Battlefield 4 servers cause “rubber-banding”: DICE

DICE has posted an update on the Battlefield blog addressing the ongoing concerns of “rubber-banding” in Battlefield 4 multiplayer games.

Rubber-banding is a phrase used to describe when players experience a significant lag in their input commands and the visual representation of their gameplay.

Players may find themselves “stuck” in the game world for a brief moment and their character then suddenly zooms awkwardly across the battlefield, as the server catches up the stack of input commands given while stuck.

Additionally, other players may view this anomaly as it occurs, making for a disjointed gameplay experience.

As DICE explains it:

We wanted to provide a quick update on the issues with Battlefield 4 “rubber-banding” some players on certain platforms experienced during matches with 64-players.

Looking into this further, we’re unhappy with our server performance, so we’ll be upgrading the hardware as soon as possible, investing more to deliver a better experience.

As soon as we know the exact timetable, we’ll let you know the ETA. Reducing lag for these players is absolutely a TOP priority for us to solve and we expect to have the solution very soon.

How this obvious problem persists 5 months into the game’s life-cycle (after a public beta-test period) will no doubt be yet another bone of contention for disgruntled Battlefield 4 players.