With the speed at which news comes out in the gaming industry we sometimes miss important or news worthy things. Some of these things we want to talk about in a way that is both easy for you guys and allows us to get all the facts together as some of these stories develop quickly. Sometimes we also just cover topics that we find interesting and want to discuss.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 Crate Update

With the Star Wars Battlefront 2 beta in the rear view mirror and the full release fast approaching DICE and EA have updated players on the thing that many beta players felt was the most damning part of the experience, the random loot boxes. Here is the full announcement.   Let’s just jump into the changes they are making to the final game:

• Epic Star Cards, the highest tier of Star Cards available at launch, have been removed from Crates. To help keep everyone on a level playing field, these Star Cards will primarily be available through crafting, with the exception of special Epic Star Cards available through pre-order, deluxe, and starter packs.

• You’ll need to reach a certain rank to craft upgraded Star Cards. You won’t be able to buy a bunch of Crates, grind everything up into crafting materials, and immediately use them to get super powerful Star Cards. You can only upgrade the ability to craft higher tier Star Cards by ranking up through playing the game.

• Weapons are locked behind specific milestones. While a select few will be found in Crates, the rest can only be attained by play. Want to unlock a new weapon for your Heavy? Play as a Heavy and you’ll gain access to the class’s new weapons.

• Class-specific gear and items can be unlocked by playing as them. As you progress through your favorite class, you’ll hit milestones granting you class-specific Crates. These will include a mix of Star Cards and Crafting Parts to benefit your class’s development.

So the big change they are making is removing Epic Star Cards from loot boxes meaning you can only get them from crafting. It will remove the ability for players to buy these cards with the random loot boxes and also stop someone from randomly acquiring some extra firepower with the luck of the draw. They also level locked Star Card upgrades. Hopefully this will create a more natural and balanced power curve. Finally they have added class-specific gear and items to be unlocked by playing them, however still acquired from the crates meaning you can still get shafted.

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Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject :  So I’m quite happy to see that EA and Dice are willing to make changes to the way loot boxes function before the game drops but I’m still concerned that their main focus is still to push out these boxes. As I touched on above these class-specific gear and items that they give you for playing specific classes sounds like the right direction to go, similar to how the Battlefield games work but the stark difference in the Battlefield franchise is that the guns you get from playing those specific classes aren’t dictated by RNG crates. You know that if you get to level 21 with the assault class you will have access to weapon X or Y. The way it seems it’s going to work in Battlefront 2 is you will be given a crate with class-specific items in and you still might not get a weapon or item you want for that class. This type of randomness can lead to huge issues with balance and perceived fairness within the game. If my friend opens a loot box for a assault class he might get a new weapon straight up and I might open a box and only get crafting points. I might not have enough points to actually build the weapon he just got and thus be at a disadvantage. This disadvantage might not be immediate but if he now gets to focus on using his Crafting Parts for weapon attachments and I’m still struggling to make the weapon he’s now up a weapon and attachments over me. This hardly seems like a great way to reward players for time spent in the game and honestly feels a free play model squeezed into a full priced game. This type of system really deters me from wanting to sink a large number of hours into the game when my reward for playing is still entirely randomly. It doesn’t reward skill or time spent, it rewards those who have more time and that in my book is not a great way to design games.

Steven Gilmour, Lead animator for Anthem has left

Neowin has brought to light that Steven Gilmour the lead animator for EA’s upcoming answer to Destiny has left the project.  It seems that his departure happened a while ago but nobody had taken note until now.  A comment by Bryan Johnson on Reddit has confirmed his departure. Johnson says on the topics of  departures: “So I know it’s easy to look for any details to determine what is going on when there is little news, but I would say dont read into departures too much.”

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Wiggin’s thoughts on the subject :  I don’t know that I should read too much into the departure of a lead animator for an unreleased game to much. I do find it interesting that Gilmour left so close to the release of the game. There is no explanation given for him leaving and we can only speculate on his reasoning as it might be private. So while this isn’t a red flag to me personally it’s an interesting topic that I think we should keep our eyes on. It might come out later that this should of been a red flag in terms of the overall quality of the finished product but in the mean time we can only speculate.