EA and DICE have received criticism already for the loot box economy in Star Wars Battlefront II. They even announced some changes after feedback from the beta regarding making the loot boxes less pay-to-win and putting higher-tier gameplay benefits behind actually playing the game and leveling up. With some copies of Star Wars Battlefront II now being out in the wild, players are analyzing the currencies, loot boxes, unlocks, and general economy of the game to find some results they aren’t happy with.
One player took to the Star Wars Battlefront Reddit to complain about spending $80 just to have Darth Vader locked out at the beginning. In fact, many of the game’s most iconic heroes are locked from the start, with the most pricey of them requiring 60,000 credits to unlock. For reference, each trooper loot box costs 4,000 credits, with hero and starfighter boxes coming in at under 2,500 credits each. Loot boxes contain Star Cards that can be used to customize and improve your characters’ abilities, so when a single locked character costs 15 times as much as the most expensive loot box, it’s clear there will be a significant grind to unlock Lord Vader. Now add that there are numerous locked characters, such as Luke, and it’s unlikely that any player will actually unlock every single available hero. That’s just a lot of grinding in one game.
Cue EA’s response. In what comes across as a very generic reply to the complaint, user EACommunityTeam, a verified EA account, attempted to talk about how the economy will be updated and changed based on real data, but this intent to change was overshadowed by a brief comment about wanting to provide a sense of pride and accomplishment where players only see a grind.
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.
The comment currently has a score of -381,000, a number that takes into account both upvotes and downvotes, so assuming the comment doesn’t have a 100% downvote ratio, a lot more than just 381,000 people have clicked on that down arrow. That easily makes it the most downvoted Reddit comment ever. For reference, the previously most downvoted single comment on Reddit was from just a couple of months ago, netting a score of only -24,000.
It’s clear that players don’t agree with the economy of Battlefront II’s unlocks, but given the fact that the entire game is basically a response to fan feedback about the first, it’s safe to say that EA and DICE are quickly working to resolve these concerns. The Reddit comment from EA strikes me as a quick PR response while the development team analyzes how to best fix the issue. I expect that we’ll hear more from EA and DICE soon regarding changes to how heroes are unlocked.
