Battlefield 4's Game-Breaking "Death Shield" Bug Discovered

[MeChaNiZ3D]

directly behind behind him

Typo.

Also, this is why we do bug testing before launch. I'm not so anti-publisher as to say a released product should be devoid of bugs, but in the same breath, the counter-argument of being able to release a patch falls flat when you're faced with bugs that take months to find and fix and have ripple effects that are problematic themselves.

 

[RJ 17]

At this point I think that every patch should update the end-credits to include every gamertag that's ever played BF4 under the "Testers" heading. I mean six months after release and they're still actually making the game, you'd figure we'd all be employees of DICE by now.

Now excuse me while I laugh at the memory of that DICE exec who said that all criticism about BF4 during the Beta was ignorant and unfounded and that the game was perfect.

Ahem....BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

 

[orangeapples]

So, my constant dying was actually done to help make better players immortal... yeah, I'm going to go with that...

But at least it has 64 players on the map, right guys? guys?

 

[Metalrocks]

wow. still bugs after how many patches now? sounds more like they just add more problems then they fix. again a reason not to install this game again.
fine by me. having anyway more fun with titanfall.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

I try and I try, but I'm almost to the point where I won't be buying Battlefront 3 when it launches. EA executives better not just shove it out the door.

 

[Revolutionary]

I like how it's referred to as game-breaking, and then followed with a statement that it wasn't discovered until recently. If it was truly game breaking it would have been discovered pretty forking quickly.

OT: Who's really suprised by this? Online games never seem to be finished any more. I still can't mute people in GTA Online lobbies.

 

[Vrach]

This bug is quite a large, game-breaking one, and it's a shock that it has remained undiscovered until now.

Never noticed this bug, and frankly, if nooone else did and still played the game with it, then everyone has been on equal footing? Sure, now that we KNOW it's there, people are gonna be pissed, and some might even start abusing this until DICE patches it, but until then, this hasn't felt game-breaking for me.

Agreed, though to be fair, I don't play the closed-quarters maps. There are plenty more game breaking bugs in the game, the constant crashing, unwarranted PB kicks, textures missing upon loading the map, client updating so slowly that you die within a moment after one shot etc.

 

[Vrach]

wow. still bugs after how many patches now? sounds more like they just add more problems then they fix. again a reason not to install this game again.
fine by me. having anyway more fun with titanfall.

Actually yes, they fucked up far more than they've fixed. There was a blissful time sometime when China Rising was out when the game just ran... well, decently. They've sorted the crashes, the game didn't lag and the only main issue was the netcode/rubberbanding and the like and I could live with that. Second Assault launched fine, but I've been playing since Naval Strike was out and... literally all those crashes are back and worse. There is now a random kick by PunkBuster that seems to happen to some people and EA just don't give even the slightest inclination of a fuck. Ground textures are often missing upon loading (goes away after you die once in my experience) and you get that "half stuck in terrain" thing where your character stutters like mad during that. On top of that, the game is far more laggy than it ever was and the "feel one shot with 100% health and you're dead" thing happens more than ever. I've even had moments where the game would just lag for a while whenever I got shot, not long, but certainly long enough for someone to empty an entire clip into you.

Now, I'd accept that some of these issues could be blamed on me, my PC or my personal experience, but the fact is, most of this shit was literally there in BF3 as well. They've still got bugs and crashes that look, feel and give error reports in the same exact way as their game they launched nearly two years ago did. Only exception is, there's far more of these errors and there's no sign of fixing any of them, every patch seems to only make it worse.

 

[Metalrocks]

wow. still bugs after how many patches now? sounds more like they just add more problems then they fix. again a reason not to install this game again.
fine by me. having anyway more fun with titanfall.

Actually yes, they fucked up far more than they've fixed. There was a blissful time sometime when China Rising was out when the game just ran... well, decently. They've sorted the crashes, the game didn't lag and the only main issue was the netcode/rubberbanding and the like and I could live with that. Second Assault launched fine, but I've been playing since Naval Strike was out and... literally all those crashes are back and worse. There is now a random kick by PunkBuster that seems to happen to some people and EA just don't give even the slightest inclination of a fuck. Ground textures are often missing upon loading (goes away after you die once in my experience) and you get that "half stuck in terrain" thing where your character stutters like mad during that. On top of that, the game is far more laggy than it ever was and the "feel one shot with 100% health and you're dead" thing happens more than ever. I've even had moments where the game would just lag for a while whenever I got shot, not long, but certainly long enough for someone to empty an entire clip into you.

