Star Wars: Battlefront II

[MiniSanders 588]

Not that I noticed... 

But I only saw a MP button and clicked it... 

 

I don't even remember a way of choosing a game mode, but that might be the Beta

[MasterShrive 2,016]

Oh sweet Jesus no.

[MiniSanders 588]

Just had a couple of games... There is 4 modes, which you can choose from. (1 is for solo play)

The Starfighter Assault is great fun

 

• Galactic Assault: 20v20 battle on Naboo's capital, Theed.
• Starfighter Assault: Space battling over Fondor.
• Strike: 8v8 battle in Maz Kanata's castle on Takodana.
• Arcade: Two versus-AI Arcade missions.

[MasterShrive 2,016]

Yeah just had a very quick look. Graphically it looked awesome, no doubt about it.

 

No server browser really irritates me though because like last year's game, how are we going to know how long we'll queue for, what our ping is and how many are playing?! I guess I'll reserve some judgement until I've tried to "party" with a few people later tonight. Still, this has me more excited than CoD, but that's not saying a lot.

[MasterShrive 2,016]

I wanted to like this. I really did. But if I can't play with other clannies then I'm not interested. It looks like it could be fun - but this afternoon we tried to get a few of us in a group via the in-game menu and/or via Origin and it just wasn't having a bar of it. What a shame. I certainly wouldn't be paying full price for this.

[MiniSanders 588]

Thats weird.. Me Phobes and Law played last night with no issues at grouping up.

But then again, I know they had trouble grouping with each other prior to me coming online.

 

Seems a bit hit and miss, which seems to be normal for EA games sadly.

[MasterShrive 2,016]

It's horrible. Reminded us of Rainbow Six and how terrible that is. At least with a server browser we could have joined the same game; but nope.

[Penchamus 411]

So other than Shrives getting triggered about the lack of a server browser... How does the gameplay feel?

[Decroxx 815]

Very quick. You die quick, and you spawn fairly quickly. You don't pick where you spawn (in the game mode we played, at least) so I was constantly lost and just following others around.

I wasn't exactly a fan of the map we played, the long corridor was a bloodbath, and you almost couldn't run across it to get to the other side. Then you get into the Palace Halls and there's about 3 chokepoints. If your team is sitting in there you're fine, if the other team gets in, you won't get it back.

 

I just got frustrated in the end, and I think we spent more time in the menus than we did in game.

[MasterShrive 2,016]

Menu Simulator 2.0.

 

Parts of the map reminded me of Metro, lol.

 

That said, I didn't actually mind it once we got in. It certainly looked and felt like Star Wars. The space battle Noods and I got into was also pretty cool, although it took me a bit to work out the controls. I'm hoping to maybe do another space battle tonight, just in case this is my last chance to play it.

 

The menu sounds amazing though, so that's great.

[Phobos 1,212]

I thought the opposite. The time to kill was too long. 

 

The "squad" system is a complete joke. I got sick of being forced to play third person. They've made the move to different classes but a medic/ammo class would be awesome and a change to Battlefield's system. You could say it's meant to be casual - and I would say, so was the first one and it was dead after a month.

 

I enjoyed Starfighter Assault the most of all the game modes. Although, I felt pretty tired of it after a few hours. There isn't a high skill ceiling once you master the controls. 

 

Runs at 50+ fps on low with my 580 and still looks great.

 

tl:dr It's the same as the first, slightly improved in a few aspects. The same in others. You still can't team swap to balance! If you bought it just for SP (Penchy!), I'd wait and see how many hours it actually is from reviewers before throwing $90 at it. 

 

Edit: Lootboxes are a concern(BF starts at 11:50):

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 9, 2017 by Phobos

[Penchamus 411]

Yeah I saw TB's video on the loot boxes and how powerful you can become in a short time is very worrying. I guess I'll hold off until it drops off in price so I can play the singleplayer.

[Dallyfergo 248]

I watched some gameplay before and it looked interesting. I haven't played battlefront before so I'm not familiar with the what's what, but I'd definitely consider getting it if others are keen.

[TheLaw 860]

no idea how this got there

[Phobos 1,212]

cdkeys have it on sale atm for $71AUD: https://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/star-wars-battlefront-ii-2-pc-origin-cd-key

 

It was $61 three hours ago when I was going to post, looks like they bumped it. Heh

[TheLaw 860]

Mark my drunken words. 


This is DICEs last chance, i've pre ordered this in good faith that im not goinng to getg burned again like i did with BF4,.,.... 

[MasterShrive 2,016]

I just can't do it. I just can't.

[Phobos 1,212]

9 hours ago, MasterShrive said:

I just can't do it. I just can't.

You should see the witch hunt going on over loot crates. Imo, when they said no paid DLC, this was always going to happen.

