Battlefield 4 gets superservers to fight latency issues

"High-performance servers" are the latest weapon DICE are throwing at Battlefield 4 to knock it into shape. They hope that it'll reduce instances of rubber banding—when players appear to be running in

one direction, but are teleported back a few steps thanks to a high-latency server hiccup. It's a very frustrating phenomenon in a reflex shooter when every player hop can ruin a perfectly good shot.

"We've found that the root cause of the issue was a configuration of certain hardware types dedicated to 64-player matches," writes DICE vice president Karl Magnus Troedsson on the Battelfield 4 site . "We have invested in new hardware to resolve this issue and deployed new higher-performance servers this week.

"In preparation, we conducted a significant amount of testing before installing the new servers to ensure they would correct the issue. We are already seeing performance improvement with 64-player matches and expect this to continue."

It's been a difficult launch for Battlefield 4, riddled with issues attributed to the"netcode", a mystical entity that's been held responsible for everything from disconnection errors, latency problems and the bizarre " death shield" bug . The ongoing news of BF4's difficulties has put me off returning to the game. How about you? Are you a long-suffering BF4 fan? What keeps you playing?

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.