With just a few days to go until Star Wars Battlefront launches, Community Manager Mathew Everett has revealed some of the changes DICE implemented after holding the open beta, which drew over 9.5 million players.
Making it a point to address as many pieces of feedback around balancing, party systems, spawns, vehicles, and bugs, here’s what DICE has improved since the Battlefront beta:
Partner and Party System
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. 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.
Spawns
Speaking of spawning, we’ve listened to your feedback on how this was handled on Hoth. Here, 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.
Vehicles and Weapons
To make your fights as fun and fair as possible, several tweaks to vehicles and weapons have been made. The Cycler Rifle, for instance, has been balanced with bullet drop and slower projectile speed for more deserving kills.
Walkers should be mighty – but not invincible – so weak spots have been added to the AT-AT and AT-ST vehicles. Furthermore, damage balancing is vital for a fair game, and we’ve tweaked this balance for how vehicles, troopers, Star Cards, and ion weapons stand up against each other.
Heroes and Villains
Playing as Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, or any other of the Star Wars Battlefront heroes and villains is something we want to feel truly special, and to achieve this we’ve made several tweaks. Two things we decided to remove were the automatic damage done to heroes over time, and the ability of getting health back when killing enemies. Ultimately, we think this will perfect the power fantasy of playing as these characters.
Everett adds that more changes were made based on fan input, and the above list is just an idea of the adjustments DICE made.
When you do grab Star Wars Battlefront next week, there will be a day one update that makes numerous fixes and improvements.
Star Wars Battlefront launches on November 17 in North America and November 19 in Europe for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
[Source: EA Star Wars]
