Yet another Battlefield 4 patch, fixing and breaking things as usual

EA DICE has pushed out the December 16 patch for Battlefield 4 on the PC, which fixes a list of bugs, but has its own issues, too. The new update improves BF4's netcode, so that it will hopefully stop "kill trading".

Kill trading is something where two players who fire at each other, and die in the same place. The patch fixes the amount of time where players with high pings should already be dead, but get the kill instead. The patch also fixes:

• Fix for a crash that would cause the game to stall, resulting in a sound loop. This should eliminate most of the problems relating to this.
• Fix for the SUAV (introduced in the China Rising expansion pack) not exploding when hitting enemy soldiers. While these indeed should be deadly, they were never designed for "roadkilling" opponents.
• Fixed one of the issues related to the so-called "Netcode" (see below for details).
• Fix for an issue where 4x the damage from a vehicle's minigun would be applied to the chest when a player had the Defense specialization equipped.
• Fix for player tags not always showing when needed to, resulting in players shooting team members.
• Fix for graphical flickering appearing on terrain.
• Fixed the instance where players suddenly would transition into Spectator Mode while playing the Defuse game mode.
• Fix for a Defuse bug where none of the teams would win a round by letting the timer run out.
• Fix for players getting stuck in the revive screen after being killed.
• Fix for players getting stuck in the kill camera after being revived.
• Fix for the game mode specific ribbons being counted twice in the multiplayer progression.
• Made NVIDIA 331.82 or later driver versions mandatory for all players.
• Disabled DirectX 11.1 on NVIDIA cards that have outdated drivers.
• Fixed driver version not being properly detected on NVIDIA Optimus systems.
• Fixed a minor crash that could occur when bringing up the scoreboard.

But, there are new issues: users with NVIDIA GeForce SLI systems, like myself, get massive flickering issues - with the only option to stop this is by disabling SLI. DICE has said: "Both of these have our attention, and we're investigating them."