BF4 seems to have the gun glitch too!

[Necromancer]

-It appears after several rounds (6-8)

misleading, it appeared right after server restart too. although in lower numbers.

-As soon as it is triggered for one player, it cascades to multiple players usually affecting a quarter of the server.

We don't know how it starts, we know that it hits a handful of people right away.
seems like it comes and goes in waves.

- it has not been observed when playing with 40 players or less.

- it has not been observed prior to AK patch/release. it also effects non-AK maps though, including vanilla.

[Gonzo]

I'm in. If this gets fixed, i'll send zorp some of the finest brew in all of Germany. And before anyone asks, it's Haake Beck Kräusen Now fight, germans. Fight!

Seriously, if this ever get's repaired, Zorplex is gonna get a lot of d.u.i.'s in his tank.

[Gwynzer]

Mention that if aplayer doesn't die, he doesn't lose his guns. It's only after revive/respawn that a player will lose their guns.

[Jokerle]

Mentioned that we can gather specific information next saturday if needed.

[Necromancer]

Mention that if aplayer doesn't die, he doesn't lose his guns. It's only after revive/respawn that a player will lose their guns.

not entirely true.
i had once lost my gun after spawn, but got it back about 30 seconds later.
though yeah, generally you only loose the gun on respawn/revive/switch kit etc...

[Ash2Dust]

They can join us Saturday. While we cant "reproduce it", if we play Caspian or Karkand, it will most likely happen as I cant remember the last time we played those maps without the bug.

[InsanityRocks]

Just asking...trying to help...

Is there anything 'client-side' that is produced, like a log file, that might be helpful?

[StarfisherEcho]

I think that covers it. Only thing to add is that we typically have people from EU and NA connecting - no clue why that would matter, but they might want that info.

Ask if there's anything we can do to help them track down the glitch. We've got plenty of videos of the glitch occurring, so what more than that can we do to help? Anything we should check on our server when this is happening (CPU usage etc)? Hell, let's email this guy the minute it happens next Saturday and see if we can get him live access to the bug.

Probably 0% interest from them in the above, but might as well ask.

[zorplex]

Ok, I've sent the response with a few additions and changes from everyone. For posterity, here is the final message I sent minus formatting:

Spoiler: show

Unfortunately, no, not consistently. But it's almost guaranteed to happen a few times during our Saturday matches which last 6 hours over the course of 10 rounds or so on various maps. (What I wouldn't give for server error logs...)
I know that doesn't count as reproducible as we don't know exactly what triggers it but if it helps I've included some of its characteristics below:
Bug Characteristics:
It appears after several rounds (6-8) have been played with the same players connected. (Possibly why it isn't seen on public servers as we only switch out a handful of players and most stay connected)
As soon as it is triggered for one player, it cascades to multiple players usually affecting a quarter of the server. (It appears in waves. If one person is affected, multiple people will soon follow. Once it is corrected, it's corrected for everyone at the same time.)
The bug only appears when players spawn or are revived.
The bug will persist through death until all players effected leave the server and wait a bit and rejoin.
The bug is more prevalent on certain maps (Sharqi and Armored Kill maps in particular.)
The bug was introduced with the Armored Kill expansion.
Server settings don't seem to effect its presence (We've played with vanilla settings and had it occur and so many permutations therein to try and force it to trigger. Our server plays with all weapons unlocked and we thought that might be the cause.)
Having all players leave and restarting the server seems to delay the bug. This could either be due to all players leaving or the server itself clearing cache/memory. We haven't determined which.
Some further thoughts
Global Conflict(GC, the organized group I play with) has players from the Americas and Europe but we've had the bug appear when everyone has had sub 100 ping, so I don't believe latency is a factor. We have tried multiple server hosts in NA and Europe and all have had the bug occur at some point. Some have claimed they notice the bug occuring most often when a certain area of the map has an unusually high number of players/actions/events happening at once. (i.e. majority of the server at or around a single objective)
While we can't force the bug to occur, it's almost guaranteed to happen during our 6 hour Saturday play sessions so if there were a way to play on a server that keeps logs we might be able to reproduce it in order to catch the culprit. My group has been trying to get it fixed since it is so game breaking for us, but since it only affects such a small subset of players (those who play high player count competitive matches) we haven't been able to get traction from the public at large or DICE. If we can be of any help, just let me know and I'll forward it to the leaders of GC. We are more than willing to do whatever it takes to see this issue addressed as it has been plaguing our games for the better part of a year now.
Again, thank you so much for your time and consideration. I truly appreciate your attention to this issue.
Sincerely, Z

