DICE and EA's Star Wars Battlefront

[Haveayap 127]

I was wondering how others found the beta, I personally did not like it... All the beta had going for it was the graphics.

I must also ask what are peoples opinions on the new $50 DLC pack that was anounced for the game? I am honestly over this sh#t that EA continue to do to my favorite franchises and have just decided to boycot them from now on.

[Dastardly 31]

I think your forgetting about the amazing sound design. Especially for the implosion grenade which sounds incredibly awesome.

[high5 18]

EA in a nutshell.. I would struggle to mention a game by them that doesn't fit the same description, graphics and sound only go so far without depth. but that's just my years of discontent built up, there are exceptions but unfortunately not many for the decades they've been standing at the top of the food chain. what can I say most people like crap IMHO  I get that they dont develop them but its definately an EA thing.

[Kexikus 995]

Well, graphics and especially the sound were awesome, no doubt about that.

 

And I personally liked the gameplay a lot, even though I wish it were slightly more tactical. But still, it was fun even after 8 hours on those two maps, so I'm definetly looking forward to the full game.

 

Not sure what to think about the season pass though... Those DLCs have to be really big to be worth another 50€/$ and I'll probably wait to see what they're going to be and even then it's unlikely that I'll buy the pass for 50€.

[Xuul 224]

The game looked great and really captured that Star Wars feel. As far as actually being a good game.... it alright. 

 

No real depth. It will sell well. I'd give the game 4-6 months max before not many people are playing, unless the DLC is really special.

 

If you care to see my thoughts as I played the game for the first time (having only seen the trailer) you can watch it here.

 

 

 

[l2daorch 19]

Played the beta for about 12 hours. I thought it was pretty fun, graphics and sound are obviously pretty darn awesome. Now I might be slightly biased because I have been waiting for this for about 10 years. And I'm not talking battlefront 3, I'm talking star wars games. Really awesome star wars games. When a new Jedi Academy, Kotor 3, Battlefront 3, Imperial Commando etc were canceled/didn't happen a part of me died. I grew up playing mainly star wars games and suddenly I was left with a bunch of Clone Wars Games, the occasional handheld/mobile game, 1 decent force unleashed and a mediocre follow-up and an MMO that (to me) raped KOTOR while telling me to pay 15 bucks a month to get to watch (before it went f2p). So to me it's been about 10 years (or maybe 9) since the golden age of awesome star wars games came to an end. And boy have I been waiting patiently for this.

Now I'm usually very critical about the games I play, but if you put star wars on it I'll play anything and probably have a great time doing so.

So I was gonna love battlefront either way, but I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. The controls are pretty iffy (console) as I never accepted Left Trigger being zooming. However, I was able to get my original Xbox S Controller to work and also managed to get a control scheme going that felt right, thank god that they let you decided between hold zoom and toggle zoom.

The gameplay felt really good. Movement speed was ok, could be faster. Field of View was pretty sweet, jump height could be higher. Kill Times were alright but could have been a bit slower, headshots do give a nice juice multiplier though. The snipe felt pretty sweet and I hope that they keep it 2 shot to the body and 1 shot to the head. The lack of ADS is my favorite part though, I love classic zoom. I don't like how nades explode after a set time, but the way you throw them is pretty sweet compared to most fps nowadays. I was sad to see sprint in (i know it was in the original, I just really hate sprint in games), but it didn't feel that much faster than regular walking so I was ok with it. Card system felt nice, I really enjoyed farming those credits to buy something new, though I wish you could put any card in any slot as I would have loved to use grenade + snipe + jet pack. Also the jetpack is probably the best that I have ever seen in any fps. One quick super jump is so much better than, for example, what Halo has been doing. I don't really care wether they use the card system or the original battlefront's class system. Though as kids love customization nowadays it's probably good that they use this new system.

Power ups for vehicles being on spots on the map rather than you walking up to that vehicle is fine with me, I don't really enjoy vehicular combat anyway. However, I prefered battlefront 2's system of granting hero to someone performing well rather than it being a random powerup on the map. The other powerups for thermal imploder, orbital strike etc. working the way they did was ok with me as well, most of them felt pretty useless anyway.

I very much so preferred the smaller map over hoth, but both were pretty fun though I never quite got the hang of air battles. I'm very much so looking forward to the final game coming out, though I'll probably wait for a sale before I pick up the 50 $ season pass. I personally think 50 bucks is way too much, but that's what sales are for and I really don't mind paying 10-20 bucks for DLC if it's actually good dlc, if not I'll simply not buy it. Some people are acting like EA is forcing you to pay those 50 bucks. Also I really enjoyed dedicated servers and simply choosing which gamemode you wanted to play, I for one am not a big fan of server browsers and I'm very glad that they made matchmaking the way it is. The 1/2vsAI mission was also alright, though I don't really see the point in playing them. I don't mind the lack of campaign as battlefront has always been a multiplayer focused game for me.

