EA Exec Admits Battlefront May Lack Depth

[Steven Bogos]

EA Exec Admits Battlefront May Lack Depth

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1008/1008377.jpg
EA explains that Battlefront was built from the ground up to be as accessible as possible.

lack of depth [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/star%20wars%20battlefront?os=star+wars+battlefront]. Many fans assumed that the game was "dumbed down" deliberately in order to be made accessible, and now, Electronic Arts CFO Blake Jorgensen has essentially confirmed it.

"Star Wars Battlefront is a first-person shooter, but it is [one of] the only teen-rated first-person shooters," Jorgensen said this week at the Nasdaq Investor Conference [http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/zcx7tr3t] in Europe. "We had designed it to be a much more accessible product to a wide age group."

"So, an 8-year-old could play with his father on the couch, as well as a teenager or 20-year-old could play the game and enjoy it. It is more accessible."

He added that due to these changes, "for the hardcore, it may not have the depth that they wanted in the game."

Jorgensen is confident the game will go on to ship 13 million units, and suspects that it will see a massive spike in sales around the release of The Force Awakens [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/142880-Star-Wars-The-Force-Awakens-Theatrical-Poster-New-Trailer].

Source: GameSpot [http://www.gamespot.com/articles/star-wars-battlefront-may-lack-depth-for-hardcore-/1100-6432769/]

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[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

This game may lack depth but the older games were no different.

I currently own and played Battlefront 2 and despite the game HAVING Space Battles and more maps and game modes, the game still rather feels simplisitc and accessible and the more I kept playing it I got bored in the end and quit and its Hero units were just as OP. Jedis/Siths can easily one shot anyone with their lightsabres.

 

[Zontar]

This game may lack depth but the older games were no different.

I currently own and played Battlefront 2 and despite the game HAVING Space Battles and more maps and game modes, the game still rather feels simplisitc and accessible and the more I kept playing it I got bored in the end and quit and its Hero units were just as OP. Jedis/Siths can easily one shot anyone with their lightsabres.

Not quite true. The Heros where offensively just as over powered, but their health was lower, their health drained more quickly and they where less mobile, meaning the "20 v 1" that you see in Battlefront 3 isn't there unless you're against a player with skill. Which is another problem Battlefront 3 has on top of the fact it has 4 maps, no single player, only one game mode worth playing and the fact the fighter battles are worthless: there's no skill involved. The blasters are as accurate as they are in the movies, which is a bad thing since in a shoot-out between two players it's a dice roll and not a skill based outcome.

How anyone could even consider buying this game form more then 20$ baffles me. Fallout 4, Witcher 3, Phantom Pain and Rise of the Tomb Raider all cost the same, yet not a single one doesn't have an order of magnitude more content at the least.

 

[shirkbot]

This game may lack depth but the older games were no different.

I currently own and played Battlefront 2 and despite the game HAVING Space Battles and more maps and game modes, the game still rather feels simplisitc and accessible and the more I kept playing it I got bored in the end and quit and its Hero units were just as OP. Jedis/Siths can easily one shot anyone with their lightsabres.

Not quite true. The Heros where offensively just as over powered, but their health was lower, their health drained more quickly and they where less mobile, meaning the "20 v 1" that you see in Battlefront 3 isn't there unless you're against a player with skill. Which is another problem Battlefront 3 has on top of the fact it has 4 maps, no single player, only one game mode worth playing and the fact the fighter battles are worthless: there's no skill involved. The blasters are as accurate as they are in the movies, which is a bad thing since in a shoot-out between two players it's a dice roll and not a skill based outcome.

I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The balance wasn't so skewed and there was just generally more to do in Battlefront 2. After all, even if it was shallow, it was so much broader that you at least had something to do. You can usually have a big, shallow game or a small, deep game without any complaints, but once you have a small, shallow game it's ridiculous to assume people won't cry foul.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Well, the first step to fixing a mistake is admitting it. Too bad I doubt that's going to be the case. I bought Battlefront on launch day. I have fun playing it, and it really does make me feel like I'm fighting in the movies. But I fully believe this game could have been so much more. The opening tutorial, where you're patrolling on Hoth, was such a tease because it was a glimpse of what this game needs: A single player component.

Please, EA, against all odds, learn from this. The next Battlefront game that you release, put the single player in there. You have the build for it in the training missions--those are pretty fun in co op, but they're too short. Build on that. Bring back some space battles too.

