Star Wars Battlefront 2 Alpha Review (Now with Screenshots)

[TVwazhere]

So the Alpha ended 7/3 and they closed down the Alpha boards Friday soooooo ( @Zando Bob)

 

I got admitted into the closed Alpha Thursday and the game launched on Friday. The TL;DR is the game so far is exactly what we saw in the reveal at E3, nobody new was used, game is smooth and looks great, game play features still need to be tweaked and adjusted, but so far so good. (Also I can confirm the leaks)

 

Class selection/Battle Points system:

Four main classes as shown in the E3 reveal. All these are always accessible (Assault, Heavy, Officer and Specialist [sniper])

 

You gain points in game by killing enemies and working towards the objective, staying near your squad mates (though it's very little, more on that later) and at death you can spend those points on getting Upgraded classes like the B2 Super droid or jump trooper, AAT's or AT-RTs, air vehicles and of course Hero's which are 5000 points. These all have limits to how many can be active at any given time. This system is FANTASTIC because it means theres no rushing to vehicles, no pay to win system (here anyways more on that later), no advantage given at the start of the map. Everything is earned. "Git gud"

 

Current issues:

While "Git gud" is always a viable strategy, in the Alpha it was often a race to get to 5000 points first and then see how long you could hold onto the hero (I never got one, though I did get a chance too once. Shoulda taken it, oh well) Darth Maul and Rey were the OP characters, usually they didnt die because they would run in, kill things then run away and heal. Only once did I see Han Solo used, Boba Fett was there a handful of times. NO DRODIKAS????  I personally am not concerned with the "Rey being in the Prequel" issue, because I think it's just to show off heroes. They've already shown a rendering with Yoda fighting DM so it all seems on the up and up.

 

Card System:

If you played the first Battlefront, you'll be familiar with this. Not a whole lot has changed, there seems to be a lot of options, including a new Passive Class card that gives varying bonuses to specific class types (I think the Assault got extra health from killing enemies for example) You can also upgrade these multiple times, and also get them in "loot boxes" which give upgrades, and also "scrap" so you can forge your own.

 

Current issues:

Could be a "pay to win" system with these, since they do modify the way the abilities work, but it's usually a small amount of cool-down or small bump in damage. Though not all cards were unlocked. I stuck mostly to the thermal detonator. Will have to keep an eye on this.

 

Squads:

If you've ever played a Battlefield (not Battlefront) game, you'll be familiar with squads, though this works differently. At the start of the match, the game tries to pair you with three other players spawning in. Sometimes you only get one other player, other times you get all three. Getting all three puts you in the game faster since youre not waiting for anyone. You gain 10 "squad points" by staying near your teammates (outlined in your mini map) which really isnt a lot.... the GOOD thing about squads is when you stick with your buddies, you gained SIGNIFICANTLY reduced cool-downs on the previously mentioned Card system, allowing you to chuck twice as many thermal detonators at the CIS scum. I found this out way late into the game though.

 

Current issues:

Unlike Battlefield games however, you dont get to pick your squad. It changes every time you die and respawn (this will hopefully change in the future, especially if you have friends youre playing with) and you always spawn at designated points, not with your squad mates. I never saw spawn camping, but I have a feeling that could be a thing on certain game modes. Also at no point was I ever made aware except for just playing the game about squad cooldown reductions. This would have been nice to know. Often times squad mates split up because 10 points really isnt worth sticking around a guy who's gonna die in twenty seconds and then cant rejoin the squad... 

 

Game mode:

We were only given the new game mode (I dont even know what it's officially called. Assault?) at Naboo, so theres no "new hidden game mode or map no one is showing off yet" or anything. As shown at the E3 reveal, it works in three stages. The MTT advancing to the palace gates, The Capture/Defense of the East and West Atriums, and the Capture of the Throne Room. The East/West Atrium portion is very well balance IMO. Personally this is when I have the most fun on either team, as it's fun to flank the sides and get picks, usually I'll get killed too but its #worth

 

Current Issues:

Let's start with the less offender, the Throne Room. While this area can still be taken by the droids, It still favors the troopers slightly if they play it right. That being said, it could be argued that it's home team advantage, so its not that big of an issue. What IS a big issue for me is Phase 1 ,the advancement of the MTT. Oh boy where do I start?

