The economy of Star Wars Battlefront 2 is based entirely around credits now that premium transactions have been removed from the game, and earning enough credits to buy the loot boxes to get the cards you need or to unlock the heroes you want can take a lot of time. So clever players have found physical ways to cheat the system.
While one player created a simple robot to keep their character moving in order to farm credits without being removed from the game due to inactivity, the same thing can be done by simply adding a few rubber bands to your controller.
You may be hurting your team’s chances at winning and annoying the rest of the players on the server, but this is the world EA and DICE have created. It feels weird to get angry at players who are trying to stretch what’s acceptable inside an economy that was this ill-conceived.
Just in case you want to ruin the game for others while earning enough credits to get whatever you want, this is how it’s done.
It’s hard to get mad at these players due to the fact the economy has been hated since the first days of the beta. Locking away content in this manner and focusing on playing long hours to get credits to try to get the things you want from loot crates that randomly spit out loot gives players an incentive to give up and start farming.
Right now you can get a minimum amount of credits just for showing up, which is what these farms are after. You can increase the amount you earn by doing well and taking part of each objective — and credits are given for playing the campaign and arcade mode as well — so this is merely the easiest way to get credits without putting any actual work into the process.
This is what happens when your economy is bad. Things get sad for everyone, very quickly. These phantom players are going to ruin the online experience, and EA and DICE have no one to blame but themselves.
We’ve reached out to EA and DICE for comment and will update when they respond.
Comments
While it’s not fair to the players that actually want to have fun, the quicker the player base dwindles for this sorry state of a game that EA put out, the better. Once they try to introduce loot boxes back into the game, there will be no one left to pay.
By darkwonders on 11.24.17 1:51pm
Yep, this is just a reaction to a poorly designed game. The game was designed primarily to milk players of their money; it’s not surprising that players will, in turn, try to milk the game to try to cut down on the ridiculous grind.
By NotNumber6 on 11.24.17 1:58pm
Its not that ridiculous a grind. I have all the characters, level 3/4 on most upgrades now and Im 2 weeks in (playing casually too).
By pingpanpoo on 11.27.17 7:15am
That doesn’t sound like casual play.
By NinJustin on 11.27.17 9:04am
No, you see, to him it’s casual, because it’s only 8 hrs/day when others are playing 16 hrs/day.
By Sybrwookie on 11.27.17 10:30am
I’m sorry, but I spent money on this game and I’m having fun with it. You’re essentially saying it’s ok to screw me over to spite someone else and I don’t appreciate it.
By AngryChiefsFan on 11.24.17 4:33pm
AngryBattlefrontFan
In all seriousness, you’re right that these players shouldn’t be allowed to ruin the game for others. However, you must’ve known about the sales practice before you purchased it, and it’s not much of a long shot to assume that a broken system would be gamed. It’s great that you’re having fun with the game, but when the progression is broken, the playerbase will follow.
Until they actually fix it! Tune in next time…?
By Paul Beenis on 11.24.17 5:34pm
It’s an interesting concept, because anything you do can fall under the umbrella of "ruining the game" for someone. Those are paying customers as well, maybe playing with rubber bands is fun to them, and then which fun is the best?
By AmiralPatate on 11.24.17 7:28pm
True. EA should set up designated "Rubber Band" servers. Problem solved!
By Paul Beenis on 11.25.17 1:03am
They should sell Star Wars themed rubber bands and have random designs in similar looking (loot) boxes for $3.99 each!
By Waheda on 11.25.17 7:16am
You laugh. Then I remember when half of the populated TF2 servers in my vicinity all of a sudden became market/achievement/afk farm servers.
How in the hell did we not see the rest of this coming?
By ajaxender on 11.26.17 5:31pm
No, it is obviously not "fun" for them. Devil’s advocate completely unnecessary here.
By derek tomek on 11.25.17 10:45pm
If I were trying to have fun with this piece of garbage game, did this, and came back to find thousands of credits I could spend to unlock enough things to make the game fun for a while, after which I could walk away, leave it like this to farm more, come back, and repeat, I’d call that fun.
By Sybrwookie on 11.27.17 10:34am
If you can’t understand why this game design is bad FOR EVERYONE, then you are a lost cause.
By obi_wan_shinobi on 11.25.17 3:09am
Bigger concept (stay with me here) – game designs like this one are ruining gaming for me as a whole, and especially star wars gaming, which has previously resulted in some incredible games. One could argue that by spending money on this game, you are screwing over my future fun, by incentivising the continuation of this farce in future titles. Strong I know, but I guess what Im saying is … we are all of us, as consumers and gamers, responsible for looking after each other.
By owarren on 11.25.17 4:20am
This is a ridiculous statement if I read it correctly. Are you actually trying to say a paying costumer of a product is screwing over a non paying customer who doesn’t even own the product? Maybe he doesn’t mind the system. Star Wars has been milking it’s fanbase bone dry for years. Does that really bother you? So if you support Star Wars in any way you are no different by your own logic.
By zachbrown83 on 11.28.17 9:17am
The community doesn’t owe you anything. It’s up to the developer to A: create a product which people want to be engaged in and B: police the community to ensure an optimal experience for players. You spent money on this game knowing what EA was doing; if you didn’t anticipate a backlash that was just poor foresight.
By theHazardMan on 11.25.17 1:49pm
So start banning people doing donuts for the duration of a match? My thoughts exactly.
By derek tomek on 11.25.17 10:47pm
What? I’m sorry but I cannot agree with this article at all, in anyway Ben Kuchechera.
First of all, this method existed way before this game even came into existance, heck it existed even before Micro-transactions and lootboxes were a thing.
And back then it was just as a bad thing as it is now. Or did you forget about the hairtrigger button adaptations on controllers back in the good old days? or many of the other small adaptations.
So yeah, this has absolutely nothing to do with the state of this particular game, it’s online economy etc.
By Syrellaris on 11.24.17 1:57pm
Not 100% correct. Back in the day (before loot boxes) this wasn’t something you saw in FPS type games. It was done in other game were there was an in game economy – but not in this type of game. When you introduce an economy that rewards time spent in game this behavior is rewarded and you will start to see a large number of people do it.
I’m not saying it’s right, not saying it’s new – just saying that EA motivated players to bring this strategy to BF2.
By Noctys on 11.24.17 2:07pm
Actually, I’ve seen this type of behaviour, albeit with different reasons then in this particular game, atleast 10-15 years ago in FPS games as well. It wasn’t as common as it now though as you said, nor am I not denying that EA, with this particular game, did motivate people to use.
Saying that this happens just because your economy is bad is just false. Not to mention that telling people how to do it, is just..questionably wrong?
By Syrellaris on 11.24.17 2:24pm
The intent in this case wasn’t to provide instructions to do this, but provide an example/evidence.
By TrueMad on 11.24.17 6:00pm
I’ve seen this in tons of games even before loot boxes. I saw it in old COD games back when people would do that so they could unlock more class slots.
By AngryChiefsFan on 11.24.17 4:35pm
Not to mention Destiny players who just wanted to be carried through the game for their alt’s…
By Hudson on 11.24.17 4:43pm
This.
By illmatic724 on 11.24.17 8:08pm