Star Wars Battlefront II (Nov 17)

[Papa Francouz]

The AMA is so bad, but exactly what was expected.

On why credits are limited in offline Arcade mode - to prevent players from playing offline and gaining an edge in multiplayer

Wouldn't want people exploiting the system by playing the game.

EA & DICE are gonna be pretty busy these next few days looking into the things they said they’d look into in the AMA. They’ll probably be too busy looking into these things to fix any of the problems that people have pointed out.

 

[KingBran]

You bought crates or are straight up lying through your teeth. What you are describing is mathematically impossible otherwise. You would have had to have beaten the campaign before the reward nerf took effect and then also bought the heroes after their price drop for what you are describing to be even remotely plausible.

Hey Yoyo! Here is the proof! Played a little more than 3 hours total with over 1 hour for the campaign (I died a few times). First pic shows I unlocked Vader (and I used scrap to get a star card for him. This one increases his health). Second shows how many hours I have for the EA trial. The third shows that I have played the 3 campaign missions in the trial proving I spent time on that. The 4th shows what I have purchased for this game.... Just the standard game, nothing else. No crates or anything.

Notice if you do a Save Image As... I called them BluetonProof1-4 to prove that I took the pictures.

I am sure you will find some way to say I am lying again but I have, just like I said I would, given the screen shots proving it doesn't take 10 hours to get Vader. You say mathematically impossible? Well what say you now?

 

[Hammettf2b]

 

[kurt]

lol

 

[Emperoreddy]

This thread is hilarious.

 

[Emperoreddy]

There are star cards that f***ing improve your aim. EA flat out lied in the AMA when they said the game came down to skill and not star cards.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Unlocking Everything in Battlefront II Requires 4,528 hours or $2100

Unlocking everything costs 4528 hours or $2100.

 

[Hammettf2b]

I boycotted getting NHL this year because I didn't like the way they handled sets in HUT making it very expensive to do them and lacked offline things to do (although I believe you can do things offline this year in HUT). I didn't think it would go this far but EA has proven with this whole debacle that they don't care about putting out a decent product.

 

[Bjorn Le]

Bethesda's review policy is nearly as anti-consumer as loot boxes, tbh.

Not really though. The DLC pass for Fallout 4 was very good value even if only two of the expansions (Far Harbour and Nuka-World were worth it). Looking back at Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, the only really questionable DLCs were Horse Armour and the two mini-ones in Skyrim. Lootboxes are much worse because they're pay-to-win unless the loot is cosmetic only.

The campaign is a total throwaway, watch it on youtube. It's hardline bad.

I've seen. It seems the writers had a coherent idea for a story and then DICE went "nah we don't want our designers and coders wasting time on that."

FYI the EA Access Trial you can only play the first 3 campaign missions. It was about an hour long for me to play those 3. There's 12 missions so yeah... 4 hours might be about it. The "official" release said 5-7 hours I think which is on par for most FPS games. So 4 indeed would be a little short. Looking forward to it though. Really enjoyed the first mission on Endor. The game is beautiful looking.

I've been really busy so I haven't got a chance yet. Just 4 hours is so disappointing. I actually really liked BF1's campaign (even if it was horribly ahistorical), and was upset it was so short. But what I've read suggests the campaign falls off a cliff halfway through, as if they had to cut out more than half of their material

I'll be honest with you guys, I've actually been thoroughly enjoying the multiplayer through the Beta and now the Origin Access trial in spite of all these lootbox shenanigans.

That said, these reveals about the campaign are the real problem for me. It had such an intriguing premise....

I'm really starting to lean on waiting for it to show up in the Origin Vault so I can play it for $5 instead of $80

Paradox and Bethesda aren't angels by any means. Paradox has been less generous with DLC practices in the past and has been called out on it many times. Bethesda has a terrible track record with broken games and hide that with terrible review policies that they sell to gamers as "fair".

Don't get me wrong, I like the stuff both of those companies sell on average. That said, none of these companies are your "friend".

Nobodies an angel, and they're not your friend because it's a service-client relationship at best, and a producer-consumer relationship at worst, but companies get a reputation as just looking to exploit you for your ducats when I don't think that's true. Paradox' criticism mostly comes from a Gamergate-esque crowd who is mad that DLC (which will have had far more man-hours put into it than the base game by the third or fourth major release) isn't free. Stellaris is getting a massive free update, the scale of which I've never seen outside a MMO.

