Sorry if this is a little OT.
But I really can't see why the customers have to fix this issue themselves!
We bought a game in order to play it, not to have to play around with settings, routers, firewalls and what nots...
A lot of people just want to start up and play the game! Including me. But I can not connect.
This is some of the worst I've seen i the ways of customer service. And I can't find no good replies from Devs or publishers regarding when of even if they are going to fix the connection issues. That also goes for a lot of other issues I have seen people having. No real replies Seems like the "head in the sand" tactic is what goes.
So I would say that the purchase I made of BF4 is a total waste of money since it's a product that cant be used in the way it was intended.
I've played a lot of Battlefield through out the years, but I will no buy any more BF games coming out in the future. Since making money abviously has become more important than to produce and publish a good product to the customers. Which ironically enough are the ones that pays the money they make..
But that is only my opinion..
I don't think it's off-topic, it's core to the problem.
This wasn't caused by users having bad settings, or their routers not forwarding ports properly. The game worked for months without this issue, it started after one of the updates, whether it was to BF4 or PunkBuster, it doesn't matter, it just needs to be fixed. But I suspect the lack of any official support for this issue is symptomatic of the issues in general with the game: it's poorly coded - probably because it was rushed out - and they can't fix something without breaking something else.
I have been playing BF games since "1942" and still enjoy the games, but when connecting to them is an exercise in frustration and there's no support it just saps all the goodwill the series has built up with me. I doubt I'll buy another BF game, at best I'll wait and see how farked up it is at launch, but I'm not going to hold my breath that it won't be another clusterflake.
Every time I see the message "ERROR Could not communicate with BF4. Please use the Task Manager to close it down" I laugh at how bad it is when that is an official message from the game.
I could not agree more aversiontheapy.
I know that it's not the users that have the bad settings. And mine has also worked fine until the latest update.
I also have a quite good computer to play on, so that is not the problem.
But as I said, it should not be up to the consumers to find solutions to these problems. This is something that those who make the products have to adress, but sadly they seem almost blind to feedback.
I have the utmost respect for thos who actually find these solutions, and trust me I have googled many times to find a fix to various problems.
But it's such a shame that it has to be this way. It just proves that the communities actually care more than the ones that make the games.
It's just too bad that the ones that make the games can't be the ones to supply the fixes that are needed in stead of releasing other stuff like fixes to how the vehicles operate or the damage the weapons do. That's not what should be the nr 1 priority.
This is going to kill the BF series as the players are going to look for other series or games to play.
I have also played BF since 1942 and enjoyed it. And when BF4 worked I also enjoyed that. But now they have broken the trust and confidence I had to them as devs and publishers. It has just become more important to push out half finished games to make money in a "war" against other series as f.ex CoD. And no one benefits from that, except the ones that make the money all the consumers spend.
As you also said, I hardly see myself spending money on another release in the series.
At least not a pre-order. I would in that case wait until they would adress any start up problems and other issues.
So as long as the connection error is there, I am not even going to try to start the game.
