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Eurogamer: Star Wars Battlefront 2 has a loot crate problem.

Saty

Member
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-09-star-wars-battlefront-2-has-a-loot-crate-problem

The only way to get new abilities and weapons in Battlefront 2 is from opening loot crates, bought either with in-game currency or real-world currency, price TBD. Either you randomly receive the ability or weapon directly from the loot crate, or you randomly receive an amount of scrap to go towards eventually crafting it - although scrap costs are high and amounts received torturously low.

Star Card abilities in Battlefront 2 change not only how regular Assault, Heavy, Officer and Specialist soldier classes play - as well as Interceptor, Bomber and Fighter spaceship classes - they also change how Battle Point-unlocked power-up characters play, all the way up to the iconic Heroes and Villains of Star Wars lore.

your options are getting lucky when opening a combination of daily loot crates, gifted loot crates and earned loot crates for levelling up, or when opening loot crates bought with in-game currency. But as in-game currency is awarded at a flat rate for a team regardless of performance, this could take a long time.

It gets worse when you consider there are bronze, silver, and gold versions of each Star Card - plus a fourth tier I'm not sure the name of. For instance, Boba Fett has a Star Card ability called Death From Above which grants him damage reduction while jetpacking and using Rocket Barrage. Its lowest tier damage reduction (bronze) is 50 per cent, and it's highest tier 100 per cent. That's a huge difference.

So not only are you now after the full collection of Star Cards, you're after the best versions of them. And again, you can individually upgrade them by spending scrap, but you're given too little and too randomly to make this reliably viable.

Wouldn't it be easier if you had a big pile of money to spend on a stack of loot crates instead? Yes, in other words, Battlefront 2 - a full-priced game - is pay to win.
 
"The only way to get new abilities and weapons in Battlefront 2 is from opening loot crates"

That explains why I couldn't level up to get abilities. I did not open any loot crate during the beta.
 

Briarios

Member
Totally turned me off in the beta. I lost several encounters simply because they other side has better cards ... Just because they started the beta earlier. I can imagine how bad it will be when people can pay for them.
 
So not only are you now after the full collection of Star Cards, you're after the best versions of them. And again, you can individually upgrade them by spending scrap, but you're given too little and too randomly to make this reliably viable.

This reminds of the Fire Emblem: Heroes gacha system where you could get a Chrom but not the Chrom you wanted and a weaker verison of it at that. But see I can forgive that because it is a f2p mobile gacha game.

Not a $60 game with loot crates. Fuck all that.
 

Gator86

Member
I hope this game bombs disastrously. I hope every game with loot boxes does at this point. Enough is enough. Stop it.
 
I hope this game bombs disastrously. I hope every game with loot boxes does at this point. Enough is enough. Stop it.

Hope so too with them all but sadly Battlefront 2 wont since its Star Wars. Still gonna sell gangbusters.

But the main reason im not getting it isnt even the lootbox problem. The game just plays not that great.
 

ZeoVGM

Banned
Something felt very off about the beta in comparison to the original game and it wasn't just the crates. My hype completely deflated.
 

Xater

Member
And article number 2 about this. Game is obviously P2W and hopefully this will majorly backfire for EA.
 

Neptonic

Member
This seems like the Team Fortress 2 system pushed to the extreme, where you don’t get new weapons as random crate-less drops
 

Spacejaws

Member
I really hated this about Evolve where advancement wasn’t about unlocking new abilities but making the current ones stronger.

All it does it make the plywrs who grind and play day in and day out more powerful and give them more advantages over the skill they have from playing day in and day out. The original Battlefront had this and it sucks when one player is obviously OP and that’s partially to do with grinding.
 

Brandon F

Well congratulations! You got yourself caught!
After first hearing the lootcrate news I thought it may still be worth buying just for the campaign and to dabble in the occasional match(not caring about balance issues) just for that nostalgic hit of visual and aural splendor.

