Star Wars Battlefront 2

[mobias]

Yeah Fighter Squadron has a few known exploits which can make it quite unbalanced. Thats one of things which is thankfully fixed in the new game.

3rd person mode is superior in the first game to the first person. Wider angle of view. Again they've fixed this in the new game so if you prefer first person you're not at a disadvantage.

I've never really go into the smaller games in Battlefront. I know some people swear by them but first for some reason I just really like the bigger 40 player modes. A bit more mayhem and
sense of spectacle in Walker Assault for me.

[mobias]

Absolutely fascinating behind the scenes read about the demise of Visceral Games and their Star Wars game. EA does yet again sound like the most awful games publisher out there https://kotaku.com/the-collapse-of-viscerals-ambitious-star-wars-game-1819916152

[mobias]

This game is out on EA early access. Looks like there's a total pay to win situation going on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GynsazTkww

I'm still definitely getting it next week though.

[Shay Chaise]

I tried it last night on EA Access and while it's very very similar to the first game, it looks frankly unbelievable. The splash of laser fire bursting against a rock...I've never seen the effect before, it's very beautiful and looked real. I know that sounds dumb. I'm going to have to play more, and I'll certainly do the free ten hours before making my mind up but the presentation is absolutely stunning.

[BeardFaceMan]

So this has all kicked off on reddit, some EA community manager made a statement regarding lootboxes and progression and its become the most downvoted comment in reddit history.  If this were any other franchise than Star Wars the I think they might take notice but there are going to be enough casual gamers who know nothing of these new 'games as a service' models who will buy it anyway because its Star Wars. And then be in for a huge shock when they find out they have to pay extra or play for 40 hours minimum to unlock Darth Vader. Actually, I dont think they give a fuck either way and will keep pushing the games as a service thing, just maybe dial it back a bit. For which they'll be congratulated and all past transgressions forgiven and they can carry on getting you to throw money at the screen.

It's another thread but fuck, man, I dont like where modern gaming is headed, at all. Time to get into emulation seriously so I can play some proper fucking games. I'd rather smash my controller up trying to do Ghosts and Goblins on a single credit than play a game that's purposfully designed to piss you off with slow progression so you end up paying to get there instead. You have to have microtransactions in your AAA game because its so expensive to make games and the gamers demand that you spend lots of money making a game? Fuck you, the game industry was thriving and improving for 40 odd years before this bullshit came along, its not needed, not wanted and certainly not demanded.

[Zetetic]

Here's the post.

HYPERTEXT.

[mobias]

You've got to hand it to EA they really know how to screw things up.

Anyway, it looks like its all sorted now. https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2/news/swbfii-changes-launch

[Chairman Bodog]

They're apparently scraping a winky PR team together for an AMA on the Battlefront sub. Surefire diffident softball bot stunts chiming in with lootbox scuzz. There'll probably be a traffic storm raid of downvotes and death threats.

I'm right on with the EA investments limited money corp conglomerate megacock buck machine getting ripped and rugthumped to the guts, but you just know half of these fucks will still buy the game anyway.

[colacentral]

Yeah, I was going to say: all this "we've listened to the fans" shite is just more PR. "What a great bunch of lads we are, listening to the fans," when in reality they're testing the waters to see what they can get away with.

Reducing the amount of time it takes to unlock Darth Vader is akin to someone stealing a hundred quid out of your wallet, then giving you back 90 as an act of generosity, and expecting you to be grateful they gave anything back.

[brat-sampson]

They've cut back on how many credits heroes cost, but they've also changed at least how many credits you get for finishing the campaign too (i.e. so it's still enough to buy the main Hero of the campaign itself, who is now cheaper) but is everything else the same? And even if so, this is still just Hero costs, and just for current heroes. The fact is you can still dump $100 into  fucking loot boxes day 1 and get significant boosts to all your multiplayer classes. Not like boosts with offsets to aid min-maxing, just straight up 'this weapon does more damage, this class has more health' etc-type stuff.

