We’ll see in a month’s time
Let’s cut to the chase.
During Star Wars Battlefront 2‘s beta period, folks messed around with the new loot crate/progression system, and found out that you can earn actual in-game upgrades from loot crates, which can be purchased via crystals, bought with real money. In many cases these enhancements are innocuous 1% alterations (but still pay-to-win), and in others, rare upgrades can be a little more impactful. It wasn’t a good look given all of the other non-cosmetic loot crate business going on lately, but DICE has since gone on the defense and clarified a few things.
Here are the updated tenets based on their new beta postmortem site:
- There are many things you can earn in the game, including weapons, attachments, credits, Star Cards, Emotes, Outfits and Victory Poses.
- As a balance goal, we’re working towards having the most powerful items in the game only earnable via in-game achievements.
- Crates will include a mix of of Star Cards, Outfits, Emotes or Victory Poses.
- Players earn crates by completing challenges and other gameplay milestones, or by purchasing them with in-game credits or Crystals, our premium currency.
- If you get a duplicate Star Card in a crate, you will get crafting parts which you can then use to help upgrade the Star Card of your choice.
- And lastly, you have to earn the right to be able to upgrade Star Cards and unlock most Weapons. You can only upgrade or unlock them if you have reached a high enough rank, which is determined by playing the game.
Most of this is alleged, as the concept of “most powerful items in the game” is rather subjective, and we haven’t actually seen it in the retail edition. The major problem lies in the fact that Star Cards (upgrades) are included in the crates, rather than the otherwise cosmetic outfits, emotes, or victory poses. There’s also the issue of not earning crates inherently by leveling up, but instead by “completing challenges and other gameplay milestones.”
Again, we’ll see how much it impacts the actual game when it arrives in November. If you’re against the idea of loot crates at all, you might be sitting out. At the very least it doesn’t have a Season Pass on top of all of this, but given that I’m against any form of pay-to-win, I’m not thrilled this system is in the game in any form — they simply need to remove Star Cards from loot boxes.
