It has been many years since I’ve seen a mess like the one Star Wars Battlefront 2 stumbled into this past fall, stripping microtransactions out of the game at the last possible minute when it became clear that players abhorred the idea that you could purchase in-game power advantages through loot boxes.
But even without paid loot boxes, the core of the progression system, upgrades in randomized crates, remained, and Battlefront 2 needed a larger rework, given the last-minute gutting. Now, it’s finally detailing those changes, most of which will be added in a patch March 21st.
EA released this list of changes in a blog post this morning, which you can read in full here. But the highlights? I find them very interesting indeed:
All progression is now linear
You can only earn Star Cards through gameplay, and not through a randomized crate system any more. You earn skill points through gameplay, and can use them to unlock out upgrade Star Cards in a way that echoes most standard shooter progression systems. Microtransactions and randomization come nowhere near this part of the game.
You keep everything you have
I mean, it would be insane if they wiped all the Star Cards and progress people have gotten already, though it does mean that many veteran players will remain at a steep advantage over newcomers through the power gains alone.
Crates, loot boxes, still exist, but they’re cosmetic only and you can’t buy them
The common thought was that Battlefield 2 would still have purchasable loot boxes at some point, but they’d switch to being cosmetic only. But even that hasn’t happened, with DICE playing it ultra-safe instead. Yes, there are still randomized rewards in these earned crates, but you can’t just flat-out buy crates. The only thing you can buy is…
Crystals and Credits purchase cosmetics
The only way to spend money in microtransactions now is to shell out for Crystals that will allow you to buy skins. And it appears you can also buy them for earned in-game credits as well. So literally, we went from power-advantage, for-sale loot boxes to…you can purchase skins outright, no randomization. That’s an enormous change.
Two things come to mind after reading all this:
- Wow, these are massive alterations, and really speak to how much fan pushback worked here. DICE and EA were so rattled that they more or less eliminated purchasable loot boxes for good, even with this “rework” solution. That’s pretty incredibly, and will hopefully be a lesson to other games. This is a real blow to the entire philosophy of loot boxes, and those who protested the original release should be proud they got this done.
- I still maintain that the entire Star Card system, which gives significant power advantages to some players over others, is bad, microtransactions aside. Designing a system where veteran players flat out have more health and damage and reduced cooldowns than other players is going to always feel lopsided. Regardless of how you get the Star Cards, I do think this wasn’t a very well designed system in the first place.
But yeah, this is pretty amazing to see. I’m curious to see how this will work in action, but with these changes happening five months after release, I’m wondering how many people will actually care other than the die-hard fans who have stuck around this long. But still, this is a significant moment in the industry, and the weight of it should not be overlooked.
Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook. Pick up my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is now in print, online and on audiobook.
