Battlefront seems to suffer from the weapons all being too samey while also being "easy to learn, not hard to master".
It's that, and that...I dunno, yeah the presentation is nice, but picking up power ups for ships...the weapons all feeling samey(Battlefront had great weapon diversity that wasn't attached to a limited 'card' system)...I dunno. The reason why Battlefront worked was because the factions played differently from each other. If you were a droid, even a footsoldier droid was completely different from a clone trooper. There is no differentiation like that in this incarnation of it, aside from the ships and heroes. Everything plays the same. It's....
....Battlefront, the original ones I can go back to and have a good time. I can be a roly poly droid, or a heavy droid, and spend a good amount of time playing each one because of how different they play. There's none of that in DICE's battlefront. I can't be a wookie for the rebels who always has a crossbow.
I dunno, I'm very negative on this incarnation of battlefront. It's just...a shallow sequel.
Dan specifically said "any multiplayer-focused game". And why I arrived at sports games is in the post. I've also never heard anyone count random gameplay agnostic drops as a progression system. CS:GO is the compelete counter argument to that sentence.
Like...good gameplay maybe? If anything, a too meaningful progression system actively works against a game you want to play years later. When all the prestiging and unlocking is done and what's left isn't interesting, there will be no players left.
Those sports games you mentioned tend to have a robust single player. That's the difference between those and Battlefront. I brought up CS:GO because that drop system is an added thing to strive for, not dependent of gameplay.
And good gameplay...again, Battlefront is shallow. The hours I played of it, it's not promising.
The actual mechanics and environment of the game? It's fine if people don't find Battlefront's gameplay engaging but just because it doesn't have loads of unlocks and customization and noises and pictures and prestige doesn't mean it can't sustain itself on just being a fun game. How was any shooter before COD successful and beloved?
I'd be very surprised if Battlefront fell off a cliff in terms of player population any time soon. If anything, it's extremely refreshing.
Fun is subjective. I can't tell you 'It's not fun, stop having fun.', just like you can't tell me 'No it's fun, this is fun, the noises and graphics make it fun.' I can however offer my experience with previous games like it, and then judge it by those merits, and my conclusion is that it's a shallow game.
And Progression doesn't make a game fun by itself. Like, good examples of that are League of Legends and DotA, where there is no real 'progression' aside from your skill. (Less so for League due to how they handle unlocks, and more so for DotA since everythings unlocked.) The progressions they both offer though, are an incentive to keep along with the game.
ogchamp