Broken games exaggerates Bethesda's track record a little much. In general, open world games have clearly lower performance than linear games and shooters. Now some of the bugs in Bethesda games particularly bother me, but that's the nature of the beast. On the review side, I think developers need to be MUCH more careful about how they handle reviews. EA fumbled ME:A's review structure with early access unbelievable bad by allowing loud and angry voices to effect review scores. To me, reviews should only come out after release. No embargos, just literally don't give the game out until release day. f*** technology media, they suck on the mobs teat way too much. Even outside games, where major technology outlets are very afraid of giving Apple products bad press due to how vocal and powerful Apple's loyal followers are.

 

[x Tame Impala]

Was about to go on a rant on Ultimate Team but I remembered this is a $Tar War$ Battlefront 2 thread and it might not be totally relevant here. I'm going to make a "Pay to Play" discussion thread

 

[Emperoreddy]

Not sure how anyone can still argue this isn’t pay 2 win when their are now tons of evidence of people doing just that.

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

I'm both a huge Star Wars and DICE fan...but I'm not buying this colossal piece of shit, pay to win garbage game. EA can choke on a bag of dicks.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Not really though. The DLC pass for Fallout 4 was very good value even if only two of the expansions (Far Harbour and Nuka-World were worth it). Looking back at Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, the only really questionable DLCs were Horse Armour and the two mini-ones in Skyrim. Lootboxes are much worse because they're pay-to-win unless the loot is cosmetic only.



I've seen. It seems the writers had a coherent idea for a story and then DICE went "nah we don't want our designers and coders wasting time on that."



I've been really busy so I haven't got a chance yet. Just 4 hours is so disappointing. I actually really liked BF1's campaign (even if it was horribly ahistorical), and was upset it was so short. But what I've read suggests the campaign falls off a cliff halfway through, as if they had to cut out more than half of their material



Nobodies an angel, and they're not your friend because it's a service-client relationship at best, and a producer-consumer relationship at worst, but companies get a reputation as just looking to exploit you for your ducats when I don't think that's true. Paradox' criticism mostly comes from a Gamergate-esque crowd who is mad that DLC (which will have had far more man-hours put into it than the base game by the third or fourth major release) isn't free. Stellaris is getting a massive free update, the scale of which I've never seen outside a MMO.

Broken games exaggerates Bethesda's track record a little much. In general, open world games have clearly lower performance than linear games and shooters. Now some of the bugs in Bethesda games particularly bother me, but that's the nature of the beast. On the review side, I think developers need to be MUCH more careful about how they handle reviews. EA fumbled ME:A's review structure with early access unbelievable bad by allowing loud and angry voices to effect review scores. To me, reviews should only come out after release. No embargos, just literally don't give the game out until release day. **** technology media, they suck on the mobs teat way too much. Even outside games, where major technology outlets are very afraid of giving Apple products bad press due to how vocal and powerful Apple's loyal followers are.

The fact Nintendo can put out a giant open world game Breath of the Wild with minimal bugs that runs great out of the box ends all excuses for other AAA developers to keep putting out broken games at launch.

 

[Chaels Arms]

Investigation opened in Belgium as to whether the loot crates should be classified as gambling (Overwatch is being investigated as well). I know it's Belgium and I know the ESRB will never take similar action but since this is Star Wars all the discussion comparing the crates to gambling is going to get noticed.

As to the AMA, from the few snippets I read it seems like the devs are in all out mitigation mode but are completely without the power or authority to do the only thing that would fix the problem which is to get rid of the loot crates completely. I expect we'll see a ton of "tweaks" like we've already seen but the pay to win system is here to say.

I did get a kick out of one of the devs saying "you should never be matched against players much better than you are" and that "effectiveness is going to come down to skill, not the star cards that you have." For a game that allows massive attribute boosts that's an absolutely hilarious statement but of course all the legitimate follow up questions which pointed out that this is basically just going to create different tiers of play to win went completely unanswered.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Investigation opened in Belgium as to whether the loot crates should be classified as gambling (Overwatch is being investigated as well). I know it's Belgium and I know the ESRB will never take similar action but since this is Star Wars all the discussion comparing the crates to gambling is going to get noticed.

As to the AMA, from the few snippets I read it seems like the devs are in all out mitigation mode but are completely without the power or authority to do the only thing that would fix the problem which is to get rid of the loot crates completely. I expect we'll see a ton of "tweaks" like we've already seen but the pay to win system is here to say.

I did get a kick out of one of the devs saying "you should never be matched against players much better than you are" and that "effectiveness is going to come down to skill, not the star cards that you have." For a game that allows massive attribute boosts that's an absolutely hilarious statement but of course all the legitimate follow up questions which pointed out that this is basically just going to create different tiers of play to win went completely unanswered.

I don’t think the ESRB has any really say in what does and does not constitute gambling. I think it has to be taken up by whatever organization oversees gambling in that country.