I'll let you know when/if I get a response from the dev. If the issue carries on into the beta, we should try to get an organized team to reproduce and identify this bug for them. That said, let's try to keep the information as uniform as possible so we don't create too much noise and muddle the issue. (That's why I haven't listed the name of the dev I'm speaking to. I don't want them to be inundated with messages. At least not while they are actively pursuing the problem.)

I know it's a bit presumptuous of me, but I'll offer GC's help if he asks for it. For now though we get to play the waiting game.

[dan1mall]

- it has not been observed when playing with 40 players or less.

as far as I know it has, I think I've seen it happen on 30 people BO battles. But I might be wrong here

[zorplex]

I'll try to keep this message up to date if these conversations go anywhere. Feel free to offer input in case I forget anything or say something I shouldn't. Record of conversation with the devs so far:

Spoiler: show

Sent to several DICE devs on Reddit:

I know this isn't your department, but if you could take a look and/or pass it on to someone who might be able to address the issue I'd be IMMENSELY thankful.
If you have a minute, please take a look at the player spawning here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... rVs#t=115s
The bug is the player can not use any weapons but can drop support kits. (med kit, ammo kit) The bug persists through death. The bug (in BF3) will propogate to multiple players on a server until they all leave.
I've been playing BF3 with a 64p competitive team weekly since February 2012. We started to experience that exact gun glitch weekly around October 2012. We've talked to EA support, been redirected to server support, switched servers several times, switch settings, paid for cpu priority; nothing has fixed it. We have this exact glitch every week in several matches and have to restart rounds which wastes time and corrupts our tournaments.
I was hoping it would be fixed in BF4 and haven't really pursued the problem further. But now that I have evidence it was in the E3 pre-alpha, I'm afraid it might make its way into the final release. I know it is an alpha, but could you please confirm that DICE is at least aware of the bug and currently working to correct it?
Thanks, Z

Considering our current internal builds have this bug 9 out of 10 times you spawn, I think it's going to be fixed pretty quick
But I'll follow it up internally and see if there isn't another way it's triggering in BF3, thanks for the report!

Response to Dev1:

Thank you so much for the response! I really appreciate it. I just hope it doesn't appear in BF4, but would love to see it patched in BF3 as well.
In the case that you have time to pursue it in BF3 and need references for the bug, I know of several videos documenting it occurring in different situations in our BF3 matches. The best I have is from one of our smaller BF3 rush games where we tried to isolate and correct the problem as seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... U6Yg#t=60s
(The glitch will usually persist far longer than seen here. As this was a smaller Tuesday match, I think it's quick end was due to the server not being full while it is the full 64p on Saturdays.)
I play with an active group of 70-90 players every Tuesday and Saturday and we've collected quite a bit of information on the BF3 instance of the bug. We've had to make concessions to cope with it but would be ecstatic to see it fixed in BF3 as well as BF4. I know you are all busy on BF4, but if I/we can help you in any way to address the problem in BF3 please let me know.
I know I will be pursuing it doggedly once the beta starts. Thank you for your time!
Sincerely, Z

Do you know how to exactly reproduce this bug?

