When Star Wars: Battlefront came out last November, both critics and players noted that the number of vehicles, maps and modes in the first-person shooter came off as a little underweight when compared to similar full-priced games. EA promised that there’d be more stuff to do and play in Battlefront but the additional offerings seem to be missing in action. After a long wait, news about what’s coming got announced today.
Star Wars: Battlefront made its retail debut on November 18. A week after its launch, the game received a free DLC pack called The Battle of Jakku, named after an important planet in the most recent Star Wars film. Things have gotten decidedly quieter since then, despite a promise from EA execs that they’d be supporting the game for months to come. That silence led to a giant thread on official EA forums, where users grumbled about the lack of info.
Like many big-publisher releases that come out nowadays, Battlefront‘s post-launch content is tethered to a season pass. Spend $60 on the season pass and you get early access to four expansion packs with a mix of new weapons, locations and hero characters. Further communications from EA hinted that a big update would come in January.
Today, the publisher is at long last announcing a new DLC update and outlining their plan for supporting Battlefront moving forward. A blog post from senior producer Sigurlina Ingvarsdottir details the free updates hitting over the next three months. This Thursday, a January update is bringing more modes and new costumes for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, based on the pair’s get-ups worn during the Battle of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back:
- The Tatooine Survival map will now support the Blast, Droid Run, Drop Zone, Hero Hunt, and Heroes vs Villains multiplayer modes, and is called Raider Camp.
- New Hoth-themed outfits for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, both of which will be available to all fans when they play as these two iconic characters on the Hoth — these were unlocked by our players for completing our Heroes’ Holiday community mission last month.
- We are giving players the ability to create Private Matches, which makes playing with friends even easier.
- The introduction of Daily Challenges and Community Events. These are designed to rally the Community around certain goals and objectives, giving players the chance to earn credits and unlocks even faster. We’ll have more news regarding Community Events and Daily Challenges in the days ahead.
- And of course, we are also including some overall balancing tweaks to both weapons and multiplayer modes.
The February update will bring a brand-new Hoth multiplayer map and a new Survival mission on Hoth. And for March, players get a new Endor multiplayer map and a Tatooine survival map.
Paid content add-ons start in March as well. The roll-out is as follows:
- Star Wars™ Battlefront™ Outer Rim (March 2016) — Fight among the factories of Sullust and battle within Jabba the Hutt’s palace on Tatooine
- Star Wars™ Battlefront™ Bespin (Summer 2016) — It’s hunt or be hunted in this action-packed experience set in the Cloud City of Bespin
- Star Wars™ Battlefront™ Death Star (Fall 2016) — That’s no moon! One of the most iconic locations in the Star Wars universe makes its debut in Star Wars Battlefront.
- Star Wars™ Battlefront™ Expansion Pack 4 — Title TBA (Early 2017) — We will have more details to share about this exciting new expansion pack in the coming months.
Comments
34 responses to “Star Wars: Battlefront Finally Getting New DLC This Week”
Sounds bleh
As a “Turningpoint-aholic” I cant say I’m over the Endor Moon about this.
New DLC isn’t enough to make me want to play this again.
Fixed that for you 😉
Pretty spot on 😛
Glad I didn’t buy the Season Pass. Sounds like $60 for 4 maps and some vehicle skins.
I have been enjoying the game but this feels like such a cash grab, good on them for providing so much free content, something that seemed like it would never occur, but the paid seems a little skewed as a result
Turning Point mode available on all maps that currently support Walker Assault and Supremacy in Feb. Ok this sounds good.
Private matches too! Maybe we could finally play this at the LAN.. although we might need better internet there.
You know what’s better than this game? Plants vs zombies garden warfare 2.
Also, Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.
ME3 multi makes me wish there was a Mass Effect MMO where you could do co-op scenarios with your mates, across the galaxy, and some bridging conversation-heavy plotlines.
I’d grind that forever.
Sounds like you want warframe.
Warframe with ME world/storytelling yeah. 🙂
(Srs though, I have the Founder’s pack that came with the t-shirt and am about to get stuck into the ‘repaying Alad V’ event. Warframe is mah jam.)
