DICE Faces The Music In 'Star Wars Battlefront II' AMA

After the massive outrage over the microtransactions and the lengthy progression system in Star Wars Battlefront II, DICE made some changes to the system prior to its launch later this week. However, it also sent three of its (apparently brave) developers — executive producer John Wasilczyk, associate design director Dennis Brannvall, and producer Paul Keslin — to represent the studio in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on the game’s subreddit page.

The AMA attracted quite a few viewers--currently, it has over 24,000 comments. However, it seems that some of the answers provided didn’t satisfy the public, because they mostly included variants of the phrase “we’re looking into it” or “we're gathering more data.” This included answers to topics such as the amount of credits earned, the idea of lootboxes as the main method of advancement, and implementation of any major changes in the progression system after launch. This is undoubtedly frustrating, but it’s somewhat fair. The game isn’t readily available to the public yet, with its launch scheduled for November 17.

There were some comments that did shed some light on a few features within the game. For instance, Keslin mentioned that the reason for a cap on the amount of credits earned within the single-player Arcade mode was to prevent players from abusing the system. Limiting the amount of money earned would ensure that you would have to play the multiplayer mode in order to get more credits to unlock other content, which people already dislike. He also said that DICE is already making changes to another gameplay feature, which would let you level up a class while using it. This allows for specializing into specific character types early on without the need to collect Star Cards as a way to upgrade each class’ skills.

As the session ended, Brannvall wrote that more news is coming when all of details are ready for reveal. In addition, the he acknowledged the recent issues with progression and promised constant fixes in order to get fans to try the game.

"Big thank you to everyone who stopped by! I hope you feel the questions we answered provided clarity and hope going forward. We really appreciate the mods doing their best on a very short notice.The goal with this AMA from our perspective is to give you a look at where we are in digesting the feedback we've gotten over the past week.We were incredibly saddened by the negative response from you, the community on Reddit about the game. In-fact, we hated it, we truly did, because we want to make a game that you love. We've made a really cool, fun and beautiful game but it was overshadowed by issues with the progression system. We will fix this.Stay tuned for more specifics and details once they get set, we’ll be sharing as much as we can, in our blog, in our forums and here. We'll be around Reddit so please be sure to tag us in posts you'd like to get dev eyes on.Thank you again and may the Force be with you."

As expected, these were not the answers you were looking for, but if Brannvall’s words are true, changes are coming to Star Wars Battlefront II. However, they will need to implement fixes as soon as possible. Otherwise, the game might be dead in the water even before its release.