'Star Wars Battlefront II' Players Outraged Over Progression System, Microtransactions

Status
Not open for further replies.

DJowns

Reputable
Feb 15, 2015
3
0
4,510
I'm not defending EA... I dislike them as much as the next person and you know they are going to try to justify micro-transactions as funding the DLC. So will they actually go away? Looking at the reality of how games have been developed since there inception it's doubtful so here we all are having to live through another deluded decade of great games convoluted with terrible features.
 

Dyseman

Distinguished
Feb 8, 2009
141
2
18,680
I want it NOW NOW NOW NOW. I don't want something to work for, Just want it NOW NOW NOW NOW. - Signed, Millennials... and dudes still living with parents.
 
The outrage began when a player, who purchased the $80 deluxe edition of the game, complained on the Star Wars Battlefront Reddit page that Darth Vader was unavailable as a playable character until they gathered enough in-game credits to purchase him....EA’s response was met with a multitude of comments and downvotes from frustrated players. At over 362,000 downvotes, it’s currently the most hated comment in Reddit’s history.

^^Leave it between Dice and EA to ruin yet another what would be cool gaming experience. By the way - new AAA release titles are $60 USD. What is the benefit of spending another $20 for the "deluxe" version if you are still behind the power curve from the start?



Well you have to understand that the gaming world, especially in the console world, there's severe peer pressure. If one or two guys in a group of many gaming friends decide to get something, then everyone else wants to join in as well. I am older and wiser and do not bow to peer pressure. But you are correct: buying games like this just supports more junk down the line like buying a 1986 $3,995 Yugo that fell apart after six months.
 

armor152

Honorable
Aug 19, 2017
11
0
10,510
Great game so far. Graphics are insane and using heroes/upgraded infantry is much better than in 1 when it was random. Lots of variety and it's deeper than before, plus the campaign was great so far (you can only play the first part of it until it's officially released)
Considering there's no paid DLC, the microtransactions are a necessary evil, most people won't buy them which is great but if you really want to then go for it. Games have stayed at $60 for a long time and they need to get more money somehow. A skilled player with crap cards will still beat a person that's played an hour with maxed out cards and spend a ton of money on it.

There are crazy people saying they want everything unlocked right away, what's the fun in that? I like unlocking stuff and using a variety of weapons and modes to earn challenges and accomplish something.
So buy the game, but don't buy the Deluxe version as it's pointless and don't spend any money on loot boxes.
 


Nonsense. There is nothing "necessary" in microtransactions, especially if you up front pay $20 USD more for the "deluxe" version. Microtransactions are nothing new to gaming of course, but if you pay 1/3 more for a "deluxe" edition you expect to get more up front. But I do agree that it is no fun to pay more to get more up front instead of earning said perks yourself.




 
It's amazing how they're able to get people to pay $60 or more for free to play games these days. : D

Having unlockable heroes isn't bad, but once they incorporate the option to pay to unlock them, it encourages them to increase the time investment necessary to so through ordinary gameplay.

And AAA games haven't actually been at $60 for all that long on the PC. It was normal for them to launch at $50 up until around 5 or so years ago. If anything, the higher price of games and more content held back for later release as "DLC" encourages many people to wait a couple years until the games have been bargain-binned with all their content included at a much lower price.
 

poochiepiano

Distinguished
Nov 1, 2010
222
0
18,710


You realize this is a game, not a job, right? I'm generally terrible at analogies, but what if you went to a driving range, which you had to buy a membership for, bought a bucket of balls on top of that, but were then informed that you could only putt for the first 40 hours. After that, you could use one other club. Then 40 hours later, another club. What if you joined a gym but could only use the 2.5-lb weights for the first 2 weeks? What if you bought a PC but then found out you could only use one of your 8 CPU cores and 2 of your 16 GB of ram?

