Battlefield 4 expansion development suspended

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Many players are angry at EA and DICE for shipping the China Rising expansion for Battlefield 4--especially as ongoing issues plague all versions of the game. A promised patch for PS4, for example, was delayed. New problems seem to be caused by the expansion, with some players unable to connect to the game's servers.

While DICE and EA have offered players double XP as a token of their "appreciation," the company is going one step further until the ongoing issues are fixed. No further expansions will be released until the game is running as it should.

"First, we want to thank the fans out there that are playing and supporting us with Battlefield 4," an EA spokesperson told Polygon. "We know we still have a ways to go with fixing the game--it is absolutely our No. 1 priority. The team at DICE is working non-stop to update the game. Since Battlefield 4 China Rising expansion pack was already in the final stages of development by the time issues began with Battlefield 4, we decided to fulfill our promise to deliver it this week, but we're not moving onto future projects or expansions until we sort out all the issues with Battlefield 4. We know many of our players are frustrated, and we feel their pain. We will not stop until this is right."

Naval Strike, Dragon's Teeth, and Final Stand are all planned for release in 2014. With no release date assigned to these packs, it's unclear how long the suspended development will actually affect the final three map packs.

Andrew Yoon was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 4, 2013 1:00 PM

    Andrew Yoon posted a new article, Battlefield 4 expansion development suspended.

    Many players are angry at EA and DICE for shipping the China Rising expansion for Battlefield 4--especially as ongoing issues plague all versions...

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      December 4, 2013 1:02 PM

      [deleted]

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        December 4, 2013 6:48 PM

        Yeah, I don't know who's fault it is (EA probably) but at least they're owning up and trying to fast track the bug fixing. Maybe they learned a lesson too?

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      December 4, 2013 1:07 PM

      That's good to hear!! They need all men on deck to fix the existing issues before doing more DLC.

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      December 4, 2013 1:08 PM

      Well am I fucking happy that I didn't give those dickheads money for premium. And this is aimed at EA.

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        December 4, 2013 1:13 PM

        No further expansions will be released until the game is running as it should.

        I guess that's an optimistic way of saying that they have your money that you prepaid for dlc/expansions, but won't deliver the content.

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      December 4, 2013 1:15 PM

      "How could dice let this happen" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh8voPESN70

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        December 4, 2013 1:18 PM

        Testing and stability isn't going to magically happen on it's own apparently.

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        December 4, 2013 1:19 PM

        lol drone road kills! nice

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        December 4, 2013 1:19 PM

        I am frankly shocked to see DICE charging for content that wasn't properly tested.

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        December 4, 2013 1:22 PM

        Hilarious that this exact same problem was in BF3 with MAV... except the SUAV looks even more overpowered. Sigh.

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          December 4, 2013 1:31 PM

          haha that was my first thought. "here we go again" lol

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            December 4, 2013 1:33 PM

            well the SUAV is just for Support Class... so we won't end up with people just sniping and using the MAV all round thankfully.

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              December 4, 2013 1:35 PM

              No, the SUAV is for Recn. The UCAV is for Support, which is also fucking overpowered as shit lol. It's like a flying C4 that you can kill tons of infantry and vehicles with.

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        December 4, 2013 1:24 PM

        that is hilarious

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        December 4, 2013 1:26 PM

        what, that's great. that's working as intended. shoot down the damn thing!

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        December 4, 2013 1:27 PM

        Robbaz is the best

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        December 4, 2013 1:36 PM

        [deleted]

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        December 4, 2013 1:36 PM

        haha that's so good

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        December 4, 2013 1:38 PM

        Can Premium people use this against us regular folk?

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          December 4, 2013 2:59 PM

          Probably, as Premium and regulars could mix in BF3...

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        December 4, 2013 1:40 PM

        lol that's going to get nerfed to hell.

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        December 4, 2013 1:42 PM

        Oh my god hahahaha!

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        December 4, 2013 1:44 PM

        What the heck did I just watch? lol

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          December 4, 2013 2:14 PM

          What looks like a fairly lightweight RC reconnaissance drone kill a bunch of people just by touching them and still continue flying.

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            December 4, 2013 2:53 PM

            That was possible with the helicopter UAV in Bad Company 2 by flying it inside buildings.

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        December 4, 2013 3:47 PM

        Well that is awesome.

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        December 4, 2013 3:49 PM

        HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA

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        December 4, 2013 4:14 PM

        [deleted]

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        December 4, 2013 4:35 PM

        http://replygif.net/i/1370.gif

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        December 4, 2013 4:50 PM

        How can someone not like Robbaz???

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        December 4, 2013 5:22 PM

        Sweet jesus they really do not learn do they? Do they start their next project with the same broken code base?

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          December 4, 2013 5:35 PM

          mmmm yes? Cryptic does exactly this. They have a generic template for XYZ MMO and they slap new graphics on top of it, they've done it with the exact same code for their past few games.

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            December 4, 2013 6:21 PM

            Yup. Cryptic MMO launch means fucked up auction house.

