Yeah that's what I'm going to check out later Spooky....Any tips on menu and connection settings then let us know...I'm sure it looks the same on a Playstation 4 as it does on a PC.

I do not play console games online as the latency is that awful especially with one player hosting- servers help to a point but its how the game deals with latency.

I play PC so i know what pings people have- anything over 150 will cause issues as their will be a latency advantage but below 100 their is very little difference as the way BF4 has its hit detection.

Pings of below 50 are ideal and on alot of UK servers people with good connections will have sub 10 pings but thats down to the server providers network.

On PC you can set up servers to restrict high ping players ie anything over 100ms cannot join or as a server admin you can kick high ping players- console players should campaign to get rid of the connection bars and have actual pings.

All FPS are latency based but you also have to factor in hit dection and player reaction times.

Indeed its one of the most enoying things in Battlefield, why a tank that ways a few tons can skid around like a go kart.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Dec-13 19:46:39)

Just to clear up what you are asking you want to order the servers in terms of population size?

I have not tried to play commander on a tablet, i have only played it on my monitor as i see no point to use the tablet why go to a smaller screen and you need to use comms to be a good commander.

How i play is with friends or find a decent public squad and work together to take and hold flags, their will be plenty of flanking and falling back to cap rear flags that have been taken.
The difference between normal players and better players is map awarness, not many people have it and it shows.
On some maps air can dominate yet if 1 or 2 players, deploy with stingers you can shut down the air and get the game back under control.
Other maps certain vehicles can determine how the map will play out- for instance on Hanin the AA and Mobile Artillery are key to winning the map.

Team balance is one of the hardest things to get right in a public server- player on a 64 server first round on hanin it was 0-653 tickets a one sided map, a change to Flood Zone it finished 50-0 a very close round.
The difference can be just a few players leaving or joining the server, their are alot of lone wolf players in Battlefield but squad work makes a massive difference.

Small vehicles are alot more prone to exploding or suffering heavy damage in bf4 then in bf3, yesterday i was on a jet ski and collided with the attack boat- insta death.

Yes, we have had this conversation before with someone on here (mr saffron if I recall correctly) and he explained the same. I would take an increase in server population time over poor matchmaking every time. The green bars are irrelevant if you want to compete in any meaningful way.

Can you tell me what you know about BF4s servers? Is it dedicated servers with client side hit detection? I am writing to Dice and EA out of sheer [censored] mindedness as this game is a load of [censored]. After two hours of wasting my time, I have a KD of 0.09 and a score per minute of 0.04.

I am going to speak to plusnet today and force them to write to me explaining why there fibre apparently makes for a better gaming experience. The I will forward that to EA and Dice for their comments. I wholeheartedly believe that it is an accepted and unspoken falibility of this online model that I should have the choice to opt out of. I'm fed up of paying for thngs that were never going to work in the first place.

I also have no function to the server browser. None of the servers are ever populated. Anybody know why they all show 0/64 and let me join, but there is never anyone in game?

You make some good points but really they are your idealistic observations if you'll forgive me for saying so.

Yes, playing with a well organised (open) squad is the way to play but in my experience, it isn't all that common to find one that's actually playing the same objective. Instead, it'll be fragmented and the squad leader will be off flying a plane or something.

Two guys with stingers can make a big dent on maps like Flood Zone. Even on Golmud Railway a single stinger guy can discourage a fairly sizable area like points C/A and B from the helos even if you can't take them out completely, the constant lock on gets annoying. But if they've got a repair guy going at it nonstop you've got to admit it's not possible to take them out at all. And I've only come across squads with more than one stinger guy on a handful of occasions (chiefly being in response to me piloting a transport chopper with a couple of gunners on Guilin Peaks). We were dominating so I guess there frustration forced them to equip stingers. They were far more effective in dealing with us for sure.

I've only ever heard a commander talk over comms once. As commander myself, I'm learning just to give orders that follow what a squad leader is doing as people rarely pay attention though the good squads do once you've built up a rapport with them (and this takes time). You do you see, offer idealistic points I feel though I'm only going by my own (admittedly long term) experience from playing chiefly BF2 and BF4 that on the whole, the games are pretty anarchic and chaotic.

