HOW EA Games and Dice screwed us with Battlefield 4

So BF4 premium on release cost me a whopping R1000 (95 US Dollars) on the 29^th of October last year. I was ok with that, loved the BF games, loved premium. At the time, totally worth it. And so I went on my merry way playing battlefield 4 to my heart’s content, new expansions rolling out thick and fast, almost too fast. Then the unthinkable happened, EA and Visceral Games decide that it is a good time for a new game. Not even a year later, with 2 BF4 expansions still to be released, a new BF game is on the verge of being released.

All I want to know is, how can they justify making a new game already? BF4 is buggy as hell, so shouldn’t fixing it be a higher priority than bringing out a new game? I could have almost understood if Hardline was going to be a single player only game, that would have actually been pretty cool as BF4’s single player was awful. So what I have essentially done, is spend a whole lot of money on a half-finished game, just for it to be replaced by a new game not even a year later?

Good job EA, as far as I was concerned, Battlefield was the best fps multiplayer game available, but thanks to this stunt of yours, I shall be joining the children over at COD, at least Advanced Warfare looks decent.

1 x Battlefield fanboy lost!

What's Crazy is Battlefield 4 seems to have just started working. Guess it runs much better when everyone stops playing it.

pre-release they emphasized how bf4 would be all about cooperation and teamwork. It's almost impossible to get on the same team or server as your friends 8 months after release.
that's how much they care about this game. this is not a problem in any other games btw..i'll wager a guess..they got a call from disney about making the star wars game, and dropped all the resources from bf4 to make it instead. they should have called it Half-Ass 4

It's almost as if when Battlefield: Cops & Robbers comes out, Battlefield 4 will cease to function any longer. I know that since Visceral Games is making the new one, that it's going to stop DICE from working on 4. I hate when that happens.

And you know what's funny? Your friends will peer-pressure you into buying Battlefield Hardline on day one+Premium. Again.

Your upset that Battlefield has yearly releases so your solution is to go play another game series that has yearly releases? Lol, ok then. Hardline is made by a different dev that has been working on it for 3 years.

The part that bothers me is that these are the folks who are making the new Star Wars: Battlefront...

You can hardly notice the awful hit detection when there is no one to shoot ;)

@firefox59: You obviously didn't read very carefully if you think that's why I'm upset. When you fork out that kind of money on a game, you expect it to at least be working properly before a new game is released, or is a working game not a big issue for you? I'm just curious.

In saying that though, I'm not hating on Battlefield at all, the game has brought me over 300 hours of great entertainment. It's just sad that a new game will pop out before BF4 reaches its potential best and then see it drift away into a forgotten place where games go to die.

@jimmy_russell: Judging by your comment I'm going to assume you're not a very big battlefield fan?

The problem is that the press doesn't really care, and they keep saying that Hard Line is just another BF game instead of showing how it really is just BF4 all over again..

http://purenews.net/battlefield-hardline-plays-like-expansion-pack-bf4-will-visceral-change-game-beta/

At least fans notice how hard line really is..

Ehmm do you know that COD get a yearly release? also your mad at EA for making a completely new different game that just carries the Battlefield name?

Anyways have fun with COD im sure you will fit in with the community over there.

You got that all wrong, fhe expansion-argument is funny coming from people who each year buy Call of Another Dog where pretty much nothing at all changed or bought Battlefield 4 since its pretty much just the same as 3 with a slight graphical update.

Also complaining over a yearly release in a franchise that's built around yearly releases is just moronic.

Except that BF wasn't a franchise built around yearly releases, hence the complaining....

Well, Battlefield have been built around the same concept as Call of Duty, EA might not have released a game every year but the concept is the same. A short time between releases and not much change but enough to make it seem like a new game and worth the purchase.

Also EA Dice still isn't making a game every year, Hardline is Visceral Games not Dice and its more like Payday then its like Battlefield, it might use the same engine, the same idea that you can smash buildings etc. but the gameplay is a lot more smooth and i know a lot who have played both find Hardline a lot more fun, as do i and i normally hate FPS mp games like CoD and BF4, never found them fun but Hardline felt like a breath of fresh air.

But yes its stupid when everyone knows or should know what kind of franchise they buy that they suddenly get angry over yet another game that might have been a expansion, Its after all what the whole franchise is built up around.

1. Visceral are the ones working on Hardline, Dice has nothing to do with it.

2. Broken? When was the last time you even checked the game? Obviously you don't know about the CTE (Community Test Environment). It's a separate game client available on the PC for Premium users, where Dice has been working on fixing all the issues of game. Not only that, but also adding additional features suggested by the community. They test this stuff in the CTE, then release it to the base game. It's a bit late, but what they've done so far with the CTE is pretty great.

The first patched that got pushed from CTE to the main game addressed the "netcode" among various other network related fixes. The server tickrate is now 30 instead of 10, and there's no more getting shot behind cover and the game feels a lot smoother now.

Ever heard the ACDC song "Money Talks"? If people buy buggy games they will keep releasing them in an unfinished state. If people buy the new game every year then they will keep releasing them that often. If people only bought a new Battlefield if it was significantly different from the last one and was reasonably polished then that is how they would be released. Granted, if people don't buy a game they still need to provide a reason why, either by *****ing on a forum, filling out a survey, whatever or else a publisher like EA or Activision will probably just blame piracy or some other reason for the poor sales. They might even try to get a new law or two passed to make the industry more profitable haha.

Everyone seems to have a pretty short memory... DICE has been releasing their Battlefield games in a terrible, buggy state for years now. Battlefield 2 was extremely buggy on release.. I remember having to download like a 1 or 2GB patch for that game... Battlefield 3 was bad on release, and now Battlefield 4. People keep eating the games up though so they keep selling unfinished versions and fixing them as they go.