I’m not a lawyer but I believe the crux of an actual legal argument on whether loot boxes is gambling or not depends on whether the prizes can be considered a material good

Honestly I think all of that is moot though. If enough of the mainstream media even begins sniffing around the idea that this is gambling Disney is going to go into full damage control mode.

As for the AMA, nothing significant is going to come out of that as far as fixes go. EA is doing the old foot in the door technique. They presented consumers with the worst possible situation, and will now dial it back a bit to make it seem like they listened. It is working too because you see some people willing to go to bat for EA for some insane reason.

End of the day progression will still be completely tied to loot boxes and the only different is it will take 2000 hours of gameplay or $1000 to unlock everything instead of double that.

It really is a shame because there is a decent game under all of this bullshit, but they had to get insanely greedy.

 

[Chaels Arms]

Yep. Just the Star Wars name being tossed around with gambling is going to be damage enough. There's actually a great poster circulating on Twitter describing the loot crates as gambling aimed at children.

Also, I'd just like to point out for fun that Jorgensen described Battlefield 4 and it's extended run of success as a huge missed opportunity to loot crate the shit out of us. Any company that looks back at a successful game it released 4 years ago and says "Wow, we really missed the boat on that, we could have nickel and dimed the hell out of all these people!" is not a company I trust to do the right thing here.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

BF4 will probably be the last thing good game that DICE ever does.

 

[Natey]

I see no one really replied to me days ago.

How does EA monetize this game without cosmetics. Cosmetics are really hard to pull off in a licenced game. No one at LucasArts/Disney wants a bright pink Trooper with a purple digital camo gun with a Darth Vader charm hanging from the side of their blaster.

I'm not saying the system is right. I'm not saying the thousand hour grind that can be paid for is right. But I'm asking how they monetize this game?

And don't give me the excuse that you paid $60 or $80. They've added a free season pass. And the last season pass was a ton of content. They need to replace that revenue somewhere... How do they do it?

 

[Natey]

Yep. Just the Star Wars name being tossed around with gambling is going to be damage enough. There's actually a great poster circulating on Twitter describing the loot crates as gambling aimed at children.

Also, I'd just like to point out for fun that Jorgensen described Battlefield 4 and it's extended run of success as a huge missed opportunity to loot crate the **** out of us. Any company that looks back at a successful game it released 4 years ago and says "Wow, we really missed the boat on that, we could have nickel and dimed the hell out of all these people!" is not a company I trust to do the right thing here.

That is a little... wrong. He was saying it could have had a longer self life with a revenue stream. Basically saying they wouldn't have wasted funds on like Hardline and continued to develop content for B4.

 

[Commander Clueless]

I see no one really replied to me days ago.

How does EA monetize this game without cosmetics. Cosmetics are really hard to pull off in a licenced game. No one at LucasArts/Disney wants a bright pink Trooper with a purple digital camo gun with a Darth Vader charm hanging from the side of their blaster.

I'm not saying the system is right. I'm not saying the thousand hour grind that can be paid for is right. But I'm asking how they monetize this game?

And don't give me the excuse that you paid $60 or $80. They've added a free season pass. And the last season pass was a ton of content. They need to replace that revenue somewhere... How do they do it?

Well, if $60 USD per sale isn't enough to cover expenses and generate revenue (which I don't think is true), I suppose they could cut the costs of developing?

Oh they did that by developing a campaign that's less than 4 hours? Hmm...well I guess they could sell you different emotes and stances and the like?

Oh they did that already? Hmm....well I guess they could sell us pieces of story DLC since the campaign was so short?

Oh they're probably doing that?

Well, I'm out of ideas. I guess they had better shoehorn in a collectible card game in place of an actual progression system and put mobile timer mechanics on the arcade mode so they can make infinite revenue. Their hands are tied at this point.

Sarcastic response aside, if their only option for monetizing the game is implementing a frankly terrible system and actively harming the game's quality, that just sucks. I do think there's a good balance to be struck there somewhere, but maybe I'm naive.



Ran into a heavily star-carded Bossk last night. Holy hell. I don't claim to be good, but he was basically an unkillable murder machine. Serious question: how do you stop him?

Honest critcism: I think the star cards are too powerful. I'm somewhat seasoned after about 6 hours of Beta and a few hours of Access trial and I get constantly facerolled by powered up heroes now. Granted, I suck, but if you throw in a newbie I can't imagine that's very fun for them.

 

[KingBran]

Well I see that XX has been online and making posts in other parts since I posted my proof after he said what I claimed was "mathematically impossible" and that I was "lying through my teeth" shut him up apparently. Maybe if you are the worst player ever and earn like 5 credits a game and never unlock any milestones it will take you 10 hours to unlock hero's but that's not the case at all.

