Hey everyone,

Just wanted to stop by and say hello. My name is Dennis and I work as Design Director for Star Wars Battlefront II. Some of you might know me from Twitter and from working as Lead Designer on the expansions for Star Wars Battlefront.

I'll be at EA Play this weekend so hopefully I'll see some of you there. I shall try my hardest to pay a visit to as many streams as possible coming out of the event, to talk about some of the features we're unveiling now.

Moving forward, I'll try to be as active as I can with the reddit community. Maybe we can do an AMA or something closer to launch? Remember, we're still in development, so there are things I can't really talk about just yet.

See you around!

Hey all,

Apologies for not being more active these past weeks leading up to launch - as you know things get really hectic and you tend to spend whatever spare freetime you have recovering. I really regret not being here on the subreddit at the start of the early access. Hopefully some of these replies will bring some clarity and hope.

• Performance during games will affect the amount of credits you get at the end of a match.

• Matchmaking will take into account not only player skill, but also total gametime and rarity of star cards. This means that you will be matchmade with players with an average performance similar to you and (to the largest extent possible) not against players who are much better than you, whether by having higher rarity cards or by showing higher skill.

• Heroes that are locked at launch will only be unlocked with credits, not crystals. The heroes, similar to the locked weapons for Troopers, are sidegrades instead of upgrades (Darth Vader should be on similar pow...

Hey all,

I hope you're OK with me starting a new topic again. My last post got a few replies so I wanted to be sure my follow-up wasn't buried in that thread.

You asked me provide more details on exact hero prices for launch and so we've spent the day going over the data to ensure the numbers work out. I realize there's both confusion and reservation around how these systems work, so I want to be as clear and transparent as I possibly can.

The most important thing in terms of progression is that it's fun. No one wins if it's not. You play the game, you do your best and get rewarded based on your performance. You gain credits and spend them on whatever you want. If for some reason any of that isn't fun, we need to fix it and we will. I really appreciate the candid feedback over the last couple of days and I encourage you to keep sending it our way.

These are the credit cost for all locked heroes at launch. These prices are based on a combination of open beta data, early access d...

Happy to answer any questions regarding our overhauled progression system announced today.

Blog post: https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2/news/progression-update

FAQ: https://battlefront-forums.ea.com/discussion/102519/star-wars-battlefront-ii-progression-update-faq

Fire away!

[deleted]

Agreed, there always seems to be some desire from DICE to be extremely secretive/vague - this sort of behind the scenes transparency would be welcome wherever possible. The AI article was a great read.

Not a desire. Mostly it comes down to time and focus - as you know we've been quite busy. A couple of extra hoops to jump through given it's not our IP, but that's not an excuse either. We'll try to do more.

TheMightyBoushh

With that being said, it poses the question of why you didn’t save time in the hero creation process by making the last two ST main characters, that are blaster heroes, allowing you to spend more time in other places.

I just worry we’ll never get the last two pieces of the ST puzzle to really make it feel complete.

Thanks for speaking so candidly.

Poe/Hux would not have been time savers at all. In fact, I think we would have struggled to even make them a lot of fun to play in Battlefront in time for this release (maybe the new movie will show us something that completely blows our minds? Time will tell)

I get what you're saying on completing the puzzle, but I also disagree in that Hux belongs in a perceived trinity more than Rose, or more than BB-8. I don't think the Trinity exists in the same way as say Original Trilogy.

One thing that really scared me though was the notion of doing Rose and Hux as blaster heroes, considering neither seems overly popular with this community. I feared that would have triggered "some evil exec somewhere is forcing them to do this rather than " that would have overshadowed the rest of the announcements. While I expected the droids to trigger some (not a lot of requests for BB-9E as some rightly points out) at least I felt comfortable that their gameplay would convince any doubters. :)

Hamati

This is the type of stuff I like knowing. I wish you/the dev team would share details like this more. We don’t need a full explanation of every last decision made but when the community asks “why did you go with these weird choices” and we hear nothing; that’s how rumors are made and ran with. I always thought those hero choices were made because it was easy to re-use the heads and tweak the abilities from existing assets.

