The Star Wars Battlefront franchise is a great exercise in representing the science-fiction epic’s battle fantasies with both political allegiances going head-to-head across iconic locations. Being a boots-on-the-ground soldier or stormtrooper and rushing into a hail of bolt fire allows fans to experience multiplayer shooter combat in an exhilarating way that Star Wars fans appreciate, but one of its biggest selling points was surely the fact that fans can play as legendary characters like Darth Maul or Yoda.
Lightsaber-wielding characters never really amounted to anything more significant than hack-’n-slashing with AoE Force abilities in hectic clashes, but it is fun nonetheless to role-play as a hero or villain and help one’s team earn swift domination with high killstreaks. Other modes let fans choose heroes and villains at will if they are structured around those characters in particular, but traditional multiplayer modes like Galactic Assault could use a shake-up in terms of how heroes and villains might be selected in a third Star Wars Battlefront if one ever sees the light of day.
Star Wars Battlefront (2015) Had RNG Hero Pickups
Star Wars Battlefront’s reboot in 2015 brought with it a massive overhaul in graphical fidelity and would define the art direction for its sequel only two years later. Heroes and villains included iconic characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, with DLC introducing Rogue One’s Jyn Erso and Director Orson Krennic.
How fans could play as one of these heroes or villains in an ordinary match was simple: a hero pickup would spawn somewhere on the map that looks similar to any other blue pickup, and once interacted with it would send players to a hero or villain selection screen depending on which allegiance they were taking part in that match. This made it so playing as a hero or villain was left mostly up to the RNG of being lucky enough to find a pickup before someone else.
This is favorable for casual Star Wars Battlefront players, but it is also disappointing because it doesn’t feel earned and there is no reliable way to ensure that fans will get to play as a hero or villain unless they’re scouring known spawn points. Likewise, if players are unfamiliar with a certain hero or villain and aren’t experienced with them, that playtime as Lando Calrissian or Boba Fett might be incredibly short-lived and make the RNG of hero pickups much more tedious.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017) Locked Heroes Behind Battle Points Mid-Match
Star Wars Battlefront 2’s approach to selecting heroes or villains was the opposite. In the sequel, players gained battle points mid-match that they could then spend toward playing as a reinforcement character, a character piloting a vehicle, and a hero or villain character, each with their own battle point cost values.
This means that if fans want to play as Count Dooku or Rey, for example, they need to have played well or smartly enough in order to earn whatever requisite amount of battle points they cost. Having the privilege to play as a hero or villain bought out instead of being found should have meant that the players who get that opportunity had been skillful and tactful on the battlefield and therefore deserve a chance to be a legendary character.
However, where this approach is most egregious is in the fact that there were always simpler ways to quickly stack battle points, whether players chose the Officer class and instantly won points for buffing the spawning party, or if they chose a cheap vehicle to fly around in on particular maps and mow down opponents who couldn’t do anything about it.
Moreover, even with enough battle points secured, fans would be stuck waiting on the selection screen while heroes or villains were already taken, meaning there wasn’t always one available after all the player’s hard work. Star Wars Battlefront should consider a new approach to this sort of mid-match selection, perhaps one that marries RNG and battle points earned, but neither of those previous methods is airtight, and it would be surprising if a threequel adopted either of them.