EA And DICE Release China Rising Map Pack For Premium Members, PS4 Patch Delayed

Battlefield 4 has had its share of problems across platforms. Despite that, EA and DICE are rolling out the first map pack. China Rising is available now for those that purchased the $50 Premium upgrade.

The China Rising pack includes four maps: Silk Road, with giant sand dunes; Altai Range, land and air battle for control of the mountains; Guilin Peaks, focused on close-quarter fighting in caves; and Dragon Pass, a reimagining of Battlefield 2's Dragon Valley map. The pack will be available for non-Premium members on December 17 for $14.99.

Unfortunately, the news isn't all good. The promised PlayStation 4 update that was supposed to go live today has been delayed. "The PS4 game update that was originally meant to go live Dec 3 is undergoing some additional testing and will be rescheduled for a later date." DICE says. "We will get back with final details as soon as we have verification that the update is good to go."

This patch is designed to eliminate a few problems, including unintended one-hit kills, missing sound on video capture, and crashes due to having too many friends. No news is available yet on further fixes to stability and server-browser issues.

As we reported following the last patch, the game still experiences crashes and server-browser errors. For those hoping for a patch to the party system, which doesn't allow pre-game grouping, that won't be coming. According to EA and DICE, that system is working as intended.

[Source: Battlefield]

Our Take
EA and DICE had problems with Battlefield 3's launch, and it's disappointing that two years weren't enough time to developer netcode and server infrastructure that work. I do not recommend purchasing a Premium membership until the game is working properly. Don't throw good money after bad.