It takes something pretty special to create the most downvoted comment in Reddit history, and game developer EA has discovered that annoying Star Wars gamers certainly doesn’t help.
After the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2, the long-awaited sequel to one of the most beloved games of the mid-2000s, fans were surprised to find some of the series’ most legendary characters were ‘locked’ to new players.
A screenshot from one of the game’s character select screens shows hugely important characters, such as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, are inaccessible to punters firing up the game for the first time.
One fan of the series, who may have bought the game hoping to immediately crush Rebel scum as Darth Vader, took to the Battlefront subreddit to air his Sith-y grievances. “Seriously? I paid 80$ [sic] to have Vader locked?”, they asked.
And here’s the response from /u/EACommunityTeam, in which the developer attempted to explain the reasoning behind its progressive ‘credit’ system to unlock those characters:
The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.
As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.
We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.
Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.
That response now bears the dubious title of most hated comment, with an astonishing 426k downvotes. Four hundred and twenty-six thousand. For comparison, it appears the next-most downvoted comment of all time caught a measly score of -24,000, and that was because the user actually asked for downvotes.
It’s worth noting that players can spend real-world money to buy in-game loot crates, which contain random goodies – sometimes, even locked characters. In response to the credit-based game mechanics and this apparent pay-to-play workaround, one user wrote:
I don’t buy your games anymore. I am beyond insulted by the microtransaction/season pass/greedy-lazy business model that your company has perfected over the past decade or so. It’s disgusting. It’s a perversion of gaming. The suits that control your company aren’t interested in anything but pushing out shitty incremental upgrades to keep us wasting money on shit, and on getting a small percentage of addicts to bankrupt themselves $5 at a time.
Those sentiments also featured in our own write-up of an early-access version of the game. PEDESTRIAN.TV Tech Editor Matt Hopkins wrote “most games these days include some kind of loot system, but the majority are for aesthetic enhancements only.
“The problem is, this system weights the game in favour of those who drop actual money on upgraded weapons, abilities and passive stats, rather than actual ability.
“Whether you think paying money for a greater chance at winning is fair or not is up to you, but if you ask me, it’s a pretty shitty cash grab.”
While you wait to see if EA responds to this online savaging, maybe just wrap your eyes around the admittedly schmick trailer below:
