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DICE Turns Off MTX in Battlefront 2

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DICE just announced that they removed the microtransactions (MTX, for the cool kids) from Battlefront 2.

I guess that means my purchase of Battlefront 2 didn't make the problem worse?

I kid. No really, it was a joke.

What's not a joke, however, is that DICE or EA or whoever people love to hate these days is at least trying to course correct.

I have one last troll left in me for the night. I imagine the people who live for nothing but the EA hate train (I can think of a few from the post two days ago) look a little something like this... (Edit for clarity: The one who would never buy the game but stir up trouble just because it's EA.)

In all seriousness, I'm very happy to see that microtransactions are hopefully being rethought. If you're suddenly thinking there's balance to the force, you're probably wrong. I imagine they WILL come back. I hope they take the time to completely remove them and not even introduce cosmetic ones either. That's right, I dislike all microtransactions including cosmetic ones.

Regardless, like several people who I recently discovered are closet Battlefront 2 players -- even going as far as removing the 'what game you're playing' in Discord (like it's a bumper sticker for an unpopular candidate you can't let people know you voted for) -- I'll still keep playing and enjoying myself! 🙂 

Here's hoping in the near future those who boycotted will find themselves able to play! I'd love for you to join me.

P.S. Leave the hate (Edit clarity: personal attacks, ad hominem, strawman) in the other post. Let's have some good discussion in this one about how EA might be able to course.

  • You can poke fun at the haters, but of course, DICE wouldn’t have made the change if it wasn’t for all the outrage. So I would say, tentatively, job well done to all the angry people. I understand micro-transactions and loot boxes are here to stay in the gaming industry, but do we really need a competitive FPS with real money lootboxes that improve aim assist, of all things? I think we can all agree: no. No we do not.

    In any case, I hope EA/DICE take all this to heart and rework the progression and lootbox system from the ground up. From all the reviews I’ve read it seems like there is a genuinely good game hiding beneath it’s awful monetization strategy.

    This genre still really isn’t my jam but as a huge Star Wars fan I can definitely see picking it up once the price drops for the single player campaign.

    • Not sure if the single-player campaign would be worth the box price alone. It’s pretty short coming in at 4-5 hours. What I’ve played has been good, though.

  • I mean, the fact they changed it prior to the actual release means the pre-order cancellations must have been heavy, since we know EA doesn’t care about bad PR so long as the money keeps coming in.

    What that means is enough non-Keens wallet-voted to make gaming better, at least in this particular case. Evil sheep people like you are still horribly bad people, but will still benefit from all us good guys fighting for you even as we have to fight literally against you. So you’re welcome, and enjoy a better version of your lightsaber game.

    • Our Discord made sheep emotes in your honor.

      Thank you for climbing up on the cross. Let’s see if there was any long-term impact!

    • Let’s be realistic, here. This about-face by EA is not a gesture of goodwill toward consumers, no matter how it’s positioned. This is a result of Bob Iger having a conversation with Andrew Wilson and telling him that making money is great and fine, but he’d better not screw around with the Star Wars name while doing it.

      EA has absolutely no interest in gaining customer loyalty if it means they could make a little more money gouging those customers instead. That’s their corporate culture. This isn’t to discourage anyone from buying or enjoying the game, I just hope they aren’t doing it because they believe EA is going to make this right somehow.

      This is a temporary reprieve until the controversy dies down, at which point they will turn the cash registers back on with a few cursory changes to the store and hope that by then we’ve lost the momentum to make a fuss about it.

  • You don’t have to imagine that microtransactions will be back, it says they will right in that graphic you posted. Cynical me believes they’re just trying to salvage initial PC site reviews. Once they’re past that, it won’t matter. EA’s history shows that they are not about keeping servers up for their games for the long haul. And we won’t know if any of this has made a difference until the next game they release.