So, you're a member of a clan or you just have a few mates that you more casually play with? It's been a long time since I played alongside guys I know in Battlefield but using comms and having a singular objective is a must really if you want to play the game as effectively as you can. Having balanced teams isn't really possible I suppose, unless it's organised from the outset. That would be good to see, even better to experience a professional type of game going on to see what really could be achievable. I guess that's a major frustration to see the potential of the game and have it fall so far short of that 99% of the time. We did have some very close games last night whilst I was commanding. It was good to see more balanced teams actually as your experience on Hainin Resort is quite common. I personally feel it's important to try and hold your two capture points (say A and B if playing as US or E and D if China) and then try and hold the central point C as best as possible. All too often we'd lose say point A which means it's really easy for people to spawn and flank and capture B. I'd see squad leaders drive right past A a lot even with the UAV drone flying and it showing there was no enemy there even. [censored] dumbnuts that they were. Felt like using the comms and yelling at them really.

DICE have some good ideas but so far the tablet one needs a lot more work and as for listing servers by their populated player size, I've finally found a fix. You've got to first scroll down the list and a long way at that to get the populated servers to show, then importantly not to refresh as you'd expect as DICE's system doesn't load much more than say 20 servers on screen at a time and the vast majority of them are always empty so it is a broken and frankly stupid system they've got: again, it's a great innovation but poorly executed as it is if it doesn't work. I'm surprised you didn't notice but I guess you might be playing differently: I am in the habit of just refreshing the server list to see what's available rather than going through favourites/history or selecting to just randomly join a game. Nothing worse than joining a server where everyone's playing the same stupid map over and over again in hardcore rush mode with only pistols allowed or something.

They are sort of dedicated, although they will most likely be running other games at the same time too. Collision detection is (unfortunantely) client-side, so lower the ping the bigger advantage you have with this.

Higher pingers have advantage over movement though, so unless all players have the same ping +/- around 5, you are going to have some problems somewhere...

BF4 characters are much harder to see - possibly because everything is much darker. Maybe even the characters are smaller too.

Personally servers should be region-locked. We dont have the technology to time-lock them too yet

Anybody know why they all show 0/64 and let me join, but there is never anyone in game?

0 is the number of players, 64 is the maximum the server allows (64 is far, far too many).

I'm fed up of paying for thngs that were never going to work in the first place.

Thats what comes of buy things as soon they are released, instead of waiting at least a year...

Edited by deleted (Sun 15-Dec-13 13:19:28)

I think Mr Nelster is asking why aren't there any populated servers showing in the server browser. It's the same problem I reported that ccxo said wasn't an issue.

After experimenting I found a solution by scrolling down and down and down (like I said before) right the way through loads of unpopulated servers past the few that had a decent number of people playing (ie more than 2) and then - importantly! - did not refresh the list or anything but instead made my way back to the top THEN click on the players column to get a proper list of populated servers in descending order from most players to less.

It's a fe.cking stupid system that DICE should try and fix. Good luck getting any kind of meaningful personal statement or advice from them Nelly. We'd need a global campaign to get them to listen. I do sympathise for you I really do though and if that's the standard or common console online multiplayer experience then you can count me out.

For the record, I am with Plusnet for fibre too, live close to my cabinet (<50m) and about 700m to my exchange as the crow flies. Thus far I've been really fortunate I reckon save for a lengthy period of bad streaming from BBC iPlayer when I had BE as an ISP. As far as gaming goes I think I'm one of the lucky ones but I don't have a console as you know. You're welcome to try it out at my place if you live in/near to London. And you can add my name to DICE's dissatisfied customer list: they need to up their game along with the rest of them when it comes to online game support.

I would personally start by haranguing them on the official DICE Battlefield forums (along with the millions of others).

Yeah I noticed that in the server browser,nobody in the 64 player servers ? Still be testing the Battlefield 4 game then mate,won't have much time in the next 2 days as my Mother is paying a visit so if I'm on your talking late.