Weekends are dev-free-kends. No devs? BORING!
There has been 2 updates since I last posted. I didn’t get to work writing up a “CTE Exp” post after each because I realized that a certain youtube channel could produce less well researched videos about the latest CTE patch faster than I could be bothered to test and type them
I’ll post the full patch notes in an appendix after this article for those who are still unaware.
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Notable changes of the latest patch
Triage is here!
The medics finally finished their training. Now they can assess the severity of incapacitated teammates injuries by peering at their big circular revive timer bar. Here’s a picture of a corpsman assessing a soldier he placed in the recovery position moments earlier:
Smoke Grenade Buffed
Smoke grenades have been upgraded from “burning ping-pong balls in tinfoil” to “insta-cloud pocket poofs”. No more throwing multiple grenades just to smoke one area.
China Rising for CTE
The maps have been added to the client finally.
More rush tweaks
This time it’s for Operation locker and Rogue transmission.
UI options
You can now tweak how visible 3D icons are.
There are 3 sliders to do this.
One for enemy doritos, one for world and friendly icons in hipfire, and one for world and friendly icons while in ADS. Handy!
More betterer netcode
They’ve shaved off a bit of the time in between getting shot and finding out you’ve been shot. It’s now as low as it was in BF3 I hear. So basically:
BF4 on release: Same update rate, longer latency, compared to BF3 = worse.
CTE on release: Faster update rate, longer latency, compared to BF3 = a teensy bit better than BF3 (according to t1gge).
CTE now: Faster update rate, same latency, compared to BF3 = Around a 30% improvement in accuracy, compared to BF3, hopefully. (Don’t quote me or t1gge on this. We’ll see how it feels).
Notable changes of the patch before that.
Jet Camera Tweaks
Head ducking flinching animation reduction
Other stuff!
Read the appendix for full patch notes.
DICE used CTE sign-up announcement. it was super effective!
Prior to the vanilla Battlelog announcement, BF4 CTE player numbers were floundering. Now we’re back up to strength!
I’m also a lot less pessimistic about the people joining CTE. If anyone joins and starts posting “F U DICE THIS GAME SUX” comments, they’ll just get chewed out by the community for not being constructive.
Life without visual recoil.
Let me tell you, you non-CTE players have no idea just how bad visual recoil is screwing with your aim. Your sights are your only point of reference for judging recoil severity; so while in theory it’s only a cosmetic effect, when you play without visual recoil, you suddenly realize how much things actually recoil, and it turns out they are a lot more uniform than you expected.
While actual camera recoil values haven’t changed, I feel that it’s so much easier to judge and therefore counter the recoil correctly. I’ve been trying out new guns again and they all seem that little bit easier to get used to.
Dragon’s teeth speculation!
I know a lot of people are wondering when dragon’s teeth is coming out, so I thought I’d tell you what I think.
I happen to know that the Dragon’s teeth patch has been in validation for some time now. 2, maybe 3 weeks or so.
If you didn’t know, validation is where DICE sends their update to microsoft and sony, and they check it to make sure it won’t do any naughty stuff with your console like turn it into a brick. It’s quality assurance. But it’s slow quality assurance.
I’m pretty sure given the amount of time the patch has already been in validation, and the time the last CTE to vanilla patch took to validate, Dragons Teeth could finish validation any time now. Dragon’s teeth could be just days away. It could be a week away. But I’m pretty sure it’ll drop in the first half of this month, and definitely by the end of the month.
But this is just pure speculation on my part.
I’m going to try to ask a dev what CTE things made it to the DT patch soonish, but compared to CTE it’s already quite dated. CTE is changing too fast! I’m not even sure if the explosive camera shake reduction is in, and that’s ooooold.
I’m thinking of doing my first Youtube video
The Dragon’s Teeth patch will contain Uniform Soldier Aiming for certain. This is my favorite CTE feature and I was leading the campaign for it from the start. As such, I’m kinda the expert on Uniform Soldier Aiming.
Uniform Soldier Aiming tends to confuse people, but I consider it a real benefit, so in order to get people using it, I want to make a guide. Because people don’t seem to hold much attention span on text these days and youtube is where it’s at, I’ve decided I should try to make a video guide.
So maybe sometime soon instead of reading my next post, you’ll be listening to it. With all it’s British accent glory.
Console issues wanted!
While I know for certain that gaming PC is the only true way to play Battlefield, I’m not blind to the plight of the console inclined.
CTE is only for PC players and it will be for the foreseeable future. DICE can’t ship builds to the console fast enough for it to be worth while.
If you’re a console gamer and you think you deserve your own version of CTE with less frequent updates, here’s how it is:
Features put into CTE can be tested and proven to be good ideas in a week, sometimes less. Once the devs know they are a good idea, they will be added to the stuff going into the next vanilla patch. It’s really quite quick for most things.
After enough things are in one patch, they’ll ship the patch off to get validated by microsoft and sony. This part can take weeks. This part is also unavoidable and entirely out of DICE’s hands. So the big factor that’s stopping you from getting experimental builds is the fact that you’d get them basically as often as builds tested by CTE then shipped to vanilla.
But just because you can’t help CTE, that doesn’t mean CTE can’t help you.
The CTE forums get seen by devs. If I know what issues console players are having, I can get it in a thread and get that thread forwarded to a dev. Then at least a dev will know about your issues.
So what I want from you is every console specific bug and issue there is. Console players are a big part of the player base and I don’t want them to end up with a bad battlefield and PC players with a good battlefield because either way it affects what people think of battlefield.
I already know about aim-assist being OP, and I know that you want to be able to view player’s pings (though I’m not sure that can happen).
That’s all for now! The appendix with the full patch notes will come after someone comments!