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EA And DICE Tune Lootboxes In Battlefront II
During the beta for Star Wars Battlefront II, players noticed that the loot box aspect of the game implied some grinding or paying for what the game called Crates. After heavy criticism coming out of the beta, DICE have announced major changes to the way the crate system works.
Before and during the beta, Battlefront II would only dole out weapons and abilities above the base tier through crates. This on its own could be annoying, but it encouraged players to pay for crates in order to just get the best weapons and abilities from the beginning or get frustrated and pay for crates in hopes of losing less.
Now, DICE have promised to make the following changes:
- Epic Star Cards, the highest tier of Star Cards available at launch, have been removed from Crates
- You'll need to reach a certain rank to craft upgraded Star Cards
- Weapons are locked behind specific milestones
- Class-specific gear and items can be unlocked by playing as them
In short, DICE want to de-emphasize a player's ability to pay-to-win. Now, it is more about putting in the time to unlock weapons through playing as a class. Getting Heavy weapons requires playing as a Heavy and reaching play milestones like kills and wins. Crates are still incorporated in the game, but now do not do everything, which marks a major difference from how it used to work.
A full explanation of the changes can be found here. The post notes that all post-launch content for Battlefront II will be free, which means the crates were likely EA's attempt at monetizing the game post-release without DLC revenue.
Star Wars Battlefront II is scheduled for a November 17 release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
Our Take
This is a good change, but one I wonder if EA would have made had there not been so much clamor over lootboxes in recent weeks and months.
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