Star Wars: Battlefront

[Solo4114]

This reminds me of a youtube video i watched, i think it was a watchmojo, about the top ten underrated and ignored games. Most of them were all vastly different from what was out there and were exactly what people were demanding when they wanted something new and different but those same people went and bought the same cookie cutter games they always do. Sadly the design box has been stuck since halo when FPS became popular and then RPGs went from turn based, which a lot of folks still prefer, to action/RPG and even in japan this fad caught on. The game industry is no longer run by gamers and pioneers like in the 70s-90s, it's run by people who only want to make money and have set formulas for making games and younger gamers sadly suck it up like it's the best thing ever. You see the people who want always on pvp like this game but aren't happy when they get it now too.

I tend to think it's because people lack vision and imagination. When they try to imagine an alternative to whatever they're bored with, it usually ends up being a slight variation on exactly what they're bored with. It's not a radical departure. Look at it this way. Whenever you asked ANY fan of Star Wars about what story they'd want to see after ROTJ, the assumption is always that the empire was defeated -- totally -- and the Rebellion took over as the New Republic. Nobody ever bothered to approach the story from the perspective of "Endor was one battle. An important one, but only one. What if the Empire is still out there, fighting, and not just as some fractured remnant?" If you'd asked people to imagine the setting for Ep. VII, nobody would've guessed we'd get what we're (apparently) getting.

Likewise, if you asked people about what kind of FPS they wanted to play in, say, 2001, nobody would've described anything close to BF1942. They'd have just done variants on, say, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, or Team Fortress, or Quake, or whatever.

Right now, if you ask people what kind of FPS they want, they'll basically describe either Battlefield or COD, possibly with slight variations. Now, some of that is because those are generally decently designed games. They have their flaws, but on the whole, each game provides a particular take on the FPS genre that caters to the bulk of the audience out there. But part of this is also, I think, because people can't see beyond their own noses. At best, they can imagine slightly different tweaks to their given FPS. So, someone might suggest getting to pick which item you unlock next, rather than unlocking stuff in a set progression. Or someone might suggest making vehicles locked to people below XYZ rank or whatever (not saying all of these are good ideas, mind you). Basically, it's the same core game, but with a few minor tweaks. Nobody is saying "Screw all that. We're doing this completely differently."

I don't know when this will change, but I think it will eventually. That or the FPS itself will fade (as many other genres have) or will mutate into something else entirely.

 

[Zendragon]

I have liked what I have seen so far and have enjoyed playing the Beta. Not sure if I will buy it though.

 

[Westies14]

The only level I was able to sample was a single player "wave" assault on Tatooine. It felt unfortunately sloppy. I couldn't jump/jet to those floating diamonds for the life of me. Sure looked pretty, though! Hopefully when I get around to picking up the full game I'll get a better handle on the controls.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I didn't play it, but I gather they caught some real flak for Battlefield: Hardline, which was treated as Battlefield 4 just reskinned for cops and robbers. My guess is that it wasn't a real reskin, but that the gameplay felt similar enough that people were annoyed it was billed at full price.

What I think we might be seeing is a ground-swell of underlying dissatisfaction with just "more of the same" from gamers, but without any sense of where they want to go. People are ready for a change...but they can't imagine what that change looks like. They only know what it doesn't look like, and that includes both Battlefront and Hardline (as well as Titanfall). Some of this is also due to business model issues for EA, where they regularly:

- Include a half-assed SP campaign, or don't bother including one at all.
- Charge for a full game for what basically amounts to 2-3 expansion-packs worth of multiplayer maps (often recycling the same assets, just in different game modes). Seriously, the DLC is usually around $15 a piece, and they usually release, like, 4 DLC per new game.
- Charge full-price for, essentially, a MP game that still feels like the same old game.
- Don't seem to give a crap about preventing hacks (I gather the Battlefront Beta had hacks almost immediately, because it's the same engine).
- Make modding impossible.
- Are crap for supporting their games.

...

I agree with your post. I meant that they should have taken some features of Battlefield and put them into Battlefront. They should make the vehicles like Battlefield where you have multiple people in one vehicle. They did let you actually drive the AT-AT in Battlefront 2, but it was just the driver and gunner. Why not have them, a commander that could pick targets or something, then haul around troops in the back? Why not allow two players in the AT-ST? It's stuff like that that EA really could have improved in the new game. In Battlefield 3 or 4, if you take a transport helicopter you have two pilots, two gunners, and four (I think) other players in the back, the tank could have three crewmembers, etc.

As for hacks, I don't know about consoles, but I played BF2, BF3, and BF4 ALOT on the PC and I can count on both hands the times I really saw real cheaters playing. 99% of the time the people who are "cheating" are just better players or players who know the game mechanics better. For example, I remember in BF3 people calling out me and my squad as cheaters because we were anti-tank troops and were instantly killing their tanks. They didn't know the proper angles and damage resulting from that so us hitting from three directions at right angles to the tank (the most damage per side) was cheating to them. Another good one is getting called out for cheating because I killed his tank with a .44 Magnum. I laid down three anti-tank mines and shot them from a window, which killed their tank. The game called it a .44 kill because that's what I fired. :lol

 

[gizmo]

I didn't play it, but I gather they caught some real flak for Battlefield: Hardline, which was treated as Battlefield 4 just reskinned for cops and robbers. My guess is that it wasn't a real reskin, but that the gameplay felt similar enough that people were annoyed it was billed at full price.

