Star Wars Battlefront 2 Veers Away from Pay-To-Win with Latest Update

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past several months, you should be aware of the scandalous history of EA’s follow up to their 2015 sci-fi shooter. Star Wars Battlefront 2 received so much backlash from fans and the gaming community in general that EA had to temporarily disable microtransactions in the game to subdue complaints about the very evident pay-to-win mechanics. Fast forward to today and EA has already released a patch that’s mage significant changes and paves the way for the return of microtransactions.

	Star Wars Battlefront 2	45	Steam —	£7.65
	Star Wars Battlefront 2 PS4	45	Steam —	£4.79
	Star Wars Battlefront 2 Xbox One	45	Steam —	£4.79

It was the fact that Star Cards and other gameplay-impacting items were obtainable through crates (loot boxes) that made the game pay-to-win. Originally, players were meant to be able to purchase crates using premium currency bought with real money. The more money you put in, the better the odds are that you’d get more powerful stuff.

With the recent patch however, crates will no longer contain these items. Instead, they’ll only have credits and cosmetic items. To prevent further backlash, EA will allow players to keep anything they’ve already unlocked so far. Come April, players will be able to purchase crates with premium currency, but this time, they won’t be able to pay to tip the scales in their favor. Players will also be able to earn crates by performing specific activities such as logging in and completing timed challenges.

So how will players be able to get their hands on Star Cards? Well, they’ll have to earn it. The new progression system works this way — each level up grants skill points you can use to unlock or upgrade Star Cards. This further pushes the game out of pay-to-win territory as players will have to work for every single upgrade from here on out.

Furthermore, all heroes and hero ships are now unlocked for everyone. All Epic Star Cards and weapons are also unlocked by default in Arcade mode. The update also brings the Bespin map from the first game to a few modes. A few balance changes were also included.

You can read the full patch notes here.