Seriously will never understand people trashing games they never played. Again, the reviews are saying this game is pretty dang good and that it's easy to ignore / not use or even need micro-transactions to be competitive online. I know, people are just going to say those reviewers are paid by EA to say the game is good or some shit like that. Sometimes the simplest explanation for something is the truth. And if you don't want to buy the game because of the uproar, then don't. But professional reviewers and people here who have played it like Commander Clueless and I think it's pretty fun.

If you like Star Wars and you like EA/Dice games this is a fun game.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Well I see that XX has been online and making posts in other parts since I posted my proof after he said what I claimed was "mathematically impossible" and that I was "lying through my teeth" shut him up apparently. Maybe if you are the worst player ever and earn like 5 credits a game and never unlock any milestones it will take you 10 hours to unlock hero's but that's not the case at all.

I will say the bonus from the Beta and the campaign missions, as well as the milestone rewards get you credits quite quickly. If you have a favourite hero behind a grind/pay wall you'll be able to unlock them easily.

However, I do honestly wonder about that drying up a bit as the game progresses. You don't get a ton of credits from Galactic Assault (my favourite mode), but you do get more from Heroes vs Villains.

Seriously will never understand people trashing games they never played. Again, the reviews are saying this game is pretty dang good and that it's easy to ignore / not use or even need micro-transactions to be competitive online. I know, people are just going to say those reviewers are paid by EA to say the game is good or some **** like that. Sometimes the simplest explanation for something is the truth. And if you don't want to buy the game because of the uproar, then don't. But professional reviewers and people here who have played it like Commander Clueless and I think it's pretty fun.

I am enjoying the trial for sure, but I do strongly dislike the progression system compared to previous Battlefield style games and generally hate lootboxes. I think it should also come with the disclaimer that I'm a bit of a sucker for DICE shooters.

 

[KingBran]

I will say the bonus from the Beta and the campaign missions, as well as the milestone rewards get you credits quite quickly. If you have a favourite hero behind a grind/pay wall you'll be able to unlock them easily.

However, I do honestly wonder about that drying up a bit as the game progresses. You don't get a ton of credits from Galactic Assault (my favourite mode), but you do get more from Heroes vs Villains.



I am enjoying the trial for sure, but I do strongly dislike the progression system compared to previous Battlefield style games and generally hate lootboxes. I think it should also come with the disclaimer that I'm a bit of a sucker for DICE shooters.

I do agree that I can see the amount of credits earned dropping off after earning a lot of the bonus' but it shouldn't prevent you from only being a few hours of gameplay to unlock each hero. I do play Heros and Villains and that does seem to earn credits quicker than other gametypes. Sometimes the games don't last as long either so the rate is better.

I can agree that the progression system is garbage. However it doesn't seem to distract me from how fun the game can be.

 

[Natey]

Well, if $60 USD per sale isn't enough to cover expenses and generate revenue (which I don't think is true), I suppose they could cut the costs of developing?

Oh they did that by developing a campaign that's less than 4 hours? Hmm...well I guess they could sell you different emotes and stances and the like?

Oh they did that already? Hmm....well I guess they could sell us pieces of story DLC since the campaign was so short?

Oh they're probably doing that?

Well, I'm out of ideas. I guess they had better shoehorn in a collectible card game in place of an actual progression system and put mobile timer mechanics on the arcade mode so they can make infinite revenue. Their hands are tied at this point.

Sarcastic response aside, if their only option for monetizing the game is implementing a frankly terrible system and actively harming the game's quality, that just sucks. I do think there's a good balance to be struck there somewhere, but maybe I'm naive.



Ran into a heavily star-carded Bossk last night. Holy hell. I don't claim to be good, but he was basically an unkillable murder machine. Serious question: how do you stop him?

Honest critcism: I think the star cards are too powerful. I'm somewhat seasoned after about 6 hours of Beta and a few hours of Access trial and I get constantly facerolled by powered up heroes now. Granted, I suck, but if you throw in a newbie I can't imagine that's very fun for them.

If you think adding a 4-6 hour story mode and the season pass for no extra money should be free.. you're insane.

You kill him by being not bad? The only ridiculous star cards so far are the space combat ones. Those need to nerfed substantially.

 

[Ceremony]

I see no one really replied to me days ago.

How does EA monetize this game without cosmetics. Cosmetics are really hard to pull off in a licenced game. No one at LucasArts/Disney wants a bright pink Trooper with a purple digital camo gun with a Darth Vader charm hanging from the side of their blaster.

I'm not saying the system is right. I'm not saying the thousand hour grind that can be paid for is right. But I'm asking how they monetize this game?

And don't give me the excuse that you paid $60 or $80. They've added a free season pass. And the last season pass was a ton of content. They need to replace that revenue somewhere... How do they do it?

They make a good game worth buying in the first place.