 

I for one am not even mad that EA got the star wars license. I just want at ton of star wars games, and I'm pretty sure that that's what they'll give me. And I think that Bioware/Dice/Visceral Games are capable of giving me games that are superior to most of the star wars game crap that has come out since 05/06. Of course they are in it to make a ton of money, every publisher is. I don't really think EA is any more "evil" than ubisoft, microsoft, activision etc. And I for one preferred battlefront over a lot of fps that came out in the last few years. People really need to stop comparing the games' features to battlefront 2, this is a reboot not a continuation. I very much so prefer solid gameplay/good menus/good netcode etc. over having clone wars characters or not. Also the original clone wars was original trilogy only as well and I'd say EA would be very stupid if they didn't use clone wars as a selling point for Battlefront 2 and 7-9 as selling point for Battlefront 3. But that's just my opinion and I can totally understand that someone who has been looking forward to what he imagined would be battlefront 3 might be somewhat upset right now, but I just want fun Star Wars games, and battlefront will give me just that.

[Doctor Evil 51]

The problem is that it's not Battlefront, It shouldn't even have the title on it. I got extremely bored after a couple hours of playing it because it felt so vanilla and lackidasical. Still, I liked some bits. Here is what I liked about it

 

• Graphics - They looked incredibly real, top notch work
• Sound Effects - Right down to little blips, DICE really deserves praise for nailing this to the wall
• Rechargeable blasters - It's star wars and it makes sense honestly, a reloading system would have worked as well but I'm not all up in arms about it

What I don't like

 

• Vehicle power ups - This is the worst decision made by DICE, to make that using a vehicle involves running up to a holo disc and pressing 4, while trying to avoid fire. This completely takes away from the game because lots of players are instead hunting for these tokens rather than actually playing the objectives. I won't even discuss how bad the vehicle controls are, the T-47s are completely useless (and the empire should not have fighter support on Hoth).
• Matchmaking - Taking away the choice of the players on where they want to go has always been bad. In CoD you often get lobbies that are hosted by Russians or somebody with a god awful connection. I have no clue why they can't allow us to choose our own servers
• Partner - Apparently DICE thought that people playing this game only have 1 friend, what the hell happend to the squad system back in the BF2 Days?
• Hero System - How BF2 had it was perfect, it made sure that the hero would go to good use. Now anyone can get it, and who-ever plays the hero is generally an 8 year old who does not know what he is doing. Also, same reason as above
• the Card system - My god this HUD idea is horrendous, it makes it look like a texas hold-em game in star wars. My biggest gripe is the fact that a sniper rifle is a freaking power up, a weapon... as a power up... yeah.
• Spawn system - This could have been the easiest of BF2's features to include, but instead DICE opted to roll with the typical FPS spawn system. Static spawns have been proven to work time and again, while this kind of mobile spawn system encourages spawn trapping, spawn killing, etc. It's complete garbage
• Equip system - Only one weapon? Please, this is just awful. Any shooter gives the player at least two weapons to play with, one primary and a secondary
• Lack of a Class system - I'm fine with the idea of customizing your set up, but getting rid of the class system entirely is dumb. Now there are no specific roles for characters
• And last but not least (and most obvious), no campaign, space battles, or Galactic Conquest
• Oh, and the $50 season pass announced BEFORE the release, when the game is still buggy as crap and will likely be a BF4 repeat launch. How insulting

I will say I have always been opposed to DLC as it is used now. DLC should be (bethesda does this right) just expansion packs as they were 10 years ago that have little or nothing to do with the main plot. DLC, especially PAID dlc, for multiplayer games is even worse when it splits the player base into two, the haves and the have nots for maps, effectively killing the community. Halo specifically does not do paid DLC maps because of this effect, and that's one of the reasons why Halo is incredibly successful. Plus, I have a feeling this DLC for battlefront is just content that got the axe from the main game to be sold as DLC

 

The minute EA was announced to develop Star Wars games, I died a little inside. Disney so far has made good decisions, not so much in letting EA ruin Star Wars gaming. I might buy it when the price goes down.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Doctor Evil

[Haveayap 127]

The problem is that it's not Battlefront, It shouldn't even have the title on it. Here is what I liked about it

 

