Battlefield 4 Player Appreciation Month Begins

Starting today Battlefield 4 players can start collecting freebies. This is the first day of Player Appreciation Month for the multiplayer shooter.

Every day you log into BF4 this month, you'll get a free Battlepack. These contain a random collection of weapon attachments, camouflage patterns and experience point boosts. You'll get Bronze packs on weekdays and Silver packs on weekends. Usually you have to earn a couple ranks or so to get one of these bundles.

"Each daily Battlepack will be handed out from 4AM PST/12PM UTC on the day in question, cutting off 24 hours later, when a new Battlepack will become available," DICE says. "Note that you need to login each day to get that day’s specific Battlepack."

If you log in this weekend, you'll also get a special Player Appreciation Dog Tag. The tag shows two dinosaurs and a shark holding ribbons. I don't understand it at all but it sure looks cool.

DICE is also planning to run community challenges. For example, the player community could be asked to collect a certain amount of dog tags. Everyone who contributes to the goal will get a gold Battlepack.

The February giveaways also include two shortcut bundles. These bundles, available for one week apiece, will unlock all of the pistols and grenades in the game. The former should be especially handy, as it takes awhile to earn pistols through normal means.

Battlefield 4 Premium members will get a few perks on top of these bonuses. They can unlock all the DMRs and shotguns if they want. Premium owners will also get a bonus double XP weekend.

Throughout the month DICE plans to keep tweaking the game. They're planning many big changes for weapon balance. DMR damage and shotgun accuracy will be boosted. Several pistols will now do more damag in close range. They gave a run-down on the planned changes across multiple posts on Battlefield Blog.

Why is DICE being so damn nice this month? It's their way of thanking players for putting up with Battlefield 4's issues. The game launched in rough shape, with many players hit with crashes or disconnects when they tried to play online. A really fun bug also wiped out single-player campaign progress for some. DICE put their expansion pack plans on hold so they could focus on fixing bugs.

While the free items are a nice touch, they're not going to forgive DICE if the game's still buggy. The development team promised that they're going to improve the netcode for BF4 this month and hopefully they deliver on that promise.