Battlefront 2 is F**KED

Where do I even start when talking about how f**ked Battlefront 2 is? I touched a little upon these concerns in my Beta Impressions post, but I’ve got more to say. A lot more. All the signs for Battlefront 2 looked good. A story based, single player campaign. More multiplayer content on release than Battlefront 1. Space battles! And no, I repeat no Season Pass or paid DLC.

It wasn’t unexpected there would be some form of monetization to fuel future development, so when loot boxes were announced it wasn’t a great surprise. And honestly, even though loot boxes aren’t super popular right now, if they were included in Battlefront 2 for items that were purely cosmetic in nature – such as character, vehicle, ship or weapon skins, in addition to things like poses and emotes – I wouldn’t be writing this post, and there wouldn’t be such an outcry.

There would still be those who considered it ‘wrong’ for a fully priced, AAA title to include microtransactions, but I think the majority would understand and accept the trade off to avoid DLC and Season Pass bullshit. And there’s a lot they could do with cosmetic content in a cross-era Star Wars game, especially with unique character/race skins.

The point I’m making isn’t that Battlefront 2 is f**ked purely because it has loot boxes. The loot boxes aren’t the issue. It’s what’s inside the loot boxes that is. These boxes provide objective gameplay advantages over other players. In any class based shooter, there will be a degree of imbalance as some classes will excel within certain roles or engagements more than others. Natural skill and experience also plays a role.

But on its current system, Battlefront 2 will very rapidly become a game of those who have and those who do not. The fact is, that in 2-3 months, if you’re not rocking a full hand of epic Star Cards, you’re going to be at an objective disadvantage to those who do, regardless of experience or skill. The only way to create a ‘level’ playing field is to grind – or spend cash – to obtain epic Cards of your own.

This alone is enough to make me not want to buy the game. Even during the limited beta, players who had obtained higher level cards would frequently dominate matches, particularly in my favourite mode – Starfighter Assault. Even I was guilty of it, as I got lucky with some crates and obtained a full deck of ‘rare’ Interceptor cards. And I could feel the advantage I had going into fights with players who didn’t have any. It felt cheap. I could fire faster, longer and do more damage. Matches became about which team had the best cards, not the best pilots.

Since the beta, the grind to obtain loot boxes and the necessary cards needed to level up has only increased to the point where you may need to spend 2 or more hours of play to earn a single crate. Why? To encourage you to buy them with real cash, of course! Even this, as terrible as it is, wouldn’t be so bad if all vehicles, classes and heroes were available to play at their most basic level. But no!

Some heroes require credits to unlock – an obscene amount of credits, which on current calculations may take 40 hours of play to unlock – provided you don’t spend a single credit on anything else. Let’s not forget – this isn’t a free to play title. It’s a full priced AAA release locking release day content behind a pay wall. EDIT - they’ve now reduced the hero cost, but reducing it isn’t enough – it needs to be removed entirely.

And rumours are beginning to spread that the intention is to continue this approach with the upcoming ‘free’ content, which will be locked behind ridiculous credit costs, forcing players to grind for countless hours to unlock it or take the intended short cut and buy random loot crates to speed up the process.

Everything about the loot box system, the obscene credit costs for those who don’t pay, the locked content, the gameplay advantages that will f**k over any player who picks up the game post-release, the fact that you can find DUPLICATE items in those crates, and the whole encouraging players to gamble aspect which I haven’t even touched upon means that Battlefront 2 feels rotten to the core.

It’s gone from a game I was wanting to buy, to a game I most certainly won’t. Not unless significant changes are made. And I guess that’s the point of this post. If enough people keep bitching about it, maybe things will change. They said changes would occur post-beta, but it seems they’ve only made things worse. Maybe this time they’ll really listen.