Lagolution: Battlefield 4 Patches Netcode

"Lag!" you cry as the bullet zooops down your scope and through your virtual face. "Laaaaaag!" You're awful and everyone wants you to be quiet, but last week you might have elicited a modicum of sympathy in Battlefield 4 by grumbling about netcode, or at least recognition. Now you'll get only contempt. Maybe. Assuming a new fix actually works. Developers DICE yesterday rolled out a patch adding a 'High Frequency Bubble' option which should take a knife to the visible lag. One of DICE's test shows this cut in half, though of course things may be different in actual real games.

The bubbles basically work by telling players more often about things happening close to them--the things you'll notice more and which are more important. Or in DICE's words: "Within a certain radius of the player, we add the possibility to update the clients at a higher rate from the server. What this essentially means is that the server will update the client on what is happening more often than before. This normally results in a smoother, more 'correct' player experience."

The patch also hit a few other bits which felt laggy, and some other odds and ends. The notes:

• Improved/reduced explosion induced camera shake
• Character collision improvements
• Fix to reduce object damage mismatch between client/server.
• Fix explosion packs not being able to be shot sometimes
• Improvements for client side packet loss
• Client crash fixes
• AMD Mantle multi-GPU improvements
• Carrier Assault game mode reports bug fix
• High Frequency Network update

- Added High frequency "bubble" updating player movement, stance, rotation, damage and projectiles at a separate rate on foot and in vehicles
- Added option to control client side update rate setting

Here's DICE testing blowing bubbles on an empty server, though do note that they seem to be doing their sums the wrong way round--what they call a "60% improvement" is a 40% change.