Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (DICE)

Well, I'm still playing and I find it enjoyable much of the time. That said, there are three big issues facing the game right now:

- Ongoing bug fixing. The latest unbalancing bug is the bug relating to "Explosive Shot" not properly overheating or having a slow rate of fire for several guns. But this is par for the course with DICE games, so I knew to expect it going in.

- The same old maps are getting stale, and several of them are really, really bad. Unfortunately, most of the sequel-era maps are not that good. Jakku is hot garbage in any mode. Maz's Castle is pretty unbalanced in Galactic Assault. The two Starfighter Assault maps are really boring. Overall, I'd say only Crait is genuinely good, and Starkiller Base is so-so. They need to add some new stuff to keep things interesting beyond mere cosmetics.

- Teambalancing is a HUGE problem. Most games are pretty clear blowouts these days. Either you're getting steamrolled, or your team is steamrolling. It's decidedly not fun. In some games, you get really close rounds and that's a lot of fun, but the blowouts suck. They have to get this solved fast.

The progression thing and associated microtransactions were barrier issues for the game's future development. Without an ongoing revenue stream, the game would die off from lack of development. Progression was so tied to the old microtransation model that it was an incredible slog and an unsatisfying one at that, due to how heavily dependent it was upon randomness. Slow progression also made this game the kind of game that people wouldn't buy because the folks who've been playing for ages have maxed out this or that, and nobody wants to be the fish in someone else's shootin' barrel.

Adding back microtransactions focused on cosmetics makes sense, because it creates an ongoing revenue stream. Removing the barriers to fast, logical progression makes it easier for newbies to get access to the game. The next step, therefore, is adding content to keep things fresh and keep servers populated, and to gradually ratchet up a matchmaking system that pits people of equal skill against each other. Without that latter part, the game will turn off newbies, word will spread, and the server population will gradually dwindle as oldsters move on to other games.

Solo4114 said:

- The same old maps are getting stale, and several of them are really, really bad. Unfortunately, most of the sequel-era maps are not that good. Jakku is hot garbage in any mode. Maz's Castle is pretty unbalanced in Galactic Assault. The two Starfighter Assault maps are really boring. Overall, I'd say only Crait is genuinely good, and Starkiller Base is so-so. They need to add some new stuff to keep things interesting beyond mere cosmetics.

- Teambalancing is a HUGE problem. Most games are pretty clear blowouts these days. Either you're getting steamrolled, or your team is steamrolling. It's decidedly not fun. In some games, you get really close rounds and that's a lot of fun, but the blowouts suck. They have to get this solved fast.

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Agree on both points. The fact that they've only come out with two maps (Crait and the SA map from the beginning of TLJ) since November is inexcusable. Adding Bespin is nice, but its a recycled map from BF1 - we want new maps. The SA map was a huge letdown - shooting space junk? Really? This maps SHOULD have been the Rebel assault on the Dreadnaught from the beginning of the movie. THAT would have been epic.

I think updating the progression system is nice, but I feel the game severely lacks any competitive feel to it whatsoever. Its really just a numbers game - if you have more people actually attacking the objectives than those who are defending it - then you'll win. If your team is made up of a bunch of snipers or players running around the map, but not pushing towards the objectives - then you'll lose.

The progression update had to be taken care of, alongside the microtransaction reintroduction. Here's why (as I see it).

1. The progression had to be changed because progression was previously designed to incentivize microtransactions. That failed spectacularly and blew up in EA/DICE's face in a big, big way. But killing microtransactions had the effect of leaving an incredibly slooooooooow and random (and un-fun) progression system. Progression needed to be altered to keep people playing. And you needed to keep people playing so that....

2. ...you could re-introduce microtransactions. Cosmetic microtransactions are the way to go for this. People will spend money on it, and that money will fund the additional content the way that people buying Season Passes/DLC in years past funded the future development of the game. And it's not punishing or feels like giving an in-game advantage to players.

By fixing these two issues, they free the team up to develop additional content and improve the game overall.

I think the new progression system is quite good, and a major step in the right direction. They have GOT to get matchmaking sorted, though. My hope is that the progression system will let them do that by simply grouping people by ranking/level (e.g., your overall game rank and/or the total of all the star card pips you have). So, like, people who have a total of 120 and up are paired together, people who are 90-119 are paired together, people who are 60-89 are paired together, and so on and so forth. They can tighten these spreads as more players join the game, but it would go a long way towards making the game more fun to play.

alienscollection.com said:

https://www.facebook.com/StarWars/videos/1916334965084762/

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You know what's sad? I absolutely LOVED the first (third?) Battlefront game. Loved it. I pre-ordered #2 the day it was available. Played it for maybe a month. Got bored. I watched maybe about half of that Solo Season trailer, and then just lost interest. IDK what's wrong with me, but I just can't get into this game. Maybe it's PubG taking up all my time. IDK...

SB

I played a ton of this game until just after the most recent patch that broke several characters and introduced a bug where people lost ranks. I haven't logged in since. Even at that point, the game was growing stale. They REALLY need to ramp up the content output and support the larger game modes with a bunch of new maps. But content is coming at such a slow pace that it kills any real desire to keep playing.

The scuttlebutt is that there's a skeleton crew working on the game these days, which is why everything released is limited or small scale stuff (e.g. "Hero Showdown" which is just a 2v2 hero mode).

The new Geonosis DLC is gorgeous. Looks better than some of the CGI in Attack of the Clones.

And some of Obi-Wan's dialogue is hilarious. One of the lines he says when facing against Bossk, "Shouldn't you be babysitting Boba Fett?"

am wondering if anybody here still has BF2 installed on their PC? I have a few questions regarding some of the character mods that are available.

I deleted that game ages ago. I've never played it with mods. Might give it a little bit of freshness, but simply replacing graphics wouldn't fix what I saw as wrong with the game.