Battlefield 4: Now with more WUB WUB

[Megrim]

Go to Game Options (or something) and set the "Network Smoothing" slider down to zero. Should help.

[jakonovski]

Go to Game Options (or something) and set the "Network Smoothing" slider down to zero. Should help.

Oh right, I had forgotten about that feature of BF. Thanks!

I did it and five minutes later I headshotted a helo driver. Is such a thing even possible?

[Surlyboi]

Yes it is.

[jakonovski]

Ugh, the honeymoon is over even before it begun. Tonight's been utterly unplayable. It shows I have ping of around 15 but I can't run without stuttering and whenever I die I either warp back several meters or alternatively the shot comes from out of LOS on the kill cam.

I knew I shouldn't have bought anything made by DICE/EA.

edit: also, the game is full of invisible walls and vaulting over obstacles fails most of the time. These were not present in BF3 to me, so I guess they're regressing with their netcode?

[Jherad]

I'm not seeing any invisible walls, and whilst vaulting is 'iffy', it works more often than not for me - is this is a particular server you've been having problems with perhaps?

[jakonovski]

Naw, it's all of them. Seriously, I just ragequit because I ran through some branches, then tried to come back and got stuck in the same branches and got killed. Though the real reason for raging was the spawn system, which I hate. On many maps you can't spawn anywhere with an enemy presence, you'll just end up next to the enemy looking away.  

edit: and on the flood map, I literally was unable to run to the park with the bridge. There was a line in the sand my dude wouldn't cross. Had to circle around and come from the water.

[Megrim]

It does seem to sound like a server issue. I know personally the vaulting can be a bit glitchy, but it tends to happen in fairly specific places - such as the low rubble walls of a collapsed building. I know, for example, that I won't be able to cleanly vault over those. Rubberbanding issues can be either server (likely), or an unstable connection on your end.

[jakonovski]

Well I've only played on like three servers, so might be that. I searched for a bunch of new ones just in case.

[Jimbo]

It still has horrible netcode. They made it way different then BF3. In BF3, I could actually play the game, in BF4 is sure seems like, spawn, killed by a sniper from behind cover from across the map. The support LMG suck, you can't move and flank people with out exposing yourself, that could be a map design or net code (or both), it just doesn't feel right.

I'm glad they made some changes, like not making you rez with full health (as medic trains could rip apart a rush map), giving recon the ability to counter armor with c-4 or other gadgets, improving the camo and weapon attachments. How it plays is horrible compared to other Battlefield titles.

Maybe when they do the patch for the netcode it will be better...hopefully.

[jakonovski]

Haha, I shot my sniper at a player who was afk. First round hit, pull the bolt, second round in the exact same spot, no hit. It's like you have to test the waters when playing, if you can't hit then it's bail out time.

edit: another thing I learned, everything flying is basically immune to the Stinger because it can stay at range with impunity, or fire flares and go out of range. The AC-130 flies higher than the Stinger's max range. I can't believe this stuff. I can maybe see Stinger getting some use if you voice coordinate a whole team of Engineers, but that's once again games design for catpissmen.

[Trouble]

The Battlefield 4 ipad app is out now that lets you play commander.

[WayAbvPar]

I have been playing sporadically, but it really isn't grabbing me. Part of that is the sheer magnitude of all the unlocks and progression. I didn't spring from premium, so I it takes fucking forever to unlock anything. I can't decide on a path I want to concentrate on, so I end up bouncing around and unlocking approximately dick.

[jakonovski]

Made aiming a bit easier for myself today. The game has mouse acceleration on by default, and to remedy it I found this:

-close your origin, i mean completely!
-go to "C:\Users\username\Documents\Battlefield 4\settings" if you have 2 folder ( battlefield 4 and battlefield 4 BETA) do both of them
-open file PROFSAVE_profile by notepad or word pad
-find "GstInput.Scheme0Sensitivity" and "GstInput.Scheme1Sensitivity" and change it to 0.000000 then save it
-enjoy sniping headshot xD

[Trouble]

Commander in BF4 is actually really well done (especially when I can do it in bed on my iPad). BF2142 had commanders, but it was bullshit. You could "command" squads around and hoped they did shit for you, which they never did. In BF4 you can direct squads around if you want, but it's equally impotent. Instead, the commander has a bunch of actually powerful and game-changing abilities:

* Scan UAV: you can choose an area where all enemies will be automatically be marked. It has a short cooldown and you can keep it up 95% of the time.
* EMP UAV: Blocks enemy Scan UAV, prevents spotting, blows up cruise missiles that cross its path
* Cruise Missile: Takes like 10-20 seconds, depending on map, to arrive. But when it does it blows every enemy up in a large area, regardless of cover and altitude.
* Evac Order: When the *other* commander launches a cruise missile, you can always see its trajectory. If you plop an Evac Order where it will land, anyone within kill radius gets this incredible on-screen red ass warning GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE plus ear piecing warning alarms. I've found this to be pretty effective in making people GTFO
* High Valued Target: if an enemy gets a 6+ kill streak, you can plunk him with this which makes him perma-spotted and gives bonuses to anyone who kills him (and you)