The obvious choice here would be to not buy/join/subscribe in the first place, but people already spent the money and EA didn't make it known ahead of time. Wish consumers would make it more apparent to publishers that this stuff won't fly, but still, people are throwing their money at them.

Anyways, as a side note, coming from a Titanfall 2 player... this doesn't look good.



For multiplayer games, this isn't really the case. With the number of big games coming out every year now, you're basically renting the game. The majority of the population will leave in a couple months, with a loyal (or frugal) few staying longer. Games like overwatch are the exception. I would bet that the cost/benefit ratio of multiplayer with DLC far outweighs single-player games and companies making perennial AAA games are realizing this. Campaigns are now barebones. CoD single-player is an afterthought.
 

DRosencraft

Distinguished
Aug 26, 2011
743
0
19,010
Different game, with different mechanics and background concerns, etc., but I recall when getting into the free-to-play Ace Combat Infinity and the ultra-expensive planes were introduced. The time needed to dump into upgrading a Darth Vader equivalent plane would make 40-hours look like absolutely nothing. Absent a ton of microtransactions (all centered on just playing it more), you needed something like 12,700 missions, with a minimum of 3 minutes per mission, to accumulate the credits. That's all just to say, such lopsided mechanics are nothing remotely new.

As for EA's response here, the backlash was over-the-top. It is a cogent, reasonable, explanation of the reasoning behind the way the system is. Honestly, for most folks that into the game, 40-hours is 2-3 weeks of gameplay, maybe a month. It's not the great huge burden like it's being made out to be. If you bought the $80 version instead of the $60, that's your own poor decision-making process. It's not as though there was something promised to be in there and then not. Don't like micro-transactions? Don't spend on them. It really isn't that hard to avoid these things if you just stop making excuses for why avoiding it is hard.
 

Th3pwn3r

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2011
257
0
18,860
Rather than play for 40 hours to unlock something I really want in the game I'd rather go to work for an extra hour and pay the $40 it costs for the loot crate.
 

Oenomel_G

Commendable
Nov 18, 2016
6
0
1,510
I don't buy games that allow cash transactions to better your chances of winning. My kids don't buy those games, they tell their friends not to buy those games.

I could care less if they offer micro transactions to buy "pretty" things.
But if they affect gameplay...my house will not take it if it's free.
 

Don't forget how they also bought into the "it's only cosmetic" Overwatch lootboxes, which both normalised and popularised this whole glorified gambling in games trend in the first place.
 

Spock_rhp

Distinguished
Apr 27, 2012
35
0
18,540
ONLY 40 hours to get one of the top characters? Where, oh where, is their backbone? Are we supposed to dumb down real work as well so these pampered fools can enjoy themselves immediately? Tell you what -- any first world dreamer who thinks 40 hours is far too much should check out the real world -- any second or third world country will do -- and find out just how long it takes to accomplish even a simple task like earning enough money to buy one day's food and safe drinking water.
 

therickmu25

Honorable
Aug 7, 2013
44
0
10,540
These 'gaming' companies have very smart people crunching numbers behind the scenes that definitively conclude 'people are paying for loot boxes'. They know people don't like them, but they're opening their wallets for them.
EA's stock is a publicly traded company and their stock rising. The same people crying on Reddit need to look in the mirror as 90% of the 360k down-votes will undoubtedly shell out $60 to EA in their 'outrage'.
 

I don't think that's the core issue. It's that this grind has been deliberately put into the game to make the gambling elements more tempting - i.e. paying real world money to rapidly unlock the character. So there will be those, like you, that aren't concerned to earn the character by playing but you're up against people who just buy it, creating uneven/unbalanced "pay to win" gameplay and damaging your experience (and any sense of achievement you might otherwise have got from the grind).
 

saunupe1911

Distinguished
Apr 17, 2016
203
74
18,660
And this is why people pirate games or simply don't buy smh. Just makes us a good game. Forget all of the BS. If it's good then folks will buy...plain and simple.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.