• Graphics - They looked incredibly real, top notch work
• Sound Effects - Right down to little blips, DICE really deserves praise for nailing this to the wall
• Rechargeable blasters - It's star wars and it makes sense honestly, a reloading system would have worked as well but I'm not all up in arms about it

What I don't like

 

• Vehicle power ups - This is the worst decision made by DICE, to make that using a vehicle is running up to a holo disc and pressing 4, while trying to avoid fire. This completely takes away from the game because lots of players are instead hunting for these tokens rather than actually playing the objectives.
• Hero System - How BF2 had it was perfect, it made sure that the hero would go to good use. Now anyone can get it, and who-ever plays the hero is generally an 8 year old who does not know what he is doing. Also, same reason as above
• the Card system - My god this HUD idea is horrendous, it makes it look like a texas hold-em game in star wars. My biggest gripe is the fact that a sniper rifle is a freaking power up, how stupid is this?
• Spawn system - This could have been the easiest of BF2's features to include, but instead DICE opted to roll with the typical FPS spawn system. Static spawns have been proven to work time and again, while this kind of mobile spawn system encourages spawn trapping, spawn killing, etc. It's complete garbage
• Equip system - Only one weapon? Please, this is just awful. Any shooter gives the player at least two weapons to play with, one primary and a secondary
• Lack of a Class system - I'm fine with the idea of customizing your set up, but getting rid of the class system entirely is dumb. Now there are no specific roles for characters
• And last but not least (and most obvious), no campaign, space battles, or Galactic Conquest
• Oh, and the $50 season pass announced BEFORE the release, when the game is still buggy as crap and will likely be a BF4 repeat launch. How insulting

I will say I have always been opposed to DLC as it is used now. DLC should be (bethesda does this right) just expansion packs as they were 10 years ago that have little or nothing to do with the main plot. DLC, especially PAID dlc, for multiplayer games is even worse when it splits the player base into two, the haves and the have nots for maps, effectively killing the community. Halo specifically does not do paid DLC maps because of this effect, and that's one of the reasons why Halo is incredibly successful. Plus, I have a feeling this DLC for battlefront is just content that got the axe from the main game to be sold as DLC

 

The minute EA was announced to develop Star Wars games, I died a little inside. Disney so far has made good decisions, not so much in letting EA ruin Star Wars gaming. I might buy it when the price goes down.

I agree with everything on this list, Id like to add some to the negatives though, The thing that frustrated me most about this game is how it did not feel like it was set in the SW universe... IMO, Vader and Luke Skywalker should move how they do in the movies and other games, their movements feel so unnatural in the games, the same goes for the stormtroopers and rebels... like seriously, Also the lightsaber system was rubbish I could not believe that they let this hack and slash in the alpha, but to leave it in the demo was ridiculious, its 2015, not  2003... (JKJA system was alot better). I was also rather mad how the empire does not use jetpacks (even though many troopers did), yet the rebels use jetpacks (Seriously, a few special units inside the rebellion used jetpacks, not every bloody trooper, they felt so out of place and misused in the game), Also was rather frustrated how awful the flying felt in the demo (It feels way to stiff)... again, I thought they would have fixed this from the alpha, but obviously not. Other things that annoy me about this game includes the $50 season pass (which ill assume will be an annual payment like most of their games, I hope that TCW is added in... I might buy the game if that was part of the DLC), their awful decision on how they have set up the servers (Its a multiplayer game that could have no servers in two years... not a great decision), and we cant mod the game, wheres the fun in that?? One of the reasons why SWBF 1 and 2 were so good and people like myself still play them was because of the many mods created for them... Its sad how EA have treated the Battlefront franchise, and after TOR (which I have some large issues with myself, it just doesnt live up to the name, KOTOR and TSL were great, and this game just wrecked those great stories)... I think ill be boycotting anything EA release's from now on

[Doctor Evil 51]

I agree with everything on this list, Id like to add some to the negatives though, The thing that frustrated me most about this game is how it did not feel like it was set in the SW universe... IMO, Vader and Luke Skywalker should move how they do in the movies and other games, their movements feel so unnatural in the games, the same goes for the stormtroopers and rebels... like seriously, Also the lightsaber system was rubbish I could not believe that they let this hack and slash in the alpha, but to leave it in the demo was ridiculious, its 2015, not  2003... (JKJA system was alot better). I was also rather mad how the empire does not use jetpacks (even though many troopers did), yet the rebels use jetpacks (Seriously, a few special units inside the rebellion used jetpacks, not every bloody trooper, they felt so out of place and misused in the game), Also was rather frustrated how awful the flying felt in the demo (It feels way to stiff)... again, I thought they would have fixed this from the alpha, but obviously not. Other things that annoy me about this game includes the $50 season pass (which ill assume will be an annual payment like most of their games, I hope that TCW is added in... I might buy the game if that was part of the DLC), their awful decision on how they have set up the servers (Its a multiplayer game that could have no servers in two years... not a great decision), and we cant mod the game, wheres the fun in that?? One of the reasons why SWBF 1 and 2 were so good and people like myself still play them was because of the many mods created for them... Its sad how EA have treated the Battlefront franchise, and after TOR (which I have some large issues with myself, it just doesnt live up to the name, KOTOR and TSL were great, and this game just wrecked those great stories)... I think ill be boycotting anything EA release's from now on

