EA Responds To Star Wars Battlefront II’s 40 Hours To Unlock Characters Controversy

Over the last couple of days players have worked out that to unlock certain characters in Star Wars Battlefront II’s multiplayer, for example Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, will take around 40 hours of game time each due to the price of the characters being 60,000 credits while the rate of earning credits will be low. The game has already been criticised for the loot box approach which EA and DICE amended.

Update: EA have now slashed the pricing of all the locked hero characters in the game, effectively quartering their price. See here for the details.

Obviously a 40 hour grind to unlock iconic characters for Star Wars Battlefront II’s multiplayer has not gone down well, and it appears EA have tried to address those concerns on Reddit. The verified EA Community Team account has been responding to comments, and honestly it isn’t a pretty sight. Below are some of the comments made in a thread titled “Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?” by the team.

The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.

As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.

We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.

Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.

“Pride and accomplishment.” When I unlock or achieve something in a game I do have a bit of pride, that’s true, but by the 40 hour mark that accomplishment is usually beating a massive game. Getting all five of Nier Automata’s main route endings took 33 hours. 40 hours to unlock a single character is far from a pride thing, and can be seen as push to make people pay money for credits to unlock someone like Vader sooner.

Beta prices were lowered to allow players to experience all the Beta had to offer. Also it was a Beta/trial for us. We wanted to see how player progressed, how fast they unlocked content, etc. Beta was not a final product by any means. Like all Betas it was a learning experience in how our systems work, how players progress, etc.

If you played the beta you got an experience that was more lucrative for you when it came to earning credits, while in the final product prices for items have been hiked. Obviously EA’s community team can’t start saying that decisions were made so more people would invest in micro transactions, but it’s clear from what is happening.

Regardless of what happens Star Wars Battlefront II will likely sell very well, and the market has proved that people are willing to spend money on microtransactions. Recently though it seems that the objective to cash grab has led to much more unscrupulous undertakings than in previous years.

Source: Reddit