But, they're making it a F2P model inside a retail price game. Some estimates are you need 40 hours of multi to unlock Luke OR Darth Vader. Each..

 

It's like the dog(Dice+EA) who bites your hand, you can never completely trust it again. They have the best talent but whoever is calling the shots needs to eat prison food for the rest of their life.

 

Edit: lmao, ok i'll stop now:

Spoiler

 

Edited November 13, 2017 by Phobos

[Penchamus 411]

I friggin lost it Phobs

[MiniSanders 588]

As much as I can see the MP failing on this badly... I have grabbed it from JB for $62...

If for nothing other than the SP and some Arcade fun. Hopefully get a few MP rounds in as well.

[Mr Spontaneous 143]

Anyone following the drama on reddit for this game?

 

 

This comment from EA has almost 600k down votes. Its likely to be the most down voted comment on Reddit for a long time.

 

I was dragging my feet about buying Middle Earth: Shadow of War because I heard it had loot boxes. I jumped on twitch and asked a streamer with 30 viewers what he thought of the loot box system. His answer was he has almost 70 hours of game play, is only a few hours off 100%ing the game and he completely forgot about the loot crates in this game. if you don't believe me there is proof somewhere in the Saturday 11th November VOD: https://go.twitch.tv/moodmant. He said you dont ever need to touch the loot crate system. But you do get random rewards that are the same as loot crate rewards for doing some of the "online Vendetta" missions. Which are optional missions to avenge another player who died. Sure, OK fine. So I bought the game and I have done a few of those missions and got a random bit of gear from it. Those missions are almost always available and I got bored of them to be honest as the best gear comes from tracking and killing the Epic and Legendary Uruks.

 

Whats this got to do with Battlefront?? Battlefront have their in built progression system based around opening their loot crates. They have put Luke and Vader (and a few other characters) behind a play or pay wall. I am OK with unlocking things, even in these multiplayer shooter games. But not the fucking protagonist and antagonist from the Original Trilogy! Their business model is pay-to-win hidden behind the facade of play-to-progress which is really pay-to-progress. The fucking greed is endless.

 

Compare that to the biggest pay-to-progress game I can think of. War Thunder. In War Thunder you can literally spend your premium currency to get levels in countries plane progression. Now you cant endlessly buy levels in countries. you earn "reserve xp" and normal xp by playing the game. The reserve xp is useless if you don't have any paid premium currency as it costs the premium currency to transfer reserve xp into normal xp. Their are also premium planes which you can only get if you buy packs or if you buy them with premium currency. Seems pretty greedy! Except the game itself is free!! EA's model has the loot boxes as core of the progression system... which you can buy on top of paying the cost of the game.

 

Please don't support this bullshit by giving them money. /rant

 

 

[MasterShrive 2,016]

Seems like a pretty good summary to me.

 

I like the good old days in CoDUO. No unlocks. No loot. Each game everyone started with all the same weapons available. No kill streaks. You could rank up in a match and get more ammo and grenades, but so could everyone else. Never had to pay another cent.

[Phobos 1,212]

Don't forget, Shrivey. Mods !

 

To add fire, they have removed the refund button(automated) from the Origin store after getting so many refunds. You have to contact chat to get it.....now we're entering scummy..

 

[MasterShrive 2,016]

Wow. That's pathetic.

 

If you wanted to produce a formula on how to screw up something so big, when it should almost be impossible, you'd just copy what EA have done with BFII

[Mr Spontaneous 143]

I'm not a fan of lvlcap. He is a whiney and annoying. Pretty much my only reason for disliking him. However his video on the situation is a pretty good overview of the problem: (edit: was only 2/3rds of the way through the below video when I typed this. I think he was far too easy on the game and he contradicts himself a few times but still worth the watch)

 

 

He was straight up wrong about some of the things happening over at /r/StarWarsBattlefront and what /u/EAcommunityteam has communicated but ignoring that. He showcases the pay2win aspects of the game. Which is quite sad because the graphics and the design of the game modes look so good! But that's all thanks to DICE. While I have no proof of this, I would speculate that the loot crate nonsense and pay2win progression is not their idea. Previous Dice games have either had no gambling crates and just straight play to progress or they have battlecase things which you could only get by playing (I believe? Is that correct?) And they certainly didn't make your character stronger than someone else. Maybe better attachments but you could get those by playing anyways. Not sure what they use for BF1.

 

In any case this progression (and character strength) being tied to gambling on the crates is a new system and it needs to fuck right off.

 

It just sucks to see. So many people have wanted a new battlefront game after playing the original battlefront 2 for so long, including me. Seeing it ruined by greedy dickheads who are completely out of touch with their market is just plain disappointing. I want to play the game for the gameplay. But no way am I going to while the current system is in place. If they never change it I guess I'll never buy it.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Mr Spontaneous