The controversial choices by EA are worse than once thought, limiting the amount of credit a player can earn each day.
The worst part of the game is this: You are limited on credits earned in Arcade mode. “More credits available in 14 hours” pic.twitter.com/8NOTvby2hl
— Andrew Reiner (@Andrew_Reiner) November 13, 2017
From the insane grind required to unlock primary characters like Luke and Vader, to the amount of real money a player would need to spend to unlock them, to the nonsensical PR attempts to smooth things over, and the lack of human decency from EA Community Manager Mat Everett, nothing about the state of microtransactions and Star Wars: Battlefront II is sitting well with gamers.
In an article covered by me earlier this week, we focused on the state of Battlefront II just less than a week before release, and it is not good. It was discovered by a Reddit user who got early access to the game that it would take 40+ hours of grinding to earn enough in-game currency to unlock/buy new heroes, particularly Vader and Luke. If that was not enough, the amount of money found to pay for these characters exceed well over $100, as Gamespot found out.
Apparently the loot boxes through microtransactions are not guaranteed to reward a player any significant amount of credits to unlock characters, with Gamespot having discovered that after $100 towards these microtransactions only garnered them less than HALF of what it would take to unlock Luke or Vader.
Now, with the game ready to release in just a manner of days, players are discovering that you can’t earn more than a certain amount of credits from completing arcade challenges within a certain timeframe, EA/DICE having locked players out with a cooldown period of 14 hours. What sort of insane nonsense is that?
Holy shit, it happened. -400K+ Downvotes! @EAStarWars || pic.twitter.com/i8kUcqKYdA
— marc (@marcdorris) November 13, 2017
At the time of this writing, EA’s PR Team have received the highest amount of Downvotes in Reddit history. The above snapshot taken yesterday, with the current total being well over 600K Downvotes at the time of this writing.
EA is just one of a few major publishers that has a tendency to demonstrate little regard for the community when it comes to the subject of microtransactions and in-game purchases. For players who spent $60 or more on the version of the game they pre-ordered, it comes across very shady that not even $100 worth of loot box purchases don’t even amass to half the price of unlocking heroes like Luke or Vader.
With so much negative buzz around all of this, EA has seen not only a dip in stock prices, but a surge in cancelled pre-orders for the game to boot. To battle this, it appears that EA has allegedly taken another step towards what many would consider immoral and unethical by REMOVING the ability to cancel your pre-order from their website. I suppose they want gamers to feel a sense of pride and achievement by calling in and speaking to an automated system for 3 hours before they are finally able to cancel?
EA & Activision are both huge contributors to the decline in game quality due to their focus on microtransactions and pay-to-win/pay-to-progress. Games need to be made for gamers, not share holders. Leave greed for the politicians, not game publishers. Breaks my gamer heart. 🕹
— marc (@marcdorris) November 13, 2017
