I got early access to Star Wars Battlefront 2 via pre-ordering (I guess?) so I played a bit of it last night. I enjoyed it. I know I’m not supposed to say that and I’m supposed to be outraged about loot crates but meh, life is too short.
Loot boxes are going to be with us for a while, at least when it comes to games from the giant publicly-traded publishers like EA, Activision and Ubisoft. It’s just part of the cycle of game publishing. First it was DLC, then it was Season Passes, now it’s Loot Crates. Would I prefer they not be there? Sure. That said, I prefer loot crates to having to shell out for a Season Pass. In a perfect world we’d spend $60 and the company would supply new maps and modes for free for a couple of years, but is that a realistic thing to hope for, particularly in this age of aggressive sales on games? The only people who are going to pay $60 for Battlefront 2 are the ones buying it at launch. Wait a month and it’ll be $50, wait a couple months and it’ll be $30, but you’ll still be able to benefit by the post-launch extra content. Revenue to pay for that content has to come from somewhere.
For SW Battlefront 1 I did buy the Season Pass and hardly used it since the it fragmented the player base. It took so long to get a game on one of the Season Pass maps that I rarely bothered, and over time I got bored with just playing the maps that shipped with the game and drifted away. So for me personally, I’ll take loot crates and knowing everyone has the same selection of maps to play on.
Then specifically there is the “But these loot boxes are pay to win!!” arguments. Again, don’t really care. Someone is always going to have more stuff unlocked than me. If I’m facing 2 opponents with more unlocks and one of them got them by spending an extra $100 and the other one got them by playing the game 12 hours a day because he lives in his parent’s basement and has no job, does it really matter to me? Yes it does matter in one crucial way. The dude spending an extra $100 is the dude making it possible for EA to do away with Season Passes in favor of loot crates.
I mean, I think EA could have side-stepped a LOT of controversy if they’d gone the “cosmetics only” path for these loot crates, and I get why people would have preferred that, but for me personally the pay to win aspect isn’t going to have much impact on me so I can’t work up much outrage over it.
The one issue I can sympathize with are the folks that are pissed that some of the heroes need to be unlocked. When you first get the game, you can’t play as the more iconic heroes (or villains) and you have to spend in-game credits to unlock them. Prior to launch EA at least reduced the price of them, they’re now anywhere from 5000 to 15000 credits. If you got the game because you really want to play as Darth Vader and then you learn that you have to play for a couple of nights to earn that 15K (or spend additional cash to buy credits) I can understand why that would be upsetting. After my first night of play I had a little over 6000 credits but I did get some loot crates free from playing the beta and some of them had credits.
Personally, I kind of enjoy having a goal to work towards so for me even this doesn’t bother me much but I do think it’s a valid thing to be upset about. Plus, weirdly, I don’t even like playing the heros/villains. I kind of prefer being a regular Clone Trooper or a Rebel or whatever.
There are things I don’t like about SW BF 2, though. I don’t like that they added the scoreboard back (in the beta there was no post-match scoreboard which I thought was a good thing for a Star Wars game that is going to pull in a lot of casual players). I don’t like the loading times, which are pretty awful. I don’t like that the Clone War era droids are so skinny I can’t spot them as easily as I’d like. I don’t like that there doesn’t seem to be a space battle single player mission (though you have to unlock the single player missions as you go — these are separate from the single player campaign — so I could be wrong) because I need a LOT of practice flying these ships.
And that’s about it, really. So far no regrets, but anyway I really bought the game because I wanted to see what EA Motive has done with the single player campaign. I didn’t even start that yet since I’m already juggling so many games (Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Middle Earth, Shadow of War, Forza 7, and .hack//GU Final Recode) but I’m optimistic about it.
So while other parts of the Internet are occupied with sending death threats to Battlefront 2’s community manager and calling for a boycott of the game, I’m just over here playing it and having fun. Sorry Internet, I’m just not that into you any more. In a time when Hawaii is taking steps to prepare for having a nuclear bomb drop on them, I just have to pick my battles when it comes to what to be stressed out about. Loot crates are WAY down on that list.
