After a fun filled weekend of stormtroopers, shields and lightsabers, the beta for Star Wars: Battlefront will wrap up in a couple of days. But what exactly did we learn from it all?
There were plenty of questions going into the open beta: would DICE get the servers right? How would the performance hold up on consoles? Was Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader broken once you had them? And would the game actually be fun?
DICE and EA gave us plenty to unpack over the last few days, so I took it all apart. Keep in mind this won’t cover any surprises if DICE decides to unveil them over the next day or so — pictures have been floating around online of Walker Assault on another map — but otherwise, to Hoth, Sullust and Tattoine we go.
What’s your experience been like with the beta, and what platforms have you been playing on? Do you think DICE got it right this time — or is the formula a little too simplified for your tastes?
As a final aside, thanks to the Battlefront TAYbies who didn’t mind me joining in on Friday for a few hours. It was good fun; I’ll drop back in soon!
Comments
56 responses to “Here Are 5 Things We Learned From The Star Wars: Battlefront Beta”
I”ve been under a self imposed dice ban after being burnt by both battlefield 3 & 4. BFBC2 was the height of the franchise and its been a rapid decent ever since.. That said, i did weaken and install Starwars over the weekend.
The overwhelming impression i come away with was one of frustration.. When trying to connect or finish a game (exp/leveling) the entire thing would grind to a halt for minutes on end and more often than not result in a “session is no longer available” kick back to the main menu. By all reports it appears to may be related to PC AMD hardware. Add that to annoying enemy spawning (especially in the first 2 sections of the walker assault map) where entire squads of enemy soldiers can spawn behind you. My self imposed Dice ban wont be lifted anytime soon.
I had no server or performance issues at all on PS4
He’s talking about PC though….
wooooooooosh
I had no performance issues what so ever on Pc. I am running it at blasting 1080p144 too.
To be fair to them, issues like these are the entire point of a beta.
With a track record like dice currently has though, it certainly is enough to warrant caution.
I played all weekend from a PC with AMD hardware and only had one log in issue all weekend, it was the one you described . I only suffered lag when the game was over and it was tallying my points for the game which is not an issue as it does not affect game play. The re-spawning in the first part of the Walker Assault map was hectic as you could be wiped out within seconds of re-spawning only to be dumped in the same place again. I just waited a few seconds more then jumped in and it seemed better. But that was just my experience with the Beta
I really dont get why people desperately for for amd products. Years of gaming with nvidia and never had a single proplem.
Couldn’t agree with you more. “I”ve been under a self imposed dice ban after being burnt by both battlefield 3 & 4. BFBC2 was the height of the franchise and its been a rapid decent ever since..”
However i haven’t given the new battlefield – i mean star wars – a go, simply because from all the videos I’ve watched, its Battlefield with walkers…. 🙁
Just another game filled with sloppy mechanics and worst hit detection ever seen?
It doesn’t feel like there is a lot of depth here and they really dropped the ball by allowing people to just camp the enemies spawn.
Like Titanfall I think the Beta has given me my fill of the game and I will save my 60 dollars.
I mistakingly fell for the Titanfall hype train and invested in the full version – Biggest gaming mistake of my life!!! So boring! Same thing over and over again and I cant help but feel this is going to be the same!
I had a great time playing the beta but cant help but feel without the campaign, this multiplayer experience isnt worth a full game price
Agreed, what I really want is a campaign.
Or just a remake of X-Wing vs TIE Fighter for VR.
Really though, Star Wars is as much about story as the familiar figures and sound effects, no campaign is a crime 🙁
Thats what I thought. its like the greatest story ever told and they cant just give us an offshoot for even 8 hours?! I would be ok with a short campaign but no campaign is a deal breaker for me!
I’d buy it for a campaign, it’s been too long since a good Star Wars game (Rogue Squadron?). Not interested in multi-player if it’s just dumbed down BF with no server browser.
Dice makes a campaign (BF3, BF4, Hardline) and everybody complains that it was shit and unnecessary. Dice gives the players what they have been screaming for, drops the campaign in favor of an all out multiplayer game… and people still complain. I had heaps of fun with the battlefront beta. All the sights and sounds I expected from a Star Wars title, addictive gameplay, it is well optimized and ran flawlessly at max settings on my modest machine, and the matchmaker was perfect for me and my friends on PC, so much better than that battlelog abomination.
There were a few balance issues with the spawns and empire vehicles, but players did not have access to all the equipment either, (like the Ion torpedo) and I was still able to win my fair share of games on the rebel side. These problems are easily tweaked and Dice has a track record of balancing their games years after launch. I can’t wait for the full game.
You make a couple of good points but I must interject.
Dice made campaigns, and players complained that they were shit. That’s because they were shit. Dice didn’t give players what they wanted by removing the campaigns, they just removed what the players didn’t want. They fucked up the campaigns so badly I’m surprised they didn’t go under.
