I know all the HCG look down on this game but I'm finding a lot more competitive depth the more I play. I'm assuming I'm getting mostly placed on at least decent servers. The level of play from others working in what is on the surface a very unbalanced game is kind of surprising.
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Star Wars Battlefront |OT| Here's Where The Fun Begins
- Thread starter JDHarbs
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Spacejaws
Member
Ok so Jakku has totally ruined the matchhmaking on PC right? I only seem to be able to find games of turning point and fighter squadron with jakku enabled and walker assault without.
No way the population could have died that quickly right? Otherwise that was a proper waste of money if we only get to play the full game for a month before players are unable to match each other. Damnit why the hell isn't there a server browser...
Shit just looked it up 4000 players right now, not bad but not great either dwindling pretty fast.
No way the population could have died that quickly right? Otherwise that was a proper waste of money if we only get to play the full game for a month before players are unable to match each other. Damnit why the hell isn't there a server browser...
Shit just looked it up 4000 players right now, not bad but not great either dwindling pretty fast.
I came home excited to unbox my new ps4 and play some battlefront. Downloaded the game in about an hour, not bad.
Oh cool I'm playing as Vader while it loads, shouldn't be too long.
4 hours later and the progress bar is at 60%. FUCK!
I will never, ever, be a part of the digital only group. This wait fucking sucks.
Oh cool I'm playing as Vader while it loads, shouldn't be too long.
4 hours later and the progress bar is at 60%. FUCK!
I will never, ever, be a part of the digital only group. This wait fucking sucks.
Me either. Where I live the internet sucks. I bought fallout 4 digital and it took 20 hours to download. No way I could do that with every game.
kriskrosbbk
Member
I dont know man this is something like 800kb/s.
I mean my 3G is faster than that.You tell me.
Uh, isn't that like 700kbps? That's pretty slow
I haven't been able to find a game of Supremacy since the last patch. I think there is some sort of bug involved. I also get a really annoying bug in HvsV where I spawn as a normal soldier and can't use my cards or powerup.
i haven't tried it in the full game yet but i'm fairly certain the cycler rifle could only one hit kill with a headshot in the beta as well, if you body shot a trooper who had full health you had to quickly follow it up with one or two long range blaster shots to actually kill them.
i'm guessing they've nerfed the body shot damage slightly though?
PodcastFips
Member
825, that's more than enough for online gaming.
Insane Metal
Member
Yeah, I checked it when I tried to play and there were >70k people on PS4... but it seems I'm the only one having trouble?
Noticed a patch or download of some kind is out for the PC version today, was over 100MB, the only difference I could see is it asks for a quick survey in the main menu after I had played 8 rounds of Blast mode and went back to the main menu. It only asks if you would recommended the game to a friend, and why. I could only get Blast mode to work, all other modes were near empty or empty.
I was doing so well on Blast until I got to large Endor map (not the smaller one with the landing platform in the middle). I kept getting stuck on geometry a lot, so when I would enter a shoot out with someone and I kill them, I do my best to run away to recharge my health but it's more like this:
I was doing so well on Blast until I got to large Endor map (not the smaller one with the landing platform in the middle). I kept getting stuck on geometry a lot, so when I would enter a shoot out with someone and I kill them, I do my best to run away to recharge my health but it's more like this:
Interesting statistics:
Not suprised about Boba Fett, but less than 1% take-downs with a cable? That's not much...
So the X-Wong is destroying the standard Tie Fighter, not much of a surprise there, I wouldn't even want to see the A-Wing stats, easily outdoes both Ties. The hero ship kill count is meaningless as well, it's easy to shoot standard ships in either, literally fish in a barrel in pretty much every game, I would love to see the stats on which is being defeated the most, and how, I've seen the Millennium Falcon drive through Slave 1 a ridiculous amount of times.
The snow speeder taking down AT-ATs isn't that surprising either, why bother when it can be easier to spend the multiple rounds just shooting the shit out of them.
Tal Shiar Agent
Member
Based on the player counts, it probably wouldn't make a difference to EA sales wise if Battlefront was a PS4 exclusive.
WadiumArcadium
Member
I still haven't been assaulted by an ewok yet. I need to play more games on Endor.
Spacejaws
Member
Should be on steam godamnit. Surely it would have helped sales.
I was pretty much only able to find walker assault matches before the patch. Kind of crazy that you can only play 1-2 gamemodes in a game that is already starving for content. This is going to end up like Titanfall but much faster. I imagine the season pass and DLC will split the small community even more.
Gravemind IV
Member
I just won a game of Walker Assault as the Rebels on the first tier, both walkers destroyed.
That's a map where there aren't even dish turrets, so it even cuts down on the amount of damage you can do to them.
Damn.
That's a map where there aren't even dish turrets, so it even cuts down on the amount of damage you can do to them.
Damn.
