By now, we’re fairly used to seeing Battlefield 4 and the word “patch” in the same sentence. Despite having launched for a few months not, Battlefield 4 still needs a lot of attention from developer DICE, and bugs are nowhere near being a thing of the past. Still, in DICE’s favor, the general stability of the game has improved, and perhaps in a few months time, the game will finally feel polished enough. The latest patch to hit Battlefield 4 is aimed for the PC version of the game, and should improve general stability, while refining the recently introduced AMD Mantle API support, ensuring its performance boost increases. Here is the complete change-log:
Feb 13 PC Game Update Notes
-General stability improvements
-Fix for an issue where spawning into, or switching to, a gunner seat in an IFV/MBT sometimes could cause the game to crash
-Fix for missing sound in Team/Squad Deathmatch
-Fix for an issue in the Defuse game mode, where a bomb carrier would be permanently spotted
-Decreased the rate at which the kill card would incorrectly display 0 health, while the enemy was clearly alive
-Fix for an invisible wall that was incorrectly present in one of the fallen concrete pipes on Zavod 311
-Fix for an issue where bullet impact sounds weren’t properly matching the actual number of impacts
-Fix for an issue where the “Draw” message would not display on-screen once a Conquest round ended with both teams having the same amount of tickets
-Fix for an issue where long IDs wouldn’t scroll on dog tags
-Fix for missing grass physics in terrain
Mantle
-Fix for a crash that would occur when activating full screen in portrait mode
-Fix for stuttering that could appear during video sequences on multi-GPU PCs
-Fix for a memory system leak that could cause stalls, which would result in frames taking longer to process
-Reduced the amount of stalls that occurred when running with high graphics setting that require more GPU memory than is currently available
-Fixed screenshots on multi-GPU PCs
The patch also prepares Battlefield 4 for the upcoming Second Assault DLC, a DLC that rolls out next week, more specifically on the 18th of February. The DLC comes at a price of $15, but is free for players that have a Battlefield 4 Premium membership, which costs $50. Second Assault is just one of the 5 planned DLC’s for the game. China Rising has already been released, and 3 more DLC’s are planned until summer: Naval Strike (coming sometime at the end of March), Dragon’s Teeth (early summer) and Final Stand (late summer).
Second Assault will bring 4 popular Battlefield 3 maps to Battlefield 4, mainly Caspian Border, Operation Metro, Operation Firestorm and Gulf of Oman. The DLC is already available on the Xbox One, and for those that don’t have a Premium membership, it will be released on the 4th of March. DICE and EA’s decision to push out so many DLC’s for a game that’s just starting to find its footing is questionable. With more content, more issues will surely appear, and we would have liked to see a stable Battlefield 4 experience before worrying about maps and features. Regardless, the released PC patch should go a long way towards ensuring that Second Assault will be enjoyable.