Earlier today (or yesterday, depending on when you're reading this), we reported on some rather rough Star Wars Battlefront 2 news. The story covered the outrage sweeping across the 'net regarding the game's increasingly controversial loot boxes and the notion that heroes -- that's Darth Vader and the other powerful, named characters -- would be locked behind huge in-game currency costs. Word quickly spread that it would take around 40 hours of grinding to unlock just one hero if you didn't want to spend any real money on microtransactions to speed up the process. Naturally, people are up in arms, and you certainly can't blame them.
The aforementioned controversy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2 is nothing new, and you can tell that EA is starting to enter damage control mode -- at least to some extent. Between attempting to talk things out with prominent YouTubers and issuing statements to the media, the company is definitely trying to scrub away the stain of negativity that now sits over the title just days ahead of its launch.
With that in mind, it's no real surprise that the publisher is now saying it'll lower the in-game currency cost of heroes. In an official post, DICE executive producer John Wasilczyk writes "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."
Wasilczyk continues: "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."
That sounds way more reasonable, but it's a real shame that it took such a widespread backlash to force change. Still, it just goes to show that if you can get enough people to rally against something, it can be altered for the better. Fighting the good fight and all that.
Of course, this won't be the last that we hear of Battlefront 2's loot boxes. Regardless of your own feelings on all of this, it's going to be interesting to see what kind of impact, if any, all of this negativity will have on the game's initial sales figures. We won't have to wait too long to find out.
[source ea.com]
Comments 49
It doesn’t matter anymore, the damage is done. All I hear for the last few hours is people cancelling their order.
Also 75% off the €1.300 to unlock all 6 heroes makes €325, that still is €325 too much.
@YummyHappyPills when it was at 50k downvotes earlier today it aleady was the most downvoted comment by a large margin. Let the fact that they almost multiplied that by 10x the same day sink in
Wait you guys thinking that downvotes will mean something to them.
Lmao
Can they really be trusted?
@Hapuc not the downvotes no, but the reported 700k cancelled order will mean something (I know, that might be fake, but I reckon with the amount of people that actually ordered the game and cancelled it if were going by reddit might still be above 100k)
P.S. Sorry for throwing around all those numbers in my last 3 comments.
@Hapuc You are the same commentor who said we (as in all of us) were not doing anything about microtransactions and we had to lie on the bed we made remember?
Then when something pretty big happens condemning the practice you deny its going to have an effect.
Wow, took a lot of noise but they did listen! People power does work, you can bet other publishers like Activision are watching this intently to see where the boundaries are regarding unlocks and microtransactions.
@YummyHappyPills Well it did have an effect gg in this situation but i'm not only saying in Battlefront 2 I'm saying as a whole gaming space it doesn't have any effect and I'm still right.
And when you look at it what has been achieved there are still microtransactions in BF2 a whole lot of them(so did we really win)
@darkswabber Those 700k canceled pre orders I'm having a hard time believing but ok if Even 50% of those people canceled it Nice Job i Applaud them.
@darkswabber And no it's not 450k costumers It's 450K people who are just on the bandwagon.Maybe around 50k really did canceled their pre orded and who the heck pre orders
That's why i said I have hard time believing there was 700k Canceled pre orders(But please let it be true hell I would have liked to be even more canceled pre orders then that number)
Unless it's we're removing all loot boxes then it won't be enough anymore.
Jim Sterling absolutely tore EA a new one today on his Jimquisition and Blizzard over making loot boxes mainstream with Overwatch.
Until EA back down as publishers, then give the property to Square to get Taro and Platinum Games working on it, I don't give a rats a$$.
This escalated really quickly! Wow!
Nah I don't believe EA. I was very excited about this game, but yeah EA destroyed Mass Effect (which was among my favorite franchises all time) and now is destroying Star Wars.
I hope that Disney think better about this partnership in the future.
EA broke more records today, not just the most downvotes on Reddit. I also heard they broke the record for longest distance backpedaled in a single day!
The high cost to unlock heroes was a cynical move, and I'd like to think I'd be strong enough to boycott the game, but so much of it looks great. It's AU$62 (£36) here on launch day, and between the single player and playing split screen with the kids, it's pretty much a done deal. Roger roger.
Even a million cancelled pre-orders might still be peanuts. Considering the amount of money they are putting in marketing, the huge franchise and the “whales” that will more then make up for their cancelled pre-orders losses ...
Such a shame. Game looks beautiful. Why did they need to ruin it with such a broken and forced on P2W loot system?! Cosmetic stuff would’ve made them millions too.
It saddens to see EA go out of their way to ruin these talented studios. 😔
I'm going to say because it's Star Wars and you have the Episode VIII hype as well that this game will definitely sell well. However, as usual EA is doing everything in its power to tick consumers off. Sadly this will be an ongoing story for every game EA puts out because more than any other publisher it just doesn't give a damn about the consumer.
