatively slow 8 core processors of NG.
A single console core does not have the punch of a core on your desktop.

* Hard to verify if code is thread safe or not
My take: Yes, it really is. You have to design and write to make it
tread safe. Very hard to add efficiently later. With few processors you
can cheat. Put a big lock (you won't loose that much performance) the
more concurrent CPUs you have, the more finer grained locking you
will need.
(One core waiting for a few tens of cycles aren't that bad but seven?
Linux went through the full transition, from a single CPU where the
kernel never expected to be racing, first multiprocessor required that
only one executed at the same time => add a Big Kernel Lock, and now
finally it has been removed - it took a decade!)
Frostbites starting position was probably a lot better as it was
introduced after multicore CPUs entered the market. But could it have
expected eight cores?

* Timing, causes crashes in non thread safe code
My take as I have understood Frostbite.
There are lots of small jobs triggered by external events (including
finished GPU processing of another job) and other jobs finishing.

2) The former DICE employee left after BF3 and do not really have first
hand information. He might probably have met former work mates at
noisy bars.
I would say this is a lot less reliable source - and the tweet
doesn't really say anything valuable...
What if the real reason was SONY releasing one year earlier than
everyone expected? (It fits the tweets)

[SharnOfTheDEAD]

Tbh I'm enjoying it, had a few crashes... but that's it. It is bad how other players have suffered. Just my personal experience hasn't been too bad...

[Big-Bruizzer]

So the timing is off due to the math in the programming? So fix your math. Developers want to make a game using one generic code for all systems. If said systems are different for receiving code then it requires more coding for those systems. This is what bothers me. The developers cry that they want more money for their games, but yet are too lazy to give proper code to each individual system. Put in the work and effort to produce a good game for each individual system instead of using one set of code templates across all systems and then maybe you can ask for more money.

[RegorL]

This is not how I have understood the Frostbite engine.
My understanding is that each platform has different code.
And that even data is "compiled" to fit every platform.
(Mantle will be a separate platform even if it has lots in
common with PC)

Check out http://publications.dice.se...