So, to recap: players want a campaign that isn’t rubbish.
That’s fair, but I don’t have a problem with dice sticking to what they are good at.
BF4 was not rubbish.
It was actually quite playable to the point i think i played it through 3 times – First nice looking shooter on the next gen consoles etc – it played well man. It got shit because of the poor online support day one lol
Let me take a step back for a moment.
The campaign in and of itself wasn’t bad. It was everything else they should’ve done that got people angry.
Why have an FoV slider in multiplayer but none in singleplayer? And don’t give me that “it’s better for cinematics” bullshit, that was a lame cop out at best.
Also, can we talk about trains for a second? By trains I’m referring to being on rails. A CoD-esque campaign has no place whatsoever in a shooter where open maps are one of the key drawcards. I get the odd set piece is good to give some semblance of overall direction, but if I wanted to play a CoD-esque campaign, I’d just play CoD. BFBC and BC2 had fantastic open-map campaigns. Why did they copy paste Call of Duty?
Multiplayer is great. It’s fun to play with mates. But sometimes, what people really want is an engrossing, well-made singleplayer mode. They want to dick around with all the settings, not be restricted because some fuckwit was too lazy to copy paste the code from multiplayer into singleplayer.
Now I find myself on somewhat of a tangent. Also this comment only covers two things that could’ve been fixed. I’m sure there are more but I’m on my phone so I can’t be bothered.
TL;dr – FoV sliders are awesome, on rails campaigns are not.
Yeah but most FPS campaigns are on rails – They tell a story and have always done a good job at trying to make you feel immersed in that story. The tanks in the Singapore level – There were MULTIPLE ways you could approach that level and i did differently each time
Yes most of it is on rails but they did have more open areas you can flank a certain side etc – unlike COD where you actually have to get to a trigger point to open up the next section of gameplay!!!
I see your argument but i remember BF4 – some people were quite into the campaign after bad write ups and other people just like to beat on EA and DICE. I platted the game in a month or so – Had quite a bit of fun with it!
Would have loved to see a story come from DICE – Partly because that gets me more invested into any game to make me want to take it online. I never bought games to go online first – I always playthrough campaign before going online – Have done since COD4
It’s almost like Star Wars has a built-in audience who want different things from the BF fans.
Agreed with the spawn camping, several times I and several others would find ourselves on Hoth spawning in with an AT-ST standing over us and instakill…
The beta runs better than Battlefield 4 ever has including its current state!
Pro: Terrific audio, graphics with a nice simple menu design.
Con: I found myself bored after a couple of hours play. Perhaps the full game might offer more entertainment, but I don’t intend on buying it for a while. Poor vehicle performance. Rebels pretty much always lose on Hoth with next to no weapons to counter the attack.
I rate it two “Meh’s” out of five.
I played roughly ten matches on Hoth, not once was there a rebel victory. Seems slightly imbalanced to me. Partly for what you mentioned with the weapons, but I also feel it comes down to level design as well. I think back to playing rush in BFBC2, and how each set of checkpoints were progressively easier to defend, it was great level design. I just didn’t get that feeling with the Battlefront beta, I’m hoping dearly that the rest of the maps will bring the goods!
As long as the Rebels work together, it is very easy to win that map. My last 10 or so matches the Rebels have won around 7 times.
Yeah, I thought it was great. Played well, and was a lot of fun… but after playing it for a night I was kind of done. Just wasn’t much that made me want to fire it back up and keep going. Will still be getting the full game, but am not expecting it to last longer then a week. I hope it proves me wrong though 🙂
I’m still tossing up on whether i will get full version – It doesnt seem worth it at the moment. Went back on last night and had some fun but I’m just hoping there’s a bit more gear and unlocks than the present setup
My thoughts exactly. I guess it was only a beta, so I don’t want to pass judgement too early, especially considering we only got a couple of maps and game modes. Am curious to see what the campaign is like
Super average. At the very least the connection was much smoother than BF3 and BF4 betas. BFBC2 was the last game of DICE I felt that really nailed this genre well.
I just want to play Rush again.
Played it all weekend on the PS4. Super quick and easy getting into a game. One or two drop outs which was to be expected with a beta. Disappointingly, one just as us rebels were about to finish off the second AT-AT robbing us of victory. Thoroughly enjoyed every second of it.
I can see myself playing this a lot once it comes out. It just has the old school Star Wars atmosphere and big battles that I never seem to get with first person PVP in Destiny, COD or Battlefield.
Have it pre-ordered and paid off after EB Games had a E3 double trade in special offer in July. Roll on November.
The Noth mission felt more flavorful than practical, which is a shaky ground when it comes to a multiplayer shooter it felt casual and imbalanced.
