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Polygon Updates Battlefield 4 PS4/XB1 Review Score: 7.5 -> 4

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
I understand the idea, but changing the review score seems like a cackhanded way to achieve it.
 

Nemo

Will Eat Your Children
Can somone with an r9 card expect a big improvement in performance when the patch hits?
 

braves01

Banned
EA/MS to Polygon: "Battlefield 4 has sold well enough around release. You can lower the score now."

Gies: "Yes, master."
 
Thanks for waiting until after plenty of people already bought it. Maybe you shouldn't have issued out that original review score to begin with.

How are reviewers supposed to predict the problems that will arise in multiplayer?

Also, maybe we gamers should be a little more cautious before running out to buy the biggest, newest multiplayer titles. Reviewers are never going to be able to tell how the huge influx of players online will affect the game.
 

j-wood

Member
Who else thinks this is absolutely ridiculous? Let's break this down:

You have a major news site that people probably go to read reviews and help decide whether to buy a game or not review a new AAA title and give it a high score, saying buy it.

In actuality, this AAA game is terrible. Said review site updates the review to reflect this WEEKS after release and after tons of people have already bought the game.

This should not happen.
 
More review sites need to do this. maybe it'll get EA/Dice off their asses and fix their game.

Or maybe they should review the games correctly the first time around. By all accounts, the multiplayer has been broken since launch and, if anything, has only incrementally improved...so what were they basing their initial review off of in the first place? Why was it an 8 then an a 4 now, when by all accounts, it's at least somewhat improved?
 

Nokterian

Member
How does DICE fuck up a net code that has gone through multiple iterations and is now playing on simple x86 architecture that is more powerful than ever?

DICE once made must-have shooter software. I cannot believe they're becoming a dev. that should be ignored.

Getting that CoD crowd of course,mostly done by folks in suits at EA. You know less polish faster development for more cash.
 

jambo

Member
I didn't end up picking up BF4 on PC so when I played it on a mates XBone it was my first experience with it.

About half-way through the FIRST match, the game suddenly restarted and dumped me back out to the start screen =\
 

Kinthalis

Banned
By Arthur Gies

What a surprise

Common now. Debate/attack the content, not the person. This is like debate 101. No, kindergarten debate class.

I personally like that some outlets are willing to revise their scores and give publishers/devs crap when they deserve it.
 

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
Good. I hope more articles start popping up cause I'm getting really sick and tired of the PS4 crashes.

BacxKSLCcAAObqn.jpg:large
 
Or maybe they should review the games correctly the first time around. By all accounts, the multiplayer has been broken since launch and, if anything, has only incrementally improved...so what were they basing their initial review off of in the first place? Why was it an 8 then an a 4 now, when by all accounts, it's at least somewhat improved?

Was it broken when the relatively small number of reviewers were playing it? Or did it only become shit when the game was released to the masses?
 

RyudBoy

Member
I get crashes every now and then but I never have an issue finding a game. 64 player conquest mode is easy to get into. XB1 version here.
 
Still the campaign I guess.

I haven't had any issues with multiplayer, except getting booted out to the xmb after the game ended in conquest.

However I did lose all my progress in the campaign and that's fucking inexcusable. PS+ cloud save didn't save me either. I won't be playing that again until there's a patch, but I feel that deserves a much bigger knock in score than a few multiplayer issues.
 
Really regret buying BF4 day one on PC. I have not played in about two weeks because every time I try the game crashes or I get disconnected from the server and cant reconnect. Really sucks unlock the same weapon or achieving the same rank 15 times due to disconnects or game crashes
 

Odrion

Banned
Also didn't someone find a piece of writing suggesting that journalists may have known the PS4 version had issues ahead of time? Like people saw the PS4 build crashing in late October with the same error message but only a few actually commented on it?
 
How are reviewers supposed to predict the problems that will arise in multiplayer?

Also, maybe we gamers should be a little more cautious before running out to buy the biggest, newest multiplayer titles. Reviewers are never going to be able to tell how the huge influx of players online will affect the game.

The problems were there in the days after launch. The problems were there when their initial review went up. What took so long? Why is it a worse game NOW, after EA has actually somewhat improved things (though not nearly enough) rather than a month ago?
 

Kinthalis

Banned
Or maybe they should review the games correctly the first time around. By all accounts, the multiplayer has been broken since launch and, if anything, has only incrementally improved...so what were they basing their initial review off of in the first place? Why was it an 8 then an a 4 now, when by all accounts, it's at least somewhat improved?

I believe it was based on preview events and playing the game before launch. They were assured (and they felt assured since this was supposedly honed on the PC version since BF3) that that experience was indicative of the launch one.
 

theytookourjobz

Junior Member
Or maybe they should review the games correctly the first time around. By all accounts, the multiplayer has been broken since launch and, if anything, has only incrementally improved...so what were they basing their initial review off of in the first place? Why was it an 8 then an a 4 now, when by all accounts, it's at least somewhat improved?

