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Its been more than two years now. Why can't Battlefield 4 save campaign progress?

N

NullPointer

Member
I can't believe this is still a thing. In 2016. For a game that released in October of 2013.

The save-game bug is the reason I got a PSN refund a few months after the game's original release, and I've been content to forget about it until recently. With the lack of decent modern shooters these days I ended up jumping back into the game as part of PSN's Hardline/Battlefield 4 bundle.

Now, the multiplayer for BF4 is better than ever, and that's the main reason I picked it up , but now that I had it again I figured I'd jump back into the campaign that I had started at least half a dozen times already, years ago, only to have that save-game wiped each and every last time I tried.

Surely that's been fixed by now, right? They re-released the game for chrissakes - you don't re-release a game that destroys your campaign saves, do you? I guess you do.

But more than any scorn to heap at EA and/or DICE I'd really just like to know how this even happens. Why Battlefield 4? What happened in its development to allow a bug like a propensity to eat your campaign save to ship? And not only to ship, but to stay broken, throughout all of the months and years and patches and promises and even a re-release?

Is there a statute of limitations on the inside baseball stories for this kind of thing? Does anybody know how this happened and why its never been fixed? Will we ever know?

Edit: Thread title fixed. Thanks mods!
 
T

Tambini

Member
Wow they really didn't fix that yet? I remember uploading my saves to the cloud after every session to avoid it at launch
 
SkylineRKR

SkylineRKR

Member
Haha, I lucked out once and managed to finish it in a weekend. Other than that, nope, always gone.

But really, the campaign is a big fucking piece of shit. Worse than 3 even. I guess its sentient and deletes itself.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
Eduardboon said:
Isn't it quite normal for alpha versions of games to have some bugs?
Click to expand...
Its a pretty painful bug, one that never got fixed, and its in a title that EA and DICE both put out statements apologizing for its multitude of bugs and issues and promising to delay any premium DLC until the game was fixed.

I just don't know how something like this happens. Did DICE's dev kits not have the "save files" update that all the other devs got? What is it about this bug that made it unfixable?

I can't even theorize whats going on under the hood there.

PrimaNocta said:
what do you mean? You have the beat the campaign in 1 sitting? I've never played BF4.
Click to expand...
If you don't beat the game in one sitting, or manually backup your saves to some external drive there's a good chance that campaign save won't be there when you go back to the game.

As I found out, again, this morning. I'm not even angry any more, I just want to understand.
 
E

Eduardboon

Member
NullPointer said:
Its a pretty painful bug, one that never got fixed, and its in a title that EA and DICE both put out statements apologizing for its multitude of bugs and issues and promising to delay any premium DLC until the game was fixed.

I just don't know how something like this happens. Did DICE's dev kits not have the "save files" update that all the other devs got? What is it about this bug that made it unfixable?

I can't even theorize whats going on under the hood there.
Click to expand...

I feel bad now for joking about your typo because of your good response.

It is indeed very annoying that the saves keep disappearing. I don't have the problem on pic though but sold the ps4 version because of it.
 
Nizz

Nizz

Member
I don't know if I just got lucky, but like you I had the campaign save glitch but after one of the patches (forgot which one exactly) I no longer had the problem and was able to finish it. Sucks that it's still not working for some.
 
C

cantthink9

Banned
Weird about a month after BF4s release I ended up beating it in multiple playthroughs no problem. First week of launch was a mess though so i stopped for a month.
 
ss_lemonade

ss_lemonade

Member
I was able to beat the campaign and have my saves stick throughout. Sadly that was several months back. Today, my saves are gone lol
 
Chozo_Lord

Chozo_Lord

Member
I must have gotten lucky, as it's never happened to me. But I've experienced other bizarre bugs like unlocking trophies for getting all the collectibles when I didn't get all the collectibles.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
Booker Dewitt said:
Got this bug on both the 360 and PS4 version, wasn't a great campaign from what I played, but I would've finished it.
Click to expand...
Yeah, its not the greatest. But I do like the ballistics model, the weapons, the audio, the destruction, the vehicles, and that presentation is still eye popping in detail and fluidity at 60fps.

Vaga said:
Don't play the campaign while connected to the internet, surely it's quite known by now.
Click to expand...
Care to explain a bit? What is it about being online that wipes the save?

And if I play through half the campaign while offline, play some other stuff online and then go back to unplugged BF4 will the savegame still be there? If I ever go online with BF4 in the future will it then eat my game save? And if that's the fix, why hasn't DICE just patched away online functionality for the campaign in particular? It doesn't even retain the weapons unlocked via the campaign server side.