What I think we might be seeing is a ground-swell of underlying dissatisfaction with just "more of the same" from gamers, but without any sense of where they want to go. People are ready for a change...but they can't imagine what that change looks like. They only know what it doesn't look like, and that includes both Battlefront and Hardline (as well as Titanfall). Some of this is also due to business model issues for EA, where they regularly:

- Include a half-assed SP campaign, or don't bother including one at all.
- Charge for a full game for what basically amounts to 2-3 expansion-packs worth of multiplayer maps (often recycling the same assets, just in different game modes). Seriously, the DLC is usually around $15 a piece, and they usually release, like, 4 DLC per new game.
- Charge full-price for, essentially, a MP game that still feels like the same old game.
- Don't seem to give a crap about preventing hacks (I gather the Battlefront Beta had hacks almost immediately, because it's the same engine).
- Make modding impossible.
- Are crap for supporting their games.

When BF1942 came out, it was revolutionary. BF2 was a clear evolution from that design. Subsequent games have been minor tweaks on the basic formula...and it's a formula that's been around almost 15 years at this point. It's tired. It's old hat. It's in dire need of revitalization, and flashy lens-flare HDR-bloom graphics don't count for much when they're layered on top of the same bloody game you've been playing for 15 bloody years.

I actually don't think people would've been satisfied with a Star-Wars-skin BF game. I think they would've said "Come on. It's just BF4 with a Star Wars skin. And we have to pay full freight for this?!" That said, I think such a game would have been better received than this one. For me, the beta evinced a game that is a weird blend of casual and hardcore/standard gameplay. The unlock system...sucks for casual players. But the rest of the game isn't deep enough to keep hardcore players around for anything other than the occasional shooting gallery. This kind of imbalance in game design can kill a game in 6 months or so, as newbies fizzle out and move on, and hardcore guys have no one to shoot and go back to whatever else.

All that said, I expect it'll sell well, just like the prior Battlefront games (Which, to be honest...really weren't that great, either), and the trend of mediocre Star Wars games will continue. They'll get sequels, people will get hyped for "maybe this time it'll be better," it won't be, and we'll sit on this merry go round wondering why everything seems so familiar...

Nail on the head.


Ben

 

[Clutch]

My 10-yr old loves it so I'll end up buying it.

 

[azheat]

Been waiting to go hands on with this for a while also, sad to say I was a bit disappointed in the game play as well. Loved Battlefront 1 and 2 despite their flaws. For this game, graphics and scenery were nice, sound effects were great, I felt immersed in the Star Wars universe, but it has a ways to go. I'm a huge Battlefield fan, been playing it since the first game on the original xBox (never got into the computer versions). When I heard they were doing this, all I could think about was how cool it will be if they took the BF4 game play / design and switched everything over to Star Wars. Yeah, not what happened.

My biggest issues are:

1) I hate the vehicle tokens spawning throughout the battlefield, maybe it was just the beta maps, but it made it too easy for the enemy to shoot you when you try and deploy them. Then you need to wait for another one to spawn. It's one thing to get in a vehicle and be defeated, but I thought it was lame you could be defeated before even deploying it. Yes, in BF4 the enemy can come to your base and try and spawn camp, but there are tactics in place to at least help prevent that. Not so much here. Vehicles need to spawn at the base with the exception of the AT-AT.

2) Speaking of the AT-AT, one person inside at a time, come on!!! And way to short of time allowed inside.

3) I also hated the Hero token just spawning in the field, whoever finds it first gets it! That's the best you can do? I also hated when I deployed the Hero, he deployed in the back of the battle. On several occasions I deployed and was down to 88% before even getting to the battle. Terrible to have that timer start as soon he's deployed unless you deploy him in the action.

4) Flight mechanics on the air vehicles were terrible, the targeting system for the lock-on missiles was terrible, it felt way to easy to dominate / be dominated in aircraft. Loved the cockpit view though in the ties and x wing and the sound was awesome.

5) I hated not having anyway of defeating air vehicles unless you happened upon a spawn token for a missile launcher in the field or were in an air vehicle yourself. And even the missile launcher was incredibly difficult.

6) No different soldier classes to play with? I'm sure that's in the final game, but throw us a bone and let us test more than one!

7) Spawn camping was way too easy, several times when I was on the Rebel side enemy troops would get behind us, hop in a turret, and spawn kill.

8) The tokens for vehicles, weapons, and power-ups in the field were a joke. Way too many people were randomly wandering the field looking for tokens rather than working on the objective. I understand this may be unique to the beta version because everyone just wants to "try out" everything. But I think this will still be a problem in the final version if they leave it as is.