  • They had to do something the Gambling Authority of Belgium was looking closely at the game and how the loot box practice is affecting children. Personally, I won’t buy the game I have no interest in it, and if people were to let this go, they would just push for more.

    three rules for buying games that I use now

    1. Don’t ever pre-order
    2. only buy the basic game.
    3. Never buy the game until your sure of how the microtransactions loot box works and especially don’t buy the game if you find out they have crippled the game or stipped it of functionality just to sell loot boxes.

      • What part about paying money for a randomized reward which may or may not be what you want do you think is not gambling?

        Note that this isn’t just bf2, this applies to all lootbox systems, including overwatch.

      • As long as the definition is kept consistent, I have no issue with it being considered gambling. They’ll need to make trading card packs, vinyl figure randoms, pin trading packs, etc., all considered gambling too, though.

  • Admitting to trolling twice, even including gif memes, followed by a statement to “leave the hate in the other post” is disingenuous, as well as passive aggressive, and functions as saying, I want to get my digs in, but I want my readers to behave more civilly than I have.

    It seems the MTX protesters/EA haters were able to overshadow the apologists/apathetic gamers and make BF2 temporarily a better game for all, so to the latter group, you are welcome, as the change certainly wasn’t fostered by the purchasers of the $80 Deluxe Edition, agreed? 🙂

    …of course the phrase “The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date” doesn’t leave much room for trolling from the latter group, lest they once again need to be reminded in the days ahead why supporting B2P games with MTX is undermining the integrity of the industry they claim to love so dearly.

    So to restate, with this announcement EA has decided to enact damage control to increase initial box sales by withdrawing MTX that they initially tried to get away with, while promising to reverse this decision and at some point in the future, really a halfhearted and hollow attempt to temporarily change their unscrupulous monetization scheme.

    By analogy if an adulterer were called out for committing adultery, and in turn sought to decrease the outcry from those opposing adultery by stating they will stop committing adultery for the moment, and immediately followed that the adultery will return some time in the future, I wouldn’t give them kudos for “at least trying to course correct”. 😉

    I must say your ‘I recognize I do bad things, and I still plan to continue to do so’ argument has stuck in my craw as it is a convoluted form of rationalization that doesn’t dismiss the fact you financially support MTX in B2P games while simultaneously decrying MTX.

    Admitting you are doing something against your stated principles shouldn’t be misconstrued as an effective coping mechanism to decrease cognitive dissonance in the long term, and it likely may lead your readers to respect your opinions less.

    If you recognize that shopping at Walmart undermines local small businesses, buying an iPhone supports outsourcing labor to people who are paid pennies, eating at In-n-Out fosters cows being killed to create the patties, and financially supporting MTX in B2P games helps establish this as a standard monetization scheme, then you might consider changing your behaviors instead of rationalizing them as somehow being acceptable because others are also doing it?

    The whole ‘if your friend jumps off of a bridge’ thing…

    It certainly is not an argument that garners respect for being a blogger who stands up for their stated principles, actually it has quite the opposite effect.

    Every action has a reaction; in this case your trolling from a hypocritical position of financially supporting MTX while simultaneously expressing adamant anti-MTX sentiments has caused a progressively unfavorable reaction from me for yet another night.

    If you wanted this post to remain positive, you may have considered not leading with antagonizing comments attempting to diminish the role of MTX protestation in EA’s temporary reversal of MTX inclusion?

    …and in all sincerity, yes, you are welcome from the crowd that stood up against this form of unscrupulous monetization scheme and made the game better, where you failed to do so.

  • I see you deleted my comments.

    They were accurate, but difficult to accept I am sure.

    In any case good luck with your blog.

    • Gankatron, calm yourself man. Your comments are saved in the backend with other pending comments. Notice the comments section looks different and keeps flipping back and forth between a new look? I’m currently working on updating the site so comments are reverting.

      • I understand, but appreciate that watching my comments get posted and liked, then completely disappear, and then be put under moderation status, even though subsequent comments are still present, could be interpreted as questionable moderation.

        I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on this though.