My response to Dev2:

Unfortunately, no, not consistently. But it's almost guaranteed to happen a few times during our Saturday matches which last 6 hours over the course of 10 rounds or so on various maps. (What I wouldn't give for server error logs...)
I know that doesn't count as reproducible as we don't know exactly what triggers it but if it helps I've included some of its characteristics below:
Bug Characteristics:
It appears after several rounds (6-8) have been played with the same players connected. (Possibly why it isn't seen on public servers as we only switch out a handful of players and most stay connected)
As soon as it is triggered for one player, it cascades to multiple players usually affecting a quarter of the server. (It appears in waves. If one person is affected, multiple people will soon follow. Once it is corrected, it's corrected for everyone at the same time.)
The bug only appears when players spawn or are revived.
The bug will persist through death until all players effected leave the server and wait a bit and rejoin.
The bug is more prevalent on certain maps (Sharqi and Armored Kill maps in particular.)
The bug was introduced with the Armored Kill expansion.
Server settings don't seem to effect its presence (We've played with vanilla settings and had it occur and so many permutations therein to try and force it to trigger. Our server plays with all weapons unlocked and we thought that might be the cause.)
Having all players leave and restarting the server seems to delay the bug. This could either be due to all players leaving or the server itself clearing cache/memory. We haven't determined which.
Some further thoughts
Global Conflict(GC, the organized group I play with) has players from the Americas and Europe but we've had the bug appear when everyone has had sub 100 ping, so I don't believe latency is a factor. We have tried multiple server hosts in NA and Europe and all have had the bug occur at some point. Some have claimed they notice the bug occuring most often when a certain area of the map has an unusually high number of players/actions/events happening at once. (i.e. majority of the server at or around a single objective)
While we can't force the bug to occur, it's almost guaranteed to happen during our 6 hour Saturday play sessions so if there were a way to play on a server that keeps logs we might be able to reproduce it in order to catch the culprit. My group has been trying to get it fixed since it is so game breaking for us, but since it only affects such a small subset of players (those who play high player count competitive matches) we haven't been able to get traction from the public at large or DICE. If we can be of any help, just let me know and I'll forward it to the leaders of GC. We are more than willing to do whatever it takes to see this issue addressed as it has been plaguing our games for the better part of a year now.
Again, thank you so much for your time and consideration. I truly appreciate your attention to this issue.
Sincerely, Z

My followup to Dev2 when I realized he wasn't Dev1:

In the case that you have time to pursue it in BF3 and need references for the bug, I know of several videos documenting it occurring in different situations in our BF3 matches. The best I have is from one of our smaller BF3 rush games where we tried to isolate and correct the problem as seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... U6Yg#t=60s
(The glitch will usually persist far longer than seen here. As this was a smaller Tuesday match, I think it's quick end was due to the server not being full while it is the full 64p on Saturdays.)

[zorplex]

Is there anything 'client-side' that is produced, like a log file, that might be helpful?

BF3 does not offer any log files on the client and servers are hosted by companies who are officially licensed by DICE and do not give file access to clients. So if the server creates error logs, we can't see them.

- it has not been observed when playing with 40 players or less.

as far as I know it has, I think I've seen it happen on 30 people BO battles. But I might be wrong here

The glitch video I uploaded for the devs to look at only had 27 players on the server:

Spoiler: show

phpBB [video]

[Sarantini]

Let me guess, the bikingviking or darklord?

[TacticalVirus]

The only problem I see with the response so far is the 6-8 rounds bit. We'll have the gun glitch show up in the very first round (see, the BFI). We'll have it show up immediately after we've restarted the servers. Hell, we had it show up on the NA server after the break with ~20 people on server. It will hit the same player repeatedly (loa disconnected and rejoined three times in the second round of Wake, never losing the glitch).

If it's already an issue in BF4 and doesn't get completely, 100% eliminated, I wont be purchasing it. GC is already less fun than C2/C3 was because of this retarded bug, I'm not going to continue dealing with it in the next generation.

[V_]

- it has not been observed when playing with 40 players or less.

as far as I know it has, I think I've seen it happen on 30 people BO battles. But I might be wrong here

You are correct. I've seen it many times in BO matches. In fact, LoA had it yesterday pre-live, before there was a chance for the server to get stressed out at all.