ElzarTheBam
Member
I'm putting up good number with it, the hardest part is the initial push.
Yeah, they really need to make it harder for the rebels ASAP.
Try setting your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and secondary to 8.8.4.4 both are Google's.
Helped a friend with every damn network problem he had with PS4 yesterday.
blackdevil
Member
i think you have to stand still and wait.
if you run into a crowd you are pretty much gone in a second but if you keep your distance and shot from afar you can kill at will.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
They are easily taken down if someone hangs back in an AT-ST and uses the missiles and it's blasters on them. Easy pickings for the one track minds of spawn campers.
Voidwolf
Member
Hmmm, the game patched this morning and now I can't find any Supremacy matches on PC. Surely it can't be too early in the day. I tried searching Walker Assault and couldn't find any lobbies with enough players to start a match. Disabling Jakku from the rotation doesn't seem to help.
bargeparty
Member
Does anyone have tips on aiming (PS4) in the "planes?" I use the lock on, try to keep the enemy in my sights but I often just miss and do little damage. Meanwhile I'll get taken down in seconds when someone is on my tail.
Somewhat related: it's way too hard for me to see ground units, and I'm sitting relatively close to a 65" tv. I think they need up up the ground unit draw distance or something.
Something about the scale just seems off to me. I never had an issue strafing ground units in BF3 jets.
Somewhat related: it's way too hard for me to see ground units, and I'm sitting relatively close to a 65" tv. I think they need up up the ground unit draw distance or something.
Something about the scale just seems off to me. I never had an issue strafing ground units in BF3 jets.
blackdevil
Member
try shooting where the enemy is going to be not where he is right now. The laserbeam takes a while to get there.
Same when the enemy is running.
Darth Smurf X
Member
I'm pulling a quote from the NPD thread, since it applies here as well:
I cut out the non-Star Wars stuff, but going by Best Buy's results, I have a feeling we will see a HUGE influx of Battlefront players next week/Christmas. Also, Amazon's weekly charts are showing a very large increase in Star Wars bundle sales.
Now if DICE could just make the Jakku DLC mandatory, we'll be in business.
I cut out the non-Star Wars stuff, but going by Best Buy's results, I have a feeling we will see a HUGE influx of Battlefront players next week/Christmas. Also, Amazon's weekly charts are showing a very large increase in Star Wars bundle sales.
Now if DICE could just make the Jakku DLC mandatory, we'll be in business.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Thanks for posting this, and it seems as expected by several of us. And yes to Jakks mandatory. Hopefully in the next patch, and soon.
Still at 27 with 24 hours of playtime, lol.
They raised them in BF4 expansions I believe, so signs point to they will.
Lee Chaolan
Member
8 new Heroes would be awesome. Heroes vs Villains is my favorite mode (minus the glitchy sub weapons now) but that would add tons of life into the game for me.
Patchnotes said it was for a server update and adding some Dolby Atmos support. Probably just bug fixes.
DrGonzo615
Banned
Also, they dump anti vehicle turrets right by the AT-ST spawn. I used the AT-ST last night on Jakku and I was already down to 48% health by the time I could actually take control of the damn thing.
The spawns and how they work and their placement is total fucking shit in this game. This is probably the biggest problem facing the game right now in my eyes.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Ah, now that is fucking tacky. They definitely need to work on the spawns. I will agree. There should be no anti-vehicle pups on this map/mode.
Insane Metal
Member
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
Optimistic take: It's going to go on sale like Titanfall but much faster, allowing the community who wants to keep playing it to consolidate under DLC ownership even easier.
Excessively long explanation for why I feel positive about this:
I mean, it's better for EA, who only wants to sell DLC at full price insofar as they can. If they've run out of people willing to buy it full price, they have ceased to profit from it at all, so it's better to go on sale. That goes double when you realize the DLC releases are what rejuvenates continued playing, which encourages microtransactions. Less people owning the Season Pass DLC means less people coming back to play when a new package is released, so their goal is to have that number be as high as possible while not sacrificing full price SP sales.
The release of the first package is usually a last moment to try and get people locked in with SP, but after that it becomes less and less likely as the remaining people are harder holdouts, and harder holdouts who get too used to missing out on each consecutive package release are more likely to drop the game altogether, and the power of a package release to pull them back in for microtransactions is nullified. So the transition is inevitable, and after the first package heavy sales come into effect, from what we've seen on other EA titles. If playerbase and SP sales drop off quickly, the markdowns are heavier.
If it feels gross being under this system there is an easy solution: Don't buy it. If you want to minimize the effect but still partake in this product, buy SP on deep sale and don't buy microtransactions. I personally feel this is going to be the model for a long time. Chop up the game too much and your initial package to pull people in seems too scant, so then to get people on board you have to go F2P, but then you have sacrificed the quick income that allows quick consecutive development of new titles. Those who have the franchise sizes and money to be on this cycle, such as EA, have absolutely no reason to go that way.