    • …upon reloading the page there now is a placeholder stating “Your comment is awaiting moderation”, even though it was posted and two people even liked it.

      Of course it is your blog, but making the comment disappear doesn’t make the underlying concerns simply go away. 😉

      • Notice there isn’t even a “like” feature and the comments look different? Give it a few hours and that function will be back along with your 2 likes (if I leave that function enabled).

      • Sounds good, but the point about the likes was to illustrate the comment had been posted and viewed. Whether or not it was externally validated is not a primary concern for me.

        You’re a good man Charlie Brown!

  • I’m not a fan of the way you seem to be pigeon holing those who do not condone EA’s approach to monetization in games, as haters. Maybe you are deliberately playing devil’s advocate? I didn’t comment on the last thread because I don’t like to put negativity out on the web, there is enough of that already. I do think you are trying to champion EA’s cause a little too much though.

    I haven’t bought an EA game since Battlefield 3, and that isn’t because they don’t make fun games, it’s because somewhere I feel I have to draw the line at publishers attempts to nickel and dime their customers. I feel the exact same way about the recent Warner Bros shenanigans with Shadow of Mordor.

    I’m probably not the target audience for Battlefront anyway, so they aren’t really missing out on my purchase. That said, it is the type of game I would consider picking up if a few of my friends did (that’s why I bought Battlefield 3) but given what happened with Battlefront 1, and the shit show leading up to release of 2, it would take something special to sway me now.

    One thing they absolutely have to fix to sway me, is to stop this nonsense of introducing grind on a buy to play game, to encourage you to spend more money for a shortcut. I’m used to that in a free to play game, and there are instances of where this is done well (e.g. Warframe). That statement they made about wanting the players to feel a sense of achievement was such a crock, because if that’s what they wanted then they wouldn’t have allowed people to pay for it.

    • Please don’t misconstrue. The “hate” is the people who were making personal attacks and non-constructive attacks on me or EA, not the people who simply disagree or boycott the game. Those are more than welcome. It’s the people who drop insults (many comments were removed) and the people who create ad hominem arguments that aren’t welcome. Even Syncain’s sheep-hate has remained. 😉

      RE: The grind
      I think grinds in general aren’t great, but I like knowing I”m working toward something. There has to be a healthy balance in there somewhere between Overwatch having nothing to unlock, and a game forcing you to grind it all (with microtransactions or not).

      • Thanks for clarifying, because I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair amount of people down-voting the now infamous Reddit thread were coming from the same view-point as myself.

        I’m totally with you on the concept of grinds as a general mechanic. I do like having things to work toward but there does indeed need to be a healthy balance.

      • This is the closest thing I’ve ever read to someone just flat out requesting “please put skinner box mechanics in my games.” Game devs have employed teams of psychologists for about a decade now and apparently it’s paid off a lot more than I had thought.

  • Yes I’m sure the Reddit thread and not every single game review site that tried to make sense of the progression system has forced EA’s hand. And still DICE went ahead and did the AMA which shows they probably knew the system was garbage and forced on them by EA. But meanwhile DICE deserves credit for developing probably the most immersive and cinematic looking shooter you could ask for. It’s Star Wars fan service to the extreme. That’s what I was voting for with my wallet.

  • I want to be clear that I was an early critic of loot box mechanics tied to high profile IP’s particularly regarding Shadow of War and K&G did not shy away from my comments and in fact addressed them clearly with their own opinions.

    It’s a day of reckoning for gamers. There are sites I no longer visit because they refuse to acknowledge loot boxes…that includes Eurogamer a long time favorite. While I wish K&G agreed with how I feel 100% I appreciate their take on mechanics and considering I don’t see any WB or EA monetization on their site they get the benefit of the doubt.

    • Thanks Jim! We appreciate your insights as always, and while we may not agree fully (or at least we don’t approach it the same way even if we agree), it’s still something we will always acknowledge and participate in commenting on. As always, thanks for being a valued reader and contributor.