Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (DICE)

Split-screen co-op is available for Arcade mode. It doesn't cover all of the maps (the biggest maps, designed for Galactic Assault, are not available), but there are several different scenarios (10+ each, light-side and dark-side) available, and some of them look like they would be a lot of fun for co-op. Vader and Palpatine, assaulting the rebel base on Yavin 4, would be one of those. You can also make custom scenarios as well, and adjustable difficulty. There are a number of achievements for Arcade mode, but they put a daily cap on how much you can earn from it.

I didn't think the campaign was all that short. I spent 2 long nights playing through it, totally glued to the couch, spending something more in the ballpark of 8 hours. Maybe it can be blown through in 4 hours, but that would be by kids with ADD, trying to race through it.

The truth is, the days of longer campaign experiences in a AAA game like this are in the past. The kids these games are primarily marketed to do not want them, and they take way too much time (and therefore budget) to make these days. The more powerful the hardware gets, allowing for better looking games with more detailed environments, the fewer levels we see, whether single or multi-player. This has been the trend for decades now, and I don't see that changing. These days, it would take an exceptional budget (in the ballpark of $200 million+) and 4 or 5 years to develop a modern AAA FPS game with the number of levels and long campaigns of years past. That's a big risky situation, when the biggest sellers they have to compete with get roughly half that time and budget.

The only reason that a game like this got made, and got the hefty budget that it did (to include a single-player campaign at all, not to mention the planned free DLC releases), was because of all the $$$ EA saw if they could monetize it the way they planned to. It was never going to be otherwise, in this day and age.
I don't even care about the campaign - could have ditched the whole thing. What I find really galling is just how limited both local co-op and solo offline play is - given the history of this franchise, that's just inexcusable to me. I mean, there is in fact less game modes than the LAST BF game, as walker assualt and starfighter are both gone, replaced by team or free for all deathmatch on 4 small maps, and no vehicles. We know the large maps can handle numerous bots at least in solo mode, with little reason to think (as the LAST game already proved) that there would be appreciable performance hits if they were running splitscreen co-op either. The 'custom match' boils down to "how many respawns of 10 v 10 do you want?', 'which of these 4 maps do you want?', and 'what skill level do you want?', all for only a basic deathmatch mode or team deathmatch mode. The "Battle Scenarios" are again on very limited maps, and boil down to one-against-ten, or two-against-ten deathmatches. Contrast this to the offline solo and/or co-op play in the original BF2 with objective based modes in addition to deathmatches, vehicle combat all over the place (still love to load up Bespin platforms and enjoy the chaos at the bridge choke points while XWs and TIEs are slugging it out, AA cannons are laying down fire, and YWs are dropping bombs on the infantry) and it's hard not to be really, really unimpressed with what this game is.
 
Not "likely." It's actually confirmed. The first (hopefully not last?) DLC will include single player missions for Iden.

Right now, the big question in the community (aside from the usual "They need to balance these maps better" discussion) is about what comes next for the progression system and microtransactions. DICE has been silent. I expect them to remain so until the next DLC at the earliest.

In my opinion they should just switch over to the Battlefield 3/4 system of progression. They already have that in house so it can't be that hard!
 
I would pay 60 bucks for just a bit longer single player campaigns with this engine. The areas and models are just so cool. In the arcade mode you can see the multiplayer maps a bit better and geeze, they are just so cool and good looking.
 
I really don't get this. I even called, I'm pretty sure in this thread too that this would be a Tutorial disguised as a campaign and likely clock in at around 5 hours.. just like the "campaign" for BF1, **** I'm pretty sure I even called out how the Story line would play out. Battlefield has always been Multiplayer focused, were people really expected like a 30 - 50 hour SP campaign?

Also keep in mind they are saving stuff for the free DLC releases coming up which will likely extend the SP story. people would have lost their minds if it had the entire thing and spoiled parts of TLJ or the movie after.

