Star Wars Battlefront 2 (all eras)

[Julius]

John Wasilczyk, Executive Producer at DICE:

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Since the start of the project, listening to fans has been important in making sure Star Wars™ Battlefront™ II is the very best experience for all of you. We’ve done this with the closed alpha, through the beta last month, and our Play First Trial. And we continue to make adjustments based on your feedback as the game launches worldwide this week. Listening, and providing choices in how you play, will always be our principle with Star Wars Battlefront II. We want to ensure the game is balanced and fun both today and for years into the future.

Making games great comes from regular tuning. As one example, today we’re making a substantial change based on what we’ve seen during the Play First trial. There’s been a lot of discussion around the amount of in-game credits (and time) it takes to unlock some of our heroes, especially Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Unlocking a hero is a great accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have fun earning. We used data from the beta to help set those levels, but it’s clear that more changes were needed. 

So, we’re reducing the amount of credits needed to unlock the top heroes by 75%. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will now be available for 15,000 credits; Emperor Palpatine, Chewbacca, and Leia Organa for 10,000 credits; and Iden at 5,000 credits. Based on what we’ve seen in the trial, this amount will make earning these heroes an achievement, but one that will be accessible for all players.

It's a big change, and it’s one we can make quickly. It will be live today, with an update that is getting loaded into the game.

We’ve also been listening to how much you’re loving features in the game (Starfighter Assault, 40 player MP battles, Darth Maul lightsaber throws, etc.) as well as what you haven’t liked. We know some of our most passionate fans, including those in our subreddit, have voiced their opinions, and we hear you. We’re making the changes to the credit levels for unlocking heroes and we’re going to keep making changes to improve the game experience over time. We welcome the conversation.

In fact, this Wednesday we’d like you to join us for a Reddit AMA with some of the key leads on our team. Stay tuned to our social channels for more info on the AMA, and our blog for continual updates on what we’re seeing, hearing and adjusting in the game.

For those of you already playing, thank you. For those of you looking forward to playing the Star Wars™ game you’ve been waiting for, thank you, too. The team is fully committed to listening to our community, continually adjusting the game, and providing even more great Star Wars content over the upcoming months and years of live service updates. More to come.

That’s huge, but there’s still a ways to go. 

Elsewhere:

• EA is supposedly meeting at their Redwood offices today to discuss their next move. The same source states that some 60,000 to 70,000 pre-orders have been cancelled, with Origin showing signs of mass cancellations across their billings (shall amend post as more info becomes available).

• Forbes has explicitly called out deceptive game review practices in light of Luke Skywalker being available in review copies for 10K credits, whereas the retail copy of the game has Luke Skywalker available at 60K credits.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

It's good that they are being called out and that fans have reacted by cancelling preorders. While the downvotes on Reddit are good, hitting EA where it hurts ( their wallets ) is the best way to get their attention and get changes to be made.

[Julius]

20 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

It's good that they are being called out and that fans have reacted by cancelling preorders. While the downvotes on Reddit are good, hitting EA where it hurts ( their wallets ) is the best way to get their attention and get changes to be made.

Absolutely.

Will currently still take around 43 hours to unlock all of the locked characters, but this is a decent way to start things out. Way I see it, though, there’s still no legitimate reason to lock characters behind a boundary like this. Skins? Sure. But this effects gameplay and player enjoyability greatly, despite heroes and villains who are locked supposedly having nothing other than handling subjectively better in the right hands.

Wednesday’s AMA (Q&A) should be...enlightening, to say the least.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Julius Caesar

[Hero-of-Time]

Reviews are out now. Seems that the story campaign ain't that great, which is a shame as it that was the only positive thing the game had going for it.

[Hero-of-Time]

Okay, so they lowered the amount needed to unlock characters but they've also done this...

 

 

This is hilarious.

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Okay, so they lowered the amount needed to unlock characters but they've also done this...

 

 

This is hilarious.

I don’t get this.

It’s supposedly to unlock Iden for use in multiplayer: before, it cost 20K credits, and it now costs 5K credits, hence the drop in reward credits in the end of the campaign.