There is a movement to boycott these things, but it's often not a full boycott. Instead, it's people waiting around to buy the game plus SP at the price of a regular game or less. This demographic isn't large enough to disrupt the income cycle that keeps this quick rolling release of high budget titles, but it does communicate to them that people still want to play the games and are willing to wait. Instead of remaining entirely disconnected, they instituted EA Access. This gives the ability to play the titles this demographic is waiting on sooner, yet also trials and small discounts to entice them to get on board sooner.
It also gets them income. Sure, $30 a year for so many of those games seems like a good offer, and it is, but how universal is the interest of most people going in? How many Battlefront people are interested in sports, Need for Speed, Dragon Age, Plants vs Zombies? Probably a lot less than would be willing to try them out if they had them for free. So essentially that's the $30 that was only interested in one product that year, $30 that goes to the 6-months-late ownership of it, which was going to happen anyway, yet also converted to a vested interest in multiple franchises, since technically it was paid for all of them.
Also, since it isn't true ownership but subscription, they are encouraged to repeat it, keeping their interests broad rather than focused on a single title. That goes double if they did go on to get the SP for the game they were interested in, so they have a second investment they don't want to lose. It's really quite genius. Some would say sinister, since it doesn't hold the same per-product quality-evaluative proposition as the old format of releasing one whole game at a time, but I think for someone who doesn't mind playing a bit later after release, yet likes to play along a cycle of titles rather than holding on to really old things, it is a pretty win-win negotiation.
The main concern, however, is just general quality of each game. Are they buggy? Unbalanced if based on multiplayer? Shitty checklist-based design if single player? You do have to evaluate what you're in it for and for what reasons you want the absolute highest quality. Usually people who want the most perfectly-tuned multiplayer want it as the new generational hallmark. Another Quake or CS or something like that. 10 years on the same game. That is a noble goal for a title, but also financially unrealistic, and often hypocritical in view of how people actually transition to newer releases just because they are new.
Likewise, for a single player game, people usually want something very original and artful, and that's great to have and aim for, but they are also very often impatient and want multiple such games per generation. That is rather difficult to do, and also financially unrealistic as the sales turnover is too rapid anymore to fund the large staff on AAA games for such long development terms. Things awesome yet too small and left alone are often either thought of as cute/cult hits and forgotten, like Vanquish, or clamored after for a sequel, like Mirror's Edge. This is why companies try to franchise things, to make them bigger than single titles that get lost at sea even when great, and to make the long-term development sustainable.
On the one hand, doing this does allow the artful development of ideas over long-term possible. Like, look at the progression of the battle system from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2, and the sequel to Mirror's Edge likewise seems to be making a lot of progress in evolution of gameplay systems. On the other hand, you have shifts like Dragon Age to Dragon Age 2, or Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3. I think that happens when you depend on the franchising of the title too much and lose focus of what the purpose of it was, instead thinking to purely exploit it. Yet IMO something like Dragon Age Inquisition demonstrates a healthy turnaround on it.
Yes, you still don't get something the same as the really artfully produced titles that take 5 or more years to make. That is sad, and maybe it is possible to not be completely free of some modern design choices, but handle them in a better way, as Witcher 3 demonstrates. However, I think we just have to realize the market size and speed we're at right now is strongly prohibiting the old forms of design from completely returning. And honestly, looking at oneself as a gamer in that speedy market, is it hypocritical to be judgmental? How much fun do you actually get from this high turnover? Would you complain if you only got one "big one" from each big publisher per generation?
I mean, it's easy to hear stuff like the visions of the original designers of Dragon Age and Mass Effect and then to see where the series went instead and consider it something beautiful that was for the most part lost, but if instead of trilogies, which prompted gamer reactions and market design reactivity and everything that undid those visions, they had long development time to make a complete product, how refined would the actual gameplay be? Would there be a lot of kinks left to work out? Would mechanics seem a bit archaic compared to franchises that moved faster?
I think franchises like those two demonstrate a bit of confusion in transitioning from old format and new format of franchise development. To me it feels like EA is starting to get a handle on it, while Ubisoft may be majorly struggling to keep pace with what evolution in gameplay development actually looks like. Assassins Creed is mostly the same game it has been since AC2. Rainbow Six Siege looks pretty well done, but it is born out of the ashes of the total failure of Ghost Recon Phantoms. They seem to be doing some experiments with DLC on Siege, making SP merely an early access and progression speed boost and relying on microtransactions. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
Buy anyways, yeah, I don't think boycotting the practice altogether is realistic about the nature of the industry anymore, and claiming that it is purely about greed is unrealistic when you consider the speed of competing industry releases and gamer criticism and impatience when it comes to innovative evolution and refinement of gameplay design. If I had to make a system that was financially sustainable, stayed ahead of competition in coming up with new ideas and quickly refining them to play as well as the best the industry offers, grew big lasting franchise names to sell well instead of quickly vanishing gems that waste money to simply become known and understood, yet allowed those franchises to respond and change to gamer opinions, I'd come up with a very similar system as EA.
