EA have been in a state of disaster management for the past week, as the fury at the microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront II has spiralled out of control. Their latest actions to suspend them and reconsider how they’re integrated, such as whether or not they’ll affect progression, seem to suggest they can get back on track, but EA and all publishers really need to take this as a warning that overly intrusive microtransactions can completely derail their game, regardless of how good it is or how big a franchise it is.
In the News This Week
Let’s start by recounting EA’s last seven days:
- EA first responded to the reaction to needing 40 hours of play to unlock Darth Vader in a non-commital fashion
- As the outrage only grew from this, they slashed the costs of heroes by a quarter leading into the game’s pre-order early access release
- The completely tone deaf EA CFO Blake Jorgensen explains why they love microstransactions so much
- Blizzard had a few digs at EA as StarCraft II’s first campaign went free to play
- The Belgian Gambling Commission launched an investigation into Star Wars Battlefront II, Overwatch and others
- Finally, EA relented, turning off the ability to buy the microtransaction Crystals and issuing a statement
We’ve updated this story several times, as US Gamer erroneously claimed that EA said that when microtransactions return to the game they would have similar progression boosting effects. Those comments can not be attributed to EA, however. In other words, there’s still hope that EA will scale microtransactions back to being for an array of cosmetics and emotes. - EA’s share price fell after analysts said that this scandal could affect sales
It might seem like a week that was all about EA, but others did sneak into the news cycle as well:
- Overwatch’s latest hero Moira has joined the game
- Bungie reveal more about Destiny 2’s Curse of Osiris expansion
- Ubisoft will open a new studio in Berlin next year
- The Xbox One X sold 80,000 units in its first week in the UK, outpacing the PS4 Pro’s launch
- Disney end their relationship with Gazillion Entertainment, will close Marvel Heroes shutting down
- Sony have slashed the price of PSVR bundles to £249.99 for Black Friday
- Xbox get their digital Black Friday sale underway early for Live Gold subscribers
Charity Racing
The TSA Racing Team are still racing in a 24 hour endurance race online. For more details head here, follow them on Twitter or simply head over to Just Giving to donate or voice your support for Philip, Cameron, Thomas, Matt, Ben, and Lewis. Matt has just taken the wheel again for the final stint, as I write this, and the race is coming to a close with the team in second place and trying to hold off third.
Games in Review
In spite of the awkward progression system, and thanks to the last minute adjustments EA made in the run up to the review embargo lifting, we actually gave Star Wars Battlefront II a largely positive review. There’s actually a pretty good Star Wars shooter in there.
- Star Wars Battlefront II – PS4, XBO, PC – 8/10 (Video)
- Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 – PS4, XBO, Switch, PC – 8/10
- Pokémon Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon – 3DS – 8/10
- A Hat in Time – PC – 8/10
- Numantia – PS4, XBO, PC – 7/10
- Need for Speed Payback – PS4, XBO, PC – 6/10
- Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online – PS4, PC – 6/10
- Kirby: Battle Royale – 3DS – 5/10
This Week’s Features
There’s just no escaping the game this week, so we took a look at how best earn credits early on in Star Wars Battlefront II, while Jim returned to For Honor to see how its year ending Season IV has shaped up.
It’s been a busy old week for the Nintendo Switch, and we had a bunch of games to look at and stack up against their original releases. First up was Rime, which turned out to be a rather difficult port.
Thankfully, the other Switch games this week were much better. Dom called Skyrim on Switch a “portable classic”, and I thought that Rocket League on Switch ticks all the boxes.
Rounding things off, Dave’s hands on time with the Indivisible backer beta left him looking forward to the next game from the developers behind Skullgirls, and I got to see the single player campaign from the turn based tactical mech game Battletech, which could be pretty essential for PC XCOM fans next year.
Finally, there’s the weekly What We Played, which featured Star Wars Battlefront II, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Pokémon Ultra Moon.
Trailer Park
The Rampage movie trailer has arrived
Code Vein got a new trailer at the Golden Joystick Awards
How excited would you get about concrete if you lived on Mars?
Sea of Thieves got a new trailer telling you to be more pirate
Your Achievements
The Life and Times of TSA’s Community continues this week with:
- Crazy_Del has already unlocked Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker
- ron_mcphatty, meanwhile, hasn’t even glimpsed a Star Card but he’s still having tons of fun
- tactical20 got his 15th platinum in AC Origins and it took him 68 hours of play time in the last three weeks!