There's other shit like ammo drop, squad upgrade, scans, etc. Those are all details. Point is, they made commander an actually really intense, constant action thing which has real impact on the game. On the other hand, it really depends on certain gameplay modes and only gets better with more people. Given a good map, good gameplay mode, and 48-64 people, you can expect to end up in the top 1-5 score-wise, so it's rewarding. Gameplay mode: only play commander on Obliteration or Rush. The skills available to Commanders greatly depend on HIGH concentrations of people in one spot. Tighter maps are better due to higher density. Operation Locker and Flood Zone are great in either mode due to the incredibly limited area. I've managed #1 scoring a few times on that map as Commander. If you're good at landing cruise missiles then most maps on Obliteration can be pretty high scoring.

Note on iPad: it requires a ridiculous amount of dragging shit around. Commanding on PC is way easier. But there's also this kind of visceral rewarding feeling of dragging shit on people... so whatever. Also iPad goes to my bed and my PC does not. Further problem: there's no server selection on iPad. You just keep hitting PLAY and CANCEL until you find a server with the right game mode and players and map and whatnot. I suspect this is just a "we rushed this shit out the door and will fix it soon" thing, so I'm not angry. I can usually find an Obliteration or Rush with a fuckload of people within 10 tries (in bed) so I'm not about to uprise just yet.

[jakonovski]

Looks like the mouse fix worked, I no longer have trouble hitting people. I was on a new server though, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.

I must also take back a lot I said about the Stinger. Shot down a dozen or so aircraft with it last night, the trick is to make people panic and launch their countermeasures by locking on but not firing. Even so, a good player can hang back and kill stuff without risk.

 

[MrHat]

Looks like the mouse fix worked, I no longer have trouble hitting people. I was on a new server though, so maybe that has something to do with it as well.

I must also take back a lot I said about the Stinger. Shot down a dozen or so aircraft with it last night, the trick is to make people panic and launch their countermeasures by locking on but not firing. Even so, a good player can hang back and kill stuff without risk.

 

Not sure if you can do it with the stinger, but with IGLA you can fire at them, hit reload and look away, then relock on them and fire again which causes first missile to re lock and second missile to hit them simultaneously.  Usually after they've blown flares on first lock.

[jakonovski]

Ok, I think my problems are server based. The one I used to play on most, Webhallen 1, superficially has a really good ping, but it's no good to me. I get instagibbed (ie. damage doesn't show on screen until it's fatal) and opponents mysteriously avoid getting hit even when I get the drop on them. Just now a dude warped forward while I shot at him, then warped right back to shoot at me. None of this happened on the random German server I found.

A real pity, since those servers get a lot of play.

edit: which reminds me of my "favorite" cheat on Counter Strike back in the day. If you get jumped, spam the screenshot button and the game will chug badly, making you move really erratically from the opponent's POV.

[calapine]

jakonovski, should I get this?

It seems the "Ehh! Bargain bin 2015" faction has the right idea about this game. But then I log into BF BC2 and it's all lvl 100 colonels with their shitbuckets that slaughter the opposing team. Feels like in BF4 might be easier to swim with the unskilled masses.

[jakonovski]

Welp, this was clearly released way too early because of all the terrible bugs, but the core is still good. Casuals always tend to play the latest game, so I'm starting to think buying the yearly updates is just part of the price of admission for fps multiplayer unless one is a poopsocker (is this the f13 approved term?).

Also, for all the whining I've been doing, my gameplay clock shows I've put in 16 hours in one week.

[Trouble]

Had a massive lol today. Someone accused me of aim botting because I went 21 and 0. The catch... I was playing commander, on my ipad, in bed. I guess they just saw my score and assumed. I have to admit, was having a hell of a good time with cruise missiles and did end up as top scorerl. Hilarious.

[jakonovski]

I've seen people use cruise missiles maybe three times, probably because you have no way of knowing they even exist unless you go digging for information. This game has hands down the worst documentation ever.

[Trouble]

They're really hard to use. You launch them to a given spot and it takes 10+ seconds for them to reach there and blow up, so it's hard to hit people (and you only get one try per 3-5 minutes). You have to either guess where people are or guess people will stay where they were. I've had the best luck launching at spawn beacons, which squads tend to congregate around (you can see the squad beacon icon). To get 21 kills as commander in one map is basically ridiculous... it requires getting multikills every time. This is part of why I say you need to do commander only on obliteration or rush... you need a lot of people close together to get the points. Also, you don't always have access to launch missiles in other modes. On rush and obliteration you start off being able to launch missiles (depending on map), but on conquest your team needs to own the middle node, which is always contested.