Of course people are cancelling preorders. Loot boxes are only a part of it. Admitting that the price would drop soon after launch surely had an effect as well.
I'm really just starting to not like the direction Star Wars is going anymore. I know that it's all about merchandising,
(Yogurt said it best) but the actions of Disney and EA this past few months has just turned me off from the franchise altogether. This loot box grind garbage backpedaling just seals the deal for me; I'm avoiding this game and all future EA games like the plague.
I cancelled my order when the demo came out when I saw that building up your items was based on random loot box prizes. I'm still not enjoying the grind in Destiny 2 via random token prizes so Battlefront 2 looked more like the same.
Just Read SixthAxis review and when they finished the campaign they 20.000 in credits but now apparently players will only get 5.000 due to the hero changes. EA just don't seem capable of doing anything right.
Devs are morons .... they only have to ask themselves one question .... "will loyal fans appreciate our practices .... or find them truly abhorrent?" If its the latter, DONT DO IT!!!! I dont even know what a loot box is ... got Modern Warfare Remastered last week and ONLY play the multiplayer, usually just T Deathmatch ... out of curiosity I (for the first time) opened up a couple of the menus to see you could buy CoD points (or whatever theyre called) at crazy prices. No idea what they do and not interested. Same with Fifa. Play standard online match and nothing else. Doesnt really bother me coz im not affected but I kinda miss the days when buying a game was just BUYING A GAME!
This game is awful anyway. It feels stiff and dated, and from what I've played the campaign is just about going from objective to objective with little to no variation. Multi-player is a little more interesting, but it suffers from a whole heap of balance changes and unfun game design. I'm glad I rented it, but I'll never get those two hours back.
People just see what they want to see. The guy said 40 hours so everyone jumped on that figure. Thats ignoring all the other ways to earn credits like challenges. Now they have dumbed it down so muxh its not even a challenge to unlock the charcters. As for the down votes the rate at which it was down voted shows that bots were being used.
Can someone let me know if @meltendo cancelled their order please?
The worst part is these are minor issues blow out of proportion by people not doing the math right, challenges add a tone of credits, watching it played live I saw a YouTuber get 10K credits in about an hour. The reduction is welcome but should it have gone that low?
The best thing about SWBFII is the fact there is no DLC planned to split the community and EA desire to support this for a year or so at least I think, however support for the game needs revenue from microtransactions. There is a real risk that if EA create a market place where no one wants to purchase anything then we are going to see the game go under eventually and planned support cancelled.
Honestly the fact that Darth is locked is no big deal, I would have unlocked him after time, some fat whale gamers will have paid to unlock him and we all would have recieved DLC for free for the next year or so... Now I am not so sure.
Also meta review bombing and jouralists are all over this micro transaction stuff, it gets clicks and creates revenue and will likely sink many games to come, be careful what you wish for.
@dryrain So true. I've played about 6-8 hours of multiplayer so far, have 13,000 credits in the bank, and I've already spent 20,000 on heroes and loot boxes. So that's about 33,000 credits in 6-8 hours. So either the "40 hours of gameplay" statement is exaggerated or the guy that worked that out is just terrible at playing games.
I have no problem with micro-transactions because I don't need them or use them. I just ignore them. I think the loot boxes are fine and they don't unbalance matches. I just top scored, MVP'ed and top killstreaked a game with no star cards on a vulture droid. I bet half the players in the match had at least 1 star card and it didn't affect me. If they want to waste their money, go for it.
I'd rather enjoy the game and grind and receive random loot. That's what's most games are about these days: grinding for the unknown, random treasure. If there were no loot boxes like the first battlefront everyone would complain. I love the game because I'm a star wars fan. It's not perfect but it's fun and that's why I play games.
My guess is that the damage is done and is irreparable at this point. The power of the internet has spoken, with its (sometimes) over reaction in tow. In this case though, I’m glad for it. Glad the gaming community enacted some change. The game will still probably be profitable, but much less so. It’s a much smaller scale, but this reminds me of when Microsoft announced that the Xbox One was always online with that DRM fiasco and had no game sharing allowed and they got toasted by fans and the bad press was the beginning of the end for that console. It has never recovered despite the backpedaling MS did (yes, I realize there are many other factors, but that was one of the turning points in the console wars). What I hope is that other publishers see what happened here with EA and the potential lost customers (like me - not interested to buy this now) and take advantage of EA’s misstep like Sony did then with MS’s.
