Star Wars Battlefront Beta Results: Excellent! But Is That Good Enough?
The Beta is over now, and a huge turnout of fans got to play it. Like the Alpha, it offered good game play and no serious problems for those trying it out. We got to try three different maps, each with their own game mode. EA extended it a day, and people played to the very end. This is very encouraging for the
success of this game.
It has a lot to live up to, in order to be an amazing Star Wars game. As the successor to 2005’s Battlefront II (which makes the naming/number convention confusing, but it isn’t a direct sequel so it can’t be Battlefront III either), fans of the 10 year old game will want to so a wonderful, modernized version of the classic. Star Wars fans in general, and those who take in the new movies, will want a game which gives them a good movie-like experience. And action arcade FPS game fans are, as always, going to want great shooter gameplay, with balance and tactics as well as action.
Movie franchise games have often been failures or lackluster. There are a lot of competing pressures on the game creators, to fit into the cinematic universe, while still delivering a good, and possibly even original, game. It is kind of like cooking on Cutthroat Kitchen. The fans (customers, judges) want three things: a good cinematic looking game, good game play, and an experience true to the source.
Battlefront looks very good, with smooth visuals which should deliver a 60 FPS (or faster) experience on both current consoles and PC. The game play is fun, albeit tied to multiplayer shooting action in all cases (even the solo survival emulates this feeling). We get the iconic vehicles and characters from the movies, and the combat style seems to stick fairly true to the movie universe.
In doing the last, it drops the Battlefield-style class roles and equipment from Battlefront II. Every player is free to equip their soldier with whatever selection of equipment (that they’ve unlocked) as they like. The items available so far are all combat equipment — offensive and defensive — which any regular trooper might be expected to have. Special heavy weapons cannot be included in your kit. Nor can repair or healing tools, but the health system eliminates the need for them anyway. Get away from combat for a short time, and you will recover completely. Living to fight another day depends more on your skill at evasion than your team mates assistance, but it fits the movie universe better. Nobody is crying “medic” or “man down” like a modern battlefield. Blasters just don’t leave combat wounded lying around, they kill.
All the special heavy weapons must be picked up on the battlefield. The drop locations often have to be earned, by taking key points or other battle accomplishments. This is also how all vehicles are accessed, including the powerful AT-AT walkers. And it is also the way in which the hero characters, like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, get into play. There are patterns to how these things are obtained, but it isn’t quite as easy to figure out as simply finding vehicles parked and getting in them, or Battlefront II’s giving you the option to respawn as a hero after earning sufficient scores.
On the positive side, the semi-random placement does make it more likely that players will be able to get access to these powerful features, rather than having a few ace players always dominating the roles. The fact that you can carry a useful pickup around until you get to a good, safe location to use it can also help, as it avoids the “use it or lose it” effect of powerups in some other games.
The basics and the big picture: We get seven game modes and twelve maps at release, with more to come in either future free releases or paid DLC. What we’ve seen so far is solid — three maps, three game modes.
First, Tatooine survival. The classic survive waves of AI attackers game, which is a staple of coop game play, works well here. The Beta limits us to one map and limited waves compared to the final game, but with enough maps and more scenarios, this kind of thing could be solid. Survival is easy to get into, and a good way to play with a friend rather than being part of a larger match.
Second, Drop Zone on Sullust. Capture packages which are dropped randomly on the map to score, a nice fast paced infantry oriented combat game. The randomly placed objectives give clear goals for both teams, but there is a solid secondary element of simply controlling useful terrain points to help your team secure the next package.
Third, Walker Assault on Hoth: The scenario from The Empire Strikes Back, the rebels must stop the AT-AT walkers from advancing to the shield generator, while the Imperials must get through. The situation is unbalanced, as it requires good team work for the rebels to have any chance, while the Imperials simply have to slog on and survive in order to win, but the fun is in the details of the battle, not whether you win or lose. Desperate fights to hold the trenches and secure the key stations in order to deliver (or prevent) a succesful attack against the walkers are the critical elements of the game.
All three have solid pacing, making it easy for most players to be frequently engaged in game-changing firefights. The respawning system also usually puts players back into the action quickly. All in all, it is simply a lot of fun to play.