 

[Ukomba]

The game has a 3.5 from users of Metacritic, has been denounced by big critics like Angry Joe and TotalBiscuit, and is already showing signs of week sales, yet he sticks to the 13 million sales number? His certainty that the movie will blind people into buying his crap game is really really insulting.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Well they will never just come out and admit that their business opportunism is what it is. That is bad business. But these excuses are at least entertaining, briefly...oh, wait...

 

[RJ 17]

Not quite true. The Heros where offensively just as over powered, but their health was lower, their health drained more quickly and they where less mobile, meaning the "20 v 1" that you see in Battlefront 3 isn't there unless you're against a player with skill.

Ehhhhhhh.....I'm not so sure about that. Don't get me wrong: I think the older games were much better for having campaigns, galactic conquest, and the prequel races (god damn I loved the droids in that game)...oh, and let's not forget space battles. But the heroes were still pretty ridiculous.

Alright, some of the heroes were pretty ridiculous. Darth Maul, in particular, was a one-man death machine. His sprint and double jump made him obscenely mobile, his throw-lightsaber could take out entire waves at a time, and his standard attack routine was enough to take out anyone around him.

Same thing with the Twi'lek girl who used two lightsabers...she was essentially a jedi FemMaul.

That said, the heroes were still more balanced due to the fact that their health was actually constantly draining. You had to keep in the fight and killing to keep your health up, but that just meant you were getting blasted more. Still, certain heroes could clear entire platoons singlehandedly.

OT: Yeah...I wouldn't be hoping on a massive sales spike even with the release of the movie. You might see a bump, but not much more. Word has already gotten around and it spread pretty fast: this game is an absolute P.o.S. A stunningly beautiful to look at P.o.S. with fantastic sound design, but a P.o.S. none the less.

Perhaps the greatest flaw which is already widely known: people who have already been playing it for a while have clear and distinct advantages over people who are new to the game. The last weapon unlocked in the game - which you're just given if you pre-ordered - is so accurate and deadly that it pretty much makes your standard soldier a hero.

 

[Metalrocks]

im glad i could play the beta and saw how quickly the game gets boring.
having way more fun with rainbow six siege. at least team play is required and it doesnt get boring since the objectives are never at the same place.

 

[Micah Weil]

"Lacks depth".
My cat's water dish has more depth than this game, and I didn't have to wait for my local pet store to demand I shell out some cash for the "depth" DLC.

 

[shintakie10]

So I'm torn here. On the one hand I'd love to see EA get slapped down for making ridiculously bold claims like sellin 13 million by friggin March. It'd be great to watch their stock price take a massive dump for banking so heavily on nostalgia and the Star Wars name without actually putting the effort into it to back up that game. However if they do get clobbered like that, people like Peter Moore and the execs in charge wont be the ones who suffer. It'll be the peons on the bottom who were just doin their job and got fucked because of terrible corporate decision making.

 

[F-I-D-O]

I played Battlefront 2 when I was 9.
It wasn't hard to figure out six classes (and only two in space) and where each one fell on the battlefield.
Or both teams having viable attacking vehicles and interesting interactions between them.
The Galactic conquest mode was fantastic, even when adding over effects in between matches.
I could grasp that maybe spawning on top of 8 enemies was bad, so I'd pick a different spawn.

Battlefront 2015 puts spaceships in the same battle as land fights for a more combined arms feel. And then scrapped the rest.
BF2 was an accessible game. It wasn't the deepest game, but it had something beneath the Star Wars paint job. BF2015 lacks that same substance. In audio and visuals, it's the best Star Wars game made. But its mechanics have the staying powder of cheap gum flavoring.

It will sell and probably spike again around Christmas because a lot people just want a quick shot of Star Wars or a short match once a week. But it's probably going to fade as fast as Titanfall. I'm more interested in seeing how the DLC sells, since people seem to get disillusioned with the game after 10+ hours.

 

[Neverhoodian]

While he's generally too "in your face" for my taste, I'm reminded of Razorfist's take on why the push for "accessibility" backfires so often:

Spoiler: NSFW language

Your average "non-gamer" Joe/Jane doesn't know any better, so why strip away so many core features that are just going to piss off the dedicated fanbase?