See, for me, the biggest factor of gameplay is feeling like I'm accomplishing something. Single-player, online co-op, whatever -- as long as what I/we are doing affects the environment and the endgame, I'm happy. It's why I don't really do much in the way of MMOs -- if nothing you do matters, why play? I don't mind a head-to-head or team vs. team slugfest arena to practice, hone skills, and such, but I don't like it being the focus. Nor do I like grind. I don't care about an achievement for playing every character on a particular map, say. And it feels pointless in the extreme to rescue X prisoners or pick Y mushrooms or mine Z ore for fetch quests when there are ten thousand more "chosen ones" who have come before and ten thousand more coming along right after who have done and will do the exact same thing.

It doesn't even have to be something complicated. Even something like the Borderlands games, with their branching storyline structure, is terrifically fun for me and almost endlessly replayable. The various choices I make affect what or who is or is not available to me later in the story. I like that. For all their faults, the Force Unleashed games had something vaguely similar (even if there was, at the time, only one "official" storyline).

I do not object to CoD style games, either. One is being plunked in to a roughly set scenario. If BF were dropping you into the Battle of Scarif or the Battle of Hoth or the Battle of Endor or the Battle of Jakku as a common soldier or officer on one side or the other (and no matter the outcome of the battle in-game, it has no bearing on what "really" happened), it makes a nice what-if. But dropping in Main Characters who may not have been present in the actual battle, or were even dead by that point in the story... Mneh. I'd rather create my own Jedi-in-training than play as Luke or Rey. I'd rather build my own Sith Lord than play as Vader or Maul. I'd rather hone my piloting skills as an original avatar than play as Wedge or Poe. I'd rather create my own well-equipped bounty hunter than play as Boba Fett. Bonus points if you can evolve the character over the years, in-timeline. That was one of the things I liked about the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter games. That's what I liked about Galaxies when it started (before it got broken). It's what I like about Destiny now. Yeah, there's a PvP arena. Yeah, there are fetch quests and grind. But it's all blended into the setting and story well enough I don't notice much, or mind at all. Because it's primarily about the story.

--Jonah
 
2. The matchmaking sucks. You're matched against people who have a ton more stuff unlocked, and who can end up being WAY better, which just makes the game no fun. There's also no team scramble at the end of each round, so if a round starts off unbalanced, it'll probably stay that way. You repeat each map twice for modes like Starfighter Assault and Galactic Assault, and, I think, Strike. Not sure on blast or HvV. But this means that when one team steamrolls the other, it's gonna happen twice. It also means that you can end up spending a LOT of time on each map, if the match goes the whole round.

This was (and still is) a huge problem in the previous Battlefront, too.

Also, is anyone else experience horrible load times? Even returning to the main menu seems tedious...
 
Honestly, of level-matching was handled better, all would be forgiven. Even the slog to get credits would be a little more bearable if you weren't killed within 10 seconds of spawning.
 
I play on Friday or Saturday night after my wife and kids go to bed. I play online with a few buddies and drink beer. I don't know why we always have to over analyze these things. We were starved for SW for 30 years and now we finally have something and it is pretty visually stunning.

PS Dan, I will be playing for a few hours on Saturday night 9ish Central time.
 
That's the problem IMO. The last Battlefront was obviously made for casual gamers. I want something like Battlefield 3/4 where it feels like you need more skill than putting your crosshair on someone and holding a button down. In those, to damage a tank for example, you need to know what angles to hit to deal the most damage. In these you just spam rockets to kill them. Well that's when the freaking AT-AT doesn't have shields like the last game...
 
Also, is anyone else experience horrible load times? Even returning to the main menu seems tedious...

Gads, yes.

After a week or so of casual gaming I must say I am very underwhelmed. Whereas it is still very pretty, it's still a very unbalanced playing field for me being a casual gamer and I get tossed into games where I get spawn spammed, or instantly wiped out by someone who seems to have been playing non stop since the launch the moment I take a dozen steps.
The flight controls are quite a bit backwards from the last game, with limited controller adjustability. I spent forever flying in the last game, now I have to train my brain to switch hands.
The campaign is fine, and the whole reason I really knuckled under and bought #2. Without it, no way.
It's an okay game, not even worth the $60 that won't pay Dice's bills. There's no chance of me spending extra within this game.
 
