"Star Wars Battlefront II" is launching this week but has been playable on the PC and Xbox One for those who have EA Access. Access allows players to play trials of the new EA games first. The trial for "Battlefront Ii" lasts ten hours and gives access to the first three missions of the campaign. So people that have been playing since November 9 have been having some issues with the loot and the loot box systems and have been taking to Twitter and social media.
The backlash has forced EA to change up a few things before the official release.
What happened?
It's been known for some time that this game would have loot boxes and there would also be a card system for weapons and Heroes. During the trial people found that it was going to take a very long time to get enough credits to unlock some of the playable heroes. Unlocking characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker was going to cost up to 60,000 credits. Keep in mind that each match rewards a few hundred credits and completing challenges gets some as well. It was going to take players around 40 hours of normal playing to get enough credits just to get a single Hero character.
That's without buying any cards or weapons.
People completely lost it and went to social media, even going as far as sending death threats to some of the people who worked on the game (pictured below). Since all this happened EA decided to lower the cost of credits to get a character like Darth Vader from 60,000 to 15,000 credits. It took the lowest-rated Reddit post in the history of the site to do this but this is a step in the right direction and shows that EA is listening.
Launch and beyond
If you are getting the deluxe edition of the game then you can start playing tonight but the regular version comes out on the 17th for everyone else. The changes to the credits have been fixed but it may be too late for some at launch.
People seem to hate this game even before it's release since all this credit stuff has gone down. If it works anything like the first game, and all other multiplayers games, then double xp weekends will be a thing and earning more credits will be available then. Having one this weekend might be a smart move on EA's part and then having another around Christmas for people that get it then.
The game seems fun and the story in the single-player is going to be consisted canon, so most "Star Wars" fans are going to want to check this out at some point. People may just wait till the price drops or to watch a few streams and see what's up with things.