At the risk of sounding like a bitter old codger complaining about kids having it too soft these days, when it comes to games I was raised on brutal difficulties. I grew up playing the X-Wing series on PC, which at times boasts some truly sadistic mission design.[footnote]Just getting the damn games to run on DOS could be an ordeal in and of itself.[/footnote] Later missions were often grueling tests of endurance, fending off waves of enemies nearly single-handedly for thirty to forty-five minutes...with no checkpoints! Even turning on cheats for invincibility and infinite ammo wouldn't guarantee victory.

Got so caught up dogfighting that you missed a single flight of Tie Bombers making a run on your mothership? Mission failed. Didn't know a flight of Assault Gunboats would hyper in on the other side of the map and make a similar run? Mission failed. Got shot down or crashed into a piece of space debris? Mission failed AND you were "treated" to a cutscene like this one:

Spoiler

Did I mention the game would then wipe your score and bust you all the way down to Flight Cadet? Sucks to be you (unless you kept a pilot backup on a separate text file)!

I'm not saying I miss that degree of masochistic difficulty. All I'm pointing out is this was the norm for many games back then...and they STILL sold like hotcakes for all kinds of age groups.

 

[thewatergamer]

You don't say? I am so sick of these half-assed PR speak excuses that publishers love to trot out whenever they release a shallow or buggy or just bad game...it's never quite their fault you see, it's always something else that caused whatever happened

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Alright, some of the heroes were pretty ridiculous. Darth Maul, in particular, was a one-man death machine. His sprint and double jump made him obscenely mobile, his throw-lightsaber could take out entire waves at a time, and his standard attack routine was enough to take out anyone around him.

this might be deja vu, but god damn this is the truth, still remember on coruscant I was using darth maul off the start, force sprinted to the other teams main CP and lightsaber throwed down the hallway, taking out a solid 10-12 clone troopers (pretty much all of them that spawned at the beginning) and continued to have a lightsaber party in there for the 20 seconds or whatever it took to capture the CP, and I won the game because they didn't have anywhere to spawn...so I won something like 140-110 had quite the cackling sith laugh after winning that planet in conquest.


OT: pretty much everyone in existence was telling you guys this since the start, obviously your lack of faith in our force abilities is disturbing...to say the least about you EA.

 

[The Enquirer]

Well, the first step to fixing a mistake is admitting it

I don't think they actually learned anything. The older games weren't complex or difficult to get into at all, largely because they had single player. I remember being 11 when the first once came out and loving it. Hell, I still love it.

It isn't about complexity even. It's about features. It lacks so much when compared to even the original, a game that came out over 10 damn years ago. Had we simply gotten a re-release of the original with updated graphics/sound and some additional weapons, even if it was just the one era, I think it would have done better simply because the core gameplay was better.

 

[EndlessSporadic]

I completely understand wanting to make a game accessible, but if you have to make your game shallow to do that then you are doing it wrong. Maybe you could have, you know, put some star wars into a game called Star Wars. It's what the fans wanted and blowing up space ships has been an E-rated experience since the days of the arcades.

EA, you can do better than this.

 

[Jingle Fett]

"Star Wars Battlefront is a first-person shooter, but it is [one of] the only teen-rated first-person shooters," Jorgensen said this week at the Nasdaq Investor Conference in Europe. "We had designed it to be a much more accessible product to a wide age group."

"So, an 8-year-old could play with his father on the couch, as well as a teenager or 20-year-old could play the game and enjoy it. It is more accessible."

He added that due to these changes, "for the hardcore, it may not have the depth that they wanted in the game."

Fuuuuuuuck youuuuuu Blake Jorgensen. The original Battlefronts were also rated teen. They were rated teen, and had way more depth. They were accessible, even my friends who hated Star Wars loved those games. Heck, I played those games with my actual 8 year old cousins and even my non gamer sisters! They all loved it because they could just run around and shoot bots and feel like they were a part of it, or everyone hop into a Republic gunship and derp around--if I wanted to join in on their shennanigans I could, or I could ignore them and focus on winning the match. I could do either of those and still have a fun time with them because the game had 4 player splitscreen with bots on all the regular maps.
Oh, and those games also had actual depth and no shortage of content. Jedi Smash Brothers mode was extremely accessible and you also had ewok and wampa modes for shits and giggles. And in terms of depth, there was just a ton of stuff you could do--you could play the game all day and never get bored simply by cycling between game mechanics, play styles, maps, etc.

/vent

 

[Millky95]

I'm having fun with it... I'm enjoying flying and being able to "build" my character. Would rather not have to unlock so much of it and more available at the start but otherwise I'm enjoying it.

Please don't shoot me