It’s no secret at this point that EA and DICE screwed up with Star Wars Battlefront II. They failed to deliver “a sense of pride and accomplishment” to players due to some strange and anti-consumer choices with the progression system in the game.
Star Wars Battlefront II tried a whole host of solutions to the negative player reaction, from adjusting XP gain to finally removing loot boxes completely. As we covered previously, they finally made a good decision. EA and DICE have scrapped Hero unlocks entirely and done the same for the majority of the ability “Star Cards” currently in the game.
An official Q&A was posted on the Electronic Arts website for the game. But for the TL;DR, here goes: The base roster of Heroes is now completely open for anyone to use. You also get to keep anything you’ve unlocked up to this point and a new Skill Points system allows you to unlock new Star Cards. Players will still need to spend Credits to unlock any future Heroes.
And as for loot boxes, those have been reworked as well. The game no longer rewards Crystals or loot boxes for playing. Players can still purchase loot boxes, but their contents are entirely cosmetic. Not one item in loot boxes has an affect on gameplay.
There are also some more standard changes for the game as part of today’s update, including a new location with Bespin returning from the previous game. Cloud City will be available for Blast, Heroes vs. Villains, Arcade, and temporarily in Jetpack Cargo. Plenty of balance changes are also here, and you can see those in the full patch notes.