Companies like EA and Activision exist to make money first and foremost. Game development studios exist to make money. Only if a studio has a lot of money or wants to take a big chance do they go out of their way to be creative. Yes, game developers might be genuinely invested in the game they are working on, but in the end, the games are made to make money. Now indie studios are another story; they probably care less about how much money they make and care a lot more about the quality of the game.

If you take money out of the picture then the level of creativity and quality would probably go up across the board. Of course, the only real way for that to occur is if the development team was supported by donations or something similar.

But hardline is being pitched as (and might be) a very different game than BF4. There are many people who would be interested in one and not the other. I don't think Hardline will signal the end of BF4. People played BF3 for two years.

Is Hardline really that different though? Apart from a few new game modes, gadgets and the cops vs robbers theme, the beta looks exactly the same as BF4 beta did. There seem to be a lot of people who love the Hardline idea. I for one am not interested. I will stick to my BF4 for as long as i can and wait for something else worthwhile to come out, wont be wasting money on another premium purchase.

@harry_james_pot: CTE? That actually sounds fairly brilliant. Think I'll check it out, if things like that were done from day 1, games would improve greatly at a much faster rate. I see CTE was only introduced in May this year, perhaps it will be the saving grace that keeps BF4 afloat when Hardline lands

Apparently EA likes to milk the shit out of battlefield, just like how activision likes to milk the shit out of Call of Duty.

lol. I knew threads like this would start popping up. "How can they charge this and that?!" A few years ago COD could have cost $99 for a standard copy and people would still run out and buy it, and then theyd all buy the 20 dollar map pack and subscribe to a monthly service as well.

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but when you say it's the same except for these three main items, it makes it seem like it is in fact different lol. No?

Yeah, it should've been there from the beginning. But they're really improving the game a lot now.

I think it's far more different the just the gadgets and the theme. Battlefield stands out from the rest of shooters like COD due to its scale. With how there's huge map with all kinds of battles going on at the same time.. Infantry, tanks, light armor, helicopters, jets... As the name says, it's a battlefield. Hardline has none of that, it's not a battlefield game, it's a scaled up Payday.

So, OP---now that it's been nearly a week now since your first post, have you found out yet that DICE isn't making Hardline? Instead it's another studio altogether?

Meanwhile, DICE has been working non-stop to fix issues with BF4, including opening up the CTE (community Test Environment) to all Premium members on PC, including taking most fixes everyone agrees with to all platforms.

While I would agree that EA are a bunch of greedy asshats that can ruin any project with a quickness, there's atleast something to be said for DICE who's doing what they can (although should've been before release, but still) to fix the major glaring mistakes. I'm still in awe that these games have been running on a tick-rate of TEN this whole time before the CTE came along.

Fucking cripes. -_-

@DuaIFace: I was aware that Visceral Games is the new developer, I did mention that in the OP. And I am also now aware (thanks to comments on this post) of the CTE,which is an amazing solution to the many bugs in BF4, however, and as I mentioned before, why did it take this long before CTE was introduced? The main problem doesn't lie so much with DICE as it does EA.

Maybe one day, in a land full of unicorns and rainbows, we will have a franchise release a game, completely bug free from day 1, that will last us a good 2 years before they try to burn our pockets out of more money. That is my dream, a somewhat unrealistic dream, but a dream non-the-less.

Battlefield 3 was fine after the first week and lasted two years. I've already posted that in this thread.

@firefox59: But BF4 wasnt, and battlefield 3 was most definitely not 100% faultless from day 1

I suggest you follow the news , first of all DICE is not working on BF Hardline ...they're kinda guiding the Visceral , DICE's first priority is fixing BF4 as they've mentioned it like 1000times , and it keeps getting better and better ....i almost have no issue playing BF4 now (PC). And DICE is not the one to blamed, EA is the publisher and they released the game sooner that it supposed to be released so place the blame on EA.

I personally don't recommend any multiplayer game to be purchased at lunch u know it's inevitable to have issues at lunch, u gotta wait to see how the game turns out to be , how are the servers and whatnot ....

@mjorh: And I suggest you read the OP and my comments a bit more carefully then you will see that I place majority of the blame on EA, and that I am well aware that DICE aren't developing Hardline!

And DICE is not without their own faults, was it not them that released an unfinished game in the first place? But yes, the game is getting better. But only now that it's time for a new BF to show its face.

I am still however ever very excited for Dragons Teeth next week. Always good getting new stuff

Welcome to the current gaming era, where every major title is completely run into the ground until people are tired of it..... I knew it would stop at the annual releases. Its only a matter of time before we get two games every year. LOL

Yeah my bad with the "blame" thing but about the release , You said:

All I want to know is, how can they justify making a new game already? BF4 is buggy as hell, so shouldn’t fixing it be a higher priority than bringing out a new game? I could have almost understood if Hardline was going to be a single player only game, that would have actually been pretty cool as BF4’s single player was awful. So what I have essentially done, is spend a whole lot of money on a half-finished game, just for it to be replaced by a new game not even a year later?

It'd be great if Hardline was an expansion , yeah i agree , but fixing BF4 is the highest priority for DICE ! not Visceral ! DICE has made the game and it was half-assed so it makes sense that DICE be working on the BF4 and corresponding expansions....

AND , DICE is NOT responsible for releasing and stuff , DICE is just a developer .....its publisher's job to decide when the game should be released ....and as you know a new BF comes every two year from DICE , so i don't think calling "Hardline" from "Visceral" a "Battlefield" game is a good idea ......i jus accept it as a spin off and i think it's gonna be a flop ! let's wait for what DICE makes....