Battlefield 4 China Rising DLC, patch out today

Developer DICE today released a patch for Battlefield 4, as well as the China Rising DLC, which it celebrated with another very explody trailer.

The China Rising DLC includes exactly what the leaked image we reported on last monthrevealed it will: four new maps (Silk Road, Altai Range, Guilin Peaks, and Dragon Pass), five new weapons, new vehicles and equipment, and ten new assignments. China Rising also brings back Battlefield 3's Air Superiority mode, in which two teams of up to 24 players fight over three aerial control points by taking out nearby jets. At the moment China Rising is available only to players with Battlefield Premium memberships, which costs $49.99. It should be made available to everyone else after two weeks.

Unfortunately, players are already reporting trouble staying connected to China Rising matches. DICE said it is aware of the issue and is in the process of implementing a solution. “This fix will take some time to be fully completed, but players should be noticing normal gameplay behavior soon,” it said on Electronic Arts' official site.

The Chinese narrator for the new trailer opens it by literally saying “Confucius said,” and then muses bitterly about China having to make cheap toys and flags for the United States. I cringed at this, but besides what comes off as a little bit of stereotyping and maybe xenophobic, the trailer is quite the spectacle, and manages to get me excited to play BF4. DICE is pretty good at making these.

As we've reported recently, the patch will address some of the key technical issues still present in BF4 a month after launch. The most significant problem that the patch fixes is the one-hit kill bug which made headshots within eight meters occasionally deal more than their predicted 200 percent damage.

Obviously, the other really big problem that DICE needs to fix is the game's tendency to disconnect players from multiplayer matches. Hopefully, this patch will help, but DICE also said today that it is “already working hard on a new update to further increase stability.” It didn't say when that update will be released.

These are the full pre-patch notes from the Battlefield 4 forums:

Removed the blur effect on soldiers that appeared when Commanders were using EMP attacks Fixed the audio bug where audio sometimes randomly dropped out while playing on certain multiplayer maps (typically Golmud Railway and Hainan Resort) Fixed the "one-hit kill bug" where occasionally damage from a single bullet was applied multiple times Fixed a common crash that would occur when exiting from the Single Player Campaign to Main Menu Tweaked the network and computer performance screen to show proper values. Players can now test their computer and network connection and get recommendations if they need to adjust something to improve their gameplay experience.