We are getting 12 maps to start, plus two free ones shortly after release. That is pretty good, compared to the 18 base maps from Star Wars Battlefront II, as there will be four DLC expansions which will add additional maps. I would guess 4 each, to bring us to an ultimate total of 30 battlegrounds. Not bad, if they are decent to play on, and there is a lot of potential with new game modes and the possibilities with new weapons and scenarios using these maps.
All these are pretty good points, which is a good sign for the success of the game. But not everything is quite so perfect, and there are some bits of bad and ugly to deal with.
Bad: The random spawns can put you either into an immediate engagement (and likely death) before you have a chance to orient yourself. Or you can appear on the far side of the map from the action. You can use the Partner spawn to join one other player alive on the battlefield, and that helps, but isn’t always the best location. Spawn point logic can be improved, but both Battlefield and the original (2004 and 2005) Battlefront games offer actual choices for spawn locations when entering or reentering a game.
The Season Pass is $50, but as with Hardline and unlike Battlefield 4, it has four DLC packages instead of five. That means you only save $10 vs the $60 standalone price, rather than $25 vs the $75 five DLC price. Now, Battlefield 4 offered a “free” DLC for many buyers, so many players only got four additional paid-for expansions, but it still is a reduction in the relative value of getting the Pass rather than purchasing separately. If the idea is that most serious players will have the Season Pass, it has to be worth enough to make it the obvious best way to get the full game. Otherwise, many players will get play a wait and see game with separate DLC purchases, and leave a divided community of players.
There is no story campaign, nor anything like the galactic conquest game mode. Both are mostly single player game play, using AI run bot soldiers to fill in what is otherwise a regular multiplayer style engagement (albeit with some special modifications and objectives). While it was possible to play the conquest mode one on one against another player, it simply wouldn’t work to expand it beyond that — you’d never get the players to stay together throughout the entire multi-battle campaign. But any single player story would need to work both for game play and with the Star Wars source material, and Battlefront really isn’t suited to retelling the story of the original trilogy, nor its sequels. The Jedi Knight/Academy series worked far better for that sort of thing. Would we really play a new campaign, or replay it? Especially if it was, in essence, just a series of multiplayer game modes with progress tracking?
Maybe. But multiplayer gaming tends to get a stronger following and more active players in the long run than single player play. The cooperative survival can be run solo, but also works with friends.
The Ugly: The beta didn’t really give us a solid look at how the social side of multiplayer play would look, because its matchmaking system made it hard to join a game with friends. That shouldn’t be the case once released, but it is hard to be sure. The Partner system is a clever way to allow you to play with a friend and stay close to the action, without the tactical and balancing issues that come with Battlefield’s squad system. Battlefront 2004/2005 didn’t use either squads or partners, and that worked OK, but you could pick your spawn point and try to meet up with friends.
A lot of multiplayer play is essentially solo, lone wolf play. We don’t always have time to hook up with our friends for a game, but want the joy of fighting against other people rather than programmed AI opponents. Star Wars Battlefront will work perfectly for that style of play. Find a random partner and just start engaging the enemy.
But often, and very often for the best multiplayer games, we want to actually play with, and coordinate with, our friends in the game. Even if they are ones we just met, it is one of the key social elements of the game to be able to communicate with and join with players in your party, and be on the same team. The Partner gives you only one other player as a secure respawn point, which is OK as far as that goes. But if you can’t either join a game and be on the same team as your friends, or be able to locate them among all the other players on your team, it can be hard to actively play together.
This gets back to the spawn choices. For some game modes, either Partner or Random is probably sufficient. But being able to make some sort of tactical choice about your place on the battle map improves both game play and team (and friend) coordination. If there aren’t specific controlled locations to capture as spawn points (as in the older Battlefront games), we could perhaps have something like Attack (near the enemy objective) or Defense (near the objectives you need to protect), or Base (if the mode has entry areas for the teams). For the Walker Assault, we could spawn near either the Walkers or the control stations as a preference, rather than entering at a randomized location.
Without some sort of system to help keep both teams and friends coordinated on the map, the game risks breaking down into a series of exciting, but ultimately unengaging and random battles. Battlefield and the original Battlefront both give players strong ways to coordinate, both by reinforcing key locations and by keeping friendly team mates working together. If the new Battlefront fails in this, it may fall short of being a truly awesome game, and a true successor to its namesake.
There will be no private matches at game launch, and those are also pretty important for both serious game players and fun non-competitive game play and creativity. I can’t see DICE and EA ignoring the value of these.
