If you played Battlefront you already know that it looked great and it offered some really fun moments, you also know that one of the biggest flaws of the game was that from release when it came to content it felt bare and like a half-assed, incomplete version of what could've been a better game. Of course, there was plenty of content down the line but it was all locked away behind a paywall, and even if you did decide to pay for it, it was too little, too late. Feeling cheated by the lacking game that they got despite paying the premium for a full game, players moved on and those few hopefuls that remained were all segregated from each other by the number of maps they had available to them which was directly proportional to the amount of content they had purchased, thus leaving them in a less than ideal state of virtual isolation.
It seems that DICE and EA became aware enough about the dissatisfaction that this caused because according to an interview that the game's creative director, Bernd Diemer, gave to Mashable before the big trailer reveal, there will in fact be no season pass for Battlefront II. This of course doesn't mean that they've completely thrown out the idea of paid DLC, or that no new content will be added to the game. Instead, it means that this time around the game will have a different approach to how it develops and expands over time, with the focus now being shifted on keeping a consistent player base rather than seeing how much subscription-based content they can sell.
Here's Diemer's full statement as to why the game developer decided to forgo a Season Pass model for Battlefront II:
“We decided on that, and it’s one of those difficult decisions because it has so many implications all around. When we looked at the way Battlefront had evolved over its lifetime, with the DLC and everything, we decided, ‘You know what? For this type of game, season passes are not the best thing. We need to [take it apart] and come up with something better. We don’t want to segment our community, I cannot talk about the specifics of this, but we have something different in mind that will allow you to play longer, be [more] invested in the game without having a fragmented community. The community is falling apart because there are simply not many people playing the different modes.
So we definitely want to avoid that. ”
This sounds like a great direction for DICE to take in order to elevate Battlefront toward becoming the game that fans want, however, they're not the sole decision makers in this process as EA later made it clear to Mashable when they sent this follow-up message regarding the interview:
“While we’re not ready to confirm any live service plans just yet, what we can say is this, we heard the feedback from our Battlefront community loud and clear. We know they want more depth, more progression, and more content. So we’re focused on delivering that in every dimension of Star Wars Battlefront II. We’ll have more to share about our plans soon. ”
Even if we don't know how post-launch content will be distributed, what is clear is that the Battlefront team has come to realize that for games like online first person shooters that are highly reliant on having a consistent player base it is extremely detrimental to the longevity of the game to hide most of the content, be it maps or game modes, behind a paywall. I'm not saying that game studios shouldn't make money on the content that they work so hard on, but even if there are paid DLCs down the line hopefully they will happen in a situation where a balance has been found so that both the developer and the player feel satisfied with the performance of the content in the final game product.
Source: Mashable