Also they only made the changes they did as a result of the uproar, which at least shows they can listen. Just seems like maybe they should listen more next time. I might've been interested in the campaign alone, but not in this game, not for that cost and hell, I've heard pretty mixed reports about its quality anyway, which for a new take on an unseen part of the canon is just so blegh.

It's a hard-ass no from me, even with the 'adjustments'.

[Barry Admin]

Making the outrage outdated:

I work in electronic media PR - I'll tell you what EA's PR strategy is regarding the "progression system."

Here is some information. Make whatever decisions you want with it.

EA spends tens of thousands of man-hours focus testing and doing market research on the optimum way to wring money out of your wallet. This means that one or two days (or weeks or months) of complaining will not get them to change their mind regarding the nature of the progression system. They will not truly "fix" it because they believe that it's working as intended and their accountants and marketing guys will tell them that it is. A certain amount of players are supposed to get sick of it and stop playing. That's built-in to the calculations, like when Wal-Mart assumes that there will be a certain amount of shoplifting.

That said, they understand that they have a clusterfuck on their hands, so since they are not interested in fixing it, they are going to use a technique referred to as "making the outrage outdated." This was very clearly what they did with the beta. The beta had a great deal of backlash and instead of fixing anything, they "made changes." The effect of these changes were negligible but it didn't matter because all the articles written about the flaws of the beta and the complaints by users became outdated and replaced by articles and comments about how they were making "changes." This allows them to control the narrative of their product without actually losing any money or making significant changes. The fact that the changes didn't help and potentially made the game worse didn't matter.

(Ubisoft did this in a much more elegant way with Assassin's Creed: Origins by the way - they prevented you from buying loot boxes with real money, knowing there would be a backlash, instead allowing you to purchase the currency needed for loot boxes with real money. The ONLY things that accomplished was allowing them to do interviews saying that you couldn't buy loot boxes with real money during pre-release and make people who wanted to use real money for loot boxes have to click two extra buttons. They didn't have to make the outrage outdated because they controlled the narrative from the jump.)

The reason this works is two-fold: 1. Journalists who cover the initial outrage feel that, ethically, they have to post the follow up but probably aren't going to do the research to figure out if the changes are substantial or effective at fixing the actual issue. (Edit: I've started seeing articles pop up already about the "changes" and at best, all they do is parrot the good research that various Redditors have done.) 2. Loyal fans who get fed up with it and decide not to buy the game are desperately searching for a reason to forgive EA so they can play their neato shooty game so they'll take any crumbs they are given.

Accordingly, I will guarantee this: They will "make changes" with a day 1 patch. That much is obvious, but specifically, the changes they make will be based around reducing the cost of heroes and loot boxes. Sounds good, right? Well, maybe. The actual reason why they're going to reduce it is because right now the complaints are that progression takes too long - specifically about 40 hours to unlock heroes. They will change it, negligibly, so that the story becomes "We fixed the 40 hour hero requirement!" Of course, the change will make it so that still takes about 37 hours (I'm obviously just making up a number here, but the point is that it's still an absurd requirement), but that will be lost in the news cycle of them "making changes."

And of course, inexplicably, forums will be filled with people who for whatever reason are desperate to point out that your outrage is outdated. You'll say "It takes too long to unlock heroes" and they'll pop up to tell you and everyone else that EA "made changes" to that. Complain about loot box percentages? They "made changes!" What changes? Who gives a fuck. Changes!!!! Every complaint you have will be met with someone who wants to tell you that the reason you have for being upset is outdated.

This is a very common strategy used for scandals that are linked directly to financials - they will fuck you a little less than you expected and hope that you don't do the math on just how much less it is. All the while they will take advantage of the PR resulting from the reduced fucking.

