Star Wars Battlefront - one of the worst gaming experiences ever

Please read the following link that fixes and clarifies some errors with thid initial post:

Sorry the the long post/rant but maybe some will come to identify with it.

My Uncle, nephew, and myself all got Star Wars Battlefront for Christmas on PS4, and XBox one for my nephew. Between the 3 of us, we spanned the widest breadth of gamers one can imagine. The 60+ crowd, the 40’s lifetime gamer, and the under 13 group. After giving all the single player modes a ton of time, and spending a week in mp modes, happy to have the game being hyped up on Star Wars movie and lifelong Star Wars fans, we came away feeling this was one of the worst gaming experiences we’d ever had. Since there’s nothing but crap for the single player gaming experience our initial wow at dealing with AT-AT walkers in mp gave way to the realization that the majority of people playing were of 3 camps:
#1 - Maxed out players who become nearly invincible to newbies due to equipment and an endless supply of cards.
#2 - People with keyboard/mouse adapter setups giving them an incredible advantage in shooting.
#3 - People who pretty much only play this game or other shooters in all their free time.

My poor Uncle, no matter days of trying, only managed ~10 kills combined in all our mp sessions. Seeing how the only way you can get better equipment is in mp for mp, he was never able to upgrade much of anything, though he did use my options when he could. But coupled with the fact he could only get 1 middle card for a match it doesn’t really help a lot when it was painfully obvious the same people who racked up 90% of the kills in our sessions were constantly using homing missiles that required cards to utilize. We did read reviews, but didn’t think the low 72% aggregate could be justified when looking at the action online. I’ve played Madden online with random people, I’ve played GTA V online with random people, and the experience of what should have been an amazing Star Wars experience was instead made horrible. My uncle and I managed to do every heist and option in GTA V together, yet this was untenable.

To add insult to injury I had hard earned weapons I paid for disappear and ended up in an argument with EA Tech Support after spending half a day trying to find a way to get in touch with a human there. I was very nice and cordial, but the EA rep was an ass. After saying they would refuse to do anything, not even submit a bug report because no one else had reported it happening (yes how do bugs get properly reported if they refuse to log them), the guy said Star Wars was exactly what fans wanted because EA did a survey with the last Battlefront game. A rated M" Battlefront game, and EA in their brilliance decided no kids wouod be getting it for zchristmas that weren’t part of the adult crowd, and no one wanted a single player campaign, and it needed to be this unforgiving to non-pro players. When I told him younger Star Wars fans would not have been voting because their other games are rated for kids 17 and older he said, “Well it’s their own fault for owning a rated T game”. I was flabbergasted that a CSR had the balls to claim that all the reviews were wrong, that EA had done their job by running a lame poll that didn’t include half the fan base for the new movie, that my bug wasn’t relevant. When my family went to the movie, easily half of everyone there was under the age of 13. So at this point I was a bit irritated, I didn’t care at that point about hours of game time wasted losing spent I game points, but the fact EA had deluded themselves into thinking no one under the age of 17 should be playing Star Wars Battlefront. Using logic, I asked why there was no general chat feature, why the only way you could chat was to have a private group of friends, and he told me EA didn’t want kids exposed to bad language.

Please read the following link that fixes and clarifies some errors with thid initial post:

I haven’t played my PC copy yet even.

Yeah, I tend to shy away from MP shooters these days because you kinda get stuck with 2 choices: Play a zillion hours to get good enough to hang with that crowd; or be pure cannon fodder. To be fair that’s a a pretty common thing in lots of MP shooter, not just Battlefront.

EA support guy sounds like an ass though, always a bummer to have to deal with that sort of person.

At least they responded. My Tickets to EA support for SWTOR remained unanswered for a month before they closed them without any information.

I watched the Angry Joe review and it looks like a beautiful, hilariously bad game. You should watch it as his exaggerated frustration is… maybe not exaggerated.

Having played my sons copy a bit since the holidays (we have reached level 18 I believe), I’ll offer my comments on the actual gameplay (I haven’t had the need to call support so I have nothing but my sympathy to offer there):

#1 - Maxed out players who become nearly invincible to newbies due to equipment and an endless supply of cards.
Maxing out your cards gives you shorter respawn on those cards/abilities, but I would not call them invincible. I find the homing shot immensely annoying, and the fact that you can equip an impact grenade, a thermal detonator and then get a thermal imploder as a pickup makes for some serious grenade spam. Obviously, quicker respawn of grenades is annoying in that context, but it also helps squad and personal shield to become too op. Quick respawning homing shot is a pain, but they are mostly a concern on the big open maps. As soon as you see the lock on warning, find cover. The arrow will let you know from where the missile is coming.
The middle card abilities are short boosts. Each use requires a charge. Is that what you are referring to with “endless supply”?

