Battlefield: Hardline werd onlangs uitgesteld naar volgend jaar en daarnaast zal dat de laatste DLC voor Battlefield 4 ook wat later zal verschijnen. Ontwikkelaar DICE is hier natuurlijk druk mee aan de slag, maar dat weerhoudt de studio er niet van om ook nog aan updates te werken.
De eerstvolgende patch voor Battlefield 4 moet namelijk volgens de planning van DICE in september uitkomen op alle platformen. Hoewel het nog vroeg is voor een precieze changelog, heeft de studio al wel aangegeven op welke vlakken ze de game gaan aanpassen, met her en der al enkele details.
- Game Mode Improvements: General improvements and tweaks have been made to the following game modes: Rush, Obliteration, Obliteration Competitive, Capture the Flag and Carrier Assault.
- Visual Recoil: Close and medium range optic reticules do not move with the gun any longer, however both bullet spread and bullet drop are still present.
- Soldier Movement: Changes have been made to soldier movement so that it closely matches the one in Battlefield 3, but without compromising the visual fidelity. This change also makes it easier to get away from undesirable firefights. Additionally, we’ve dampened third person hit reactions where the soldier previously moved his head around a lot when getting shot at.
- HUD Triage: Focusing on clarity, and de-cluttering the HUD/UI to only show what is important – we have added several options and functionality to make your screen much less cluttered (and give you a lot of choice in making it the way you want).
- Revive Mechanic Improvements: A special effort went into making revives easier to use, more robust and easier to understand. Additions include a “fully charged” paddle sound, UI indication on revive time and better networked ragdolls.
- “Netcode” Improvements: Making ping differences, trade kills and kills behind cover less of an issue by lowering the time allowed to damage on the client side. Automatic High Frequency Update setting enforced with the intent of release to all platforms, including Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Improvements to bullet damage times from client to client, “dusting” and de-syncs.
- Vehicle Balance: Identifying and tweaking the top vehicles in need of buffs and nerfs.
- Weapon Balance: We’ve focused on maintaining a consistent Time To Kill (how long an average engagement lasts for). With the changes to visual recoil, the third person hit reactions and improved “tickrates” has been sped up somewhat as we still need to balance this with damage and recoil changes. Suppression systems has also been re-tuned and made clearer.
We kunnen dus een hoop veranderingen verwachten die de ervaring alleen maar ten goede moeten komen. DICE gaf verder nog aan bezig te zijn met aanpassingen in de Commander modus, de Squads en de Field Upgrades. Daarover gaf de ontwikkelaar geen verdere details.