DICE continues to constantly improve Battlefield 4 to make the best gaming experience possible. In the Spring Patch (releasing late May for all platforms), we’ve listened to your feedback and gave you what you wanted – more guns!

Five new weapons

Some of the weapons are old fan favorites, others are picked based on their unique gameplay aspects. These are the five new weapons:

New fan favorite Assault Rifle
Picked based on its unique burst gameplay and massive fan desirability

New Carbine
A unique bullpup carbine with built-in vertical grip

New PDW
A unique PDW with built-in silencer

New Sidearm
Unique long range “sniper” sidearm using magnum rounds

New LMG
Magazine fed LMG, which with the new weapons balance, plays in between a belt-fed LMG and an AR – your “run and gun” LMG

 

Full weapons balance pass

In the Spring Patch, we have also revamped the damage, falloff and suppression model. With this pass, we’ve touched every single weapon in the game – and how they play.

Our goal has been to create distinct roles for the weapon classes, and award skill of the player through increased recoil and by bringing back the 2-bullet headshot!

A representation of our new damage, falloff and suppression model in Spring Patch

If you are interested in more details on what has been changed in relation to weapons, please visit our Community Test Environment subreddit (Open Weapon Balance wikipage).

 

Return of Gun Master

Next up, we are bringing back Gun Master game mode – which gained its popularity in Battlefield 3: Close Quarters.

Gun Master is played like a Team Deathmatch game. The twist is that you don’t get to choose the weapons used. You swap weapons every time you get two consecutive kills on an opponent and whoever is the first player to get a kill with the final weapon wins!

The mode will contain the following five presets with at most 18 different weapons in each:

Standard
This setup contains rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols and ends with the M9 bayonet

Classic
Classic rifles, machine guns, shotguns and pistols ending with a M9 bayonet

Pistol
In this preset you can only use different kind of pistols, ending with the survival knife

DLC
This mode will let you play with DLC weapons – including the Phantom bow

Troll
Seeing how Gun Master is a “party mode”, we had to make a silly weapon list too! This one starts out with ballistic shields (as weapons) and it’s downhill from there

 

PC Stability & Netcode Updates

Lastly, we set out to significantly improve client stability on all platforms and have applied fixes for the most frequently occurring crashes on each.

For PC crashes, we used the Battlefield 4 Community Test Environment to confirm our fixes. We focused on crashes and issues with the game client and server – not crashes related to outdated graphics drivers.

We urge all players to update their graphics driver to the latest stable versions, keeping overclocking to a minimum for the best results with Spring Patch.

 

Patch Notes

For details on what exactly has been improved in the Spring Patch, we’ll publish the full patch notes closer to release.

 

We hope to see you back on the Battlefield.

David Sirland
Live Producer

Eight teams from all around the world clashed at the ESL One Battlefield 4 Spring 2015 Season Global Finals in Cologne, Germany on Saturday 18^th and Sunday 19^th of April. After two days of heated battles the dust settled and the champions were crowned.

Kings remain kings

For the fourth consecutive time in a row, Fnatic came out ahead and defeated their opponents, proving once again that they are truly the kings of Battlefield 4. The team managed to not only defeat all their opponents in convincing fashion but they did so without losing a single map during the entire tournament.

Contenders to the throne

In their first ever appearance at an ESL One event, the Brazilian Dexterity Team proved themselves to be one of the strongest teams in Battlefield 4. Their skill was displayed when they defeated top European teams and fought their way in to the grand finals. There, their story ended… for now. We are looking forward to what the Brazilian team will bring to the table at the next event.

1st Place – Fnatic
2nd Place – Dexterity Team
3rd/4th Place – Epsilon eSports, MeetYourMakers
5th/6th Place – SK Gaming, InFamous eSports

You’ve commanded the Battlefield from your sofa, the bus and sometimes in the most awkward of places with the Commander app for Battlefield 4. It’s been a fun ride watching and playing with you all from a bird’s eye view, adding team support wherever possible. But, the time has come and we have to inform you that on August 11^th 2015, we will no longer continue our support of the Battlefield 4 Commander app on the iOS and Android platforms.

This is not an easy choice, but we believe the time is right to retire the mobile app as we’re seeing more of our Commanders playing on PC and console. This change means that you’ll no longer be able to download the app from Apple Store or Google Play starting today, April 28^th. However, if you have the app downloaded already, you can continue to play it on mobile devices until August 11^th. Additionally, this change does not affect in any way the in-game Commander mode experience. You will still be able to take the command and lead your team to victory on your PC and consoles!

We are committed to continuing the support of Battlefield 4 and as always, we wanted to say thanks to you, the community, for playing.

We’ve seen a lot of appreciation for the Battlefield 4 Community Missions, where you have been fighting together to reach a common goal. To test your skills further, we have now tweaked the Community Missions, letting you pursue a personal goal for your own Battlefield 4 soldier.

