It’s been a wild ride for EA and the Star Wars Battlefront 2 gaming community this week following complaints about the in-game purchases and progression system. It has been a complete mess for EA and a temporary triumph for gamers.
Just prior to launch, EA announced the would be temporarily disabling the in-game Crystals currency while they reevaluated the progression system. A disclosure in the filing to investors reads:
On November 16, 2017, Electronic Arts Inc. (“EA”) announced in a blog on its website at www.ea.com/news that it will turn off all in-game purchases for the Star Wars Battlefront II title until further notice. This change is not expected to have a material impact on EA’s fiscal year 2018 financial guidance.
Analysts are now predicting that sales of the game will fall below EA’s expectations which is 14M units in this fiscal year. EA’s stock price also took a dive following EA’s in-game currency pausing announcement and analysts see this as EA caving in to social media pressure. EA obviously see this differently if they are prepared to tell investors there will be no impact.
Videogame sales are already down by 11% ahead of the holiday season. That coupled with the latest backlash from gamers over microstransactions are sure to have an impact on sales for Star Wars Battlefront 2.
EA appears to be taking a hard look at their progression systems in their other games after this week’s backlash. They also just announced that the progression system in Need for Speed Payback is being tweaked.
Hey Everyone, bit of an update for you.
As you’ve seen from previous updates recently, we’ve been working on improving your experience with the progression.
We’ve been using Community feedback, along with our own in-game data and have come up with a number of changes, many of which are in the process of going live. Our aim with these changes is to make the progression, especially around the ownership of cars a much more enjoyable experience.
If you’re currently playing the game while reading this, please restart in order for the changes to come into effect.
- Increased the amount of REP awarded by taking part in events.
- Increased the amount of Bank awarded by taking part in events.
- Bait crates now reward increased REP.
- Bait crates now reward increased Bank.
- Competing against a Roaming Racer will reward you with increased REP.
- Competing against a Roaming Racer will reward you with increased Bank.
- Air Suspension will now appear more frequently within Shipments.
- Slightly increased REP and Bank for finishing an event outside of first place.
Today’s changes are just phase one and we have further tweaks coming. Coming shortly will be some changes to the way tune-up shops work, especially around the quality / level of parts they stock. More on that soon.
It is worth noting that we do encourage you to recycle your speed cards for tokens. Targeted rolls are a very good alternative to tune-up shops. Definitely worth buying out the parts from the tune-up shop and recycling them.
Previous Changes
- Decreased the time it takes for new parts to appear in Tune-Up shops, down from 30mins to 10mins.
- Increased rate in which parts are rewarded within Ranked Speedlists.
As always, keep the feedback coming. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you in Fortune Valley.
Perhaps the message is finally getting through to EA that there is only so much gamers will put up with when it comes to microtransactions in their games. Gamers can force change if they vote with their wallets and let’s hope this continues and gamers get a fair deal when they pay premium prices for AAA games.
It’s probably too late to save the flawed progression system in Battlefront 2 but perhaps next time they will get it right.
Published: Nov 18, 2017 08:18 pm