Via Forbes.com:
EA and DICE continue to overhaul the progression system in Star Wars: Battlefront II. The developers just announced yet another huge change to the game’s progression system.
In the latest patch, all Heroes will be unlocked for all players from the get-go. You’ll no longer have to grind to play Luke Skywalker or Yoda. These classic Star Wars characters will be available to everyone.
DICE has also unlocked all Hero Ships, and made a variety of other changes (which you can read about here) that make progression better, if not perfect, than it was before.
EA has been under fire from the gaming community ever since the publisher included pay-to-win loot crates in the game that included powerful Star Cards giving paying customers an advantage over players who owned the base game but didn’t want to spend money on micro-transactions. Even after removing these micro-transactions the game has been plagued by a terrible progression system that was built around MTX.
With these changes, Star Wars: Battlefront II continues its laborious slog toward becoming a game actually worth paying money for.
Meanwhile, DICE is unlocking all Star Cards at their Epic tier in Arcade mode. According to the developer, this will let players test out various combinations to see what they like best and what works best in various situations. This is reminiscent of how all weapons, attachments and so forth are unlocked in Call of Duty’s offline multiplayer.
Finally, a new location is coming to the game. Bespin returns from the previous Battlefront title and is available in “Blast, Heroes vs. Villains, Arcade, and for a limited time as Jetpack Cargo” modes according to the developer.
All of these are positive, welcome changes. The fact that future DLC will also be free and that paid loot crates won’t be returning (instead players will be able to purchase cosmetics with in-game or real currency) makes this a much more appealing game than ever before. That you can also buy it at a steeply discounted price these days doesn’t hurt. EA really screwed the pooch on this one, but they’re obviously trying to do right by gamers now and, if nothing else, that’s refreshing to see.