Then I played the awful beta and now I can't even imagine the campaign alone is worth bothering.
 
its frustrating because there is so much good in the game. The gameplay feels fun and fresh, game modes are well designed. Game is gorgeous.

Fucking lootcrates ruining a good thing...again.
 
I'm a casual player but in games of 20 enemies I'm not too bothered about this in a game like BF2.

I can see why people want to be competitive in games live Overwatch, and hence why I'm happy about cosmetic loot crates generally, but I can't get angry about these issues in BF2,
 
Anyone got a list of DICE dev Twitter account handles / links?

At this point I am willing to make a Twitter account just to link them to articles / threads like this.

Politely, of course, because they're one of my favorite devs and I freaking love Star Wars and want this game to have a really healthy population for a long time.

its frustrating because there is so much good in the game. The gameplay feels fun and fresh, game modes are well designed. Game is gorgeous.

Fucking lootcrates ruining a good thing...again.


This is exactly how I feel. The moment to moment gameplay is much improved, and Starfighter Assault is amazing. I don't want EA greed to kill this prematurely.
 

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
I hate seemingly good games getting ruined forever by non-game making decisions like lootcrates. Such a shame.
 

jacobeid

Banned
Guess I'll just add this to my Gamefly que, play the single-player, a bit of multiplayer to get my fix and send it back. Sounds pretty bad :/
 

-duskdoll-

Member
It seems everyone is getting on board with the lootcrate system. I feel like with each game they are pushing it just a little bit more than the previous one, and they're getting away with it...
 

Rodelero

Member
This article seems to ignore that you get credits and crafting parts from completing challenges and arcade missions and thus pretty spectacularly exaggerates how difficult it is to earn crates. I'm also not entirely sure their point about receiving a flat amount per game is accurate, the amount I get seems to vary quite significantly.

Despite that, I do think that some of the levelled up versions of these starcards seem a little overpowered, and I'm a little worried about how big the jumps between the third and fourth rank can be.

Having said that, I think there is a slight clickbait thing going on with various sites jumping on loot crates at the moment, almost like they're trying to ride a hate bandwagon. This is what, the second article on this issue Eurogamer has put up? With the furore over Destiny (which ended up being far tamer than suggested by many journalists), you think they'd be a little more sceptical. Some of this stuff is coming across a little irresponsible in its incompleteness and how aggressively they are jumping to conclusions.
 

Jrs3000

Member
My main gripe with the beta. You can't have a progression system affecting gameplay based on lootboxes. They should just go throw BF1 upgrade system in.
 
I'm a casual player but in games of 20 enemies I'm not too bothered about this in a game like BF2.

I can see why people want to be competitive in games live Overwatch, and hence why I'm happy about cosmetic loot crates generally, but I can't get angry about these issues in BF2,

You’re ok with pay to win in a full-priced game because you’re a casual player and it’s battlefront? Nothing about that makes it okay.
 
Booted up the beta yesterday and looked at all the options there are in the game and there seems like plenty there for people who want to invest their time in that sort of thing. I, on the other hand, will just launch with whatever is pre-installed on the character I choose. I didn't care to spend anytime with customizations and still had fun.
 

RulkezX

Member
I miss the unlock system in BF4. The shit in the beta was enough to make sure I won't buy and probably don this to the same fate as Battlefront 1
 
It seems everyone is getting on board with the lootcrate system. I feel like with each game they are pushing it just a little bit more than the previous one, and they're getting away with it...

I'm one of them. At the moment, I'm in the "if you don't like it, don't buy it" camp.

I don't see any real "content" locked behind these crates. Just a load of boosts that the competitive players want to get their hands on.

If this was a single player game with loot crates for sale people with a problem would just ignore them. Heck, I even manage to ignore spending money on F2P/P2W iOS games and still have fun.
 
I really, REALLY hope this comes into play when it comes to review scores and overall sales. Shit like this is NOT okay in any fucking sense. Jesus this is fucking sad, aggravating and extremely detrimental to the industry.
 
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