Now, I'd accept that some of these issues could be blamed on me, my PC or my personal experience, but the fact is, most of this shit was literally there in BF3 as well. They've still got bugs and crashes that look, feel and give error reports in the same exact way as their game they launched nearly two years ago did. Only exception is, there's far more of these errors and there's no sign of fixing any of them, every patch seems to only make it worse.

the funny thing is, after they have released this 6gb patch for BF3, i had actually no issues what so ever with it. but since Bf4 came out, even BF3 became unplayable for me. so i have deleted this game as well.

 

[Zefar]

Edit: Ok, after looking at the video for a bit longer I saw the problem. But the weird thing is, I haven't experienced this in BF4 at all.

This is not a bug but a feature. People got pretty tired of being instant killed the moment they where revived and before being able to do anything about it. So they asked DICE to do something about it.

This shield should only be on if the player does absolutely nothing but trust me, it doesn't always work. I've been instant killed while being revived without moving a finger. In fact I don't recall ever being immune while being revived so this is something I desperately want because I kinda need it at the front lines.

On top of that, the game is far more laggy than it ever was and the "feel one shot with 100% health and you're dead" thing happens more than ever. I've even had moments where the game would just lag for a while whenever I got shot, not long, but certainly long enough for someone to empty an entire clip into you.

Getting one shot to death at 100% health is just how the netcode works now. People whined about the server side hitreg in Bad company 2 and now we got an inferior client side hitreg. All though I'd check the router for something that might limit the upload rate. I know my D-Link capped it to 256KBit/s or something

 

[Vrach]

This is not a bug but a feature. People got pretty tired of being instant killed the moment they where revived and before being able to do anything about it. So they asked DICE to do something about it.

This shield should only be on if the player does absolutely nothing but trust me, it doesn't always work. I've been instant killed while being revived without moving a finger. In fact I don't recall ever being immune while being revived so this is something I desperately want because I kinda need it at the front lines.

To be fair, I've never seen the effects of this so called shield in action and I can't say I'd want to. Resurrecting people while you're getting shot at should not be how resurrecting works. Either someone provides cover while you do it or you don't resurrect. There's a reason why there's an "accept/cancel" button when you res someone, it's not meant for the front lines (in the sense of ressing people like crazy despite a hailstorm of bullets coming your way).

What I'd also like to see removed is the bullshit invincibility during a knife stab. I'd see a guy stabbing a team-mate and unload a goddamn light machine gun clip into his head from damn near point blank range and he just walks away without a scratch. I'm sorry, but no. Just no. You should also be able to interrupt someone's knifing with your own (they're knifing another person, you come up and knife them before the stab happens, you save the teammate - or even not save the teammate, but the stab animation should not be invincible, it's just silly)

On top of that, the game is far more laggy than it ever was and the "feel one shot with 100% health and you're dead" thing happens more than ever. I've even had moments where the game would just lag for a while whenever I got shot, not long, but certainly long enough for someone to empty an entire clip into you.

Getting one shot to death at 100% health is just how the netcode works now. People whined about the server side hitreg in Bad company 2 and now we got an inferior client side hitreg. All though I'd check the router for something that might limit the upload rate. I know my D-Link capped it to 256KBit/s or something

They have client side hitreg? Aside from being complete and utter bullshit in its own right, doesn't that just open a can of worms on the whole cheating thing? It's one thing to fuck with the server, can be dealt with, if it's on client side, I imagine it doesn't take much effort to mess with it...

And yeah, BC2 was miles better technically. I'm a huge Battlefield fan (ie. classic BF, vehicles, planes, giant open maps and the like), but what they've done with these two games is just awful on the tech side of things.

 

[Zefar]

To be fair, I've never seen the effects of this so called shield in action and I can't say I'd want to. Resurrecting people while you're getting shot at should not be how resurrecting works. Either someone provides cover while you do it or you don't resurrect. There's a reason why there's an "accept/cancel" button when you res someone, it's not meant for the front lines (in the sense of ressing people like crazy despite a hailstorm of bullets coming your way).

What I'd also like to see removed is the bullshit invincibility during a knife stab. I'd see a guy stabbing a team-mate and unload a goddamn light machine gun clip into his head from damn near point blank range and he just walks away without a scratch. I'm sorry, but no. Just no. You should also be able to interrupt someone's knifing with your own (they're knifing another person, you come up and knife them before the stab happens, you save the teammate - or even not save the teammate, but the stab animation should not be invincible, it's just silly)

I'll be honest, I didn't watch the whole video. I just thought it was the typical "Look, I shot this guy but he didn't die when he was revived" type of video. Because BF3 and BF4 gets imo far to much crap thrown at them.

So what I saw in the video is actually quite insane. Still I have not had this happening to me when I played the game and I liked to flank people.

They have client side hitreg? Aside from being complete and utter bullshit in its own right, doesn't that just open a can of worms on the whole cheating thing? It's one thing to fuck with the server, can be dealt with, if it's on client side, I imagine it doesn't take much effort to mess with it...

