There has been a lot of concern, anger and frustration regarding the way in which the upcoming Star Wars: Battlefront II will be handling loot boxes. With EA finally responding to the criticism, it seems that fans are still not happy with the developer.
Star Wars: Battlefront II will make use of loot boxes, which can be bought either with in-game currency or using real money. The problem with this system is that there are some heroes who players can only gain access to through the loot box system. If this wasn’t frustrating enough, some rough calculations predicted that earning enough of the in-game currency to purchase these loot boxes could take up to 40 hours of playing. Or if you don’t want to slog through hours of grinding, you could just buy more loot-boxes to earn more in-game currency.
After a backlash from fans, EA decided to explain their decision via a Reddit post.
“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes. As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay. We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets. Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.”
As can be expected, fans were not happy with EA’s explanation and quickly begun showing their frustration and anger by downvoting the post. Currently, the post has 604,000 downvotes, which considering the previously most downvoted post only received a mere 24,000 downvotes, illustrated the anger fans have with both EA and the game’s loot box system.
EA has responded to the criticism by announcing in a blog post that they would be cutting the cost of the “top heroes” in Star Wars: Battlefront II by 75%.
“So, 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’s a big change, and it’s one we can make quickly. It will be live today, with an update that is getting loaded into the game.”
While this change is a welcome one and shows that EA is indeed listening to their fans, you have to wonder if this is too little too late.
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It’s way too late… It was too late already when EA started destroying good game companies by buying them over and removing them from existence… It was already too late when we were told to pay for every single damn thing to actually get a proper game. It’s way too late…
The game itself looks amazing but it’s EA’S greed that’s going to spoil it plus that ppl can buy powerful perks that will make them invincible on the battlefield ,the game should be made to play fairly and to enjoy the experience paying your way to the top is a shity idea plus they expect u to pay out £100 for the top perk on top of what you payed for the game itself fuck that
Haha, another horrible pay to play game…. Ryan Micheal Richard Edgar, Aaron Perry
Glad I didn’t get it too bad it could have been a great game too
Still you can earn everything over time the way I’m hearing it is that alot people aren’t gonna buy the perks
Ya but you had to play for 40 hours to get o e character…… recently they apologized and said they fucked up so they reduced the price by 75%…. so you still have to play for 10 hours to get something lol…. a lot of people are saying too little too late lol