Is the game cursed? Is this a console issue? Does Battlelog hate humanity? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
shiftymorgan

shiftymorgan

Member
NullPointer said:
Yeah, its not the greatest. But I do like the ballistics model, the weapons, the audio, the destruction, the vehicles, and that presentation is still eye popping in detail and fluidity at 60fps.
Click to expand...

That's how I feel, you get to enjoy the engine a bit without someone murdering you.

Still never finished the campaign from launch and it wiped my saves a few times (Xbox one) so I have given up. Really wanted to finish it, but in my time and not having to do it in one sitting.
 
P

Psychoward

Banned
yeah it happened to me about 3 times

got the achievement for completing the game a while ago yet whenever i go in to campaign it kicks me straight to the start
 
D

DBT85

Member
I had that problem at launch but it had seemingly gone entirely when I tried again about a year later. Completed the campaign and did all that whizzy stuff. Played multi for about 3 days before getting bored being shit (same for all console shooters for me) and haven't touched it since.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
Thanks for the understanding. Its a soothing balm, seriously.

But does anybody even have theories of what might be at work here? Any other save-game bugs that could shed light on what happened with BF4? What the technical issues could have been?

Any ideas on what made this something that DICE/EA/anybody else were incapable or unwilling to fix?

And lets not forget that this game has been subsequently re-released and bundled, and still contains the bug. It boggles my mind.
 
B

Booker Dewitt

Member
NullPointer said:
And ideas on what made this something that DICE/EA/anybody else were incapable or unwilling to fix?
Click to expand...

It's not worth it financially to fix it at this point for the few players that will play the campaign at this point, and the multiplayer being on fire taking precedence for the first couple months.
 
N

NullPointer

Member
Booker Dewitt said:
It's not worth it financially to fix it at this point for the few players that will play the campaign at this point, and the multiplayer being on fire taking precedence for the first couple months.
Click to expand...
At this point right now, absolutely. But this was a game that very publicly delayed its premium DLC rollout and put out statements about fixing the problems with the game. And they did patch the hell out of it over a pretty extended period.

But this one bug remained. So do you figure that whatever it is, its something truly costly to fix? What could that even be?
 
V

Vaga

Member
NullPointer said:
Care to explain a bit? What is it about being online that wipes the save?
Click to expand...

The logical reasoning would say the progress gets saved or not (most likely) on their servers and syncs up every time you launch the game. Or it's a fucking mess like the whole game was at launch.
 
V

VariantX

Member
fastford58 said:
I just played it in one sitting. It is short enough.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately not short enough. Having to repeat the final stage multiple times didn't help either. Don't know if the bug was ever fixed or not but I made damn sure not to take that chance again after having my progress wiped three times previous.
 
G

Grisby

Member
Was it prominent on the X1 too? Finished it on there and never had any issues.

Super shitty that it hasn't been fixed.
I guess Dice joined the gaming community at large in forgetting their own single-player campaign.
 
R

RandomExpletive

Member
God I was heartbroken after slogging my way through the campaign (some of it was OK, but overall not anywhere as good as any COD campaign), only to find that I needed to replay the final level a few more times for all the guns. And then I checked the campaign page and OOPS, save data? What save data? You mean you don't want to restart from the first chapter? :|

I should get around to replaying it JUST for the p90 :\
 
M

Mass Effect

Member
They still haven't fixed this garbage?

Makes me glad that I still haven't even touched the campaign yet, and probably never will.
 
Pegasus Actual

Pegasus Actual

Member
I think Battlefield 4 deleted my save midway through the game 3-4 times before I finished it. Then at some point after I finished it, it got deleted again when I was just playing multiplayer, so if I want to revisit the campaign at some point I'd have to start over.

Battlefield Hardline also fucked up my save. I forget the details now. All my campaign mode assignment unlocks still show up on Battelog but they all were wiped if you look at them inside the game's menu.
 
S

Sora_N

Member
Huh, that's weird. I never had an issue, I had a physical copy near the end of 2014. Finished the campaign fine, I played a bit of MP and then traded the game in.
 
K

Koh

Member
For all the comments within the industry about people not playing single player campaigns in these types of games

Considering:
battlefield 4's campaign not being anything to write home about.

And

The glitches like discusses in the OP...

Trophies show a very high completion rate imo. Mid 30%s or so? That's hardly different from single player only games.
 
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