Edit: To clarify, you shouldn't feel like EA is "ignoring" you. They aren't. It's actually worse than them ignoring you. They have people pouring over these forums (And twitter, more importantly) trying to get a general idea of the negative sentiment. They will then try to quantify that negative sentiment and add it to the previous years of focus testing and market research they've done. The previous focus tests told them the the most financially viable thing to do would be to make the game as it is now, and they will add the current negative sentiment to that formula and come up with something like "reduce microtransaction costs by 1.5%" (Rounded up to the nearest 5 or 9 or 10, again, based on what focus testing tells them is most pleasing to the customer. They also will likely increase progression rather than decrease microctransaction prices to avoid alienating people who bought the microtransactions at the original price - of course, increasing progression speed and decreasing the cost are exactly the same thing, financially.)

Last edit: So EA made some changes and decreased the time required for a hero unlock from (about) 40 to (about) 10-15 hours. This is a much bigger decrease than I expected, but please consult the first paragraph of this post: The nature of the progression system is still the same. If you're cool with that, enjoy your purchase/license of a game as service.

Edit to the last edit: Apparently they also reduced rewards so, you know, lol.

[Chairman Bodog]

[Beagle 2]

Yeah, cancelled my preorder because of all this.

[BeardFaceMan]

EA have taken away the cancel pre-order button as so many people were using it, forcing you to speak to customer service to cancel instead. Only the wait is up to an hour and you'll probably be talking to a bot.

The fact EA have bought Respawn makes me very sad indeed.

[mobias]

The irony is I never liked playing as any of the hero's anyway.

Think I'll go back to playing Farming Simulator. You just don't get this level of angst in the world of virtual agriculture.

[brat-sampson]

EA have taken away the cancel pre-order button as so many people were using it, forcing you to speak to customer service to cancel instead.

Actually, despite reports, it turns out this button was removed months ago as a change to the whole system. You can still get refunds online right here.

[Bhazor]

EA and Starwars. Its like a perfect storm of commercialized fuckery.

[BeardFaceMan]

Some quotes from an EA CFO -

"EA thinks first and foremost about "engagement" in its games: if they can keep people engaged in something they love, they can find ways to "improve their experience and monetize that along the way." According to Jorgensen, the consumer "doesn't mind that""

Actually mate, if you look at the recent shitstorm, they really do fucking mind that.


"Live events have also become "an incredible and enjoyable feature" for customers, Jorgensen continues, as they don't talk anymore about "playing the game" as much as "playing the live services.""

I must really be out of touch, I've never heard a gamer say they're playing live services.


"They'll also continue to try build live services on existing games. Jorgensen keeps track of server utilization, and Battlefield 4 is still one of the most played games, consistently in the top-ten despite being four years old. He feels that if EA "had a live service on it, they could keep people engaged, give them even more to play with, and they'd also most likely be able to monetize them over time.""

You don't need to take people's money to keep them engaged you utter fuckwit, the reason people are still engaged with BF4 after 4 years is because it's a good game with good gameplay, not because it allows you to spend money on it every week. You don't need 'even more to play with' if you put enough content in the game to begin with. And now you're going to retroactively put microtransactions in games that never had them? How the fuck are people sitting still for this?

And he also tries to say they're only doing all this because "that's the direction the whole industry is going", but it's only going that way because of people like you, you greedy fuckers. Respawn proved with Titanfall 2 you can still create a AAA game without raping gamers wallets (although now that EA have bought Respawn you can kiss goodbye to the (proven to work) 'free DLC, cosmetic only microtransactions' model). Honestly, I'm sick of all this shit, referring to gamers now as 'consumers', gameplay seems the least important thing now, it's just there as a framework to dangle a gambling system off. Gaming has truly gone mainstream and they don't care about gamers anymore, they care about the casuals, people who don't give a fuck about games in the first place so don't mind or are not aware of shitty business practices. To paraphrase, do you really have to keep sticking a fucking dollar sign on every good thing on this fucking planet? Modern games are not being made for the likes of me, it seems, time to stop playing them and stop giving them my money. Fuck, as a gamer for about 35 years now, this all makes me really sad.