9) The reason I stopped playing Call of Duty was because I always felt like my life expectancy was about 8 seconds. Never had that issue in BF. Maybe I just suck, but kind of felt like that in this game.

I know people don't like recycled games, as mentioned above in a few posts. But I guess I am the minority, I personally would have wanted them to just take the best parts of BF4 and re-skinned everything for Star Wars, minus a few obvious tweaks to accommodate the Star Wars universe and it's specific vehicles, environments, and nuances. Even with BF4, I think by adding new weapons, new maps, new vehicles, new custom options, and maybe new choices for objective based game play, you have a winner. For me, it's not about completely changing the game play, it's just adding more variety. I will admit this only works with this style of game, head to head battle online. I am all for re-imagining and progression for many of my other games. I think this works because I only play BF online, in fact, I've never played more than 5 minutes of the solo campaign. That re-skinned formula can't exist for other genres, but it works for me because every time I play online it's a different experience, and that's mostly because of the players.

 

[SpyderDan]

5) I hated not having anyway of defeating air vehicles unless you happened upon a spawn token for a missile launcher in the field or were in an air vehicle yourself. And even the missile launcher was incredibly difficult.

You can hit the aircraft with all the weapons. I've even seen a video where Vader took out a snowspeeder by throwing his lightsaber, significantly leading the target, of course.

 

[Solo4114]

I could hit them, but I couldn't ever kill them. Also, most of the turrets don't traverse that far or fire fast enough to hit the target outside of the odd lucky shot. Even then, the air vehicles were able to survive.

This has always been an issue in DICE's games, though. Air vehicles have rarely had much by way of a counter except other air vehicles. Typically, especially as the game gets older, you get a small cadre of guys who've advanced in the use of air power to basically be unstoppable, and it tends to ruin maps.

DICE has always been a company that generally supports being able to lock one team into their base and kill them a la "fish in a barrel" and has applied that same approach to air power. It's always been a complaint of mine because it tends to lead to games that are blowouts (which are always boring to me, regardless of what side I'm on).

 

[azheat]

You can hit the aircraft with all the weapons. I've even seen a video where Vader took out a snowspeeder by throwing his lightsaber, significantly leading the target, of course.

Yeah, I hear you. I know you can hit them, just not effective enough. I'm not saying they need to be powerful enough to take them out in one shot, but enough to give you a fighting chance. It's like trying to take out a chopper with an assault rifle on BF4; more frustrating than realistically achievable. Having hand held weapons that are at least a little more effective against aircraft, like BF4 has the Stinger, IGLA, etc, would have been nice. Even some ground vehicles in BF have anti-air capabilities, none of that here. Hopefully in the final version.

I hated the limitations on the turrets as well, in most cases I couldn't even raise the barrel enough to come close to an air vehicle. I did see an AT-AT take out a speeder once, it was cool, but like the Vader and his saber example, that happens way too infrequently to really matter in gameplay.

 

[ghostryder]

 

[Wolfsburg]

Hahaha! Nice. Oh the feels...

 

[Jaitea]

Great likenesses

J

 

[Solo4114]

I mean, ok, so what? They're hero pickups. Was this not already known or at least strongly suspected? Did anyone think they WOULDN'T include Han, Leia, The Emperor, etc. when you can already play as Luke and Vader and probably Fett, too?

 

[allosaur176]

I mean, ok, so what? They're hero pickups. Was this not already known or at least strongly suspected? Did anyone think they WOULDN'T include Han, Leia, The Emperor, etc. when you can already play as Luke and Vader and probably Fett, too?

Fett is a definite..

 

[Jaitea]

Fett is a definite..

Yes he is

http://www.starwarsnewsnet.com/2015/10/star-wars-battlefront-new-modes-more-heroesvillains.html

J

 

[Solo4114]

I figured as much. Basically, major characters from the OT -- heroes and villains -- should be expected to appear in this game as hero token characters. It's not that exciting. You could do this in Battlefront 2.

 

[teragon]

I hope there is a mode somewhere in there where everyone is a hero. I remember that from Battlefront 2, it was sort of a death match I think, on tatooine ? I think you could even go in the famous cantina, I remember the song playing when you got near.

 

[Solo4114]

I hope there is a mode somewhere in there where everyone is a hero. I remember that from Battlefront 2, it was sort of a death match I think, on tatooine ? I think you could even go in the famous cantina, I remember the song playing when you got near.

Yeah, I think it was "Hero Duel" or "Hero Team Deathmatch" or something. It was on the Mos Eisley Streets level, I think. It was ok. Nothing special, in my opinion.

 

[teragon]

Well, it was the occasion to try out all the heroes abilities and learn how to control them efficiently.
Because from my experience in Dice Battlefront, the two times I got Luke were first out of pure luck, stumbling on the power-up and I got killed before I could do serious damage every time, because I didn't know how to really use him. Plus I only got him 2 times on the several days I played, so a hero duel mode would be nice to actually get to play a hero for more than a few minutes every once in a blue moon !