[jakonovski]

I'll have to withdraw any recommendation I may have had for this game. DICE did something and now I can't play more than five minutes without crashing. The game is simply unplayably broken.

[schpain]

Jakonovski - the crashing could be a host of issues but i found that the last patch reset my video settings from borderless to fullscreen, changing it back stopped the crashes (like it did in beta).

There was also talk of updating drivers for graphics card, a windows update and old realtek drivers all contributing to sporadic crashes.  But yeh, not happy with this last patch, sounds like it broke the people who weren't broke and fixed some of the people who were...

[MrHat]

I was fine until this afternoon then it's about the same - 5 mins or so then crash.

[jakonovski]

I've narrowed things down, the Shanghai map is a guaranteed crash within 5 minutes, others I've tried are often stable until new map, at which point it usually crashes.

[calapine]

Got this too. First crash after an hour. It does seem nice (I like the sound, improvement over BF 2)  although not really a game I'd enjoy playing alone all time. Time to find some friends, I guess.

[Nija]

If you're west coast or play on central servers, add me: Nijasan

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Nijasan/

[calapine]

If you're west coast or play on central servers, add me: Nijasan

http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Nijasan/

Same. http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4/user/Nessanie

(Someone took Calapine before me. *sad*)

[jakonovski]

Yay, a new problem! DICE once again "fixed" something and now my ping is fucked to the hundreds on at least two servers that used to work fine. The best part of this shitfest is that the game's own ping counter shows normal latency, all the way until the server boots me for high ping.

edit: funny thing, I tried being a medic for a while. Currently it's pretty much more convenient to respawn than to accept a revive on most maps. Really dumb.

edit2: tried a third server. Was shooting at a dude with my APC HMG, got a kill assist before the dude was dead. Quit immediately. Right now the game's been absolute dogshit for a third of the time I've had it.

 

[Sir T]

I think you have officially earned the coveted "punching yourself in the dick" masochism award for the thread Jak.

I wonder did they optomise for consoles.

[jakonovski]

I know right, I have this dysfunction that if I buy something full price I feel obligated to "enjoy" it even if it's dick punching. Venting about it on forums is the best part.

Anyway, from what I hear the (new gen) console versions are worse in terms of bugs, although I suspect EA will concentrate on fixing them first (been 2 weeks now without a pc patch, no problems fixed). Old console versions are slideshows on top of all the other problems.

edit: I guess one has to count their blessings, the PS4 version launched without a working Conquest mode and still has save corruption bugs that wipe progress in the single player.

editforthenewday: found yet another bug, on some maps the graphics break if you do the levelution thing. My game suddenly became a slideshow for no apparent reason and I had to reset all the graphics settings to get it working. Also, the graphics options are labeled wrong. Medium is ultra and vice versa. DICE hasn't even fixed that.

yetanotheredit: the latency/desynch problem seems to have become a permanent feature for me. I often just plain cannot hit anyone, even if they're standing in front of me (usually they kill me before I see them, making it look like a dude appears and I die from a single shot that is never fired). These games have essentially become a scam, they hope to catch you by making you pay up front before you realize the game is broken. After that, you're no longer a customer.

[Nija]

BF4 is a buggy piece of shit. Through and through.

However. There are moments. There are moments.



That is the final engineer class unlock. The SRAW, a wire guided thing that will travel to the last aimed-at object in your view finder. Affectionately known as the RAWDOG to my friends and myself, it's a high skill weapon that has devastating results when used correctly.

In fact, how due to how the view finder / last lock works, you can fire a projectile straight up in the air (while zoomed in) and then reload it. After the reload completes, aim at your target and fire a second round. If the target is stationary, put the launcher away. Your work is complete. You should now have two hits on that vehicle, with the later one streaking in seemingly from outer space.

It's amazing when performed correctly. As featured here: http://www.twitch.tv/thesnomann/c/3272349 That guy calls is a wombo combo, which is the incorrect name. The correct name is the DOUBLE DOG.

[jakonovski]

I'm nowhere near getting that, I just got to try canted sights for my Recon, after unlocking it without actually being able to use it for like three games.

Anyway, those moments are indeed why people play this terrible abortion of a game. But that launcher thing sounds like something I'll be never able to do. Just today I learned that the airburst launcher is supposed to actually airburst. Someone raved how great it is to shoot past roof tops to get at the snipers hiding. Welp, doesn't work for me. The thing won't lock onto a building matter how many times I try.


 

[Nija]

Airburst doesn't lock. It detects flesh within something like 3m and explodes. Simply aim above where the enemy is hiding. You also have to account for drop, as it's a projectile not unlike a 40mm grenade.

You can clearly see the projectile arc while aiming with its NV scope.