Yeah, unfortunately, even as a casual gamer, you kind of need to understand the system and handle your upgrades strategically. I'll try to post a few tips towards that end.

1. Take a good look at the cards for each class, starfighter, hero, and hero ship. Look at the upgrades they provide and consider how that will play for you. Maybe you prefer to be more durable, maybe you want to hit harder, maybe you like rate of fire. Whatever. Just look at the stuff available, and carefully consider how you will want to play.

2. Spend your credits wisely. The credit drop rate is really pretty slow. The RNG nature of the crates themselves makes this more difficult, because you may open a crate with junk you don't want. With this in mind, BUY HERO CRATES ONLY. Do NOT buy the trooper crates. They're way too expensive to justify it, and you still will get stuff other than hero gear from the hero crates. The whole crate system is a crap shoot, so you might as well roll the dice with the cheapest entry fee.

3. In my opinion...it's a waste of credits to buy heroes. The only one I bought was Iden, because she was cheap. I haven't used her yet, though, and I only have her because I prefer her to Fett (can't get the hang of his rocket pack). Outside of Heroes vs. Villains (HvV), you need a LOT of "battle points" within each round to play as a hero, and you may not even get to play as them because someone else got them first. So, unless you're gonna play a LOT of HvV, there's no real point (in my opinion) to spending 15000 credits on a character you'll almost never play. That 15000 credits can get you 7 crates instead, which seems much more worth it to me.

4. Ideally, you want to be able to use 3 cards per class. That requires you to level the class up, which leads you into a complicated system for class upgrades. So, here's the deal. You can use two cards when your class is level 5. You can use three cards when the class is level 10. Your class level is based on the total number of "pips" in your class' card inventory. So, if you have an epic/purple/tier-4 card, and a common/grey/tier-1 card, your class is at level 5. If you have two uncommon/green/tier-2 cards and one common/grey/tier-1 card, same story. Get the picture? Ok, so, here's where it starts getting tricky. You can occasionally pull upgraded cards (tier 2 and tier 3) from crates. You can also craft tier-1 cards, or upgrade your cards. HOWEVER, you can only upgrade your cards when (1) your class level is high enough, and (2) your global level is high enough. It's an annoyingly complex system, but once you get it, it's mostly just time consuming to deal with, rather than difficult.

5. You can craft cards without getting them from crates. This will give you a Tier-1/grey/common card. You can upgrade those cards to a higher tier, assuming you meet the upgrade requirements and have the requisite number of crafting parts handy. You get between 35-50 crafting parts from any crate except the daily crate, which gives you only 5. Duplicate cards from crates will give you credits, rather than crafting parts. That's a change from what DICE said they'd do after the beta (they said it'd be crafting parts).

6. My advice is that you focus on using crafting parts to craft the specific cards you know you'll want to use, if you aren't getting them from crates. This guarantees that you're getting what you need/will use. The card drops from crates can be used to increase your class rank, so that you can equip all of the cards you want to at once. You may also still get lucky by pulling higher level cards that will help boost your class rank. But if you're just not having luck with the crate drops, don't sweat it. Craft the cards you want instead, and upgrade as you can.

7. The cards make a difference. But they don't necessarily make the difference. That said, the game is designed to make you think they make the difference. For example, the thermal detonator has a card that, at epic level, makes its blast radius 30% bigger. 30%!!! That's huge! Until you ask yourself "Wait, how big is the standard blast radius?" If it's only, like, 2m, then you're only going to 2.66m. That's certainly helpful, but it's not the "OMG!!! HUGE!!!" upgrade it might initially seem. All that said, the cards do help, especially with the heroes and the starfighters, where they make a much bigger difference. Darth Maul has a card that has him take less blaster damage, which is important because he can't block blaster shots (for whatever reason). Vader has a card that gives him health back for every kill he makes. The starfighters have cards that make missile locks take longer to lock on, with the lowest level increasing lock-on time by 50%, and the second tier increasing that to 100%. A lock may take 1.5 seconds normally, and now it'll take 2 seconds with the basic level card. That may not seem like much, but it can make a huge difference in dogfighting. All of this is why I advise crafting specific cards, so you get what you want/need.

