EA Cuts Battlefront 2 Hero Unlock Cost by 75% After Complaints
Reviewers and players have been heard loud and clear, it seems, as Dice's Executive Producer has released a statement detailing some significant changes to the multiplayer.
After complaints from players and a plethora of reviews and articles criticizing the abhorrent progression in the Star Wars Battlefront 2 multiplayer, EA has announced that they're reducing the cost of unlockable heroes by 75%.
You keep talking, and we’ll keep listening.
— EAStarWars (@EAStarWars) November 13, 2017
Today, we’ve drastically reduced the cost of hero unlocks in #StarWarsBattlefrontII. Learn more: https://t.co/H6m6ywGMAh pic.twitter.com/fJoJqWDRmo
The tweet above links to a blog post declaring that "Change will be constant" for the DICE-developed Star Wars Battlefront 2. The is the 2nd time that the company has had to respond to complaints, as they forced to respond initially because of criticisms raised during the beta. The full statement from John Wasilczyk, Executive Producer at Dice, is below:
"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."
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replyCharles Singletary posted a new article, EA Cuts Battlefront 2 Hero Unlock Cost by 75% After Complaints
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isn't the counter argument for people with more money than time who want to be on the same level as those with time should be able to do so if they choose?
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Get some Milleh time one the toilet with a Switch. No Battlefront for you.
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*on
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Can I have it? I'll trade you a used 970
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BETTER. I'll give you my recently born third child. What??? YES!
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oh man, #lootboxprivlege. #convicted
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The entire notion of designing MP games where *anyone* gets inherent advantages beyond the skill conveyed simply by playing more, learning maps, etc still fucking baffles me.
It's like MMOs where the PVP stuff lets gear impact performance. It's a terrible, unbalanced idea, and it needs to die.
If I'm losing in a game, I want it to be because the other people have played more and developed a skillset, and *not* because they have better items, regardless of whether those items were awarded for time played, skill, or sheer luck.
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Wow, that's pretty cool. The power of the PEOPLE.
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No season pass this time around. They have to pay for the DLC somehow. As a result, they have been stumbling, rather poorly, into a microtransaction system with a hostile online fanbase.
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Jackfrags made an interesting point in his video on this subject, which is that DICE and EA have to get Disney's approval of just about everything in the game. That means they aren't free to create lots of interesting cosmetics, and if they went to the trouble of creating unique badges and armors and alien heads and spaceship skins, etc. then it might be for naught if Disney decides it's not consistent with their conception of the property. It seems like something they could work into the production cycle, but it sounds like that extra complexity has pushed them off of cosmetics almost entirely. And so we have, instead, crates full of things that affect the gameplay, because otherwise no one would ever buy them.
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Well in Battlefield the way you unlocked things was mostly related to how you did. Play a lot of engineer? Get engineer class unlocks as you progress. Play a lot with a particular weapon? You unlock attachments by getting kills. BF4 introduced some battlepack only unlocks for weapon attachments, but each x amount of kills granted you with a battlepack that only contained that weapons unlocks.
So basically it was a way to play with a goal of unlocking what you wanted by actually playing how you wanted.
Battlefront 2 uses the card system (same as the recent Need For Speed) and the lootcrate system isnt class or weapon specific, so you just get a random set of cards and crafting parts. Sometimes for things you havent even unlocked with credits. You can craft cards too, and that costs crafting parts which you get a few of in each crate. So you dont really have much control over what you unlock, it's random chance but you can select what to craft when you have enough crafting parts.-
Battlefield 1 largely departed from that in the base game. You just get a pile of "War Bonds" to spend on what unlocks you wanted. You did have to level up classes to unlock the ability to spend the money to buy the weapons though.
I am not fond of it, I liked BF3 system better as you described, but people liked not being tied to a class I heard so supposedly BF1 was a better system ::shrug:: . -
Thank you for the detailed explanation of the differences. Given the loot crate system goes into a general bucket *and* you can spend it any way you deem fit, I don't have an issue with the way it's framed. While I'd prefer BF3/4's system of unlocks (a 1:1 ratio of using a "thing" and upgrading said "thing"), I see the potential benefit of a "general" bucket where I can spend as I'd like.
If I want a specific gun/item in another class, BUT I don't want to grind out that class, I have the freedom to farm with my maxed out class, and then spend it toward what I do want -- this isn't terrible (in theory).
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Because people want it. People have made games like what you have suggested. They bombed.
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It's a combination of this and games are just more expensive to make now. It's either this or increase the price to something like $70.
Or yeah, people can vote with their dollar and buy other games instead that don't look as nice but also don't have loot boxes or grinding.-
It's not that. It's maximizing their profits. They don't have to do microtransactions to cover development costs. Doing so only makes them more money because they can do it.
Source? Look at the development costs vs profit on publicly traded companies. Increased development costs are not proportionate to the profit gain.
They would increase the price of games if they thought they could get away with it. No one ever said "how do we offset these rising development costs?" It was more like "how can we make more money for the share holders?"
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Generally speaking, not all, but enough, gamers are impulsive, bad at managing money and easily manipulated by an urge to achieve things that aren't real achievements. Either compensating for lack of achievement in their life or a result of emotional dysfunction.
These factors and more (economics, I doubt many gamers would be gamers if they were millionaires who could travel the world or pursue other hobbies), allow companies to exploit them.
Literally no one on their deathbed will say "I really did something with my life the time I spent $250 to unlock Greedo" - no, they will die with that one silently.
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Yeah, I stopped paying for SWGOH several months ago. If I weren't already heavily invested in the game, I'd quit outright -- I almost did, on at least two occasions.
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Haha! Awesome.
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So did I.
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War changes more than TraptNSuit.
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Yeah, but now winning is 75% cheaper!
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And it comes. With a free. Fro-gurt
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But the frogurt contains potassium benzoate.
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That's.... great?
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Because you can only imagine how much better those games would have been with loot boxes, right???????
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Because DLC monetization, it is totally like sexual assault and rape.
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