Jeez man… that almost sounds like Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Dungeon Keeper Mobile?
Yes, I went there.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
Oh good, pack 4 is still completely unknown. Always good to drop $60 on a season pass without knowing what you’ve actually paid for.
I’m sure they’ll announce what it is as soon as they figure out themselves what the hell they’re going to do.
Maybe a Hayden Christiansen version of Obi Wan Kenobi from the ROTJ “special edition”? 😛
This is the first I’ve heard about a community goal in Battlefront.
…wait, what? Didn’t you just say you already did one?
for the game’s sake, I really hope that unannounced pack is a reasonably lengthy campaign that makes a bit of a story out of it for both the empire and the rebellion. where teams can ebb and flow the campaign on branching storylines.
Hah
As long as they include a Vote to kick option, or maybe actually start policing haxing then new stuff is always nice. Some more vehicles would be good too.
Paid DLC will be the nail in BATTLEFRONTs coffin. The majority of players who haven’t got the season pass aren’t going to pay for DLC, so when the paid DLC drops the player base will be split into the “haves” and the “have nots”. Battlefronts player base is too small to be split.
A server browser might help. You could than browser servers based on what DLC they are running.
I didn’t buy the season pass and I think many like myself will just stop playing, if they haven’t already. The above isn’t going to make this game good imo and just isn’t worth paying for.
Yep, after Battlefield 4, I swore I would never buy another season pass again. A new bunch of maps come out, people play them for maybe a week then everybody just goes back to the default maps and you never get to play the new ones again. The DLC a waste of money if you never actually get to play it. So no more DLC for me.
I assume they’ll have to introduce a server browser at some point if they’re going to start renting out private servers like they do in Battlefield. And I’m sure they’ll be wanting to do that because money.
Alternatively, people won’t be able to find matches on the DLC maps and the size of the “haves” group tends towards zero, forcing everyone to restrict themselves to the base game content. I’ve certainly seen that with a few multiplayer games.
Yeah that’s happened to me with chivalry, I got the expansion and everyone played it flat out for 2 months. Then it suddenly went dead and only the base game is going nowadays.
A game like this shouldn’t split the player base up with paid maps.
Maps should be free but other things could be part of the dlc like skins that only paid people get.
This goes for all fps games
The most irritating for me is the lack of bots. I want to play everything single player, or with a few mates locally. Trying to learn the ropes of conquest mode while being killed every 5 seconds isn’t fun. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to drive an ATAT 🙁
This bring me to ranking, there is a ranking system but it isn’t used. All you end up with in multiplayer is being the Rank 1 guy in a match with Rank 40-50 guys. There is no balance for new guys trying to learn the ropes, this ends up not being fun.
As a guy that can’t spend 16 hours a day during the school holidays honing my skilz. Nor have I played the last 10 years of COD 🙂 There needs to be a 30+ mode for the older fans who don’t get to play that often 🙂
Ha, yes. Separate servers for people who have only ever played a couple hours a night, maybe a dozen or so per week.
Go too high on your ‘hours played’ and get kicked out of the ‘Over 30/have kids’ bracket.
I’d be up for something like that.
Clone Wars/Force Awakens DLC when?
Just make Dark Forces for me using this engine, okay?
Season pass is a joke. I’m not paying EA another red f*%ng cent for this game until they fix the server browser issues. Completely bullshit. I’ve not been able to play ANY other game mode except Walker Assault since after Christmas as there really doesn’t appear to be anyone playing it. Even then, trying to get a game of WA results in 15-20 mins minimum, sitting there clicking back and forth when searcher gets down to 70%. The system is a complete joke and needs to be redesigned.
Wow the new dlc packs do not one bit sound exciting! When they mentioned that they had 4 coming out I was assuming potential era’s like the clone wars or force awakens were going to be implemented! And the wait for such small and minimal content is appalling! They should have had all this from the get go as the base game! Then from there branched the game out further with era’s in forms of dlc/expansions to the game like Clone Wars 🙂 They fcked it so hardcore ;(
Although the new content does look nice, the only game mode that I can do is Heores VS Villains. I haven’t even played every game mode because it is impossible to get into them. Let us pick our own servers!