Electronic Arts and Star Wars Battlefront II

Joined Jun 2004
11K Posts | 0+
Georgia
Do you think EA will finally ruin themselves with this fiasco?

I'm talking about the whole thing with Star Wars Battlefront II where major characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are locked behind either 15+ hours of playing or $260 paywall on top of paying $80 for the game itself.

After all the complaints that have already surfaced, they made "changes" but only really in words; they lowered the credit cost of heroes in Battlefront 2 by 75% but they also lowered the amount of credits you gain from playing by 75% without telling anyone, so the net amount of effort to unlock stuff that should have been available from the start is about the same.
 
I am just now seeing some reports that EA is taking the backlash seriously and making changes, but I am still on the fence about getting it.

The game looks awesome though. It would be easy for me to get it as a PC version, but friends and co-workers of mine are trying to convince me to get a PS4 to do online play with them.
 
I'm kind of curious if they had intentionally made it as outrageous as they did knowing that there would be a backlash, so that when they changed it, they would look like they were doing us a solid; and just maybe were surprised at how strong the backlash was. :lol

If they keep the microtransactions out of it, I wonder if other game companies will follow suit?
 
I bought the last one with the season pass at launch and overall felt pretty burned. No way in hell was I going to let that happen again despite it looking nice and actually having a campaign.

This won't kill them though. Only way I see that happening is if they lose the rights for their sports games.
 
At most they will probably lose the Star Wars license. EA isn't going anywhere. Gamers still buy their other games, especially FIFA and Madden.
 
This is the exact reason I haven't purchased it yet. SpartanEvolved and I have been considering it, but we're afraid they're eventually going to bring back the microtransactions. We also don't want to have to play forever to unlock one hero.

Any of you got it yet?
 
It is possible that they will find a way to get those microtransactions back in the game. They seem bent on going that way. Not a good trend.
 
Micro transactions are taking the incentive out of making great games. Instead the incentive is shifting towards making games that can be easily and successfully monotized.


Lame Game A sells 100 copies @ 60 + 10k microtrans @ .99 = $15,900
Awesome Game B sells 200 copies @ 60 with no microtrans = 12,000

Awesome game was twice as popular but didn't make as much money and used more physical resources. Companies will still have to make great games to keep their brand power up but the focus will undoubtedly shift to games that'll produce more microtransactions with less incentive for said games to actually be great.

We'll still get good games but not nearly as many, at least not in the short run. One could argue that the extra money and fewer resources spent would grow the industy. More games would be released, increasing the odds of getting great games.

The audience isn't growing that fast. The wii and the tablet really inflated numbers by adding a large female component as well as a casual component to the audience. Theres not much more market to grab. Oversaturation will occur, followed by a collapse of the industry.

I'm no economist but when Rolling Stone realeases an article about how micro transactions are ruiening video games it raises concern. We've seen the video game industry go from billions to millions in 1983 (97% loss) so it could happen again.

If there is a silver lining Activision and Nintendo rose from those same ashes. Maybe we'll have to wait for a collapse to spark another renaissance.
 
Well, I did end up getting BF2. Obviously it does take a long time to unlock the heroes (I honestly don't fully understand the system yet and I've had it for about three weeks), but it seems they have created other ways to still get to play as those characters if you do well enough in a certain game. Overall, I don't think it is affecting me as much as I thought it would.

Good game, feel free to join me. :)
 
mastermario said:
Well, I did end up getting BF2. Obviously it does take a long time to unlock the heroes (I honestly don't fully understand the system yet and I've had it for about three weeks), but it seems they have created other ways to still get to play as those characters if you do well enough in a certain game. Overall, I don't think it is affecting me as much as I thought it would.

Good game, feel free to join me. :)

They did change and lower the overall time needed to unlock the characters due to the backlash.
 
nice, I just picked up the game today because the cute girl at gamestop said the story was great...

My little boy will probably play it, I was more or less flirting