So this is gonna go down in history, I don't remember a time when a company riding the hype train manages to derail it simply by releasing the game but somehow EA has done just that, now i'm not a fan of Battlefront but i have been following this through my friends and i have some musings about it below but first i'm going to explain what happened.

The What

So battlefront is largely a multiplayer game much in the same of Battlefield where the longer you play and better you do the more progression you unlock now usually this is relegated to things like skins, weapons and the like (in the case of battlefield) however EA took it one step further and decided to charge full price for a Triple A title but still treat it like a free to play game.

As far as I know, 6 of the best heroes in the game are locked behind paywalls, while you can unlock them with in game currency i did some research and it showed you better be prepared to play A LOT of the game to unlock it, this harkens back to a previous article i did in with activision filed a patent that forces players to play against much higher level players with better equipment in the hopes that you too will pay for it just to get a level playing field.

The response from EA has been as you might expect, since the backlash is too big to ignore they have "adjusted" certain things in the game that ultimately don't affect their payment model in a big way,but here's the kicker and what some people are only just cluing on to, they actually didn't change anything at all.

They've essentially fooled people into thinking they are listening, let me explain, they cut the cost of said heroes by 75%, but what they didn't inform people of is that they also cut the rewards from games by 75% essentially making it the same exact problem that people had to begin with, they haven't changed anything they just used a clickbait title to get people to shut up.

Now of course you have the usual spin from gaming websites about why this is a good thing or why players don't have a right to be outraged but this is where we find ourselves now, triple a games being released as a free to play, pay to win model simply because they can, I haven't and won't be playing battlefront 2 so i can comment on the game play but this is how you ruin a game before it's even released.

I had a talk with a friend last night who said that if loot boxes and microtransactions never came to be we'd have a way more enjoyable experience to begin with in terms of progression, if the only way to get a legendary skin for a character is to put lot of time into a character and to get better with it when you see someone with it it's sort of a "Woah look out for that guy" now it's just "look out for that guys credit card".

A sign of the times.

We're just playing slot machines at this point, gaming companies are doing this type of shady shit in increasing fashion because they largely get away from it, the reason Battlefront seems to be a flashpoint for this is because the developers over played their hand, i think i said this a few weeks ago that by the end of next year we'd see a game that was so riddled and broken with micro transactions just to test the waters to see if people will still buy it.

Fortunately most people seem to be clued into the scam of Battlefront and EA, the only problem is the gaming websites that get paid for their reviews saying "Well if you have a problem with it, that's your problem" and refusing to call out terrible business practices in an industry they apparently love, when in reality it's simply a paycheck for the majority of them and they could give a fuck about what happens to the state of games.

The same thing apparently happened in the early CoD WW2 screens at the end of the game, it's reported that they initially had it so that players that unlocked or bought loot boxes opened them at the end of the game at the score screen and that you couldn't leave the lobby until it was finished, but like i said this is a rumor that was reported on so take it with a grain of salt.

I can't speak for the players of Battlefront since i had no intention in buying the game to begin with, but it still pisses me off as a gamer that there are companies out there that are actively pursuing this bullshit to pad their bottom line at the expense of our enjoyment, loot crates and paid items should have absolutely no effect on the game play in anyway, i'm guilty of spending probably $500 in CS:GO on Skin cases, but that doesn't affect the game in anyway the way that locking weapons in cases would which is what is happening in Battlefronts case.

As i said above, this is ultimately a sign of the times, big companies like Activision and EA are testing the waters to see just where the line is on where people will tell them to piss off, but this isn't anywhere near the last of it, you can expect more of this in the future with their titles and as the slippery slope wears off and these things become more and more standard.

Inevitably you'll find yourself paying full price just to get to a cash shop in the game that holds everything that even 5 years ago would be unlocked through dedication and game play, it really is a sad sad future we live in sometimes.

Thanks for taking the time to read my article, if you enjoyed it feel free to up-vote resteem or follow, what do you guys think about Battlefront and EA's business practices? leave me a comment below, thanks!