Battlefield 4 continues to suffer from multiplayer hiccups which are attributed to the so-called ‘netcode’ issues, which involve faulty latency compensation and glitches. These, understandably, are annoying.
DICE has affirmed they’re ”committed to improving” the situation, especially with things related to ‘netcode’. The studio has posted a new blog explaining what their plan of attack is.
Latency compensation attempts to make other players move around on-screen as naturally as possible, but troubles can make it appear you’ve suffered a ‘one hit kill’.
DICE has outlined issues raised by the community that they’re ‘fixing or investigating’:
Rubber banding
We have made several server optimizations that have decreased rubber banding for some players. To further address the issue, there are upcoming fixes for packet loss and a customize screen bug, both connected to the rubber banding issue. Furthermore, we will continue to collect data to pinpoint exactly when and why rubber banding is occurring.
Kill camera delay / Player death sync
On some occasions, the kill camera would trigger before the game client displayed the last portion of damage being dealt, giving players the impression that they died too early. There were also issues with blood effects, damage indicators, and the health bar in the HUD being out of sync. A fix for this will be included in the next game update.
Tickrate
Players have been asking whether the tickrate – how often the server will update the game world – in Battlefield 4 will be higher in the future. Though we haven’t got any immediate plans to increase the tickrate at this moment, we are exploring the possibilities of raising the tickrate on specific servers.
No registered damage
We are aware of the bug where players have been firing at their opponent and not doing damage. In the February 13 game update for PC, we added a piece of code that enables us to specifically track instances where this would occur. We are currently looking at when this issue is triggered, and what causes it. The data that we receive will help us to further improve the firefights in the future.
Instant death while sprinting
At certain occasions while walking or sprinting, a player could get catapulted at high speed which would cause death if any object was standing in the way. This was caused by a mathematical error in the character physics code, and we have a fix prepared for an upcoming patch.
Various Items
In addition to these items, there are also fixes coming for issues with Levolution being out of sync, shots appearing to be fired in the wrong direction, and vehicles outside the infantry area not taking damage when fired at. Also, we have introduced new in-game icons that will help you, and us, to troubleshoot network related problems that could cause an inconsistent multiplayer experience.
They also highlight what their recent efforts have fixed:
Kill card shows 0 health
Kill card sometimes incorrectly displays 0 health, despite the enemy being alive. This could happen when a portion of damage dealt was rejected by the server, since the bullets that caused it were fired after the point of death for the firing player – the kill card would show the health as predicted by your game client, rather than the health confirmed by the server. An improvement that decreased the rate at which this happens went live for PC on Feb 13, and will be included in the next game update for all the platforms.
Broken collision
We have fixed instances of broken collision that made it impossible for players to shoot past broken objects, such as the collapsed chimney on Zavod 311.
Crosshair disappearing, resulting in hit markers disappearing
In firefights, players on PC could experience their crosshair disappearing, resulting in hit markers also disappearing. This would happen when certain gadgets were deployed by other players. A fix for this is now live.
Hit impact sounds
Impact sounds did not match the number of bullet impacts, causing players to feel that they died too quickly. An improvement to this went live for PC on February 13, and will be included in the next update for all the other platforms. The cooldown time for letting bullet hits trigger the sound has been decreased considerably, so players will now hear every bullet that hits them.
Headshot icon
We have re-introduced the headshot icon to help players understand when they get killed by a headshot, something that usually results in an instant death. The headshot icon went live in the January 30-31 game update for all platforms.
Check out the full Battlelog update on ‘netcode’ issues for more. The last two remaining DLC releases for Battlefield 4 are being handled by DICE LA and not the main Stockholm studio, it was recently revealed.
