Battlefield 4 netcode and bug fixes promised

DICE are “committed to improving the overall Battlefield 4 multiplayer experience” for their players, and have graciously decided to fix a few common problems experienced by the online FPS.

The game’s Battlelog site put up the announcement later yesterday evening (3 March 2014) stating the “netcode issues” would be addressed – reducing “networking latency compensation and glitches in the gameplay”.

“We are working on fixing glitches in your immediate interactions with the game world: the way you move and shoot, the feedback when you’re hit, and the way other players’ actions are shown on your screen.”

The issues promised to resolved and investigated by EA owned DICE are as follows:

Rubber banding – upcoming fixes for packet loss and a customize screen bug.
Kill camera delay / Player death sync – the kill camera will no longer trigger before the game client displayed the last portion of damage being dealt. Issues with blood effects, damage indicators, and the health bar in the HUD being out of sync will also be corrected in the next game update.
Tickrate – the tickrate (how often the server will update the game world) will be higher in the future, although there are no immediate plans to implement this.
No registered damage – Shooting at an opponent and no damage being dealt? This is being investigated as the cause is unknown at this stage.
Instant death while sprinting – “At certain occasions while walking or sprinting, a player could get catapulted at high speed which would cause death if any object was standing in the way”. While this has never happened to me, it sounds epic and I think they should leave this feature in. Fortunately for you, the brains at DICE have promised to fix the “mathematical error” in an upcoming patch.
Various Items – In addition to the above, issues with Levolution being out of sync, shots appearing to be fired in the wrong direction, and vehicles outside the infantry area not taking damage when fired at will also be fixed. New in-game icons to help you troubleshoot network related problems have also been introduced, such as a clock in the HUD to indicate the server is lagging. The second icon, at the bottom, shows four squares that indicate packet loss. When you see this icon, your connection to the server is experiencing lost packets, which means that information is failing to reach its destination.

The fine folks from Sweden have also provided a list of errors that have been recently fixed:

Kill cards showing zero health while an enemy is alive are no longer a problem.
Instances of broken collision, making it possible for players to shoot past broken objects, have been fixed.
Crosshairs disappearing are a thing of the past, while impact sounds not matching the number of actual bullet impacts will no longer occur.
Last, but not least, the headshot icon has been reintroduced “to help players” understand when they get killed, by a headshot, in the head.