The review was based on a review event multiplayer session which probably had ZERO problems.
 

Vestal

Gold Member
In the reviewers defense there is no way for them to test the multiplayer and the the bugs or issues before the game has already achieved a large player base.
 

antonz

Member
Can somone with an r9 card expect a big improvement in performance when the patch hits?

You should be having fantastic performance as is now. B4 seems to be hindered more by CPU than anything. Frostbite 3 is a CPU whore that I don't know how PS4/Xbone are going to survive on frostbite games

my 2500K stock ran BF4 like shit. I mean constant slowdowns and upto 5 minute load times on multiplayer. bumped the 2500k from 3.3 to 4.3 and its buttery smooth now with no slowdowns and 30 second loads max. My R9 comes in the next day or two so expect even better graphically
 
Except it's not fluid, their score adjustments move at the pace of a glacier.

They also never did it for Diablo 3 even though it released with issues that Gies even noticed for his review. According to him it would've been a disservice to gamers and Blizzard to dwell on it. He gave it a 10 by the way.
 
I 100% agree with this low score.

I want to list my issues with the game, but I'll premise it with my stating I still find it FUN.

  1. netcode is terrible, too much is client side
  2. too much "fluff" and "style" over gameplay
  3. unbalanced weapons
  4. regenerating armor, ie. jet vs jet is so annoying
  5. weapon blooms too much while in ADS, especially while moving
  6. promised battlescreen for mobile, only delivered tablets
  7. infantry combat is poor due to a variety of reasons, including several of the above reasons
  8. too many bugs, big ones as well, like bullets dealing 1 shot kill damage
  9. BIG ONE: movement is terrible, getting out of water is terrible, vaulting objects is terrible. Any time the game takes control away from your character is terrible, including explosions which are plentiful.
  10. suppression is just a bad concept in a competitive shooter
  11. many of the graphics effects, especially HUD/post processing effects are things that take away from the gameplay to make it LOOK like a fun game but actually make it play worse (they did not learn their lesson from MOH warfighter somehow)
  12. somehow runs much much worse than bf3 on the same PC, and I played bf3 on medium/high settings and I play BF4 on low/off settings

edit:
I know different reasons for a low score and all. But yeah, I felt like venting this in case anyone from anywhere involved with a fps sees this thread.
 

Massa

Member
Was it broken when the relatively small number of reviewers were playing it? Or did it only become shit when the game was released to the masses?

It was broken at the review event, broken on release and it's still broken.

The only variable is Polygon's review score, which changes according to the weather or something.
 

dmg04

#DEADWRONG
Funny, I haven't crashed to home a single time.

In fact, the only issues I've had... at all... were with graphics randomly bugging for a few seconds.
 

Pastry

Banned
lol they waited until the game has been fixed significantly before lowering the score, way too late on the draw.
 
Was it broken when the relatively small number of reviewers were playing it? Or did it only become shit when the game was released to the masses?

and therein lies the problem. But sites are in a rush to post reviews for launch, and us as the consumers are in a rush to consume those reviews at or before launch so it's just a shitty cycle. But if Polygon really wants some credibility after SimCity and this, maybe they should refrain from reviewing online games (or EA games?) until lengthy real-world playtesting of at least a few days. But they won't. They'll continue to try and put themselves over as having "Standards" by releasing relatively worthless update-reviews weeks after launch.
 
Huh? Why did they update the ps4 score now - when it's mostly stable - instead of two weeks ago when it actually wasn't working? The game in no way warrants a 4 in it's current state. It runs fine now and 64 player matches run totally fine.
 

Ghost23

Member
I've been playing for the past week and have been disconnected from two games. The fact that the game improved and they now decide to lower the score to a 4 only lessens the credibility of Polygon in my opinion.
 

rvy

Banned
Common now. Debate/attack the content, not the person. This is like debate 101. No, kindergarten debate class.

I personally like that some outlets are willing to revise their scores and give publishers/devs crap when they deserve it.
Yeah, I mean it's not like they already fooled their readers into buying the game lol.

Sorry about your money guys, turns out the game is shit.
 
I don't get it, did this not happen when they were reviewing it? Changing scores seems like a shitty thing to do regardless if it's deserved or not.
 

Mrbob

Member
The problems were there in the days after launch. The problems were there when their initial review went up. What took so long? Why is it a worse game NOW, after EA has actually somewhat improved things (though not nearly enough) rather than a month ago?

Especially poor form since these issues have been around since the beta which came out weeks before release.

I agree this should be the bigger discussion. Congrats Polygon for changing the score after the game has sold multiple millions worldwide.
 
I believe it was based on preview events and playing the game before launch. They were assured (and they felt assured since this was supposedly honed on the PC version since BF3) that that experience was indicative of the launch one.

so now that this has happened twice, and with the same company, will Polygon hold EA's ass to the fire when it comes to future reviews? Not likely.
 
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