Battlefield 4 DLC Released Despite Main Game's Woes

Battlefield 4 DLC Released Despite Main Game's Woes

Battlefield 4 has been stricken with a variety of problems since its launch -- yet its DLC release schedule is still proceeding as planned.

The China Rising expansion rolled out to Battlefield Premium customers yesterday, and with it comes a fresh set of problems for the multiplayer shooter, including difficulty joining servers, complete server crashes and continuing performance problems.

"While exploring new battlegrounds in the Battlefield 4 expansion China Rising, you may run into an occasional hiccup, issue, glitch or problem that could interrupt or prohibit your gameplay," EA said, with considerable understatement, on an official help page that also provides troubleshooting suggestions.

Unfortunately, a number of these suggestions boil down to "wait until we fix it," which isn't ideal -- but at least in most cases EA and DICE claim to be aware of the problem and what is causing it.

China Rising also brought with it a patch for all versions of Battlefield 4 except its PS4 incarnation, and EA advises you download this new update before attempting to play. It was primarily intended to fix a bug where occasionally damage from a single bullet was applied multiple times, causing "one-hit kills." The issue has been partly fixed; true one-hit kills have been patched out, but there are still server-side problems relating to how deaths are communicated between client and server.

The PlayStation 4 patch, meanwhile, has been delayed for "additional testing" and there's no word on a release date yet.

To make up for the ongoing issues the game has been suffering, DICE offered all Battlefield 4 players double XP for any multiplayer matches between November 28 and December 5. It looks like the game still has some problems to resolve before it can be called truly stable and worthy of recommendation, unfortunately.

Have you been playing Battlefield 4? Have you had a problem-free experience, or have you run into any of the issues players are complaining about on the game's Battlelog service?