Gaming
Seems like Star Wars Battlefront 2 is still pay-to-win
It’d be fair to say the Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta in October was controversial. The main problem? Loot crates.
Near enough the entirety of progression in Star Wars Battlefront 2 comes from loot crates – from cosmetics to straight up game-changing stat upgrades. It didn’t take long for news to spread and fans haven’t been happy. Players could have a significant advantage just from having better luck when opening a crate, or more importantly, buying a ton of crates to increase their chances.
Since the Beta, DICE and EA announced that the way loot crates work would change. This involved removing the highest tier of unlockable Star Cards from crates alongside weapons and class-specific abilities. If you want a legendary version of your card, you’re going to have to craft it which is also level restricted.
Obviously, this was a step in the right direction but it still raised questions with fans.
As it turns out, the change hasn’t actually done much. According to Youtube gaming channel Xfactorgaming, Battlefront 2 is still pay-to-win.
He bought $90 worth of lootboxes and yep, he’s pretty overpowered. Sure, his cards are locked to level tiers but the highest you need to be is level 20, which isn’t very high. Sure, it’s all available using in-game currency but the grind is obviously much higher. Sure, you can craft the cards you want but unfortunately, crafting materials are also in loot crates. This is the definition of pay-to-win.
It’s a fluid system and it might be that EA will change it down the line but for now, it sure seems like not much has changed. You still need cards to improve your character and the easiest way to do that is to drop a ton of money on crates. With Xfactor already level 14 on some classes in little under a day, level gating doesn’t seem to be that effective of a deterrent.
On the other hand, this should come as no surprise to anyone. EA have literally said they want to use the Ultimate Team formula elsewhere.
“Ultimate Team started out as a mode in FIFA, and EA has now implemented it in several of its sports franchises. According to Jorgensen, the “real opportunity” is finding ways to bring a similar concept other EA games.
“Like Battlefield or Battlefront, our Star Wars game, which are very similar in the depth of play – we can possibly add a similar mechanic to that. We spend a lot of time thinking about it,” he said. “Not for tomorrow, but over the next couple of years you’re going to see a lot more of that in our portfolio.”
The problem is, raw stat increases that can be paid for have no place in multiplayer, casual or competitive. I’d even go as far as to argue that you shouldn’t level gate content but I understand that some developers want to keep players aiming for something.
In it’s current state, two new players who start playing Battlefront 2 right now can be at wildly different ‘power levels’. And that’s before incorporating any natural skill.
We’ll see how this pans out but as it stands, Star Wars Battlefront 2 is still highly in favour of those who don’t mind splashing the cash.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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