You are such an opinion hipster! =P
I did not buy the game, and I don’t plan to. Partially because I do believe in voting with the wallet (I am in the camp of cosmetics only on a premium paid for title) but mostly because I am playing Warframe, which is so awesome and so much fun, and am not even halfway through it and have already topped 50 or so hours. Yes, I have paid them for the fun and am going to spend more. So I don’t need another distraction – i already have one with a business model I can – and am – fully supporting.
I love all things Star Wars but not in the mood to support games launch day anymore – I prefer the slow and steady route of getting real blogger’s opinions after significant hours of gameplay, instead of pre-launch hype from the “professional” reviewers.
Nice to see a counterpoint to all the internet rage though – thanks for writing it, and it does make a lot of sense.
I’m a big fan of voting with your wallet; I think that’s really important. If I were to be perfectly honest, I pre-ordered this before the loot crate controversy really exploded and on PSN at least, pre-orders are final so I was already committed. So that might be coloring my observations to some extent, but at my age (and with my reflexes) I know I’m never going to be truly competitive anyway. And I really DO want to see what Jade Raymond and Motive came up with for the single player campaign.
If I was someone for whom winning was really important I might care more. I’m just happy I can spend $60 and never spend another dime and get on-going content. (I probably should have stated in the post that I have absolutely no intention of buying any loot crates or currency.)
So another way of looking at it is, I am voting with my wallet and supporting the idea of not charging more for a season pass. Games I’m playing that do offer a season pass (ACO and SOW) are charging $40 for them right now (though I’m sure they too will go on sale soon enough).
“Sorry Internet, I’m just not that into you any more. In a time when Hawaii is taking steps to prepare for having a nuclear bomb drop on them, I just have to pick my battles when it comes to what to be stressed out about. Loot crates are WAY down on that list.”
This is so sane and my greatest wish is for the whole world to just take a chill pill and quit letting the little stuff bother them so much. Completely unrelated to gaming. 🙂
::thumbs up:: (Is it sad I don’t know how to do an emoji of that on my own blog?!)
Yep – outrage for outrage sake. I’ve tried to explain what your first 2 paragraphs so elegantly lay out on multiple blogs only to be shouted down by the angst crowd. And its such a beautiful cinematic experience – just plain fun.
Yeah, gamers are so hive-minded these days. Once “the story” is established there’s no tolerance for dissenting opinions. I’m really interested to see how well (or poorly) the game sells. If the system is as universally reviled as, say, reddit would have us believe, then the game will tank. If not, then it’s just the latest thing people found to be angry about.
All I know is I booted the game and played with nothing unlocked and had fun. Conversely I peeked into a stream where a guy had outfitted himself with epic cards and he was getting his ass handed to him. People act like you can’t compete if you don’t have everything unlocked but that just isn’t true.
Again, having to unlock the heroes, I can understand frustration around that. But y’know are you going to lose consistently because you only have 9 of the 10 potential weapons available for your assault trooper? I don’t think so. You just need to be good with the weapons you have.
I could be handed a hacked account with every single thing unlocked and I’d still come in WAY down the leaderboard, so yeah, it’s no biggie to me and I’m having fun playing.
Yep I am the same way. And honestly the heroes are all equally deadly – it’s basically a killing spree until enough people whittle down your hp. And there are so many free from the second you start playing. Have you tried using the fighters/bombers yet? They are surprisingly easy to control. Every Battlefield game I’ve played in the past , I’ve just been fodder for the other pilots. Lack of physics maybe makes these less finicky heh.
I grabbed a fighter in galactic assault and immediately crashed it. Then I tried the MP space combat mode and really struggled until I reversed the sticks, so throttle was on the right stick and steering on the left. I did MUCH better after that and I’m looking forward to getting more practice in. Dogfighting around capital ships was really fun!