I don't remember the exact details on this one, but I remember at one point we tried to get Chewbacca into SWBF1 a lot sooner than we did (he was on the list for Alien heroes for Outer Rim obviously). But that damn fur took forever to get working right, and you still didn't like his appearance much in the first game!

As you have probably realized by now, Wookiee fur is difficult to get right :)

Firaxyiam

It's really cool to see you excited to do stuff that you want to do. Sometimes communities forget that devs are people too, and it's not just things we want, but things you want to do. Keep it up, this game has a shiny road ahead of it!

It is a dream come true to get to work on Star Wars, for sure. And I'm far from the only one on the team to feel that way. I'll admit that many of us had a hard time stepping away from the Clone Wars to work on sequel stuff (it's what we grew up with after all) so it's been good to find nuggets like the droids to really inspire you to do your best work for this community.

BrandonTJones23

I truly hope you participate more on here in the future. You being active a lot on Twitter today was nice, although I disagreed thoroughly with something's you said. The droids are a nice edition, I can admit, although I personally think the chance to have new weapons added for Troopers would have been better. But I'm game for new things. I know you can't always tell us things, but being more transparent about things such as decisions like today is something I wish would happen. Would it cease the anger from some fans? Probably not. But I think it would help with the overall vision you guys have and what we hope to come. (Still very hopeful about weapons for Troopers. Please don't let us down about that.)

Disagreeing is totally cool, and I appreciate that you're allowing me to have an opinion about this game too. Far from all gaming communities provide a safe space for devs to state their thoughts on what is right for a game that we both care deeply for. And it's Star Wars, I think we're supposed to disagree on a few things here and there. ;)

TheMightyBoushh

unexpected additions for sure

Unexpected to you guys too, right? Ran out of development time so just reused assets from the Sullustan and Rodian infantry.

Neither is very likely to defeat another hero or villain in a straight-up 1v1

Sounds balanced

Dengar is not Rodian, but I presume you mean Greedo for the Outer Rim DLC? That's actually a somewhat cool story.

Yes, we re-used the heads for Greedo and Nien Nunb, but built the rest of their bodies. The reason for that was because we had already used their heads for trooper customizations. Looking back, we probably should have made the trooper heads slightly different than Nien and Greedo, but they were made many months before the launch of SWBF1 and long before we started thinking about DLCs for the game.

The real restriction we were working under was localizing VO. Some countries require you to localize any English language in the game to the local language (German, for example). The localization process is a long one and usually gets done after you've recorded the English actor. We would not have been able to deliver the DLC in time had we done Heroes and Villains that speak English, where as Alien speech does not need to be translated and localized. So the restriction was to...

TheMightyBoushh

Dengar is not Rodian, but I presume you mean Greedo for the Outer Rim DLC? That's actually a somewhat cool story.

Yes, apologies, I meant Greedo since he was the accompanying hero to Nein Nunb. Thanks for writing out the story behind it again, I’ve seen you talk about it in some livestream beforehand but it’s good to get a refresher.

Happy to share as much as I can. I guess we did save about a few weeks of 3D art on the heads, which allowed us to build a few more props in Jabba's Palace instead. But that time-saver was certainly not a reason for the selections. And in game-dev, if you can save time in places that's usually a great thing, as it means you can spend more time in other places!

AzelfandQuilava

Has Dennis even been on this subreddit in the past few months?

Every few days there's been a Poe/Hux request/concept thread, and I've seen them on wishlists since before the game came out.

I visit every morning, 5 times a week. I don't participate as often as I should.

It is such an honor to continue to develop new characters and worlds for this wonderful IP, in particular for this community. I love the passion you have for what you want to see in the game. I think in most cases, what we deliver are things that you've asked for, whether it's improvements to the game systems or new content. Sometimes we allow ourselves to add things that we feel inspired to do. For example, Geonosis was a highly requested planet to add as were the heroes and villains with it, while Felucia was not (but we REALLY wanted to build it). When it came to the sequel era, the most requested things had already been added (Rey, Kylo, Phasma, Finn, Crait) so we took the opportunity to add something that really inspire us and would open up some really cool new gameplay opportunities with the droids. Yes, BB-8 was the main guy while BB-9E was more opportunistic given we're developing the roll-tech ...

*1% sorry

[deleted]

[deleted]

Donkey-faced? :'(

I was hanging out on Twitter for a few hours and asked for feedback on alot of things, some of them crazier than others. Picking one of those suggestions for a thread here and then using that to insult me is uncool. Step it up community!

I worked on SWBF1 and did not enjoy random pickups there either. We're not going to do that in this game.

d_FireWall

Let's say it's based on score/battle points, not damage done to Heroes.

For example:

Game begins. After 2 minutes, we assign the first 3 heroes on either side. The top 3 players on both teams with the most battle points get to become heroes.

I imagine this being more like a pop-up during gameplay, rather than from the spawn menu, similar to original SWBF2.

The chosen players get to play those heroes for 2 minutes, then they are despawned. The 6 player who played heroes are now reset in battle points and have to go to the back of the queue.

After another minute, we assign the next 3 heroes for either side, based on whoever has the most battle points at the time. Then they play for 2 minutes. And that continues for the rest of the game.

In such a system, we still reward players who collect the most battle points in that they likely get to play heroes more often, but we still try to cycle through everyone through the course of a game. The downside, I guess, is that the timer prevents you from hogging Anakin the entire game (which may not be a bad thing, depending on who you ask).

Thoughts?

Variation to this system would be:

At the beginning of the game, you get to pick the hero or villain you want to queue for. The first one to get enough Battlepoints to become that specific hero (say 4k BP's or something) and there is a hero slot available (say only ever 2-3 active heroes) get to respawn as that hero through a pop-up.

Play that hero for as long as you want. Once you die, the next person who has enough battle points and has chosen that hero (and if there's a hero slot available) get the pop-up and get to play that hero for as long as they want.

Downside of this system is that some heroes might have a longer queue than others, which might be frustrating. In fact, you might be queing for someone for the entire game and still not get to play them (because someone lives forever or the queue is too long). Also a bit difficult to explain that you're next in line, but there are too many other heroes active right now for you to be chosen.

I also imagine you can swap hero ...

Rupture13

That was fine for that mode, but in a larger mode where there are other objectives besides "kill the hero" to be done, I'm worried that such a mechanic would lead to some players going all-in on hero-killing and not minding the actual objectives.

Let's say it's based on score/battle points, not damage done to Heroes.

For example:

Game begins. After 2 minutes, we assign the first 3 heroes on either side. The top 3 players on both teams with the most battle points get to become heroes.

I imagine this being more like a pop-up during gameplay, rather than from the spawn menu, similar to original SWBF2.

The chosen players get to play those heroes for 2 minutes, then they are despawned. The 6 player who played heroes are now reset in battle points and have to go to the back of the queue.

After another minute, we assign the next 3 heroes for either side, based on whoever has the most battle points at the time. Then they play for 2 minutes. And that continues for the rest of the game.

In such a system, we still reward players who collect the most battle points in that they likely get to play heroes more often, but we still try to cycle through everyone through the course of a game. The downside, I guess, is that the timer p...

I am thinking about this a lot lately. There's a couple of different ways to solve this and we're trying to figure out the best way forward. I agree it's a problem. More on this later.

Immortal__Soldier

Thank you Dennis.

I think the community is whilling to share their ideas with you here, getting some inspiration.

For those of you who played the (refactured) Hero Hunt back in SWBF1 - how did you feel about the system where the most damaged/points earned get to be the next heroes which resets your total so you have to start from zero once spent?

mrj9

When did Dennis take over. I like that he said they should be looking to the old games as inspiration

Took over SWBFI after launch. Joined SWBFII in middle of production (after Rogue One DLC + parental leave) and took over SWBFII around March 2018.