Battlefield 4 patch makes friendly fire harder, ensures less quantum leaping

When Battlefield 4 released, a few of us at PCG Towers decided to enlist into its chaotic and crumbling servers in search of enjoyable shooty man times. Trying out the Defuse game mode, we quickly encountered a bug that would periodically kick the entire squad into Spectator mode. We played two rounds like this - temporarily Quantum Leaping into other players, then being kicked back to our body for a brief period of trying to complete the objective.

It was probably the most striking, weird and memorable thing that's happened to me in a first-person shooter for some time. So, while partially relieved that the game continues to be fixed, it's also with a slight trace of sadness that I report today's massive 900 MB patch, which - alongside a selection of other bugs and problems - fixes that particular surreal glitch.

I'm far more thankful about another change. Player tags should now more consistently show for fellow team members, making Hardcore mode incidents of friendly fire much less frequent. Here's the full patch list for today's update:

Fix for a crash that would cause the game to stall, resulting in a sound loop. This should eliminate most of the problems relating to this.
Fix for the SUAV (introduced in the China Rising expansion pack) not exploding when hitting enemy soldiers. While these indeed should be deadly, they were never designed for “roadkilling” opponents.
Fixed one of the issues related to the so-called “Netcode”
Fix for player tags not always showing when needed to, resulting in players shooting team members.
Fix for graphical flickering appearing on terrain.
Fixed the instance where players suddenly would transition into Spectator Mode while playing the Defuse game mode.
Fix for a Defuse bug where none of the teams would win a round by letting the timer run out. -Fix for players getting stuck in the revive screen after being killed.
Fix for players getting stuck in the kill camera after being revived.
Fix for the game mode specific ribbons being counted twice in the multiplayer progression.
Made NVidia 331.82 or later driver versions mandatory for all players.
Disabled DirectX 11.1 on NVidia cards that have outdated drivers.
Fixed driver version not being properly detected on NVidia Optimus systems.
Fixed a minor crash that could occur when bringing up the scoreboard.
Fix for the issue where the game would get stuck in loading screen when players tried to join a Second Assault map without actually owning Second Assault.

I do love the slight snippy tone present in the use of "so called 'Netcode'". It continues as they explain that the specific fix relates to "so called 'Kill trading'". You can read what that means over at the DICE patch announcement page .

In addition to the client patch, another server update has also gone live. Patch R16 does the following:

Fix for some of the more common server crashes
Overall performance enhancements
UCAV ammo replenish time was set from 20 to 90 seconds
Round time limit intervals were added for the different server types

Phil has been writing for PC Gamer for nearly a decade, starting out as a freelance writer covering everything from free games to MMOs. He eventually joined full-time as a news writer, before moving to the magazine to review immersive sims, RPGs and Hitman games. Now he leads PC Gamer's UK team, but still sometimes finds the time to write about his ongoing obsessions with Destiny 2, GTA Online and Apex Legends. When he's not levelling up battle passes, he's checking out the latest tactics game or dipping back into Guild Wars 2. He's largely responsible for the whole Tub Geralt thing, but still isn't sorry.

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