[biggytitbo]

If anything good comes from this turd extravaganza its that the game might tank and send a strong signal that these mega publishers are pushing things too far with the loot boxes and microtransactions. Hitting them in the wallet is the only language they understand.

[Bazooka]

If anything good comes from this turd extravaganza its that the game might tank and send a strong signal that these mega publishers are pushing things too far with the loot boxes and microtransactions. Hitting them in the wallet is the only language they understand.

I don't think it will, for every person that hates this shit there is someone else who will fork out the dollar for it.

[Bhazor]

It's Star Wars. It's going to sell millions. Because its Star Wars.

I've already seen a dozen youtubers fork out a $100 each just to say how shit it is to pay $100.

[Ham Bap]

Someone has worked out you would need to play 4500 hours or spend $2100 to unlock everything.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/unlocking-everything-in-battlefront-ii-requires-4-528-hours-or-2100.6190/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7d3iqg/unlocking_everything_in_battlefront_ii_requires/dput72x/

[BeardFaceMan]

And they'll use the bullshit excuse that people don't play the game that way and people dont try and unlock everything, they only try to unlock everything for one or two characters so its doable and/or affordable. If you want people to play the same game for years then of course they're gonna try and unlock everything. Fuck, you give a gamer a  game for a week they're gonna try and unlock everything. Thats the whole point of microtransactions and lootboxes, a way for players to unlock things without going to the bother of actually playing the game. Theyre counting on people wanting to unlock everything, thats how microtransactions work, that's why this excuse wont wash, I think For Honor was the last game to try an use this excuse. I don't remember seeing a negative reaction to a game quite like this, I now want to see how many people follow up on their promise and actually not purchase it, the sales and number of people playing at a time figures are gonna be interesting to follow.

[Bhazor]

Reddit AMA.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7d4qft/star_wars_battlefront_ii_dice_developer_ama/

Short version. They don't give a fuck. It's Star Wars.

[Barry Admin]

I'm bummed out as I was dying to get this for the space battles alone. And they will still make a fortune off the whales anyway, so I'll just be missing out. EA and Dice are such cunts now, though, so I guess I will also pass on UFC 3 :-( Dice get away with it a lot, but from what I've read game devs are also generally very aggressive about pushing this Skinner Box shit.

Intrigued to see what's going to happen with the new CoD; Sledgehammer have pushed back CoD points for a week or two, presumably actually because of all this. They've also claimed that they launched WW2 with double XP turned on "by mistake", and have slowed the progression way down now. Progression is meant to give you a guaranteed loot box every five levels, by the way.

[weekender]

I for one look for a sense of pride and accomplishment in every thing I do.

With that in mind, I would like to observe that biggy is a stupid fucking twat whose last mental dribblings on this page are just some random extractions from a reddit thread that he hasn't even thought about.

[weekender]

Why are people getting upset anyway?

As far as I can tell it's that you can't play as Darth/Luke immediately once you've paid $80 dollars for a Star Wars game, is that it?

[mobias]

I've just spent the last three hours playing this in 4K HDR and I'm really, really really, sorry to say its utterly amazing. At times its the most visually impressive game I've ever seen. It looks mind blowingly good. But beside from that its just an incredibly fun game. Its everything the first game should have been. In fact as far as I could see it addresses almost every gripe I had with the first game. Its still very fast paced with very little strategy but its much better at getting you into the action faster and some of the multiplayer maps are quite mind blowing and provide for some fantastic set pieces, visually and in the gameplay. There's one where you have to fight your way into and then up inside a crashed Star Destroyer with one team defending and one attacking. Amazing fun.

