EA cuts Star Wars Battlefront II hero costs following backlash

Yesterday, EA was having a bit of a PR nightmare. It started off with early Battlefront II players having an axe to grind over the game's microtransaction and progression systems, and ended with EA having the most downvoted comment in Reddit history. The backlash was incredibly strong and it has forced EA to respond, starting off with a 75 percent reduction in the number of credits it costs to unlock a hero character.

In a post on EA's website titled ‘change will be a constant in Star Wars Battlefront II', the company said: “Making games great comes from regular tuning. As one example, today we’re making a substantial change based on what we’ve seen during the Play First trial. There’s been a lot of discussion around the amount of in-game credits (and time) it takes to unlock some of our heroes, especially Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Unlocking a hero is a great accomplishment in the game, something we want players to have fun earning. We used data from the beta to help set those levels, but it’s clear that more changes were needed.”

Going forward, hero characters will have their costs reduced by 75 percent. This means Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will now cost just 15,000 credits each, instead of 60,000. Emperor Palpatine, Chewbacca and Leia Organa will cost 10,000 credits while Iden will cost 5000.

The change should be live in the game already. Later this week, EA/DICE will also be braving the lands of Reddit once again, with an AMA planned for Wednesday.

KitGuru Says: I still don't understand why anyone would have thought that a 40-hour grind was a fair trade to unlock a character. Still, with these changes in place, that issue is a thing of the past and will hopefully result in a better game.

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