8. The Arcade mode can give you up to 500 credits daily. That's about 1/4 the cost of a hero crate (a little less, actually). You can "game" the system and get your daily 500 pretty easily, though. The Dark Side's final challenge at the toughest difficulty level has a 3-second timer (it doesn't start until you actually attack an enemy). You can kill one guy, which will get you another 3 seconds, and then just let the timer run out. Boom. 100 credits for 6-ish seconds of "work." You do that five times, then move on.

I've been playing between 1-2 hours each night since the 3-day head start (I preordered the Elite edition). I've stowed away about 10,000 credits "just in case." I haven't completed every milestone, but I've completed a bunch. Even relying solely on credit drops, I can usually manage a crate a night. It's slow progression, but using the crafting parts has helped some. When all of the milestones are done, I'll have a decent "hand" of cards. They won't be epic level, but they'll be mostly "uncommon" or "rare" for the ones I use. I don't sweat the rest, figuring I'll unlock them eventually. Maybe. The progression system is incredibly stupid and badly designed, and was built to encourage now-disabled microtransactions. It sucks. But it can be managed to allow you to still have fun in the game regardless.

Map/game balance and matchmaking...well, that's a different story. ;)
 
Balance is ridiculous. Some matches will end at the first intial attack spot!? Tokadonna was a perfect example of this. I’ve never captured that temple area on that map with a group of people.

Then again I’ll occas route a group just as easily on other maps. I’ve yet to see a MTT get taken out! And I tried kneeling an AT AT with my snowspeeder but that’s harder than aiming at a exhaust port the size of a womp rat!

Does anyone find one class to be more OP than another? I find a bit of success with assault class. Heavy weapons are so weak.

I believe eve my favorite strategy on Hoth is to perform strafing runs on ground troops or orbital strikes as a AT AT! Fun!
 
I preordered the Elite edition as well and have been playing everyday since the 3 day before official release. I'm normally a casual gamer but I have been playing this a lot. What I have been most frustrated with this game so far is trying to be a hero in galactic assault. I average around 3-4 thousand points a game which is about half of what you need to be a hero. I have been playing this since the beginning and I have only been a hero maybe 5-6 times. This is really only my 3rd shooter game that I have played so maybe that's the problem but I don't think i should be penalized for that. This is not a game friendly for beginners.
 
Balance is ridiculous. Some matches will end at the first intial attack spot!? Tokadonna was a perfect example of this. I’ve never captured that temple area on that map with a group of people.

Some of it's a balance issue, no question. Much of it is about matchmaking, too. You may end up with a whole raft of people who are lower skilled players, or who have far fewer cards than other folks. Or you may just be stuck with people who are playing the game like TDM, and not really caring about working together to capture points or accomplish objectives. But defense is absolutely easier when the offense is disorganized or unskilled. The maps do favor that.

This usually shakes out as the game matures, though. The maps end up tweaked a bit, the players get smarter, skill levels flatten out instead of being wildly disparate, and more people "get" how to PTFO.

Then again I’ll occas route a group just as easily on other maps. I’ve yet to see a MTT get taken out! And I tried kneeling an AT AT with my snowspeeder but that’s harder than aiming at a exhaust port the size of a womp rat!

For the most part, games shouldn't be ending at the first stage. The way I see it, the defenders' goal in the early stages is to weaken the enemy, not defeat it. If you can defeat the enemy, sure, go for it. But if not, focus on bleeding tickets and then falling back to the next position.

Does anyone find one class to be more OP than another? I find a bit of success with assault class. Heavy weapons are so weak.

