Battlefield 4 Tickrate Increased on PS4 and Xbox One

If you’re one of the many people that still play Battlefield 4 as your online multiplayer game of choice, then you’re in for some good news. Over on the official BF4 forums, DICE developer “t1gge” has confirmed that the “tickrate” for BF4 will be increased in 32-player matches on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

This means that all “small” servers (32 players and below) will now run at 45hz compared to the previous default rate of 30hz, which should mean smoother gunfights and less wonky hit detection and whatnot.

Today we are happy to announce that we are increasing the default simulation (tickrate) of our 32 player servers for Battlefield 4!

This means ALL PlayStation 4 & Xbox One small servers (32 players and smaller) will now run at 45hz compared to the previous default rate of 30hz.

This increase improves ALL networking delays of the game by ~11ms per action – a massive impact on the second-to-second gameplay.

DETERMINING A NEW DEFAULT TICKRATE

There are several factors to consider when looking at this data and picking a new default tickrate:

• Client bandwidth increase

• Server bandwidth increase

• Server/hardware load increase

• Number of players on the server & compound impact

With the Holiday Update (released just before Holiday 2015) we included several features to improve upon these factors, both on the server load and bandwidth usage side. This enabled us to run several tests in which we filled up servers running various tickrates (45hz, 50hz, 55hz).

After looking these results, we decided to go with the more cautious choice (45hz @ 32 players). Even though higher rates works pretty well for most players, we need to make sure this change affects all players in a positive way.

As expected from the announcement, 64-player matches won’t get the same boost as DICE states, “We did not feel confident that 64 players will work flawlessly on all maps for ALL players if we increase the default rate for 64 player games.”

Finally, here’s how DICE plans to rollout this new tickrate and how they’re going to test it out.

ROLL OUT & CONFIRMATION

As changing the default rate is quite a big change, we need to take extra precautions in its roll out.

To ensure everything works as intended and it improves the game across the board, we are going to confirm our assumptions with a final testing period.

February 9th:

45hz default tickrate will be enabled on all 32 player (and smaller) servers in the North American East coast server pool (PS4 and Xbox One).

This rollout will start at 10AM CET.

February 9th-February 10th:

Confirmation testing period, ensuring the change works as intended

February 11th – :

Full roll out globally (if successfull) – timings to be decided.

This new tickrate comes in at just the right time as there’s a lot of in-game events slated for Battlefield 4.

I’ve got to admit, DICE has done a tremendous job with Battlefield 4’s post-launch support. Imagine a full-on now-gen Battlefield game with no server issues at launch and this kind of support post release? Online FPS fans would certainly welcome that.

[Source: Battlefield 4 Forums]

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