The loot box thing has sort of ran away with itself from what I can tell. Its the equivalent of GTA Online where you can either grind away at it and earn stuff legitimately or buy your way to the top quickly. How many people really are going to buy their way into winning at this game? There was no sense in any of the games I played tonight that any players were massively advantaged over others. I was getting 15 or 20 kills per match tonight no problem just after an hour or so of playing. Its a very easy game to get to grips with quickly, especially if you've played the first game. Sure, there were players having huge kill streaks and doing way better than everyone else but there always is in online games. 

Whether or not you want to get this or not on Friday is up to you. I certainly wouldn't let the loot box fiasco get in the way of your decision making. Like many of these things in gaming its been blown way out of proportion on social media, certainly in terms of how it may impede on your actual enjoyment of the game. Yeah its EA and yeah its shitty but my feeling is it'll have exactly fuck all influence over your average game of this.

You may want to hang on for the dust to settle on this fiasco of a release and for them to balance things and perhaps add more content (which don't forget they'e doing for free apparently to avoid dividing the player base as with the first BF)

[Barry Admin]

One of the big problems is that the progression will be dog shit slow, so you are tempted to buy loot boxes, just like in eg Overwatch.

And they're not doing us any favours by ditching the season pass, they're simply giving themselves more of an excuse to pack the game full of microtransactions.

GTA Online is another great example - wonderful game, hell of a fucking grind. I haven't played it for two months because I've been waiting on an Oppressor sale. That game is a fucking job.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes I enjoy the grind, but the way we're being fucking with now with all their psychological bullshit is horrible. And I just know I am partial to having a drink and thinking "fuck it" and throwing a few quid in when I can't afford it.

These people are already making money hand over fist. They're making more money than Hollywood.

[BeardFaceMan]

I've just spent the last three hours playing this in 4K HDR and I'm really, really really, sorry to say its utterly amazing. At times its the most visually impressive game I've ever seen. It looks mind blowingly good. But beside from that its just an incredibly fun game. Its everything the first game should have been. In fact as far as I could see it addresses almost every gripe I had with the first game. Its still very fast paced with very little strategy but its much better at getting you into the action faster and some of the multiplayer maps are quite mind blowing and provide for some fantastic set pieces, visually and in the gameplay. There's one where you have to fight your way into and then up inside a crashed Star Destroyer with one team defending and one attacking. Amazing fun.

The loot box thing has sort of ran away with itself from what I can tell. Its the equivalent of GTA Online where you can either grind away at it and earn stuff legitimately or buy your way to the top quickly. How many people really are going to buy their way into winning at this game? There was no sense in any of the games I played tonight that any players were massively advantaged over others. I was getting 15 or 20 kills per match tonight no problem just after an hour or so of playing. Its a very easy game to get to grips with quickly, especially if you've played the first game. Sure, there were players having huge kill streaks and doing way better than everyone else but there always is in online games. 

Whether or not you want to get this or not on Friday is up to you. I certainly wouldn't let the loot box fiasco get in the way of your decision making. Like many of these things in gaming its been blown way out of proportion on social media, certainly in terms of how it may impede on your actual enjoyment of the game. Yeah its EA and yeah its shitty but my feeling is it'll have exactly fuck all influence over your average game of this.

You may want to hang on for the dust to settle on this fiasco of a release and for them to balance things and perhaps add more content (which don't forget they'e doing for free apparently to avoid dividing the player base as with the first BF)

And sadly, this is why EA and others are going to carry on getting away with it, people don't give a fuck about the big picture if theres a game they want to play.

Nothing wrong with a grind, people love a good grind. The problem with microtransactions is that the grind is increased from what it would be usually in order to tempt you to with microtransactions. So when people say things like "It doesn't affect me, I just won't buy anything extra, it doesn't affect the game", yes, it does affect the game for you, even if you choose not to use microtransactions, the gameplay has been changed for the worse in order to accommodate a microtransaction system. And they will keep pushing and try and get more and more money from you and the games will continue to suffer because ultimately, people don't really care beyond what their own experience with the game is. As long as they enjoy it, then fuck it, that's all that matters.