I think they're decently well balanced at present. Heavy's weapons are weak per shot, but do excellent damage due to rate of fire and the heavy's durability. They're good at mid to mid/close range, I find. The assault is a good all-rounder, but is best in close range.

The ones I find more difficult to play are officer and specialist. I SUCK with sniper rifles, so specialist is really hard for me, and I almost never score kills with the main rifle. Mostly I get kills using stealth mode. Officer I like a lot, but their skills don't seem to boost your score high enough, and it's tougher to get kills with them. I may try playing some more blast, where I think the officer would do well.

I believe eve my favorite strategy on Hoth is to perform strafing runs on ground troops or orbital strikes as a AT AT! Fun!

Only played that a couple of times, but I find aircraft underwhelming vs. the ground, mostly because it's a pain to pick out targets.

I preordered the Elite edition as well and have been playing everyday since the 3 day before official release. I'm normally a casual gamer but I have been playing this a lot. What I have been most frustrated with this game so far is trying to be a hero in galactic assault. I average around 3-4 thousand points a game which is about half of what you need to be a hero. I have been playing this since the beginning and I have only been a hero maybe 5-6 times. This is really only my 3rd shooter game that I have played so maybe that's the problem but I don't think i should be penalized for that. This is not a game friendly for beginners.

It's definitely not, and it's not likely to get any better. I gave up on heroes mostly because I just never score quite high enough to get them. I'm pretty consistently in the top 5 or so, but someone always nabs 'em first or I just never score enough battlepoints, or the match ends. Whatever. I'll play HvV if I want heroes. I rarely got to play as them in BF2015 anyway.
 
Yeah-- I'm in that boat too. If I want to play as Vader and mow down a hundred people I can do it in arcade mode. I get that doing it in MP might offer up some nice credits-- but mostly it's just going to score me more battle points to spawn in again as Vader and do the same thing.
 
Yeah, unfortunately, even as a casual gamer, you kind of need to understand the system and handle your upgrades strategically. I'll try to post a few tips towards that end.

Thanks for that!

It's indicative of me, and I'm guessing many others, that I glazed over halfway through that explanation. Not because you didn't make it clear and concise as possible, but because it's a slog that, again, is not PLAYING THE GAME! It's interesting how the industry has lost perspective in its quest to "reward performance" by adding what amounts to roadblocks to fun. Performance is its own reward.
 
Not because you didn't make it clear and concise as possible, but because it's a slog that, again, is not PLAYING THE GAME!

Pretty much all of this.

I want to play Battlefront for the experience of being in a friggin' ground assault in the Star Wars world. Shooting blasters, wielding lightsabers. The sounds. The visuals. In fact, this is how both Battlefront and Battlefront II have been marketed.

What we got was an overly complicated deck management game with load screen times that can only be described as glacial.
 
I’m new to the battlefront series in general - but I find playing the heroes in galactic assault a frustrating tease. If I do get enough points, and the heroes are actually available, I don’t think the payoff is worth it.

This, of course, is somewhat related to my skill level, but usually when I do play a hero, I still get crushed and I’m not able to play long enough to warrant making up the points I spent to play the hero in the first place.

Seems like the hero ships should be “better” off the bat, instead of just being another crappy ship that I have to build up. Just my two cents.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Pretty much all of this.

I want to play Battlefront for the experience of being in a friggin' ground assault in the Star Wars world. Shooting blasters, wielding lightsabers. The sounds. The visuals. In fact, this is how both Battlefront and Battlefront II have been marketed.

What we got was an overly complicated deck management game with load screen times that can only be described as glacial.

The load screen times are definitely brutal.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Balance is ridiculous. Some matches will end at the first intial attack spot!? Tokadonna was a perfect example of this. I’ve never captured that temple area on that map with a group of people.

Not having seen the map you're referring to, it sounds like a case of one team playing the objective. Heck even a really good squad playing the objective. This happened routinely on the Battlefield 3/4 Metro map. If one team wasn't going all out they would get shoved back to their start.
 

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