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I've been playing the Battlefront beta for a few days now.

It's an absolute blast to play, but it's confirmed some things I suspected about the game.

First off, the atmosphere: DICE nailed it, hands down. This looks, sounds, and feels like Star Wars. This is especially pronounced in Walker Assault. Picture this: Walkers are pounding your team, enemy fighters are dogfighting and doing strafing runs, and you are desperately jumping into one of the comm points with your jetpack to call in some Y-Wings while the enemy blazes away at you. It's completely epic, even after playing the same thing over and over.

The game mechanics aren't bad, there are some quirks here and there but overall it's very fun. The game balance needs a bit of work, Emps have a bit too easy of a time winning in Walker Assault, but it's still massively fun even when you lose.

The partner system is really cool. You can have a partner chosen randomly or pick a friend before you start (the system is a bit wonky about joining matches, but I assume those are just teething troubles), and you have access to whatever set of upgrades they have in hand (You can use your own hand or theirs). You can choose to spawn in normally, or, if they are alive, spawn in right next to them, something that promotes teamwork and is just really neat.

However, now we come to the bad side of things: the content. Sure it's a beta, and it's rather limited what you get, but I can see now why people are miffed about a lack of a campaign. The beta is revealing just how limited things are going to be in the final release. Basically, we are getting Star Wars arena combat in several different flavors with some single player / cooperative missions.

Plus there is apparently no server browser, so no capacity for communities like ours to play together all the time on a server we own. I don't think the server can cycle modes either, so we can't do what we did with JBA and have maps and gamemodes cycle (i.e. Polis Massa deathmatch, then Tantive IV deathmatch, etc).

On top that that, there don't seem to be very many maps, unlike Battlefront II. There will apparently be 4 planets, each with several maps, but I don't think it will reach anywhere near the variety of Battlefront II.

They are asking for $65 for what is basically something like CS:GO or TF2 with some single player content (very little). I really don't think it's worth it, I wouldn't be willing to pay much more than $30 for this.

Now, that said, if they put in a couple of campaigns (one for each side say), maybe either galactic conquest or space battles*, more planets/maps, better dedicated servers, and a server browser, then I could see charging $65 for such a monolithic title, but not for this. How are they expecting to grab people's attentions for more than 6 months with this game?

* I do think I know why they didn't do space battles: they would have to have landing mechanics for fighters and those don't exist at the moment (and I guess they don't want to bother)

So in the end, it's a very fun, very good game that just lacks the content needed to justify it's price. I'm going to hold off on purchasing it until the price comes down a good bit, assuming they don't yank the servers. I think the game is going to be a moderate success, but not the massive blockbuster that EA probably dreams of. Price-conscious people like me are going to be hesitant to put that kind of money into the game.

It's all pretty good, however I cannot get the 'Orbital Strike' to work. I select the bonoculars, and can see them, but it won't bring them up to my eyes to use. Frustrating. Do I have to zoom in or something? I need advice on this.
Here's a youtube of an awesome Orbital strike when the walker was vulnerable. The effects are pretty incredible.

You have to hold the zoom button, then left click where you want to aim it. Aim it at the ground at the AT-AT's feet.

Orbital strike wrecks the AT-ATs if they are vulnerable, it takes off like 60%+ of their health. If you can get one, save it.

It's kinda broken balance wise, because it's too random. Basically you have a small chance of doing a massive amount of damage, but its kinda rare to pick up.

That said however, one guy got two of them in quick succession and won the game.

I finally got on a winning Rebel team, we absolutely wrecked the Empire in like 10 minutes by holding on to the uplinks and stacking Y-Wings like crazy (I think we had like 7 or more for the first attack). I finished off the last walker with an ion grenade, it was glorious.

I'm actually seeing more problems with this mode as I play it more. You don't have to shoot the enemy except to defend the points, just keep picking up the drops until you get a strike

For that game mode, it all depends if your team (the rebels) is competent enough to hold them. I've seen some rebels completely ignore the uplinks and go for kills.

Yeah, after I questioned 'zooming' for orbital attack, I tried it, and it worked. Today, on Rebs, toward the end of the map, I got a missile launcher, and hid for a minute behind a snow bank as the remaining walker closed in. It was low on life, and right as they said it was vulnerable again, I let the missile loose on the walker cockpit and it finished it off. Wish I coulda recorded that. Had several walkers blow up right beside me on Emps. Very impressive, but I feel that the falling schrapnel should either kill or cause damage to players on the ground.

FaiL.? wrote:For that game mode, it all depends if your team (the rebels) is competent enough to hold them. I've seen some rebels completely ignore the uplinks and go for kills.

It helps the Rebs early on if they can hold the uplinks with the help of snipers/gunmen on the high ground picking off snow troopers to keep them from deactivating the uplinks. Those jet packs are like gold. You can get around so much better, up high, and blast out of a bad situation.

WD-40 wrote:

FaiL.? wrote:For that game mode, it all depends if your team (the rebels) is competent enough to hold them. I've seen some rebels completely ignore the uplinks and go for kills.

It helps the Rebs early on if they can hold the uplinks with the help of snipers/gunmen on the high ground picking off snow troopers to keep them from deactivating the uplinks. Those jet packs are like gold. You can get around so much better, up high, and blast out of a bad situation.

Yeah, the game that we won so fast was won because I and I think a few other troopers held one of the uplink points and the emps didn't really try too hard to get it back, they were focused on the other point that they managed to keep down. We just kept stacking Y-Wings like mad. I just hunkered down behind a low hill a little distance away and kept picking up powerups and shooting any emps that got near. Don't stay in the trench with the uplink, you will get det'ed repeatedly.

I figured out that each Y-wing provides a certain amount of vulnerability time, so more Y-wings = more time to damage the AT-ATs.

Does it er where you shoot the walkers? I always shoot them in the side, but I'm wondering if the cockpit takes more damage.

Not sure. On BF2, the neck was the most vulnerable point. I imagine the side is the most protected.

I always hit the neck, even with this game, just to be sure. Of course, it's always good if you have an A-Wing, those things are fantastic in this game.

FaiL.? wrote:I always hit the neck, even with this game, just to be sure. Of course, it's always good if you have an A-Wing, those things are fantastic in this game.

I cannot figure out what to do to set up my keyboard and mouse to fly the fighters! I cannot climb or descend very well, nor turn much. Everything is very slow. Even roll wont work. I would love to do some damage with an A-Wing! Any advice on the set up?