PATCH HIGHLIGHTS
With the Spring Patch, we are continuing to add new content as well as improve and tweak Battlefield 4. For this release we’ve listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted – more guns! The Spring Patch is thus themed around weapons: core gunplay, balance and everything to do with shooting in general. Our improvements and bug fixes also tie in to this theme as much as possible!
FIVE NEW WEAPONS
Some of the new weapons are old fan favorites, others were picked based on their unique gameplay aspects. These are the five new weapons:
- New fan favorite Assault Rifle – The AN94 Picked based on its unique burst gameplay and massive fan desirability.
- New Carbine – The Groza-1 A unique bullpup carbine of the Groza family, with a built in vertical grip.
- New PDW – The Groza-4 A unique PDW with built in silencer from the Groza family.
- New Sidearm – The Mare’s leg Unique long range “sniper” sidearm using magnum rounds.
- New LMG – The L86A1 Magazine fed LMG, which with the new weapons balance, plays in between a belt-fed LMG and an AR - your “run and gun” LMG.
FULL WEAPONS BALANCE PASS
In the Spring Patch, we have revamped the damage, falloff and suppression model of the game. With this pass, we’ve touched every single weapon in the game - and specifically how they play. Our goal has been to create distinct roles for the weapon classes, and reward player skill through increased recoil and by bringing back the 2-bullet headshot!
![[IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/D2PUIq6.png)
AN ILLUSTRATION OF OUR NEW DAMAGE, FALLOFF AND SUPPRESSION MODEL
RETURN OF GUN MASTER
We are bringing back the Gun Master game mode – which gained its popularity in Battlefield 3: Close Quarters. Gun Master is played like a Team Deathmatch game. The twist is that you don’t get to choose the weapons used. You swap weapons every time you get two consecutive kills on an opponent and whoever is the first player to get a kill with the final weapon wins! The mode contains the following five presets with at most 18 different weapons in each:
- Standard: This setup contains rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols and ends with the M9 bayonet.
- Classic: Classic rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols ending with a M9 bayonet.
- Pistol: In this preset you can only use different kinds of pistols, ending with the survival knife.
- DLC: This mode will let you play with DLC weapons – including the Phantom bow.
- Troll: Seeing how Gun Master is a “party mode”, we had to make a silly weapon list too! This one starts out with ballistic shields (as weapons) and it’s downhill from there.
NETCODE IMPROVEMENTS
Included improvements to netcode in the Spring patch:
- Better handling of fast vehicles over the network. Speedy vehicles now behave and look more consistent when send over the network
- Player “stutter” improvement. Fixed an issue where players “stutter” based on bad network connections
- Reduced overall bandwidth usage for the High Frequency Update layer. Improves gameplay for players with bad connections, and for players with good connections playing against opponents with bad connections
- “Rubber banding” improvements. Significantly reduced the occurrence of the “rubber banding” effect when playing with sub optimal connections or servers with bad performance
- Player stance changes are now synced much faster. Going from stand to crouch to prone is now more correctly represented on opponents screen
- Improved first & third person animation transitions. Sped up third person animations between stand & crouch to better stay in sync with what is happening in first person
- Network smoothing removed & maximum extrapolation time reduced. Smoothing now automatically handled, reducing occurrences of taking damage behind/around cover. Servers now also reject more high ping player bullets when appropriate (when they are already dead for instance)
- Delay of hit indicator reduced. Hit indicator shows much quicker when you hit the player
- Delay of damage indicator reduced. Taking damage shows up much quicker when getting hit by an opponent
- Spectator improvements. Several small improvements to spectator mode related to player state changes
- Several crashes fixed. One server crash and several client crashes related to networking (all platforms)
For an in depth look what this means - see Battle(non)senses video covering this topic:
http://bit.ly/SPRINGNETCODE
CLIENT STABILITY
With Spring Patch, we set out to significantly improve client stability on all platforms and have applied fixes for the most frequently occurring crashes. For PC crashes we used the Community Test Environment to confirm our fixes. We focused on crashes and issues with the game client and server – not crashes related to outdated graphics drivers. We urge all players to update their graphics driver to the latest stable graphics driver versions and keep overclocking to a minimum for the best results! If you still experience frequent crashes on PC – it could be due to a corrupt install. We recommend repairing your install in Origin if you are having problems, as this usually fixes these issues.
TACTICAL GAMEPLAY
With Spring Patch, we have taken considerable steps towards improving tactical gameplay. Our goal is to make it possible to outsmart your opponents using superior awareness of your surroundings. The improvements made towards this effort are:
- Passive spotting changes: Passive spotting (automatic mini-map spotting based on someone in team just looking at an enemy) is now limited to 100m distance (down from 1.2 km prior). This makes active spotting much more important, and enables you to sneak past enemies if you can keep your distance.
- Updated Tracers: First person tracers (varies by weapon class) have been updated to more clearly communicate the spread of your weapon – something you have to keep an eye on with the new weapon balance.
- Third person footsteps: We’ve re-mixed the third person footsteps sounds introduced with the Winter Patch to be more audible at all times.
- Random Callouts: Soldier callouts fall into three different categories: Team, Self and Enemy. We re-evaluated automatic callouts (like “I need health”) to give players better control over what gets heard by the enemy and when. The rule of thumb is that lines that would inadvertently give away your position will not be heard by the enemy (excepting “grenade!” and “explosion close!”). Lines triggered by manual player action (for example, “get some ammo!”) will only be heard by the enemy if they are within vocal proximity and the line is not radio-ized.
- Third person bullet impact sounds added: Bullet impact sounds now play when shooting the enemy in the head, torso or a limb. These sounds are intended to be subtle, and you may not always hear them over the sound of your weapon. They are more easily heard when using a suppressed weapon.
- Updated IRNV & FLIR optics: Night vision optics have gotten a major overhaul. They now highlight players and vehicles regardless of what angle they are in relation to the sun, as well as in complete darkness. There are also a lot fewer false positives – anything glowing in night vision now is a player, vehicle, weapon or light. Countermeasures to night vision have also been improved. Lasers, flashlights and flares now blind night vision optics in a way not seen since the early days of BF3. IR smoke and thermal grenades also block night vision. The differences in the optic types have also been enhanced. IRNV has improved visibility, especially in low-light conditions and it now highlights targets at close ranges. Thermal optics feature extreme target acquisition at medium ranges but reduce the visibility of the world. We’ve re-vamped the view distance and visual look of both optics.
![[IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/rDimD0z.png)
Examples of IRNV and FLIR respectively Klik om te vergroten...