But hey if you enjoyed the flavor/dynamics of Titanfall you’ll most likely love this game to bits. lots of vehicles and distraction pickup items to keep you amused throughout.
The Noth mission had too much Sarah Jessica Parker for my taste!
Had to do a bunch of google searches until i figured out the reference, sadly i didn’t know noth was the key word 😛
Sorry Hoth 😛
Haha – sorry just made me laugh to read Noth!
It is a pretty Big clue…
Played on PC. Was surprised that in my 2 hours of play it was almost entirely bug free, which I did not expect given the state of BF3/BF4 in beta/release. The only issue I had was once getting stuck between a rock and another object, and having to sit there til killed. but everything else was smooth and quick and fluid and bug free. There seemed to be a nice graphical improvement over BF4 too.
I found the infantry-only map to be a bit of a clusterF, everyone almost randomly all over the place, shooting in every direction.
Other than that, gameplay was nice, but… not thrilling? I am getting old though, losing my touch in FPS.
I was hyped as hell, the beta fell a little flat though. A full blown single player/co-op campaign would be amazing.
Yes I know it’s a beta, but a month out from launch are they really going to fix all the issues? Getting shot from way across the map with the primary weapons, frustrating. Spawn camping, frustrating. Vehicle controls (on PS4), frustrating. Issues with joining a game with your party, i.e. they weren’t automatically joining the same game), frustrating.
It was fun though to run around in the Star Wars universe and pew pew people. Once that novelty runs out though I’m not sure how interested I’d be in continuing playing. Even after a couple of hours I was getting bored and (as above) frustrated and went off to play something else. EA aren’t interested in making a decent single player game anymore, instead trying to find something to go up against CoD, and that’s a shame as I think the engine could go some way to making a decent single player game. Maybe the next one will be better for me (no doubt the next game will be a terrible movie tie in game though)
I think they do need to look at the spawn points on that Hoth map, which in turn should alter spawn points for other maps in the rotation once the full game comes out. But as a fan of the franchise, and having been burnt by Battlefield in the past, I was surprised by how good the beta turned out (FYI, I played on Xbone). I never once came across a bug, it never crashed & it was smooth to play.
I much preferred the drop pod modes (single and multiplayer) than walker assault, largely because of the smaller, more enjoyable firefights that came with it. In an enclosed space, it can be hectic, but the maps allow for a little exploration and rarely do you spawn behind a capture point, although some times you can be a fair bit away from it.
All in all, it’s rock solid, though time will tell if there’s enough content to make it last. Judging from the amount of ‘not available in beta’ logos there were dotted around the menu’s, there might just be enough come launch day, followed by a healthy dose of DLC afterwards. Certainly more content than Titanfall had at launch, at the very least.
I didn’t mind it, the graphics were nice enough and the shooting was solid. I really liked the explosions and even the sparks that fly off scenery when you shoot it with your blaster.
It might just be the limited content in the beta, but it felt really flat and empty; within a few hours of playing one night, I felt done. I’ll keep an eye on the game, but I have a strong feeling I’ll be getting COD over this (has been a few years since I’ve played COD properly so I’m keen to try it out again, and Black Ops was the COD that got me into it).
The first Black ops was the best COD OMHO. But of course it’s not trendy to Say that about any COD other than COD4: MW
I learnt that i wont be paying full price for it, and will wait till its on sale…
I have to say overall I’m disappointed, but it is only beta. 3 modes, aren’t enough to get a decent feel for everything in the game.
I enjoyed it – a lot!
Goth was well done and power up made for interesting gameplay – the only thing they need to do is give those blaster cannons more than 45 degrees of movement
Haha, yeah i agree with the cannon thing. I’d often hop in and think “Right, I’ll have a go shooing that At-St with this” and turn it to face the enemy, and “HRRGGGGGG” can’t…reach….target…
Jump out. Run around instead.
Split-screen will make this a Halo 5 killer.
If they added a real campaign, then yeah, 100% with you.
I’m nonplussed. The game looks gorgeous, but tiny little things gameplay wise started to mount up. It feels like a great starting point and engine, but the game over the top feels thin and decidedly ‘Not Battlefront’.
Giving the imperials a better default gun was… Fun (In the most sarcastic sense) to find in the first game. Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the perplexing design issues the game has going on. Ambient blaster fire on Sullust sounds cool in theory… In practice… It rewards both teams some easy kills as someone thinks they’re being flanked. And Hoth’s turrets… Just… Why?
In the end, I gave up after five matches. Three Sulust, two Hoth. It became stale incredibly quick.
