I feel like I owe a lot of people an apology. When BF4's Beta launched back in September I spent an inordinate amount of time in forums and on Facebook lecturing people on the difference between a Beta and a Trial. Every time I came across a post talking smack about the Beta's unfinished graphics, lack of polish, or it's myriad glitches, I was quick to come to DICE's defense, going on and on about the 3 month old build that would look nothing like the final product. As it turns out, their Beta was a Trial; a sample completely representative of the final product. So if you happened to run into the footthumb moniker out there in the world wild web, I apologize; the Current Gen console version of BF4 is indeed an inferior product.
If you've spent any time on Battlelog this last week or so no doubt you've seen the long list of complaints and endless insults thrown at DICE and EA. If you haven't, and you've been playing the game oblivious to it's problems then you might want to skip this blog and go about your merry way enjoying your purchase. Frankly, I don't see how people are even still playing this game on consoles, and, some aren't; BF3 has seen a noticeable uptick in returning players. I don't want to turn anybody off of BF4 because with the launch of the Next Gen consoles I have a tiny sliver of microscopic faith that this game will be worth the $65 price tag. But that's just it. This generation's consoles appear to have been an afterthought, or at the very least, low on their priorities. To put it a little more cynically, BF4 on the 360/PS3 appears to be a straight up money grab intended to cash in on the final weeks of the Current Gen. The game is absolutely unfinished and falls far short of what gamers expect from DICE. The only thing they seemed to have done post-Beta is stick the game in a box and ship it. So, the problems.
The first thing I noticed, as in, maybe it's time for some new glasses noticed, was the utterly subpar graphics. Playing the Beta I consciously ignored the bland textures here and there because I assumed that they were just low-res placeholder versions of their soon to come high-res brethren. I figured come showtime all of the blandness would be replaced with the kind of dopitude that Battlefield is known for. Problem is, in a lot of instances, things are pretty much exactly the same as the Beta. Running towards the first set of M-COM's in my very first game of RUSH, I stopped to look around at my surroundings waiting for those high-res images to reveal themselves. So I waited, and waited, and waited, and… got plugged by a sniper from 200m out. It simply never happened. Visually, the final product and the Beta are nearly indistinguishable. This is an enormous failure in my book (available at Amazon.com for $499.99, Kindle Version $2.99). Part of Battlefield's allure is it's ability to immerse the player in a much more authentic real world battlefield experience. But if you play BF3 and BF4 side by side, it almost seems like BF4 was released before BF3. In my eyes, it's really that bad. But the bad doesn't stop at the graphics. In fact, that's only where it begins.
Another issue I have is not only the lack of environmental objects, but what I like to call the invisible fence. In that same first game as I was making my way to the objective I came upon what looked like an area surrounded by fence posts. As I tried to go between them I was stopped dead in my tracks by an invisible barrier. Having played BF3 for the last 2 years I recognized DICE's chain link fence setup, so I knifed that dead air and sure enough a piece of fence went flying allowing me to continue rubber banding my way to the next objective. Now, if this had only happened in that first game it would be a stupid little minor issue that I would've completely ignored. The problem is, this happens every, single, time, without fail. I couldn't tell you what exactly this problem is, maybe some sort of redraw issue that isn't loading that chain link fence texture, but when this particular failed equation is added together - the lack of detail in the textures + the lack of environmental items + the invisible fence - never are BF4's visual shortcomings more glaring then when I come upon a fenced in area. But, let's face it, all of their failures in the visual department pale in comparison to the absolute disaster that is their server problems.
Apparently it's not entirely a server-side problem. Here's a look at what DICE/EA has to say on the matter on Battlelog (edited):
This is by far the worst problem I've ever had, in any game, with crashes. My first day with the game was spent rebooting my 360 2 times. Lately, I look back on that day with fondness. Every time I put this game in I end up restarting my 360 exactly 4 times. That number would be higher but my rule is after the 3rd crash, one more crash and the game comes out. Don't get me wrong, I've been able to play for a few hours here and there but not a single day has gone by without reaching my 4 crash limit. Battlelog is filled with posts about this so the problem is widespread, affecting all platforms. This issue is the #1 reason a lot of people have completely given up on the Current Gen version and have either walked away entirely or are biding their time in BF3 until they can get their hands on one of the Next Gen consoles. As you may have noticed in DICE/EA's post, they are aware of the problem and a fix is coming soon, but by the time it does come, how many people will have completely given up on the 360/PS3 version of this game? Fans of the series are dedicated but there's a limit to how much we'll put up with. I haven't touched the game in a couple of days because I'm sick of having to restart my 360 every 10 minutes to play a game that makes my eyes nauseous. The crash and restart problem itself is a huge deal breaker, but the problem is made much worse by my POS 360. For the past year I've had major problems with my disc drive (yup, I'm that lazy). More often than not discs simply do not read, forcing me to open and close the drive 4 or 5 times (sometimes more) before it'll actually spin up and read. So when my 360 freezes up and I have to restart it there's a very good chance that I have to sit there tipping my console back and forth to get the disc to read just to get back in the game and do it all again. As you can imagine, this is not exactly conducive to an enjoyable experience.