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        December 4, 2013 5:26 PM

        Bwahahahahaha!! That's amazing.

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        December 4, 2013 9:47 PM

        Tons of people using this trick right now. There's no way to defend against it really.

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      December 4, 2013 1:23 PM

      The expansions aren't due for months any way. If they had announced this prior to China Rising then perhaps it wouldn't just be lip service.

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      December 4, 2013 1:26 PM

      What should be a common sense decision by any company is spun by EA to appear to be doing a favor for their playerbase.

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      December 4, 2013 1:29 PM

      [deleted]

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      December 4, 2013 1:30 PM

      Is Second Assault included in this?

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      December 4, 2013 1:38 PM

      http://i.imgur.com/mEkCa1u.jpg

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      December 4, 2013 1:49 PM

      There may be little overlap between those who make DLC and those who fix bugs.

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        December 4, 2013 2:11 PM

        Everyone was saying that the other day, that people working on DLC have nothing to do with fixing the game. But apparently the folks creating the DLC can also introduce new bugs, which makes shit even harder for those still trying and failing to fix the already existing issues. Still, there's no reason to stop development for any map designers or the like. Whether they actually hold the expansions back and not release them until shit's all good remains to be seen. They're still months away like skinlab said.

        BF3 took about 6 months to fix most of the major and minor bugs, but was in much more stable condition during that time. I don't know if BF4 will ever be in a state that's worthy of release at this point. It's hard to see the light.

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        December 4, 2013 2:12 PM

        Send them to QA. Seems like they could use the help.

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          December 4, 2013 2:39 PM

          probably the engineers need help, but level designers and artists should just stick to DLC. QA very often finds all the bad bugs so dont blame them. The code base can easily get too unwieldy to narrow the problem without a ton of research/manpower.

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            December 4, 2013 2:42 PM

            Not to mention that new builds can often introduce a whole new slew of bugs. Fixes may work as intended, but can often break something else entirely, especially if they're dealing with online play.

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          December 4, 2013 2:58 PM

          QA probably found most of it but EA manglement, when faced with the decision to either delay the game to fix everything or release it and fix them later, went with the instant moneyhats option like they always do.

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          December 4, 2013 4:44 PM

          Probably not. QA is normally extremely good at finding bugs, producers just have a tendency to waive more and more issues as you get closer to launch.

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          December 4, 2013 6:05 PM

          Yeah, send those highly paid engineers to do QA work.

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        December 4, 2013 2:12 PM

        "Hi, Sven here. I just write shit code, but I don't fix it. They do that in the basement."

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      December 4, 2013 3:00 PM

      I guess the Mantle update may be pushed till next year? Hope not for the 290x crew, I want to see the bench mark scores hard core one of the highlights of Dec for sure.

      Is Mantle worth it? is what I want to know and BF4 is the first example of it once the patch drops.

      Hope they clean up the post dabree and get things sorted.

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        December 4, 2013 3:36 PM

        I'm really interested in the Mantle claims as well. More specifically, what *are* the gains between non-APU chips vs. pure CPUs. How about Intel's CPU on Mantle GPUs. Crossfire benches are also very important as well! This entire matrix of benchmarks are very important to see if Mantle is worth it. My guesses are the minimum and averages are higher, but the max FPS aren't huge gains.

        G-Sync still sounds like a better buy, so far.

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          December 4, 2013 4:19 PM

          I agree, Nvidia has a lot more than just a > performance as a benefit.

          Still you never know maybe they will leverage the audio chip and even be able to add extra visuals, but that is all wanting and not factual as far as I know it will only provide greater performance boost for using it.

          800s come out next year and are suppose to D9 the 700s more than 2x increase so I am not too concerned about performance lagging in Nvidia's camp. The 700s are awesome as it is as many of you know. Some are saying 800s next year is too early but not for me :)

          Man G-Sync can not come soon enough, damn I hope it comes to HDTV screens... PLEASE Nvidia.

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            December 4, 2013 5:20 PM

            I'm looking forward to switching to nvidia. So many features.

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            December 4, 2013 5:57 PM

            G-sync, on TVs, ain't gonna happen. Three main reasons:

            1. The industry standard body would have to approve it.
            2. HDMI isn't a packet based protocol (like DisplayPort is), so the most universal consumer connector (today) already doesn't support it.
            3. HDMI 2.0 also isn't packet based.

            While I'm fully behind the tech coming to consumer TVs, we're really just better off having real OLED as the display type.

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      December 4, 2013 5:04 PM

      Wow, the game JUST came out and there's already an expansion? So damn greedy, I can't wait for this series to die.

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        December 4, 2013 5:11 PM

        They were promoting and selling the 5 DLC expansions in a $50 bundle before the game was even out. That's greedy. This is just more maps when you're starting to want more in theory. There's really nothing wrong with that in my opinion, but I then I did also get it for free from pre-ordering like everyone else

        I was dead set on waiting and grabbing the cheaper game + full dlc package next year after all the bugs were fixed before I saw that deal too. They did it with BF3 Premium Edition bundle and it was dirt cheap and came at a time when most of the bugs had been fixed. But I caved when I saw a pre-release sale price for $44 with the first expansion free. :(

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        December 4, 2013 5:12 PM

        there are 2 expansions

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          December 4, 2013 5:12 PM

          i mean already out

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          December 4, 2013 11:53 PM

          No there aren't

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            December 5, 2013 12:25 AM

            Second Assault was launched as a timed exclusive on the Xbox One a few weeks back.

