Star Wars Battlefront 2

[Craymen Edge]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-11-17-disney-pressured-ea-to-pull-star-wars-microtransactions-report

Quote

When Electronic Arts said it was temporarily disabling microtransaction purchases in Star Wars Battlefront II due to feedback, it may have meant feedback from players and licensing partners alike. According to the Wall Street Journal, EA's decision to drop the microtransactions for launch came after a word from Star Wars owner Disney.

Citing a person familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that recent online backlash over the game's post-purchase monetization model had been noticed by Disney executives, with CEO Robert Iger himself said to be "alarmed." Disney head of consumer products and interactive media Jimmy Pitaro was said to express his concerns to Disney this week, specifically the company's unhappiness with how the controversy was reflecting poorly on the Star Wars brand.

 

[Hendo]

Cosmetic boxes are fine.

Overwatch does it right - buy a box or 10 if you want to spin that wheel for a chance of something good all you want. It won’t make you better at the game and I really don’t begrudge anyone who buys them. I haven’t but good luck to them.

 

I have bought boxes/currency in Clash Royale because that’s a free-to-play game and I play it a lot. 

 

But a full price game that has its very core progression mechanics tied to you giving them more money, that’s fucked up. I’m under no illusion, it’s not the first. But it’s so fucking brazen about it, especially shows by how much they slashed the prices so often.

[ThreeFour]

I'm not fine with Cosmetic boxes either, but Overwatch or Destiny or CoD is a completely different kettle of fish to what was attempted here.

 

I'm sure there's been an investigation already into Overwatch by our gambling commission. I think there was an article on Eurogamer about it. Basically if there's no monetary gain they wouldn't step in. And there wasn't as much bad publicity to force a reaction. I think directly messing with a games progression and combat mechanics, especially in a beloved and popular brand with children, would though. Especially when other countries start putting a foot down.

 

This was a good thing. I'm going to be keenly interested what happens when the switch is flipped back on though...

 

 

[Sly Reflex]

EDIT: This footage is a week old, but it should still be taken in as a rough guide what to expect from game balance and the whole star cards stuff. Just because you can't pay for them temporarily doesn't mean you won't be able to again soon. All the cards are in the game and I'm guessing they work exactly as they do now as they did then.

 

Original post: So this is a thing. Fully upgraded Vader gameplay.

 

So the others probably aren't levelled up to his level, but that does look kind of suspect. There's one point where there's 4 people all shooting him and he just walks through it like it's nothing.

 

If it's a 1 on 1 fight and you're hitting every shot you're going to have to hit the Vader player 35 times to him hitting your once or twice. That cuts down to 18 shots (rounding up) with 2 players hooting and not missing shots or 11 shots each for 3 people shooting at him. In other words, unless you get him totally cornered you're not going to be able to kill him at all. It doesn't seem very fair, but then again from what little I played of the last Battlefront it sort of felt like that. Plus it is Vader, he's meant to be a scary figure to go against, but maybe this is taking it a little far?

 

Thoughts?

 

[Sly Reflex]

That's a good point. I think you have to get to a certain amount of points before you can pick one of the hero's so it might be a case of teams getting hero raped if they can't deploy a hero in time. That's speculation on my side, if you're being trounced I can see it happening.

 

I had a long hard think about this whole fiasco and I think the ways to fix this whole fuck up aren't workable for EA. The greed is too huge. They've tried to monetize this in the same avenue of FIFA Ultimate Team, which nets them a billion dollars each year,  I'd be astounded if they were to do the right thing, admit that they fucked up even trying this on and removing them completely. Not even to save face, they like money too much.

[ThreeFour]

[Sly Reflex]

Damn, you're not following me on Twitter, are you?

 

 

[Craymen Edge]

10 minutes ago, mr lakitu said:

Do you think Disney could have stepped in at some point when they saw what was happening? Yes. Would they? No. Because they’re a business too. 

 

Thanks for reading, guys.

 

[ThreeFour]

I read it. 

 

@Sly Reflex no, it's possible someone I know, knows a guy, who's second cousin is following you. Small world. 

 

A friend posted it in a WhatsApp, so I thought I'd share the comedy.

[Sambob]

The vader thing being op is fair enough like you said because it's vader and its like a points thing etc. Also I think Disney are the ones that made the change happen, I read it was like Disney said reel it in and hoped EW were capable of not being fuck wits and then when they realised it was beyond them they then said okay kill it and we will review changes later. 

