Battlefield 4: Reduced lag server with an update comes two years after the launch

The PS4 and Xbox versions of Battlefield 4 One run at 60fps (although not stable) and may benefit significantly by rising tickrate now announced by DICE and introduced by the last patch for the popular multiplayer shooter now released two years does. DICE has performed a series of tests during the Christmas period at various tickrate (45Hz, 50Hz, 55Hz) and then has inclined towards the more conservative option.

Recall that with tickrate you define the number of times per second the server and game client communicate with each other to exchange information on various aspects of the game, such as the movements of the soldiers, the physics of the game environments, grenade explosions, ballistics of bullets and missiles. The most advanced servers for batch management in the PC version of Battlefield 4 can ultimately have a tickrate to 144hz, in this case justified by the better performance of the PC platform, and by the existence of a 144hz monitor. We talked about it here.

Of course in the field console is not sensible to arrive at such high update frequencies, but the passage 30 to 45Hz can still lead to significant benefits in terms of the physical management of the game, hit detection and the overall reaction to the movements of the players from the server. It is an improved refresh rate of 50% server, however, limited only to matches involving a number of players that does not exceed 32 units. For lots with 64 soldiers involved simultaneously, in fact, continue to apply previous settings.

"We could lean towards tickrate even higher because that would be of benefit to many players. However, our main concern is to keep satisfying game experience for all players," it said in the Battlefield blog. "For the same reason we decided not to increase the tickrate for the match with 64 players."

DICE explains that this approach would have unhappy experience in cases involving connections capable of handling higher tickrate both for under-performing connections. He also compared the data with those from high beta tickrate PC, which is based on a server with the same hardware configuration used for the servers for the game on consoles, "and comparing cemented our decision," conclude the technical Swedish software company.

DICE will do in the coming days a test for matches hosted in North America, and if the new settings work as expected will be transposed in the rest of the world starting from February 11.