There are of course a number of other minor problems I have with BF4, or at least minor in comparison to the crashes and graphics, but I'm trying to put together a video blog covering everything so I'll save most of them for a later date (probably after the ONE version is released). There are a couple of other things worth mentioning though. Of these 'minor' problems, loadout customization is certainly near the top of the list. In BF4 if you want to customize your loadout you have two options; 1) you can customize your loadout while the game is in progress, or 2) you can do it via Battlelog on an external device. That's it. No more customizing at your own pace from the main menu, if you want to play around with your loadout you either access Battlelog from your CPU, smart phone, or tablet, or you make your team suffer while you customize mid-game. It's not exactly some sort of deal breaker, but it seems a pretty poor choice to remove that option from the main menu. Since I have a smart phone and my laptop is in the same room as my 360, it really is no big deal; but if you don't have a smart phone or tablet, and your CPU is in another room, you have to walk away from the game to go customize your loadout. I understand that a lot of companies are making decisions these days based upon the assumption that their customers have a smart phone and/or tablet as well as broadband, but it just seems like a poor decision to assume everyone has the necessary external equipment to use your product, or in this case, to use it without making other people suffer.
My final issue may very well be a off-shoot of the game's server issues, but since it's not exactly catastrophic, I never bothered looking into it. I never actually hit Quick Match when I want to jump into a game, so naturally I use the Server Browser. You pretty much have the same options as BF3's Server Browser, but after setting your options, searching for a relevant browser reveals a very, very, very long list of full servers. With options to chose Full, 1-5 open slots, 1-15 open slots, or Empty, you'd think that choosing 1-5, or 1-15 would bring up servers with only 1-5 slots, or 1-15 slots available. You'd be wrong. I have my options set for 1-15 and without fail the first 50,000 servers it returns are completely full. With no Page Up or Page Down button, and unfortunately no End of List option, you're forced to scroll through 49,995 servers before you can find maybe 5-10 servers with a single open slot. Now, that number is obviously an exaggeration, but let's say that there are 250 results. Out of those 250, 5-10 contain empty slots, regardless of selecting the 1-15 option. I strongly recommend that you do not select 1-5 because you'll be lucky if you have even one with a single open slot. It is extremely frustrating to have to hold down my joystick for 15 seconds before finding a handful of servers that read 23/24. I'm hoping that this issue gets resolved as well, but after everything else, I'm not exactly holding my breath for a solution.
Maybe I'm being a little tough on BF4, but the fact is, after such a great game like BF3, I was expecting much, much more dopitudinal awesomeness. If you'll recall, BF3 wasn't exactly smooth sailing from the get go either, but compared to the Current Gen console version, BF3 was a masterpiece. Judging by what I've seen and experienced, DICE/EA simply didn't put enough effort into polishing up the Current Gen version of their flagship FPS. We all know at this point that they're desperately trying to attract some of COD's audience, but with a move like this, they've only hurt themselves in the long run. If the game wasn't ready, or they didn't care enough to make a good Current Gen game, they shouldn't have pushed this extended Beta on their fans. As far as I'm concerned this was EA's move to both desperately compete with COD and make a last minute buck off of Current Gen console owners. Considering DICE's track record I'm having a hard time laying the entire blame at their feet, but with all the issues this game has they're just as much to blame for this Beta 1.0000000001 as EA is. I have my fingers crossed that the ONE version, with it's 64 player matches and higher quality graphics, will make this game a permanent part of my gaming for the next year, but after this experience I really can't say that I'm all that confident. If I was holding off on the XBox ONE for a while, like I imagine a decent amount of people are, I would be far more PO'd than I currently am. The fact is, the current state of BF4 is truly disappointing. Here's hoping that this is the last time I have to say that.
(EDIT): Don't ask me why I forgot to mention the Netcode in this game, because it really is one of the top problems they are having. If you take a little time to click on people's links in Battlelog or search some YouTube videos, you'll see what can only be described as an absolute joke. You can see a few examples here. If you're looking for a laugh, head on over to YouTube and do a quick BF4 search for Hit Detection, Netcode, or WTF!!