First up is the Aries Zodiac Mission. The first of 12 astrological-themed missions, this assignment challenges you to do the following: Starting today, April 28 at 9AM PT, we want you to achieve 1 Knife Kill before May 4, 2AM PT. It’s simple yet gratifying, as we are just introducing this new type of Community Mission. Believe us, they will get harder.

Succeed, and you will be awarded with the mighty Aries Dog Tag above*. Just look at him. Those horns would be great in a melee situation.

How to claim your dog tag

So get out there and net a knife kill or more. You can track the progress of your Community Mission here on Battlelog at Multiplayer/Community Missions or via the in-game Missions tab (note that the latter is not possible on PS3/X360). Simply claim your Dog Tag by clicking “Claim Reward” after mission success – you’ll need to claim the Dog Tag before the end of the Community Mission on May 4, 2015 at 2AM PT. Good luck!

THIS OFFER IS BEING ISSUED TO YOU FOR PROMOTIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A CREDIT, CHARGE, DEBIT OR GIFT CARD. REQUIRES BATTLEFIELD 4 (“PRODUCT”) ON APPLICABLE PLATFORM, INTERNET CONNECTION AND ORIGIN ACCOUNT TO PARTICIPATE AND ACCESS IN-GAME CONTENT. PC PRODUCT REQUIRES ACCEPTANCE OF THE ORIGIN END USER AGREEMENT AND INSTALLATION OF THE ORIGIN CLIENT SOFTWARE (WWW.ORIGIN.COM/ABOUT). YOU MUST BE 13+ TO REGISTER. EA ONLINE PRIVACY AND COOKIE POLICY AND TERMS OF SERVICE ARE AVAILABLE AT WWW.EA.COM. SEE APPLICABLE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT AND DISCLOSURES ON WWW.EA.COM/1/PRODUCT-EULAS. VALID WHEREVER BATTLEFIELD 4 IS OFFERED. MAY NOT BE COMBINED WITH ANY OTHER OFFER, GIFT CARD, REBATE OR DISCOUNT COUPON. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED, TAXED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW.

The Community Map Project has now reached the end of the Concept phase! We’d like to thank everyone who has influenced, voted, and spent time on this project so far.

Going into the Production phase, we will be updating this map regularly based on your feedback and how the map plays on the Battlefield 4 Community Test Environment (“CTE”). This is something that normally happens internally through lots and lots of playtests – and now you are part of this process!

 Community Map Project Roadmap – at the end of the concept phase, and going into production.

Our Concept

With your help, we have nailed down the Concept. The clear winner in the recent community poll was Concept C (check out the image below for the design). You can see the full poll results here: Open poll results

 

Concept C – The Winning Layout from Community Poll

The Scale Test

We’ve recently released the first playable version of the map on the CTE – as a scale test.

A scale test is the very first version of the map where we normally have the first playtest internally as a game team to test the Conquest map size, distances, and rough flag layout.

We will keep the map very sparse and basic to modify and iterate on – only keeping the bare necessities to be able to judge scale. The hope is to be able to quickly lock the scale so we can start adding details – mold & shape the map for our target gameplay.

In this initial release many objects and the terrain itself will be “gray-boxed”, meaning that we’ve replaced the textures of objects and terrain with a gray grid texture.

 

What feedback are we looking for?

In a scale test we are looking for feedback on scale and general map layout issues:

• Does some part of the map feel off, too large or too small?
• Is there a problem area you can already pinpoint that we should address?
• Got a great idea for an area of the map?

We are not yet looking for feedback on things like the art (objects, structures, look of terrain, sky, lighting etc.), destruction, glitches, exploits, vehicle setup, cover, sightlines and the like. Everything in the map is subject to change and you will have ample time to feedback on those issues during production.

If you’ve got feedback, we’d love to hear it. Head to the CTE Forums and tell us what you think.

 

Building a map with the community

Normally when building a map, we do this kind of testing through internal playtests and reviews. The plan for this project is to try and emulate this process, with the community providing detailed feedback and getting access to early builds of the map.

This prospect makes us both excited and anxious as we realize this first version will not yet look or play well, but we hope you can see past all that and help us push the map towards something truly glorious in the end!

 

Going Into Production

In the upcoming production phase we will publish new versions of the map at regular intervals on the CTE – each release focused around something specific (like Scale in this release).

With this project, we are opening up at the earliest stage of map creation we possibly can to show what the process looks like and to enable you to make your ideas heard along the way. We’ve never done this before (we think this is the first time it’s been done anywhere!), which means we will learn a lot along the way on how to reach the very best results.

We will try to be as open as possible during all steps of the development process – and hope you’ll tag along for the full ride!

For more up-to-date information about the status of the project, visit our Reddit wiki page and, of course, the CTE Battlelog news blog.

 

See you on the Battlefield!

David & Tompen
DICE LA