The fruits of Battlefield 4‘s ongoing community test program will soon come to bear as developer DICE LA prepares to launch a completely updated version of the shooter on all platforms this Fall.

According to the studio, the new patch is “right around the corner” as “certification has started on several platforms and the Fall Patch is targeted for release at the end of September.”

Full, detailed patch notes are to go up soon, but to give players a taste of what the studio has been baking up, here are a few highlights of some of the fixes and improvements that are a direct result of the CTE initiative, including a few notes about future updates to come.

Clearly, almost all areas have been touched, including fundamentals like player movement, recoil, and “netcode,” including a few specific items that have been requested by the community like the revolvers’ trigger delay. Be sure to tell us in the comments what your thoughts on the update are!

Battlefield 4 Fall Update Highlights

Game modes

• Rush (All base game maps except Dawnbreaker), Obliteration, Capture the Flag, and Carrier Assault. Added the Obliteration Competitive sub-game mode

Sight Improvements

• Close & Medium range sight reticles no longer affected by weapon firing animation, AKA “Visual Recoil”
• Improved visibility for red glowing reticule pieces against bright backgrounds

Player Movement

• Now almost identical to BF3 movement – with BF4 animation sets
• Dampened third person hit reactions for player head

HUD clarification pass

• De-cluttered and made customizable a plethora of HUD options to make BF4 look the way you want it to (within reason)

Revive mechanic

• Made revives much more robust, easier to understand with new UI art and included a new “fully charged” paddle sound.

“Netcode”

• Lowering the setting for how much time difference is allowed when damaging other players (addressing trade kills and behind cover kills where high pings are involved)
• An automatic High Frequency Update setting is now the default for all users
• Added High Frequency update support to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms
• Additional improvements to bullet damage delays between clients compared to Netcode Patch

Weapon attachment changes

• Muzzle Brake: Reduced the overall impact of this attachment. Both its positives and negatives have been reduced
• Heavy Barrel: Lowered the buff it gave to minimum moving spread and moved some of that bonus into reduced spread increase. Should be a good option for longer range tap firing
• Lasers: Small buff to standing hip-fire accuracy

Weapon changes

“Note that this list contains an excerpt – the upcoming patch notes will have a detailed list.”

• Bullet velocity increases: Improved bullet velocity for Slugs and nearly all suppressed weapons. Selectively improved base velocity for weapons that were too slow for their intended range
• Damage Model: Many weapons have had their maximum and minimum damage adjusted slightly. It may take 1 extra bullet to kill at extremely close engagements and long range combat
• Trigger Delay: Removed from all revolvers
• Adjustments to slower rate of fire weapons to make them easier to use at longer ranges vs higher ROF weapons
• Carbines and PDWs now have unique bullpup modifiers that give improved bonuses over the rifle counterpart
• Ammo: Gave more ammo to the weapons that were short a mag compared to their counterparts
• DMRs: Audio when being shot at by a DMR has been improved
• SKS and M39EMR no longer allow you to hold breath
• Grenade capacity lowered and resupply times increased.

Start of the Teamplay Initiative!

“The new Teamplay Initative on the CTE, which will be implemented in our coming releases, will focus on the teamplay aspects of Battlefield 4. Our goal is to improve, simplify, and make playing the objective (PTFO) more rewarding than it has ever been.”

“This initiative will span more than one release, as there are many things to look at. We will of course continue looking at the previous remaining issues and fixes in the areas of Netcode, Core Gameplay and balance as we go on.”

“For the Final Stand release, we will try and get these things addressed in time on the CTE:”

• Gameplay objective scoring re-balance (make playing the objective more desirable)
• Health and ammo pack re-balance
• Fix for Neutral/Friendly roadkills exploit and getting killed by own vehicle
• Distance Spotting changes to make spotting at a distance more precise
• Footprint sound and random callouts improvements