How to get card charges:
You can play single player missions to pick up card charges to use in MP (I think…?). You can also pay for them with ingame currency, although that is the same money that you unlock equipment with for each level.

#2 - People with keyboard/mouse adapter setups giving them an incredible advantage in shooting.
You mean people connecting m/k to their PS4 or XOne? I didn’t know that that was even an option. I haven’t seen any abnormal accuracy in other players. The autoaim is very forgiving in this one, so I wouldn’t think it would be much of an issue.

Better equipment:
The default blasters are very well balanced, and I would argue that all the others are more situational and have a more specific use (only exception is perhaps the EE-3)

How to get better equipment:
You can play the single player missions to earn cash and levels. In mp play you get more points playing the objective than getting kills (getting kills while playing the objective is always best though ;). If you play Squadron, make sure to focus on the transports when they enter into the game. Shooting them nets lots of points, and if you manage to take one down that’s a jackpot.

All in all, I understand your frustration with the actual gameplay. I can usually only play it for shorter bursts, since I feel it is a bit to random and haphazard. But mostly my complaint is that on the team based maps the lack of teams playing the objective is the biggest problem. But I usually let that go and just go in to watch and take part in the spectacle of Star Wars, and then it all feels good (for about 15-20 min)

It’s definitely a thing. If fact a lot of my Destiny crew used that setup and they absolutely wrecked shop in PVP. Not sure if it’s that prevalent, but it’s definitely out there.

Not so much an issue now, since the game has been out for a few weeks, but the DL-44 (Han Solo’s pistol from the movies) was a preorder bonus day 1 unlock. This meant that preorder players in the first couple of weeks had access to the most powerful gun in the game as a default option, while non-pre-order customers had to grind to get to the end of the weapon choices where the DL-44 sat. The DL-44 was nerfed in the Dec 1st patch, but it’s still a really good all-around weapon choice.

I played the Beta of this game, and it was… interesting. The gameplay was just so fast paced and frenetic, it didn’t feel like a battlefield game to me. Which has always been slower paced than CoD games to me.

I haven’t dived really deep into the game, but M-rated portion of the post threw me off. Isn’t the game actually rated T for Teen? I don’t remember playing anything that warrants an M, and ESRB says it’s T.

No idea on that point, but I’d wager 1/4 of people playing M-rated shooters online are under 17. It exists to inform parents and keep kids from buying those games on their own, but assuming they don’t actually play them would be a mistake.

The DL-44 is my biggest issue with the game. It’s a clear winner in nearly every way and it’s the last gun unlock (or a $10 early unlock if someone got the “deluxe” edition). Every time I go to map mode that is not Walker or Supremacy, you just see DL-44s everywhere.

Oh boy. That sort of kills my desire to play any competitive shooter on a console. I am bad enough with thumbsticks, but to fight a M/KB player would be suicide.

I might have mis-typed, but Star Wars is rated “T” for teen, but the older Battlefront games like BF4 are rated “M” for mature and would be incredibly inappropriate for kids. So yes it was shortsighted and stupid for EA to only ask adults about a Star Wars game as if kids and non-CoD players would have no interest in "Star Wars. So it’s really EA’s arrogance and indifference that angers me.

Wheelkick, when I actually got top killmeister’s to respond to ask for advice, more than half said they had a mouse keyboard switch (adapter?). I’m guessing something like this: Amazon.com
While I am admittedly not a great fps player, I can’t see any possible way for a gamepad to compete with a keyboard/mouse.

Thank you so much. I am totally watching that when I hit the sack tonight!

Yeah, though I suspect that for a game that is also on PC most of those guys would rather play on their PC’s anyway, so that probably helps with Battlefront.

Not really. Have you seen the player numbers on PC compared to console?

http://swbstats.com/

I’m not sure I really buy that argument, even if the stats were comparable. Many gamers tend to seek out situations where they have an inherent advantage, so I could certainly see a large number of modified M/KB players on console.

Ok. So maybe it’s just my friends that prefer PC where possible (they never play anything on console that is also available on PC, except to include me)

It’s fun, it’s mindless, but it is just wish fulfillment, and its not a very good long term option.