 

Yep, TOR was garbage as well. Retconned everything good about TSL and just went back to happy-go lucky black and white formula. EA ruins all that they touch, just look at Mass Effect. ME3 was utter crap and ME2 was practically a gears of war clone with RPG elements

 

I honestly don't mind the jetpacks because they are more like a double jump thing, but it's not something I'm too happy with. And yeah the lightsaber system with the heros was so hilariously awful to use

Edited January 19, 2017 by Sith Holocron

[high5 18]

Amen brother

 

Doctor's first point is my main quarrel, made a bad star wars game? Not the first not the last, but to take the name of a game I love and dangle it in front of me before.. SURPRISE mofo's different game play, producers, developers.. just think of a cool word and put it at the end of star wars its not hard.

[Haveayap 127]

Amen brother

 

Doctor's first point is my main quarrel, made a bad star wars game? Not the first not the last, but to take the name of a game I love and dangle it in front of me before.. SURPRISE mofo's different game play, producers, developers.. just think of a cool word and put it at the end of star wars its not hard.

Star Wars Battlefield Cough Cough

[Doctor Evil 51]

Star Wars Battlefield Cough Cough

 

It's actually quite different than Battlefield in itself, perhaps they should have used the name that LucasArts was using, First Assault. Then again, EA should have let LA finish up 1313, would have been great ._.

[Haveayap 127]

It's actually quite different than Battlefield in itself, perhaps they should have used the name that LucasArts was using, First Assault. Then again, EA should have let LA finish up 1313, would have been great ._.

Bad joke sorry...

[Canderis 180]

I hate online multiplayer, specifically PVP. I hate the community it attracts. I hate the competitive atmosphere. I was really hurt by the decision to axe the campaign because chances are that's all I'd enjoy in this game. 
The original battlefront series was the perfect shooter for me because it's instant action was incredibly fun for a friend and I to sit down and just go butcher some AI. I've heard they have some sort of AI battles that were not in the beta, but I don't know for sure. Had they showed those off at all I might be inclined to get the game at launch but currently I have no reason to want it, and that really hurts because I had been very excited for this game.
I really hope EA doesn't sterilize the rest of the games they are making, or continue to rely on games based purely on nostalgia to sell, because those will only end up hated. TOR played on Kotor nostalgia, and this is playing on the Battlefront nostalgia. Nothing they can make will make us happy when thats what they're working with. I want, and they will really only succeed with new original IPs. Thats what made the late 90's early 00's the golden age of Star Wars games. They had a ton of great series being made, not just one or two games with endless sequels. Republic Commando, Kotor, Empire at War, the Jedi Knight games, Battlefront, Galactic Battlegrounds, and even kid-friendly games like Pit Droids and Droid Works. There were so many, extremely different games around that nobody even cared if one or two stunk because there were plenty of others to choose from. Thats what I hope EA does with the license.

[Doctor Evil 51]

I want someone to remake Pod Racer, that game was probably the best thing to come out of Episode 1

[Haveayap 127]

WOW... Just what we need, they are planning on making SEVERAL more Battlefront games, not just a Battlefront 2 (thats due next year).

 

TY EA, you really know what we want, they are milking SW dry.

 

If the next game is based on the new trilogy, Id say the other one will have something to do with TCW, because heaven forbid we cant have TCW, GCW and whatever war they are calling the new trilogy in one bloody  battlefront game when they could make three worth $100+ each

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-2-confirmed-features-content/1100-6439682/

[Malkior 476]

I want someone to remake Pod Racer, that game was probably the best thing to come out of Episode 1

You might be right, but I still feel that Episode 1 - The Game was close to, if not, the best of the EP 1 games. It was incredibly underrated, and managed to have a much better adventure story than the movie it's based off of while still following close to it. If they could update it a bit, I could see it being a very interesting game to experience.

[Mephiles550 227]

Still never going to buy this. I'm not going to pay $110 for any game to be complete, whether it be Battlefield or Battlefront, and I'm not going to buy half of a game that's pretty much only online.