            That will be the next one for all the other platforms. So the bulk of the work on it is pretty much done on it already and it's not officially dated anyway so I don't even know why they had to come out and say they are stopping development on it until BF4 is fixed. They are only going to piss of paying premium customers.

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              December 5, 2013 6:08 AM

              Second Assault is not yet out for the XONE.

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                December 5, 2013 6:23 AM

                never-mind i stand corrected..... dang.

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      December 4, 2013 5:42 PM

      I blame you guys.

      http://chattypics.com/files/adffJPG_hm7dyske0b.jpg

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        December 4, 2013 6:04 PM

        I'm sorry you guys are a bunch of poors with shit luck. After the first patch BF4 has been amazing for me, worth every preordered penny.

        Also I've spent 30 of the last 36 hours at work so fuck you if there aren't tradeoffs!

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          December 4, 2013 6:30 PM

          yikes what do you do?

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            December 4, 2013 6:34 PM

            Software dev for a large company. Switched teams, now I work on interfacing new customers with our systems. We go live with a new customer on Friday but they weren't able to send coherent data until yesterday afternoon.

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          December 5, 2013 3:40 AM

          Did they just issue that statement for shits and giggles then?

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        December 5, 2013 10:24 AM

        You're not much better, having bought BF4. It was the same kind of shit since BF1942, through BF2, BF3, SimCity and many other games. EA doesn't give a shit about their customers, they just care about how they look in the mass media, and how good their games look in ads. Stop funding their BS.

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      December 4, 2013 7:28 PM

      I wonder how many potential customers have stopped buying Battlefield and CoD games because of all the bullshit that the publishers have pushed onto customers.

      I haven't bought a CoD game since 2 (had 3 gifted, but never played it) and I think the last CoD game I played was still based on an id engine. Not so much because of the aforementioned bullshit, but because I just got burned out on those types of games.

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        December 4, 2013 9:06 PM

        Last one I bought was CoD:BLOPS; in hindsight, kinda wish I didn't. Treyarch had that air of wanting to extend an olive branch to the PC community, but ultimately only fulfilled that partway (adjustable FOV in single-player; gotta hand them that).

        In a way, it's Call of Duty's fault for corrupting an entire genre into forcing all of the games in that genre into QTEs, ultra-cinematics with tons of high-budget setpieces and LESS FREE SHOOTING, as well as all the multiplayer Skinner Box mechanics, and DLC. Oh, and bugs. Lots of bugs. Because there's absolutely no way development on these games can go longer than 20 months, or the release date could ever be delayed.

        I'm finding far more enjoyment playing Doom I / II and Quake, investigating the intricacies of level design and item placement (remember those skills?), as well as the beauty of weapon design combined with enemy placement and population, all acting in a free-form enclosed system, allowing the AI and cadence of the weapon characteristics dictate the action, NOT a set script. I want to see more FPS games like that.

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        December 4, 2013 9:24 PM

        I stopped bothering with CoD after Blops. The lack of mod support for Zombies - clearly to squeeze $ for DLC - ruined the game. Mods in WaW were so fun...

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        December 4, 2013 11:52 PM

        No CoD Ghosts for me or the guys I play with. Just over it. Didn't get BF 4 on X360 either after hearing how buggy it was there. I play on my PC (first time in 10yrs I've had a a decent PC vs console) and its fun, but no BF5 or DLC for me. This Is beyond ridiculous.

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        December 5, 2013 5:50 AM

        I stopped COD at MW2. I stopped Battlefield at the original BF3 release. I've completely stopped buying all EA games because of Origin and their practice of harming both developers and franchises.

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        December 5, 2013 10:26 AM

        I stopped buying EA products after BF1942, which I returned. I bought one EA product between then and now (Spore), and regretted it. Never again.

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      December 5, 2013 8:25 AM

      Really surprised this has taken this long to be written about here and other places. Seems like no one wanted to really mention it until Polygon dipped that review score down like 3 pts.

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      December 6, 2013 4:08 PM

      Part of me appreciates them recognizing there are significant issues that need to be addressed, but another part of me is a person who paid for premium and now wonders if I made a mistake. If this pushes expansions out 6 months, I'm probably not going to be playing BF4 when they finally come out. I know the same thing happened with BF3. By the time the last expansion shipped, I didn't care to play it.

      Having been a Battlefield player since BF2, I'm no stranger to DICE's predilection towards buggy code and patches that seem to decrease performance over time while fixing those bugs. It's just such a unique experience, that I put up with it. I'm playing on the PC and having a good time, despite the occasional CTD. I hope this "fix" doesn't take too long.

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