[DANGERMAN]

it says something when Disney are the good guys

[Sambob]

As a sort of revisit of this/kind of science - I played through the main campaign, did three games of multiplayer and from the various mission rewards and little bonus objectives I got enough to get a loot crate and unlock one of the hallowed 40 hour plus heroes, which I havnt done yet. Just a sort of rough estimate of around 6 hours or so, maybe more as its been spread out a bit but so far I havnt found that to be particularly unreasonable. My only question now is whether I even unlock one of those characters or use it to beef up one of the ones that are already unlocked.

 

I will post about this more in impressions but the main problem im having is actually playing a good enough game to even get the choice of using one of the big fancy characters, I think I played about 30 seconds as Boba Fett because its taking me most of the length of a game to get enough action points to choose one to spawn as...in my opinion, not a game breaker so far.

[Sambob]

Thats nonsense and requires a lot of gloss to go along with the main claim the article makes. 

 

"If you take a step back and look at the data, an hour of video game content is still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment," the firm's analyst writes. "Quantitative analysis shows that video game publishers are actually charging gamers at a relatively inexpensive rate, and should probably raise prices."

 

In the example of Battlefront 2, which presumably is a good example as it caused the article to be written, its £50 retail price for the game. You also have to pay the equivalent of a monthly sub to play online, but lets say its negligible. I pay roughly £18 a month to watch unlimited (well limited by the cinema being open) movies. So Battlefront 2 is 2.7 months (roughly 80 days) of watching films, lets say you can watch 12 hours of movies a day, although its actually more, thats 960 hours of movies in a cinema. Okay you will be watching the same movies for some of that, but then its compared to playing the same game, so in that example its not necessarily true.

 

Next example, Netflix. I pay £8 a month for that and I could potentially watch that for 24 hours a day, so....720 hours in a 30 day month, you have to sleep and eat so lets knock a generous third off that, 480 hours per month. Doing the same maths means its equivalent to 3000 watchable hours of Netflix (fine ive not included electricity and internet provider, but battlefront requires that too so its moot). That example works out even worse.

 

There are probably more but its safe to say that whilst its not the most expensive form of entertainment I dont think you can say its one of the cheapest, and compared to the two examples that are just two off the top of my head when I consider where I get my entertainment from I dont see how you would justify an increase in prices, at all.

[Sly Reflex]

Shut up, conform, consume and fucking like it, you whining pigs.

[Sly Reflex]

14 hours ago, mr lakitu said:

You’re all whining babies; Analyst (not me)

 

The plot thickens!

 

https://imgur.com/gallery/VpdEe

[Sly Reflex]

Also this.

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/belgium-says-loot-boxes-are-gambling-wants-them-banned-in-europe/

 

If other governments start getting behind this, it'll be bye bye paid for lootboxes.

[retroed]

Review in the latest issue of EDGE. 

 

 

BURN. 

[Sambob]

As somebody that's played it you don't need to spend any money to progress and progression isn't necessarily intrinsically tied to the result of the loot boxes as you can actually make cards aka perks from crafting materials which you will eventually gain over the course of levelling up. Weapons are all tied to challenges which are typically x number of kills with the previous tier weapon. The bit that's still deplorable is the rate at which you naturally earn those things but if you enjoy playing it for the experience of playing it, which to give credit where its due is quite fun, then you will progress fine just a bit slowly. 

 

Ideally it wouldn't be a gimped progression system and it would actually be nicer if there were more things to progress but the game as it is without the ability to make microtransactions is better than the majority of games with 'ok' levels of micro transaction or this gatcha type of system in it. 

[Sly Reflex]

Does the crafting take longer than just getting lucky and getting the cards you need? Is it another hoop you have to jump through to power up instead of being naturally rewarded for playing? Would it be a better experience without any of this shit being congenital to how the levelling works?

 

Because if the answer to any of those questions is "Yes" then something has gone awry their end and they deserve to be put through the grinder for it. You can sugarcoat a game how you want, have a IP you are a fan of, play as your football team, drive your dream cars, but if the whole thing is based on malevolent mechanisms to make you pay out over the original asking price for some randomised junk peppered with some things you actually want, then the backlash is wholly justified.

[Sambob]

Yeah totally agree, my comments in the impressions thread were that any of this ott bullshit aside, any game based on a gatcha style system is poisonous and so open to exploitation and bullshit. 

 

@Sly Reflex you will remember from as early as Monster Hunter days just how fucked off I got at having to constantly do something for a random chance at getting a thing you desperately needed to progress further, I hate RNG especially when there is then additional bullshit logic added to it to make it more shitty. I love to plan things, and having reliable ways to do that is a must for me, Destiny got to point where I would just figure out to a precise level exactly how much of a thing I needed to do to eliminate any element of RNG and effectively take it out of the game. 

 

Id love to go back to a period where you could just do a thing to get a thing and be done with it, but the games I love are now being made by people that don't want to do that.