The ‘Star Wars: Battlefront II’ loot box drama, explained
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It’s not even out yet, and Star Wars: Battlefront II is already a bad video game. Or if nothing else, it’s the public relations equivalent of the Chernobyl disaster.
Blame the loot boxes. Everyone knew they were a problem coming out of the public beta last month. Even publisher Electronic Arts acknowledged it — «We’ve listened to your feedback,» a post-beta update from DICE, the game’s developer, read — and pledged to fix the situation.
Battlefront II, loot boxes, and you
So here’s the simple(-ish) explanation for how things work now: The online multiplayer mode in Battlefront II is filled with things for you to unlock, including weapons, abilities, and cosmetics like emotes and victory poses. Those can all be earned randomly from loot boxes, which you purchase using one of two different kinds of currency. They can then be upgraded using a third form of currency.
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Activision’s new patent makes it easy to exploit online gamers for their cash
Heroes and ships — think Emperor Palpatine, or the Millennium Falcon from The Force Awakens — are also in the game, but you don’t get them in quite the same way. Many are unlocked at the outset, but roughly a quarter of all the heroes and ships are locked and need to be purchased using in-game currency.
Credits and crystals both pay for loot boxes. You earn credits — the only way to unlock heroes and ships — from completing online matches, in-game challenges, or from loot boxes themselves. Crystals also pay for loot boxes, but you can only buy them using IRL cash. Crafting parts, the third form of currency, drop when you open loot boxes, and they’re used to upgrade your existing unlocks.
Credit: electronic arts
There are four levels of quality for each unlockable thing: Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Epic.
Those first three drop in loot boxes, but Epic items don’t drop at all and need to be crafted.
Crafting parts pay for your upgrades, allowing you to evolve even a Common card (all the unlocks are called «cards») up to Epic.
Remember, folks: That was the simple explanation. Upgrading individual soldiers, heroes, and ships doesn’t work quite the same way, and there are also three different types of loot boxes that you can buy.
This GameSpot video offers one of the most detailed explanations available at this point, though it’s still tough to follow.
SEE ALSO:
YouTuber spends $90 in ‘Star Wars: Battlefront 2’ and proves that it’s still basically pay-to-win
Battlefront II isn’t technically out until Nov. 17, but fans that subscribe to EA Access or Origin Acess — which give Xbox One and PC players, respectively, a five-day, 10-hour window to play EA games before they launch — are discovering how those changes feel. And it’s a bad scene, friends.
«At the current price of 60,000 credits it will take you 40 hours of gameplay time to earn the right to unlock one hero or villain [in Star Wars: Battlefront II],» Reddit user TheHotterPotato wrote in a post bearing the headline: «It Takes 40 hours to Unlock a Hero.
»
«That means 40 hours of saving each and every credit, no buying any crates at all, so no bonus credits from getting duplicates in crates.»
The pricing has since changed (more on that below), but not every hero is valued at 60,000 credits, only Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Prior to the change, none of them cost less than 20,000 credits.
Most. Downvoted. Ever.
The Reddit post — which is worth a read, even though the stats are now outdated — produced such a mind-blowingly negative response that an agent of EA actually responded. Unfortunately, that response made things even worse.
When we first looked at the EACommunityTeam post this morning, it had a score of -253K points — that’s extremely bad in Reddit terms. The number is determined by adding up all the downvotes the comment received and then subtracting from that figure any upvotes.
At the time of this writing, more than 6 hours later, the score is at -442K points.
A Reddit wiki page that tracks the most downvoted posts across the entire site lists the previous downvote «winner» as having -24,333 points.
Not only is EA’s response seemingly the most downvoted post in Reddit’s history, it’s also earned that dubious honor by an absurd (and apparently still rising) margin. Multiple other threads sprung up afterwards, suggesting that players respond with their wallets by skipping the game entirely, or even all EA games in general.
While that EACommunityTeam comment wasn’t so great, EA followed it up with a much smarter move on Monday afternoon, as the controversy continued to spread.
Tweet may have been deleted
(opens in a new tab)
A subsequent email from our EA spokesperson broke down the specifics:
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.
It was a necessary change. The earlier, much-maligned Reddit comment was a major misstep, but this tangible change does help to cut down on what was looking like Battlefront II‘s most laborious grind.
Now. What does all of this mean for EA?
There’s a bigger problem with loot boxes
It’s hard to say at this point, before Battlefront II is even out.
There’s no question that there’s a gross imbalance between the returns on your time investment versus the returns, via in-game purchases, on your money investment. It’s simply broken, and needs to be fixed. It is a fixable problem, though — as we saw to a limited extent on Monday afternoon.
How all of this looks, and what it means for the game just a few days before it launches, is another conversation entirely. Traditionally, the thinking here would tell you that Reddit, while it can feel very loud and pervasive online, is still a vocal minority.
Star Wars is a juggernaut of a franchise. The numbers weren’t officially reported for the first Battlefront, but estimates pointed to 12 million copies sold during the game’s first two months on shelves in late 2015. That game was dogged by controversy going in as well, largely due to the lack of a story mode and the small offering of multiplayer content, relative to other $60 games on the market at the time.
In other words, Star Wars has proven it can survive pre-release anxiety and go on to sell well right off the bat. Even if you assume the 400,000-plus downvotes on Reddit equals the number of fans who now won’t buy the game, that’s still a fraction of the original Battlefront‘s estimated 12 million in sales — a very successful start — across the game’s opening months.
Credit: electronic arts
That said, the controversy around loot boxes and in-game purchases sprawls far beyond Battlefront II and it’s been an ongoing conversation for some time.
