Star Wars Battlefront II: DICE Issues Statement Regarding Credits Grind for Unlocks, Progression Iteration Coming at Launch

In case you haven’t read it yet, a Reddit user compiled and calculated how much time it would take for players to unlock Darth Vader and other high-profile Heroes in Star Wars Battlefront II. Let’s just say, you won’t be playing as these iconic characters for quite some time — unless you’re willing to pony up some real-world cash to expedite the process. 

Understandably, a lot of people were upset about this, and with good reason. EA has previously released a statement that talks about an updated progression system to prevent a pay-to-win scenario from taking place, and it seems it’s still that way for the final version. We’ve posted the entire statement in full, which you should read below.

Over on the Star Wars Battlefront II subreddit, DICE Associate Design Director Dennis Brannvall posted a lengthy explaining the actual grind, and mentions that the progression system will be getting “another iteration” at launch on November 17 (currently, the game is available as a timed early trial for Xbox One and PC gamers).

Hey all,

Apologies for not being more active these past weeks leading up to launch – as you know things get really hectic and you tend to spend whatever spare freetime you have recovering. I really regret not being here on the subreddit at the start of the early access. Hopefully some of these replies will bring some clarity and hope.

  • Performance during games will affect the amount of credits you get at the end of a match.
  • Matchmaking will take into account not only player skill, but also total gametime and rarity of star cards. This means that you will be matchmade with players with an average performance similar to you and (to the largest extent possible) not against players who are much better than you, whether by having higher rarity cards or by showing higher skill.
  • Heroes that are locked at launch will only be unlocked with credits, not crystals. The heroes, similar to the locked weapons for Troopers, are sidegrades instead of upgrades (Darth Vader should be on similar power level as Darth Maul, etc). The goal is to keep you playing for a long time and have something cool to look forward to as you earn credits.
  • Speaking of earning credits, we’re constantly evaluating and tweaking the earn rates versus the cost of crates and heroes. The current rates were based on open beta data, but you should expect us to constantly evolve these numbers as we hit launch and onwards. There will also be more milestones that award credits and crafting parts available, as well as star cards only unlockable through those milestones. If all you want to do is play and grind towards your next unlock that will be fully possible and we’ll continue to tweak the numbers until the requirements feel fun and achievable.

Working on a game with a live economy and without a premium content lineup is a new challenge for us at DICE. We had one progression system in the closed alpha and heard your feedback back then. We made another iteration for the open beta and heard your feedback then too. For launch, we’re having another iteration and there will definitely be more iterations as we evolve this game post launch.

Your continous feedback as you play the game is absolutely invaluable and I encourage you to keep sending it our way. There is really no reason to “rebel” against us – we want this game to be as great and enjoyable as it can be – we’re reading all your feedback and working as fast as we can to adjust the game to your liking.

The dev team will be around Battlefront II for a long time. I sincerely hope you’ll be here with us!

Thanks,

Dennis

First off, kudos to DICE for tackling this head-on and not just hiding from the public eye until release and waiting for things to flame out. That said, let’s hope the grind isn’t really this long, since game-changing items, characters, etc. should never take that long to unlock. Maybe make it so it’s cosmetics that are the carrot-on-a-stick hook for high-level players?

Whatever the case might be, let’s hope DICE can sort it out for the betterment of the game, since Battlefront II’s loot crates are starting to overtake the actual game, which is a shame given what we’ve played so far have been fantastic

What changes should DICE do in order to prevent the backlash? Implement a Season Pass again and take away loot crates? Or maybe just have cosmetics behind loot crates and leave all meaningful progression items via character levels? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and let’s get a discussion goin.

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