It’s incredibly frustrating to see a majority of players criticise the games for a bunch of silly reasons after playing the beta and acting like it’s the be all and end all. The games not out yet. We don’t have all the unlocks, we don’t have access to all the maps but people just think “nope this is exactly how it is”. I really enjoyed my time with the beta and I cannot wait to sink my teeth into the main course. Too many players are going “there’s not enough it feels stale after a few hours” like, what did you expect playing the same 2 maps on and on and on? I’d feel the same for Battlefield 4 if I had to do the same. Usually I don’t mind a game I like being hit with criticism so hard but jeez, I think a lot of the ways this game gets spoken about online is ridiculous.
On the point of the video:
Empire vehicles on Hoth: AT-AT, AT-ST, Tie Fighter, Tie Interceptor
Rebel Vehicles on Hoth: Speeder, X-Wing, A-Wing, Turrets (But stealable by the emprie so moot point)
It’s only a beta and peoples skills are still developing but the Speeders and air domination will become a lot more apparent as time goes on and Rebels will start to win more. I’ve seen teams of Rebels achieve synergy and when the AT-AT gets bombed. Rebel players will let themselves be killed just to shoot at the AT-AT more than they would if they’d stopped and the victory comes swiftly.
Even with 2 maps the game shouldn’t feel stale after only a few hours. At least in the Battlefield beta’s you could mix it up by trying another class and get quite a different experience but in this game there is only one class and everything feels the same.
Played on ps4 and had no problems. Loved how quick it was to get into a game (probably the fastest multiplayer match making I’ve ever seen). I loved the Jet pack/shield combo to get around people and donk them on their heads (with the limpest melee animation)
I have no idea why people playing rebels don’t use the turrets more and even let you grab the turrets right in front of their bases so you can go on multiple kill streaks??
The power pickup system is flawed as it doesn’t really encourage team work and you can see it pissing a lot of people off when someone grabs the tiefighter and 2 other guys (who also wanted it) start shooting and trying to hit their “teammate”. If mics were on I’m sure the language would have been terrible 😛
For what it is, it’s price should be half of what they are asking. Or they will really have to show a lot more of the locked content to justify the price tag. Like the beta for Evolve it really cooled me off the game and I don’t know if I’ll pick this one up.
Firstly, the immersion via the graphics/sound is incredible and far better than any other game I have played. Sullust was a lot of fun the play, but Hoth was just painful and I quickly ended up spending all my time in the 1 game mode (Drop pod thingy) because of that. It also gets boring after an hour or two but I kept coming back after a bit of a break. Over all I am still looking forward to release.
I think the biggest issue is using “battlefront” as opposed to “battlefield” in the title. A lot of people ( my self included) were hoping for battlefront 3, sadly it’s not. The thought of being able to jump in a ship and fly of into the battles you can see on the ground would be amazing. Like many people posting I’m a huge Star Wars fan and a love games and yet, I was bored after an hour or so. Now sure, the extra levels may add new dimensions to the game but taking the trailer of Endor into account ( y-wing bombing an AT-AT) I have a feeling that the extra levels will be “samey”. Was really looking forward to “squadron assult” but after flying the fighters on Hoth ahh not so much. The game itself isn’t bad it’s just not great. The only positive thing continuously said about the game is “the sound and graphics are good” that shouldn’t be a highlight of a AAA game it’s a stock standard. ( and imo the graphics aren’t that spectacular the best word if use is “plasticy”). In an attempt to make a game for “everyone” Dice have made a game for no one. Like many people posting I don’t think I’ll get this game at release, I might down the track when the price drops and all the inevitable dlc is released. ( or day one if they add a f&&King campaign) At the moment 3/5 at best.
Definitely impossible in the Beta to win as Rebels. Twice in 2 games both AT-ATs were brought down using tow cables only for “DEFATED” to appear on the screen and a cut scene of the AT-AT destroying the base with the notable absence of the actual AT-AT.
Also find the all the cool downs for everything incredible aggravating (especially as there are so many players around capitalising on players unable to defend themselves because their gun’s a bit toasty), don’t ever remember seeing anyone in any of the 6 movies stop mid battle to blow on their blaster ‘cos it’s too hot
I can see myself playing this for a few hours, getting incredibly PO’ed then trading it in.
Being burnt? Battlefield 4 is so much further ahead than any of the other battlefields now.
Give it another go, thousands of people still play. It’s smooth, responsive, fast, action packed and hell of a lot of fun.
You are judging a game on the beta, typical whining gamer that doesn’t understand anything about game development. I had game freezes too, its too be expected from beta. But when you get into the game, it’s very fun. It obviously needs some balance tweaking, but thats why its a beta.
I played it on the PS4 with no issues. Think I’ll save my cash though, I found it quite boring after a couple of hours. It looks amazing but needs something “more” to keep it engaging.
Playing the BETA quite a lot over the past few days I can say my the game doesn’t rank too highly in my eyes. Only thing it has going for it are the theme and soundtrack, otherwise a fairly standard, uninteresting game.