Before I begin, everything in this article comes from three weeks of playing this game. I’ve played through it and have seen the good and the bad. So don’t just assume that I’m just band-wagoning on this.
Now, in this article you would probably assume that I would just praise the greatness of Battlefront II and that I would forget everything that’s wrong with it. Multiple friends of mine have assumed that but I am here to tell you that this is not the case with this article. Star Wars Battlefront II is the best broken game that I have played. It’s sound design and visuals are absolutely stunning and honestly they deserve every award they can get in this category, you genuinely feel like you’re in Star Wars. The clear standouts of the game are Kamino, Yavin 4 and Starkiller Base, all three of these maps are just insane and I always get excited when I’m fighting here. Also, The Starfighter Assault game mode is incredible and I would absolutely play an entire game of that. However, these don’t excuse the poor practices of the rest of the game though and we’ll go ahead and get you caught up with those.
If you haven’t heard, EA has basically ruined Star Wars for half of the world and the other half is still angry about it. I fully understand and don’t blame people for boycotting this game, I do enjoy the game a lot more than what most people would but it’s primarily because I’m a huge Star Wars fan. The gameplay itself feels great, Dice, Criterion and Motive have all done some incredible things with the engine but almost all of it’s faults can come from EA themselves. Loot crates alone nearly break the game because even though they’re gone, their presence is still felt heavily throughout the game.
Now, starting out, I do have to say that the heroes being locked didn’t bother me as much as it did everyone else. The only reason that it does bother me is because of how long it takes to progress at all in this game. The progression system is the biggest problem in this game and there’s genuinely no contest. It happens this way because it was targeted towards the loot crate players who just utilize micro-transactions to get the best stuff and when everyone called them out on it they removed the micro-transactions but forgot to fix the credit/progression system. Don’t believe me/Don’t quite understand? well if you’re new to Micro-Transactions or Star Wars Battlefront then let me break it down like this :
Step 1 : You buy the game and start playing. You’re enjoying yourself and you want to get better at the game so you need to level up so you can get better weapons and better abilities for your character.
Step 2 : The only way to level up is by unlocking Star Cards which have different values and abilities for your character. This system is fairly new and a bit different but if handled correctly it could be done quite well.
Step 3 : The only way to unlock weapons is by completing certain tasks. (EX : Defeat 25 people with this class and unlock this weapon.) This means that you don’t need to level up to get better weapons, you just need to grind a bit. Which happens a lot in games. No harm, no foul on this point.
Step 4 : Star Cards can only be unlocked in loot crates which you buy with in game currency that you gain at the end of each round. The loot crates will give you random cards so you might not get what you want. This isn’t a problem until you realize that the main loot crate which unlocks the most cards cost you 4,000 credits and the average amount of credits you get at the end of each round is 300. Let those numbers sink in.
Just breathe.
You good? Ok. So the numbers tell us that you basically need to play for 2 solid hours just to get 1 loot crate and that’s if you’re not trying to use those credits to buy the heroes that were locked or if the match was actually long enough to get that many credits. Which brings me to :
Step 5 : The way to earn credits is only by being in a match. Which means that the guy with 20 kills and the highest score is going to get the same amount of credits as the guy with the lowest score who went to go get a snack during the start of the match.(This is a major problem.)
Step 6 : By making the loot crates so tedious and difficult to unlock, bigger video game companies like EA offer people the ability to pay for loot crates using real money which would allow them to bypass the system and get ahead faster. This is called a micro-transaction and it’s killing video games.
There you go. In roughly 500 words, I explained micro-transactions and why people are furious with EA. Dice made the executive decision to remove the remove the Micro-transactions the day before launch but they still haven’t either lowered the price of crates or increased the amount of credits you get per match. The reason this is infuriating is because they have an in-game system that could fix this. Allow me to explain that :
So, in the match you can earn battle points by either capturing objectives helping your teammates or just going around and taking out the enemy. As you earn more you can spend those on hero characters like Rey or Kylo Ren, vehicles like an X-wing or a tie-fighter or special units like a jet trooper or a flametrooper. These start fresh at the beginning of each match so why not have it like this : 8,000 Battle Points = 800 credits per match. That system would be perfect and would only encourage people to play better. This would be a much better system than what they have now which is : You get 1,000 credits for each new rank plus you get an extra hundred for being in the top 5 slots at the end of each match, and you only get a certain amount of credits depending on how long the match went. (Supposedly they updated this with the The Last Jedi update 2 days ago but I honestly haven’t noticed that much of a difference.)
Now, here in about a week we’re getting the Last Jedi DLC pack for free. I love the idea of free DLC but unless they just knock this out of the park then they’re all going to be in trouble. People are petitioning for EA to lose the Star Wars license, there are some people who are claiming that loot crates should be outlawed as gambling and most of the other people are just refusing to buy the game. Once again : I don’t blame anyone for making that decision. I really enjoy this game but if I hadn’t already paid for it when all of the Micro-Transaction stuff started going down then I would’ve cancelled my Pre-Order. EA needs to understand that this isn’t right and I’d be fine if they did lose the license. My only problem is who would take it from there? The company that I would’ve suggested(Respawn) was just bought by EA. We’ll just have to wait and see in the meantime.
