Star Wars: Battlefront featured a lot of maps being released as paid DLC, which led to some dissatisfaction among fans, and it looks like EA and DICE have been listening to all the criticism. Battlefront II, it’s been announced, will indeed have DLC maps released after launch, but following in the footsteps of fellow shooters like Halo 5 and Titanfall 2, all the maps will be free.
EA will be making up for potential revenue they would have received from such DLC and from a season pass (which the game won’t have either) by including microtransactions in the game for players who want to speed up their progress. Obviously, such microtransactions won’t be compulsory.
“I think the main thing here is to keep the community together,” said the game’s design director Niklas Fegraeus while speaking with GameSpot. “In terms of the brand, to me, when it comes to Star Wars, that’s a family feeling. If you’re a fan, you’re a part of the family. And splitting that up and saying, ‘If you have this content you can play here, but if you have this content you can play here.’ And if you don’t share, you will be split up. What we wanted to do was have a journey that starts at the launch of the game. So when the game launches, this journey starts with different seasons [of DLC].”
While speaking of the microtransactions, Fegraeus said- “When you want to progress and get stuff, you can either play the game and when you play you earn the in-game currency, and with that you can spend towards whatever you want. If you want to accelerate that, if you can’t play for a week, you can purchase that. The important thing is everything can be earned [through gameplay]. If you’re someone who spends time on the game, we love you, do your thing, do what you want to do. If you don’t have the time, you can spend money and we love you as well. It’s your choice.”
Fegraeus also went on to assure fans that the microtransactions model doesn’t mean that players will be allowed to pay to win. “It’s not about buying the winning item,” he said. “That’s not how it works. No one can say, ‘I’m going to spend my zillion dollars and then I’m going to dominate.’ That’s not how it works.”
Star Wars: Battlefront II here received an official worldwide reveal for its campaign and multiplayer at EA’s E3 showing yesterday. You can watch it . Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more updates on Star Wars: Battlefront II.