- Jag has spent 60 hours in AC Origins, but he’s nowhere near getting the platinum
- TSBonyman enjoyed his time in the “more story than game” Firewatch, and went somewhere that he shouldn’t have in Prey
- MrYd has been playing too much of the soon to be shut down Marvel Heroes Omega, but he’s getting fed up of opening the “effectively free” loot crates that they’re throwing at players
The Week Ahead
After the mania of October and the first half of November, things are really slowing down for the next seven days.
- Planet of the Apes: Last Frontier – PS4 – 21/11
- Superbeat: Xonic – Switch – 21/11
- Gear.Club Unlimited – Switch – 21/11
- Rec Room – PSVR – 21/11
- Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV – PSVR – 21/11
- Portal Knights – Switch – 23/11
That’s all for this week, and hopefully we’ll see you again soon!
ron_mcphatty
I’ve popped my loot crate cherry, this morning I opened four or five which were filled with beta bonuses and other rubbish. Not having ‘won’ a decent weapon upgrade I can’t see the point in buying a crate yet, I’d rather spend parts for buying upgrades within menus and spend credits on heroes. I suppose it’s good that they haven’t manipulated a ‘win’ in the first few crates to entice players.
Talking of upgrades, the criteria for unlocking weapons and card slots in confusing, has anyone else found old-fart-syndrome getting in the way of comprehension?
Star cards aside the game is brilliant fun, I’m looking forward to trying the story out in the next few days.
Stefan L
Yeah, card slots is confusing. Your character’s “card level” is just how many cars you have unlocked for it, with each successive rarity also counting to that, so green is equal to two cards, blue is three and purple four.
Unlocking weapons is just eliminations with that class, while the attachments for them are eliminations with that particular gun.
And deffo play the story you get specific uncommon (green) cards from the reward crates through it. Would be stupid to duplicate what you’ve already bought!
ron_mcphatty
Cheers Tef, that’s cleared things up a bit! So will my card level increase when I start buying loot crates? Is there any other way to increase it? And what does the card level help me do anyway?
Good to know about the weapons, I wasn’t sure about all that even with the menu descriptions for the unlocks, there are so many things that have levels!
Talking of which, my traditional main level is level 8, I’ve mostly been playing with the assault class so that’s level 7, my officer class is level 2, no idea what my star card level is. With that in mind can you tell this dumbass what actions improve what levels?
This game really, really needs a quick start guide!
ron_mcphatty
And then what do all the levels help me do? And yep I will definitely play the campaign very soon, just saving it for my day off on Tuesday :)
Crazy_Del
To increase the card level you need crafts and it does cost quite a bit. The only way to get crafts are by completing the Milestones or loot crate (stupid as you only recieve like 5 crafts parts)
As for the what card level does for example I use the battle points card the higher the level the higher the points I recieve when eliminalted enemies and/or objectives the faster my heroes become available to use! Trying to upgrade my battle points to the max so I can be Darth Vade/Luke Skywalker for funsies lol.
Stefan L
No, no, no. Your Assault class’ level 7 is its star card level. That’s nothing to do with play time or experience, just a straight up link to the cards you’ve unlocked.
Higher card level unlocks the second and third card slot at 5 and 10, and also ties into when you can do upgrades with crafting parts. Top of my head, I think you need player rank 10 and card level 7 to upgrade a common to uncommon for 80 crafting parts.
ron_mcphatty
Thanks gents! I’m away from home this weekend but I’ll definitely be having a good hard stare at the menus with all this info in hand, good advice both! What a mucking fuddle it all is.
Crazy_Del
It’s really daft that you have to force yourself to buy cards that will unlock the boost/abality slots when it should be a leveling system foe each class and keep the crafts for either buying the card you wanted or to upgrade.
EA are really, really greedy!!! This must be resolved as soon as possible. Completing milestones should reward you like 1000 craft parts and not 25
It’s 160K in total to fully upgrade all cards and we all only recieve under 2,000 from completing all milestones and the rest is…. yep you guessed it loot boxes/microtransactions.
kjkg
Yeh the rewards for milestones are pretty measly. The whole game has a feel of trying to get you to part with your money. I mean, it can be avoided fairly easy but it feels like they are just trying to tempt you at every turn.
Still, unlocked Vadar and close to getting Luke. I have Kylo at level 10 now too which is rather nice. 2 4star cards helped a lot there though!