..I pre-ordered it, and have virtually none of my 10 hours trial left... it's utterly amazing.. I was curious to why half of the heroes / villains were 'locked' - but actually, like many have said... I've played half of the arcade challenges, done the first couple of chapters in single player (which is awesome btw... utterly brilliant) and had a good few online matches... and I've spent thousands on crates (didn't realise I needed to save them for heroes!) - it gives people something to work towards and keep you playing... you don't want everything at once - where's the fun in that? Will it mean me spending any more on it? NO! but will it give me incentive to play it more and unlock the ones I want? YES!
Clearly the original prices were waaaaay too high (reminds me of the For Honor debacle - why do publishers not learn from each others' mistakes??!?!?) loving every minute of it, and it looks utterly stunning on XB1X... those space battles... my goodness they're impressive...
yeah, whatever. i've never been a fan of these types of multiplayer progression systems in general, and i think they're now being deliberately designed in order to monetise them, regardless of how much they 'balance' them. so it takes 6 hours instead of 40 to earn a hero, big whoop. loads of people will manage to achieve that in the 3-day early access.. so anybody picking it up later can expect to have their ass handed to them as they use a pea-shooter to try to take on darth vader or whoever, which might encourage them to buy the heroes sooner. having to play 20 rounds or whatever being the cannon fodder against much more powerful or enabled oppononents just to unlock something half decent to compete with is not remotely fun to me.
Not buying it.
#forthegamblingaddicts
@Shuebacca They did
They did.
They did.
They did.
They did.
@Constable_What
Phew to the power 5.
@ShogunRok Not sure if this is worth reporting, cause I think it is, but:
''Reward for completing the campaign changed from 20,000 credits to 5,000 credits.''
https://twitter.com/Stevivor/status/930214403189882880
So nothing has been changed in the end. Yes, the heroes are 75% cheaper, and everyone's reporting on that, but you also get 75% less credits from beating the campaign...
And people were jumping on my throat saying they reduced the characters cost.
They failed to mention that, according to GameInformer, they've also cut rewards by 75%. "..completing the campaign earned players a unique loot crate that contained 20k credits. That reward is now 5k credits"
@Octane Thanks, already saw this but I need more info before I can make another story out of it. The campaign rewards might have decreased but it largely depends on whether the multiplayer rewards have decreased as well. Will keep an eye on it!
@ShogunRok @Octane EA's justification is that completing the campaign is supposed to give you enough credits to unlock Iden, so they've revised the campaign rewards to be in-line with Iden's new (cheaper) price.
Why don't they just give you Iden when you complete the campaign, then? Because they want to train you to spend credits.
@get2sammyb To be honest, I was quite surprised when I read that Iden was locked behind a paywall. I thought she was supposed to be the new star of this game.
@adf86 at least Lootboxes in Overwatch only contain bonus items like skins and emotes, NOTHING important is locked behind them
EA has certainly buggered this one up
So we do have power by how we spend with our wallets? Great day. Imagine if macdonalds started to charge for each gherkin slice in their burgers. Or you can own a movie once but you can only unlock chapters after you've paid extra microtransactons or you've paid full fare on public transport BUT you still need to pay transaction for every little stop... Traffic jams extra charge!
Don't know but it seems like game companies are ripping us off by charging a full RRP cost but it's not to fully own the game but more like an initial entry fee. Then if you want more (eg. The fuller experience) then expect to pay the continual VIP fees hence microtransucktions.
Glad to see EA responding to the numerous complaints!
@Octane No problem here cancelled a long time ago waiting for a massive discount or even better a secondhand game so they dont get a dime of me.
Will be picking this up in 6 months time when it's $20 and the paywall stuff is free. 😊
@bbq_boy "Don't know but it seems like game companies are ripping us off by charging a full RRP cost but it's not to fully own the game but more like an initial entry fee. Then if you want more (eg. The fuller experience) then expect to pay the continual VIP fees hence microtransucktions."
But you can get everything in the game without spending more money. It's called playing the game. It's like standard shipping and express shipping. You'll still get it, but it will take a bit longer. But if you want to be the cool kid on the block and have it first than spend more money. Give us everything unlocked at the start and people will complain about that. This has been exaggerated way too far. Paying for loot boxes ain't going to make a bad player play any better. And a good player can still take down a good player equipped with star cards.
I felt the Force,, The force not to buy it and forget about it, all the drama, and headach's tied to this disaster EA has created.
We need to go back to single player games with add on multiplayer with all rewards given for playing the game. Sold items should be expansions to the game with new content worth the sale price of that content.
Great, so now it’ll just be easier for players to get an op hero into the match. How about EA just making it easier for people to level up their characters and just play the the game in general without loot boxes.
I really like the beta but , I feel like I need to make a statement an not buy this .
I heard they also adjusted the rate at which credits are earned, but I'm not sure if that is true.
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