EA and DICE have announced that they have made changes to crates and progression based on player’s feedback. According to the press release, the beta gave the team a chance to test all of its systems in action and tune things up for better balance. As such, Epic Star Cards, the highest tier of Star Cards available at launch, have been removed from Crates.
Players will need to reach a certain rank to craft upgraded Star Cards, and weapons are locked behind specific milestones. Moreover, class-specific gear and items can be unlocked by playing as them.
EA and DICE will be continuously looking at player feedback to help fine tune and improve this system and others in the game. The teams claimed that they are committed to keeping the community together. It’s also worth noting that all post-launch content will be free.
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 releases on November 17th!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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How about removing crates all together and putting an actual progression system in the game? Maybe then I’ll check it out.
But free DLC… i like the idea of dumb people paying for my free dlc. (Not in single games though)
That’s the whole idea. How could DLC be free if there were no microtransactions? I think it’s a nice upside of this approach.
Too little too late. Even if I cared about this turd, a message needs to be sent.
The only ones they want to help is themselves (to get more and more $$$) and at the expense of ruining player experience. All the f*cking time, any chance they get they exploit us.
No thanks. F*ck this game.
Boiling frogs.
This is a company’s normal pattern to look like “good guys” whenever consumers are vocal, HOWEVER they never completely reverse the problem. People accepting it and saying “of course they wont 180 since they are a business” are ignorant because in this way companies are using slow and small incremental movements forward and only dialing back partially (usually not even at the “compromising 3/5”), and companies condition consumers.
Those who go way too far where a boycott is looming, eventually try to reintroduce their plans at a later, more acceptable time once consumers grow tired of debating and resistance (MS, Activision, and EA before this gen vs now).
Companies like the EAs, MSs, and Activisions, etc don’t “180”, even though when they dial back is persistently written as such by bloggers and big corporate sponsored gaming sites (IGN, Gamespot, etc) trying to convince consumers otherwise.
Once a company sets their sights on a dream, they never truly give up on said dream. Companies like EA/Acti merely back down slightly, but they will always take a crack at their dream, just in various ways. The only time they will ever truly learn is when it’s too late, as they head to their own demise.
Somehow… along the way… the game industry has forgotten that you need a strong product standing on its own before thinking about maximising extra profit…
The game industry has forgotten nothing. It shifted towards being more of a standardized industry. The golden age of gaming ended back in 2004.
Did they forget how BFBC2 and BF3 worked?
Fk that , do not buy
F**k off.
I will still not support companies that do this.
It’s gone from paying for loot crates to now facing a larger artificial and pointless grind for them.
There really is no middle ground when it comes to EA.
Just remove the star cards completely.
I wonder how many of you are b*tching about EA and buying the game anyway?
There is a reason why EA does what it does. About 5 billion reasons according to their last Financial Report in sales.
Interesting video. imo AAA games have gotten more expensive to develop because a big chunk of the cost is due to having to pay several hundred employees and the additional costs for benefits. Salaries go up. Sometimes the benefits package is quite large. I don’t know if people are aware of this but here in the USA we also have to match employees contributions to FICA so that’s +9.25% already.
But the argument that games have gotten cheaper to get to the consumer is valid. I’ve been around long enough to remember the packaging in a boxed game. You got a manual and sometimes a poster. All of that cost was taken on by the Publisher and passed on to the gamers. Not directly, but the money could have been spent on developing the game so we paid for it at the end of the day.
That’s not even accounting for the fact that distributors take a cut and retailers take a cut too. 30% for Steam’s cut looks pretty cheap when you add it up and you get far more exposure if the game is on Steam’s front page.
Except outsourcing to nations without minimum wage or just freelancers in general has become a very popular thing in the industry the last decade, so yeah, even if one person’s salary has bumped a little, I doubt if they aren’t offsetting that with the blatant outsourcing & wanton cutbacks they’re constantly doing.
In fact, if you want to talk US specifically; around 35% of the US workforce is comprised of “Freelancers”, otherwise known as “independent contractors”, “gig economy workers” or just “wave slaves which we’re not legally obligated to give health insurance or pensions to.” That number is expected to hit 43% by 2020 & the next recession is predicted to boost it up to around 70%, if you want to ascribe to the more pessimistic estimates.
Besides all that, you should read up on the stories of how developers in fact are & have been criminally underpaid & overworked for the longest of time now, to the point that it’s basically an industry standard to routinely abuse your workforce since they’re too stupid, too lazy, or too incompetent to grow some balls & unionise.
So, really, the only “increasing development cost” I can see right now is the CEO’s ever-more-bloated bonus check at the end of each year – and that’s not even bringing up Activision’s recently-ousted tax escapades, which only make their position look even worse.
Agreed on the posters & distribution costs, however.
They do charge you for parking though, don’t they? 😛