At the end of the day, loot boxes are a moneymaking mechanism that rely upon a simple premise: The big-spending «whales» provide the bulk of the post-release income, while the rest of the player community — for Battlefront II, the folks that don’t buy crystals — keeps the whales interested.
That turns you, the player who just wants to earn credits in-game and let unlocks flow naturally, into the product. Without you, there’s not enough of a community to keep the proportionally smaller crowd of whales interested in paying for loot boxes.
That’s the essence of free-to-play game design, and it’s been very lucrative for games like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans. Now we’re seeing that design philosophy pop up in an increasing number of blockbuster $60 games, largely because building those experiences has become so expensive that publishers need to mitigate their financial risk.
Crucially, that’s what could hurt Battlefront II, even after the hero pricing change.
Video game fans are more tuned in now than they’ve ever been to the rising presence of free-to-play elements in their $60 games. The problem in this new Star Wars game specifically is the unlock system is so convoluted, it rips away the facade of natural progression that a more well-balanced game would deliver.
Loot boxes and their ilk aren’t going anywhere. That’s just the financial reality of the games industry in 2017. But to be successful, the games themselves need to do a good job of convincing you that you’re not wasting undue amounts of your time just because you don’t want to spend more than your initial $60 investment.
In its current form, with so many messy moving parts, Star Wars: Battlefront II still fails spectacularly at doing that.
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Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.
Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He’s a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He’s also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner’s two cats. He’s a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
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Star Wars Battlefront 2 Loot Box Controversy: ‘We Hit Rock Bottom,» EA DICE Says
Star Wars Battlefront 2
By Matt Kim
Updated: Aug 26, 2019 7:06 pm
Posted: Aug 26, 2019 6:39 pm
Star Wars Battlefront 2 is almost two years old, but the developers at EA DICE are finally moving on from the loot box controversy that dogged the first year of Star Wars Battlefront 2.
“We hit rock bottom in terms of player sentiment but now it’s climbing every month,” Battlefront 2 design director Dennis Brännvall said in a new interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 was supposed to be EA DICE’s definitive take on the Battlefront series, which EA inherited from Pandemic Studios. Unfortunately, the decision to include loot boxes that potentially allowed players to earn powerful upgrades, which players said were “pay-to-win,” severely harmed the hype for the game ahead of its launch. EA DICE removed loot boxes from the game 24 hours before launch.
Battlefront 2’s loot box controversy grew beyond the game and brought the ethical, and legal, efficacies of loot boxes into the mainstream discussion. “Not a week goes by without us thinking, ‘Imagine if we hadn’t launched with loot boxes the way we did,’” Brännvall said.
Every IGN Star Wars Game Review
The loot box controversy may have led to Battlefront 2’s less-than-expected sales, but EA DICE has been toiling away on free updates despite the negative reactions at launch.
Brännvall said that the team approached the situation like how Ubisoft has treated Rainbow Six Siege. “They didn’t launch the way they wanted, but now it’s doing well and I think we’re on a similar trajectory.”
EA DICE recently announced the newest Battlefront 2 roadmap at Gamescom, which outlines the new content coming to the game starting in August through December 2019. This includes new maps like Felucia, new reinforcements with the Clone Commandos, all leading up to a Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker tie-in event in December.LoadingBrännvall says that the developers will stick with Battlefront 2 and its live-service approach to updates. “DICE has been on the sequel treadmill for quite a while, and I think the industry is changing rapidly.” So while there’s no clear plans for Battlefront 3 just yet, Battlefront 2 will continue to see updates and monthly improvements, like many other games-as-service titles currently operating within the games industry.
Check out our Star Wars Battlefront 2 review for our take on EA DICE’s Star Wars shooter.
EA is also working on another Star Wars game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order developed by Respawn Entertainment. And of course, Lucasfilm is getting ready to release Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker in December.
Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.
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«What kind of reaction do you expect?» Star Wars: Battlefront 2 Developer Replies to Fans Asking for Continued Support
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Last month, it was announced that active support for the shooter Star Wars: Battlefront 2 published by Electronic Arts will be stopped immediately after the release of « Battle for Scarif «, the last major content update for the project.
Part of the fan community was extremely saddened by the current situation and literally began to overwhelm the developers with requests for further development of the game, even through paid DLC . At some point, players launched a petition on Change.org , which has collected over signatures to date .
But, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the fans’ hopes will come true. One of the senior producers at Studio DICE Ben Walk responded to the petition by posting a fairly straightforward response.
«You keep sending me [this petition], but I still don’t understand what kind of reaction you expect? Our team saw it, but we don’t make the final decision. I’m glad to see that almost 30,000 people have signed it [at the time of publication ], but two and a half years ago, over 200,000 users signed a different kind of petition. Here’s a slightly different perspective,» the DICE producer replied.
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As you may have guessed, the « petition of a different kind » mentioned by Walk is an initiative that, in the wake of the unsuccessful launch of Star Wars: Battlefront 2 , was launched by dissatisfied users who demanded that Disney withdraw Electronic Arts has a license to produce video games based on the Star Wars universe. That petition did find a wide response among the masses, but, as we know today, it did not lead to any result .
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was released in 2017 on PlayStation 4 , Xbox One and PC . Then the game was criticized for a small amount of content and a monetization system based on loot boxes, which led to a big scandal that went far beyond the gaming industry alone.
Nevertheless, over the past years, the project continued to develop actively and rallied an active community around itself.
See also: Sailors and conquerors — the developers of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla spoke in more detail about Eivor’s ship and his crew .
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