...but why doesn’t completion of the campaign just unlock Iden anyway? Players won’t know that those credits are awarded specifically for unlocking Iden: purchase a Loot Crate unknowingly (still at 4K) and you’re out of a hero/villain you should have just been given in the first place.

I think if any of them should be locked, it would make sense for it to be Iden, though. Unlocking at the end of the campaign seems the most reasonable sounding thing, but it’s not conveyed in such a way.

 

The reviews are also proving worthwhile with regards to the progression system, and you know it’s bad when IGN of all outlets are pushing back against it.

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Battlefront 2’s Star Cards may be one of the worst progression systems I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing in a PvP game. With the exception of new weapons, which are unlocked by getting a certain number of kills with each class, all class leveling, ability customization, and upgrading is funneled through a randomized loot box system with tediously high in-game credit costs if you don’t spend real money to skip over the grind.

There are three crates you can buy, each containing three or four cards: one with hero cards for 2,200 credits, one with starfighter cards for 2,400 credits, and one for a Trooper crate for a whopping 4,000 credits with cards for the much more frequently used base classes. Since heroes and starfighters are used way less often and can still rarely be found in Trooper crates, that quickly became the only type I wanted to buy.

Credits are primarily earned through playing multiplayer matches, with a 10-minute match getting you roughly 250 credits, based on match length and performance. That means it would take an average of just over two and a half hours of in-game time to afford a Trooper crate. Those pathetic returns on playing make trying to build up a Star Card collection a grind.

What’s worse, a lot of the places you can get credits outside of regular matches provide paltry amounts. You get a free crate each day you log in that gives a measly five Crafting Parts and 125 Credits; One-time achievements can reward more credits, but then can’t be repeated have already started to dry up for me; and an Arcade round rewards 100 credits per win, but it’s pointlessly restricted to a max of 500 per day - less than a quarter of the price of the cheapest available crate.

Cards also come in four levels of rarity and power, and you can make specific ones with a special Crafting Parts that are included in crates. A base card takes 40 parts, and it only gets more expensive from there - but you can’t actually craft the better versions until you level up both your overall account by playing matches, and the card’s specific class byearning more cards for them.

That’s right: leveling a class has nothing to do with playing as the class you want to level. Instead, its level is tied to the amount and power level of the cards you have for it. Not only does that level affect what you can craft, it also influences how many cards you can equip for per class.

That means despite enjoying and wanting to specialize in the Heavy class, it took me nearly a dozen loot boxes to actually find a card for it. I could craft cards for the Heavy with the small amount of Crafting Material I had collected, but so far I’ve been able to create nothing above the weakest versions. Even then, I had to craft a bunch of cards I didn’t actually want in order to level up the Heavy to the point where I could equip three cards at a time for it.

While the different guns can often feel like a player-preference choice, with later unlocks not necessarily always being the better option, the Star Cards always represent some sort of power boost. They don’t feel so significant that they will make or break you in a match but being killed by a player only to see they were using a full loadout of max-level cards I don’t have still felt awful.

Undeniably, this system allows you to fast-track your path to in-game power with real money. But even if there weren’t any real-money microtransactions, this would still be a frustrating, unintuitive, and obnoxiously slow way to progress through a game. Pay-to-win or not, it’s just bad.

This could be the much-needed catalyst for some change in this industry. 

EDIT: it would take 4500 hours to unlock all Star Cards at Level 4.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Julius Caesar

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Reviews are out now. Seems that the story campaign ain't that great, which is a shame as it that was the only positive thing the game had going for it.

Yeah, in light of my decision to not purchase the game, I sought out the most important parts of the story which could be relevant to The Last Jedi and possibly widen the overall lore. Two minutes later, I knew the entire story (which seems...unoriginal, at best) and I’m fairly confident I know what translates over to TLJ.

It seems to be much more about filling the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens rather than bridging it.

[Blade]

Fuck getting this game. I'm not even going to buy it when its mega cheap in 12 months time. 

Such shoddy practices.

[Hero-of-Time]

So it appears the the refund button has disappeared from the options in the EA portal.

To get a refund you have to now faff on with customer support. Someone on Era done this and captured a screen of it.

This has been one glorious mess after another.

