{"id":19595,"date":"2018-04-02T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T16:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=19595"},"modified":"2018-04-02T11:41:16","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T16:41:16","slug":"the-shizamuels-arcade-star-wars-battlefront-ii-receiving-an-overhaul-to-progression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2018\/04\/02\/the-shizamuels-arcade-star-wars-battlefront-ii-receiving-an-overhaul-to-progression\/","title":{"rendered":"The SHIZAMuel’s Arcade: Star Wars Battlefront II receiving an overhaul to progression"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Star Wars: Battlefront II started off in possibly the worst way imaginable. Despite all the hype, fans (myself included) were hugely disappointed with how the game turned out to be upon release. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0The biggest problem with the game was how progression worked. You rely on loot boxes that you can buy with real-world money to get a random assortment of in-game goods. Electronic Arts (EA) decided to make this the foundation of the game\u2019s progression. Fans were outraged and considered this a pay-to-win mechanic that free-to-play mobile games use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Fans were upset with other mechanics in the game, such as how it would take approximately 40 hours to unlock a new hero. This was discussed on Reddit during a live Q&A and EA explained that this was done \u201cto provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment\u201d. It eventually became the most downvoted post in Reddit history with over 680,000 downvotes. To give you a sense of scale, Reddit is the seventh most visited website on the entire internet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Another issue was the story mode. There was a lot of hype involving story mode. Not only was it all cannon (meaning it\u2019s part of the official Star Wars lore along with the movies and novelization) but it was also played from the perspective of the Empire.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It starts on Endor after the second Death Star is destroyed. You play as an Imperial soldier, Iden Versio, leading a special forces team called \u201cInferno Squad.\u201d She grew up on Vardos which is a firm supporter of the Empire. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Once you start, you see how much she loves the Empire, but after two missions, she quickly turns to the side of the rebellion when she realizes that the Empire is bad. Then the rest is just a standard story of fighting the Empire and bringing hope to the galaxy. It also doesn\u2019t help that it\u2019s only four hours long.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Inferno
Iden Versio: the fastest turncoat of the Empire since Finn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

With all this bad press, Disney executives put the hammer down and told EA to fix this since \u201cThe Last Jedi\u201d was coming out soon after this game. So, they removed all paid loot boxes from the game. However, it was still getting worse. Belgium and the state senator of Hawaii have launched investigations to see if loot boxes equate to real world gambling, which is a big problem when the targeted audience was children.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0To make up for all of this, EA has recently released a new update to completely change how progression works. Loot boxes are now strictly for credits (in-game currency) and cosmetics without impacting gameplay at all. You can only obtain them through gameplay and completing certain milestones and challenges. If you want to make whatever class you\u2019re using stronger, you have to gain enough experience to get enough skill points to spend on upgrading weapons and in-game abilities called \u201cStar Cards\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0All of the heroes and villains have also been unlocked so you won\u2019t have to spend hours of grinding to unlock them. Now you can play as whichever hero or villain you want. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It also added a new map. Cloud City on Bespin. It\u2019s only available when you\u2019re playing Blast (Team Deathmatch), Heroes vs. Villains and Jetpack Cargo (fighting over a cargo unit where everyone has Jetpacks), though Jetpack Cargo is only available for a limited time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0It has also made certain guns and heroes more balanced, powering up certain blasters and heroes while also powering down others so battles aren\u2019t too one-sided.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Whether this game is worth buying or not is still up for debate. We\u2019ll see how players react to this new form of progression to determine if EA has made up for its previous pay-to-win mechanics, or if people still consider them to be on the dark side of the force.<\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel Christian<\/strong>
\nIntern<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0Star Wars: Battlefront II started off in possibly the worst way imaginable. Despite all the hype, fans (myself included) were hugely disappointed with how the game turned out to be upon release. \u00a0 \u00a0The biggest problem with the game was how progression worked. You rely on loot boxes that you can buy with real-world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":19596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2104,2113,3],"tags":[2507,2141,2508,2432,1633,2506,2433,323],"class_list":["post-19595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-video-games","category-tartan-news","tag-ea","tag-online-exclusive","tag-reddit","tag-samuel-christian","tag-star-wars","tag-star-wars-battlefront-ii","tag-the-shizamuels-arcade","tag-video-games"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Star-wars-battlefront-2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-563","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19598,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19595\/revisions\/19598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}