Battlefield 4 PC patch addresses 'kill trading,' causes other issues

Battlefield 4 developer EA DICE released a new patch for the Windows PC version of the game today, fixing numerous issues such as so-called kill trading, but causing a couple of new ones in the process.

The Dec. 16 game update improves Battlefield 4's netcode in a way that should cut down on "kill trading," whereby two players who fire at each other seem to die at the same time. In particular, the update shrinks the time frame in which players with high latency who should already be dead could still get a kill.

Here's a list of the other fixes contained in the patch, according to a thread on the game's forums:

• Fix for a crash that would cause the game to stall, resulting in a sound loop. This should eliminate most of the problems relating to this.
• Fix for the SUAV (introduced in the China Rising expansion pack) not exploding when hitting enemy soldiers. While these indeed should be deadly, they were never designed for "roadkilling" opponents.
• Fixed one of the issues related to the so-called "Netcode" (see below for details).
• Fix for an issue where 4x the damage from a vehicle's minigun would be applied to the chest when a player had the Defense specialization equipped.
• Fix for player tags not always showing when needed to, resulting in players shooting team members.
• Fix for graphical flickering appearing on terrain.
• Fixed the instance where players suddenly would transition into Spectator Mode while playing the Defuse game mode.
• Fix for a Defuse bug where none of the teams would win a round by letting the timer run out.
• Fix for players getting stuck in the revive screen after being killed.
• Fix for players getting stuck in the kill camera after being revived.
• Fix for the game mode specific ribbons being counted twice in the multiplayer progression.
• Made NVidia 331.82 or later driver versions mandatory for all players.
• Disabled DirectX 11.1 on NVidia cards that have outdated drivers.
• Fixed driver version not being properly detected on NVidia Optimus systems.
• Fixed a minor crash that could occur when bringing up the scoreboard.

DICE has since updated the forum thread to note that the patch causes two other problems. After installing the patch, some players who have Nvidia cards running with SLI may see graphical flickering. There's also an issue in which the revive bar gets stuck on the screen.

"Both of these have our attention, and we're investigating them," reads the update from DICE.

Keep up with the ongoing Battlefield 4 problems on all platforms in our StoryStream to the right.