 

[drahkon]

15 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

 

This made me chuckle

[Ronnie]

AAA gaming seems to be in a bit of hole atm. I'm starting to see what Jason Schreier at Kotaku meant when he said the industry is unsustainable in its current form.

[Eenuh]

I enjoyed the first Battlefront game and spent loooooaaaads of hours on it, so I was kinda looking forward to this one... but if it takes that much time/effort/credits just to unlock cards and heroes, then I don't see myself enjoying the game much at all.

I think I'll be skipping this game for now, unless EA fix this mess (seems unlikely).

[Julius]

Bethesda taking this opportunity to take some sly digs at EA.

And so are Blizzard.

Well played.

[killthenet]

I can't understand how anyone can fuck up quite so much. My interest in the game was piqued when I heard they had added a full single player campaign and that the vehicle sections were being handled by Criterion but ever since the EA conference at E3 my interest has diminished and now, like others have said, I won't even bother to play this game when it's really cheap. Hopefully this does change the way AAA games are monetised, the Hellblade model seems quite attractive to me where they craft a shorter experience that keeps the same high production values but if a company the size of EA needs to resort to these kind of underhanded F2P style tactics to make a game using the Star Wars licence profitable then something is very clearly wrong with the way the industry functions.

Would anyone be willing to pay more for the base game (say £80 instead of £60) for a big budget multi-hour commitment that doesn't include any microtransactions? Obviously many feel that the onus is on the studios and publishers who are so irresponsible with their budgeting but I think it's an interesting question to ask of gamers who are so perturbed by the prevalence of the F2P business model in full price games.

Edited November 14, 2017 by killthenet

[Blade]

I understand that the retail cost of games has not increased in 15 years. I remember N64 games being 50 quid. However, I think the £40-50 is about right for a game.

Many people don't have the cash to spend huge amounts on entertainment with cost of living increases and wages continuing to stagnate. 

It is much easier and affordable to pay £40 for a game and pay a little extra at a later time for additional content than pay £70 for a game. I would be struggling to justify paying that much money out of the monthly budget when I have financial commitments.

[dazzybee]

Such a shame as I love star wars and the original battlefront so much, but weirdly pleased so I don't have to buy it... It'll still sell millions though...

[Julius]

Link to the Reddit AMA.

[bob]

Man, Reddit is really hard to read when everyone is up voting all the questions and down voting all the answers.

[Ronnie]

2 minutes ago, bob said:

Man, Reddit is really hard to read when everyone is up voting all the questions and down voting all the answers.

The gaming industry showing its maturity once again

[Hero-of-Time]

5 minutes ago, bob said:

Man, Reddit is really hard to read when everyone is up voting all the questions and down voting all the answers.

Reddit is just hard to read in general. I can't stand the layout of it.

[bob]

Reddit is just hard to read in general. I can't stand the layout of it.

Depends on the subreddit I think. Some of them add so much flair and styling that its illegible - the Battlefront one is a good example.

I browse it through an app and it's much easier to read.

[Julius]

17 minutes ago, bob said:

Man, Reddit is really hard to read when everyone is up voting all the questions and down voting all the answers.

If you’re using the official app or a browser, sort comments by ‘Q&A’ and the first few responses you see should be lists of all of the answered questions linking to their respective answers

Pretty much all of the answers currently read as “we’re looking into it.”

Feel sorry for these developers; it should be the EA hierarchy dealing with this, not them.

Edited November 15, 2017 by Julius Caesar

[Happenstance]

https://kotaku.com/the-curious-case-of-the-ea-game-dev-who-said-he-receive-1820474458

[Julius]

10 minutes ago, Happenstance said:

https://kotaku.com/the-curious-case-of-the-ea-game-dev-who-said-he-receive-1820474458

Best case scenario: it’s some random person who did this all for social media “fame”.

Worst case scenario: it’s a ploy by EA to change the conversation regarding their game. 

Isn’t is sad that, however small, there’s a part of me with the tiniest, tiniest belief that it could be the latter?

Edited November 15, 2017 by Julius Caesar

[Happenstance]

I dont believe for a second that its a ploy from EA, this guy has been around for years. I also dont think that even if this guy is a fraud (which seems likely) that other EA employees didnt get death threats anyway.