And yeah, BC2 was miles better technically. I'm a huge Battlefield fan (ie. classic BF, vehicles, planes, giant open maps and the like), but what they've done with these two games is just awful on the tech side of things.

It did open up a lot of nasty stuff for cheating.

Killing people with blow torch, teleporting all players or just enemies in front of your AA minigun Tank cannon and killing them pretty quickly. Or other silly stuff that cheaters did in the start.
This was in BF3 though. I haven't seen it in BF4 though. More of just the typical aimbot.

 

[Glaice]

Yet another reason not to touch Battlefield 4. I think Buggyfield 4 is a better name for its current state.

 

[Kerethos]

You know a bug is bad when your reaction to it is to laugh out loud at how game breaking it is. That's how bad (and funny) I thought this was.

I'm so glad I stopped preordering games years ago, else I'd probably be stuck with this broken piece of software, that's obviously not had sufficient time with quality assurance. The only way to stop broken games like this from being released is to wait for reviews and not paying people for pushing products out before they're done - basically people need to stop freaking paying 60$ for doing QA, bonuses and collectors editions be damned. And as an owner of several CE's - which I proudly display in my living room - I find my complete loss of confidence, and thus my wish to buy CE's, quite sad.

But I'm just so sick of publishers pushing unfinished or rushed games on customers, and I hope that such practices will seriously backlash in time. But at the same time I fear for the effects this behavior will have on gaming, given that we're charged more for less all the time, as publishers continuously push the boundary's of what they can get away with by thinking only of short term profit margins and not long term customer satisfaction.

The again, at this rate, it's only a matter of time until we see the next COD (or other large series) on Steam as an Early Access title. Sold at the full price of 60$ with a season pass already in place, that includes at least 3 new maps some time after the game is officially released, all for the low, low price for 30$ (for the season pass). Main game having no campaign and a whooping 3 maps included on release. *sigh*

Yet another reason not to touch Battlefield 4. I think Buggyfield 4 is a better name for its current state.

Hasn't it already gained the name "Betafield 4"?

 

[Chinchama]

At what point can there be a civil lawsuit against EA? the game is still not finished, yet they have already pushed out DLC for profit, the sold an unfinished product knowing that it had issues. It's like someone selling you a car and saying yah, sometime down the road we will add seats, brakes, windows and lights, but for now, here is someone sweet pin striping if you would like to pay a bit more.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

I'm not gonna pretend to have any sort of Game coding/creating/designing/whatever know how, but wouldn't there have been some way to see the invisible hitbox? Like turn it on or highlight it during development or something?

Well, it's not that easy to explain but I'll try. The hitbox attached to a dead body is not invisible at all but collision with other objects is just one of its properties. In a lot of engines it's a simple checkbox, you wouldn't really notice it unless you were looking for it.

I can guess how they made this mistake, they needed a box bigger than the actual corpse to make revivals easier so you don't have to crouch on a corpse to revive. They probably wanted corpses to have collision with grenades and stuff, a grenade rolling through a pile of corpses would be kind of dumb.

The mistake is they used the same box for grenade collision as for reviving, instead of making a new one that is corpse sized and removing all collision from the big one except with the ground and the revive tool.

Good news is this is really easy to fix, but hell of a job figuring it out in game.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

Getting one shot to death at 100% health is just how the netcode works now. People whined about the server side hitreg in Bad company 2 and now we got an inferior client side hitreg. All though I'd check the router for something that might limit the upload rate. I know my D-Link capped it to 256KBit/s or something

Hit detection fails more depending on the server for some reason, they say some server hosts are experiencing packet loss, it varies from bad to torture. On some servers you get instantly killed by a handgun that does 15 dmg per shot...

There is a chrome addon for blacklisting servers, it can be pretty handy after you work out a list. You should also disable network smooting factor in options, it's a bullshit prediction feature that serves to make netcode LOOK better.

Also, 256kb/s upload is way, way more than any multiplayer title uses.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

At what point can there be a civil lawsuit against EA? the game is still not finished, yet they have already pushed out DLC for profit, the sold an unfinished product knowing that it had issues. It's like someone selling you a car and saying yah, sometime down the road we will add seats, brakes, windows and lights, but for now, here is someone sweet pin striping if you would like to pay a bit more.

Probably never.

I don't know where you're living, but I know the EULA monster is heavy here in the US. What we're all hitting accept to is saying 'You forgo the rights to actually do anything about this game if it's shit before we allow you to play it.'

 

[LordMonty]

Pretty bad bug, might know how I died to so many grenades now but can't be sure Hope they fix this soon but won't hold my breath.