So when it comes to something like Battlefront, unfortunately bugs and imbalances may not get perfectly worked out on this title in particular. They did a lot of new things with Hardline and Battlefront, and I think their refinement of those new ideas is more likely to come in sequels to them. That is the whole point of a franchise now, to keep the funding rolling and mindshare up to even make it possible. Nobody is going to care or hear if you say "Battlefront is perfectly balanced now" at a future date when a competitor's new shooter is coming out. Battlefront will simply be the old thing and that will be the new thing, you see? So you need to make Battlefront your new thing again by making a sequel out of the changes you learned that you needed to make.
Yeah, it's hard on gamers who put their money into this title expecting the perfect polish of a long-cycle masterpiece. It's also hard on EA to keep up with the industry, not go bankrupt, and try to keep gamers pleased enough with the way things work now without being able to explain that it is the only way because the old systems of 5 year development cycles are gone, that the dream of perfecting things with patches is a lot harder and worse than ground-up remodeling of innovations to retain their innovation but be less broken on the next franchise installment. That doesn't mean no patches, but less focus on patches to reach perfection of ideas introduced by the first of the franchise in this generation.
I think they are doing well. I do like keeping up with new titles instead of playing the same game for several years like I did when I was a kid. I like fresh ideas even while they are imperfect like I saw in Mirror's Edge and the first Mass Effect. I like to experience ideas getting reworked to function better like ME2 and DA:I. If I enjoy a single game enough to want more content between its release and the sequel (or next franchise I switch focus to if it has a sequel first), I don't mind picking up a SP when it goes half price or more a bit down the line. If enough things interest me that I'd like to dabble but not deeply invest, EA access is a pretty sweet way to do it.
No, I don't work for EA or anyone who benefits from EA, lol. This is all just how I read the dynamics of the industry in terms of funding, development requirements in time and money, gamer demands, and the nature of innovation and refinement in accordance with speed of market. I see similar stuff in music and film, as well. And in all of them I see gaps being filled in by independents for those who want to see continued refinement of old forms through a slower evolution that better retains their old concepts rather than replacing them with new concepts. That's great, it's just not something that can be sustainable at big budgets because it costs too much, gets returns too small, and the wider market doesn't have interest that focused or deep to understand and admire what it even is.
Genres will always be genres, and the mainstream channel will always be the mainstream channel. The former can show us the pinnacle of artfulness in a particular form, but the latter can show us innovations of form that introduce something new and overcome major obstacles to accessibility, both of which can be incorporated back into the genre after realization and adoption is standardized. Can you get the innovation in refined form without the mainstream channel? Technically yes, but it's really rare, and even more rare for even the superior thing to find adoption without going through the mainstream channel. In short, I think the industry is working just fine, things are happening that need to happen, and EA is playing its role well.
ElzarTheBam
Member
haha I believe you....errr...*looks at username*...Dice
Insane Metal
Member
Jesus Christ.
Thanks for the help, I'll give this a go now.
Edit: No change at all, this fucking sucks.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I thought someone would joke about this, but if anyone would not be joking, I obviously post here way too much to be working for anyone, lol. I first took this nickname for Quake 3 when it came out. It started becoming too popular on the internet, so I have since changed it to Dicetrain, which has proven easy to say and recall but weird enough to be unused on everything. I kept it Dice on here simply because I'm a GAF OG (well before the "Neo" was introduced) and want to retain what I've been for all these years.
ElzarTheBam
Member
Haha no problem my man.
Could you imagine if there's someone out there who took the name 'Konami' a long time ago?
Looooooooooool
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
JumPeRJumPzZ
Banned
So that PC Patch changed some stuff again...
http://starwars.ea.com/starwars/bat...rs-battlefront-dec-10th-patch-notes-pc#latest
I wonder when Consoles will get this patch
http://starwars.ea.com/starwars/bat...rs-battlefront-dec-10th-patch-notes-pc#latest
I wonder when Consoles will get this patch
Patch-notes same day? Cant be true
A Boba Fett nerf. Looks like they are paying attention the their stats.
JumPeRJumPzZ
Banned
Haha I guess soThey learned pretty fast that people still want detailed Patch notes
its interesting that this is even an issue. in the beta thread there were plenty of people completely assured that this game would sell a kajillion copies and have a thriving player base for a very very long time.
re: patch notes .. i'm not a fan of removing auto-lock on boba fetts missile .. *shakes fist*
bargeparty
Member
ok I get the idea about leading shots, but what's the point of "locking on then?" Just for the missiles?
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