The worst thing about the Star Wars: Battlefront beta was Hoth’s astonishingly chaotic spawning system, and people were rightly concerned that a similarly broken system might make it through to the game’s full release this week.
But in a post on their website, DICE has announced that the sheer weight of community feedback has — thankfully — been heard. A change has been made.
Over the weekend, DICE finally announced the changes they would be making to Star Wars: Battlefront as a result of the feedback from the millions who enjoyed the beta on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
The main one, you’ll be pleased to know, is a tweak to the spawning system. It doesn’t appear as though any changes have been made to the spawning algorithms more broadly, but DICE have announced that Hoth has been rebalanced to improve the experience.
“[On Hoth] we’ve added combat areas that are different for Rebels and Imperials to mitigate spawn camping, and the spawn distances for the two teams have been adjusted on the first uplink,” community manager Mathew Everett wrote.
DICE also announced, in a curious fashion, a change to the partner and party system that appears to only impact Xbox One users.
“Joining and playing a game of Star Wars Battlefront with friends should be as easy and smooth as possible, and we’ve done several tweaks in this area,” Everett wrote. “For instance, it will be possible to join a friend via the Xbox Friends app, and you’ll also be able to see your party friends in-game (look for green dots on the map) – but you cannot spawn on them.”
Since the PS4 and PC aren’t mentioned, it seems safe to presume that no changes have been made that could impact either platform there.
From the way it reads — and it’s worded pretty poorly — it sounds like DICE have added the ability to join the game your friend is in through Xbox Friends, much in the same way you can join a friend’s game on Steam.
What DICE appear to be saying, however, is that joining a friend’s game in this way just gets you into the game — it doesn’t pair you up as partners. That makes an awful lot of sense, because your friend could already be blasting away with a partner.
So if you want to partner up with someone so you can spawn on them, you’ll have to do that before joining the server like you did in the beta. I’ve reached out to EA just to make sure that’s the case, but Xbox One users should take note.
Another change is the decision to “remove … the automatic damage done to heroes over time”. I hadn’t even noticed that part; it just felt like it was on a timer. To balance that out, heroes won’t get health back when they kill enemies now either. “Ultimately, we think this will perfect the power fantasy of playing as these characters,” DICE’s community manager explained.
AT-AT and AT-ST walkers have weak spots now as well, and the cycler rifle — perhaps the most popular card during the beta given its utility and respawn rate on Hoth — has been nerfed with slower projectile speed and a heavier bullet drop.
It’s an interesting change considering that, from the footage I saw over the weekend, the cycler rifle is one of the last star cards you’ll be able to access. It’s right at the end along with the jump pack and the Sharpshooter trait, which some players might find a tad frustrating considering how much fun the jump pack was.
But that’s how DICE has decided it’s going to be. If you’re picking up the game tomorrow, or later this week thanks to the glory of how retailers work, the above info might be helpful.
Comments
5 responses to “DICE Tweaks Star Wars: Battlefront Spawns, Heroes And Party Chat Just Before Release”
I noticed the weak spot and cycler rifle stuff last night while I was having a bash. AT-STs are not the armoured death machines they were in beta, and that’s a good, good thing.
On PS4 you can join friends for every game in this way, the way it reads is that they have used XBox simply as one example of how it will work for all.
This video covers all of the changes – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yw8_WQhLNo
So basically you can’t be a sniper in Battlefront til practically the end of each match?
Well that bites. Not everyone likes to be the “charge in guns blazing” type.
You can, but through another card you get earlier; the pulse rifle, I believe.
It’s just an FYI since people will expect to get access to the same stuff they had relatively quickly in the beta.
It’s worded quite poorly, but he means that the cycler rifle card is not unlocked until a later level. Rank 28, to be specific.
However the Cycler Rifle is a star card. There are at least 2 blasters that you would class as sniper rifles that unlock before the Cycler Rifle: The T-21 unlocks at Rank 10 and the T-21B at Rank 21. Note that they do not shoot projectiles like the Cycler Rifle (which can penetrate shields).
Also, the Jump Pack unlocks at Rank 13. Far from ‘right at the end’ as mentioned by the author.
Going by the unlocks on the Careers website the highest rank is 50. Not sure if it’s capped at 50 or there are just no further unlocks after that rank, but this means the Jump Pack and Cycler Rifle are not at all ‘at the end’ of ranking, as the author suggests.