 

I should explain it first I guess. The MTT is a big Droid troop deploy ship that slowly marches forward and will blast a giant hole into those republican fascists bastard's precious temple theyre so damn proud of. HUZZAH! The republican army though, has ION cannons, to disable and stop the MTT from advancing for a brief period of time. BOO! KILL THEM! Sounds fair right? Far from it! Let's star with the republican side. There are multiple spawn locations for the ion rocket launchers based on how far the MTT is from the palace gates. These Ion cannons are.... Not well explained. They must charge the shot before you can fire, and do more damage the closer you are to the MTT, which at no point is ever made clear to you unless you "trial and error" it. There's also very little direction from the team announcer to "STOP THAT PAYLOAD" other then at the very beginning of the game. The ion cannons just feel very weak. But thats not the only issue.

 

Switching to the droids side, for some dumb reason, the droids also have their maps marked with the locations of the ion cannons. What's ever worse is that they also have the information on where the ION cannon travels when picked up by a player, AND when it's charging. Literally at no point do they not know where an ION cannon is firing from. Freaking Droid hacks OP. Between all these factors, I've personally never seen the MTT get below 65-70 health (starts at 99), and I havent found anyone that had actually won or lost during phase 1 (yes it should be a low amount, but still, it shouldn't be near impossible!) This phase often just leaves players sniping each other, flying in vehicles and flanking, which for the most part is fun to do since two of those three options are really only possible or viable during this phase... Perhaps I just take too much issue with this particular segment, but I personally believe a near 100% success rate in a phase is a bit one sided.

 

Graphics/Performance:

 

I ran everything on Ultra 1920x1080, and the game looked as every bit as good as we saw at E3 .I have video but I'm hesitant to post that anytime soon, it's also not worth since nothing changed. I can report however that the game runs very well, the 4790K and GTX970 never got above 70º and 60º respectively, I think the game was capped at 60 fps though. Normally my GPU is also around 69ºC, shadowplay didnt recognize the game though and I dont use fraps so I'm not sure what the frame rate was. The game used a decent amount of CPU power but not as much as Battlefiield it seemed. I have no hard statistics so I'm just going by feel.

 

Not too many issues in the graphics department

 

Overall I'm happy to have participated in the Alpha testing. I'll be pre ordering it so long as they stay true to their word about the DLC, which would have won me over even without the Alpha

 

Update: SCREENSHOTS!

Spoiler

First Image I ever saw come up on my screen. You're welcome

 

FuckThisGuy.jpg

Got caught cooling down (reloading)

Vehicles (didnt use them sadly)

Also It turns out my very first game they BARELY destroyed the MTD in time. 

 

[VinZie]

Aww you should of recorded your game play man!

[TVwazhere]

Just now, VinZie said:

Aww you should of recorded your game play man!

Oh I did, just there's not much point sharing it, since theres nothing super new or interesting about it. Plus I died a lot LOL  

 

Maybe I'll get some screenshots later when I'm home

 

[VinZie]

Just now, TVwazhere said:

Oh I did, just there's not much point sharing it, since theres nothing super new or interesting about it. Plus I died a lot LOL  

 

Maybe I'll get some screenshots later when I'm home

 

Yes that would be amazing.

[Zando_]

 Sounds good! And it's looking like it should run fine at 1440p on my 980 Ti. Can't wait for it to be released!

[TVwazhere]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

 Sounds good! And it's looking like it should run fine at 1440p on my 980 Ti. Can't wait for it to be released!

Oh hell yeah I could probably run this 1440p high on my 970 (I dont have a 1440p monitor tho), these games if nothing else are pretty optimized. 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

Oh hell yeah I could probably run this 1440p high on my 970 (I dont have a 1440p monitor tho), these games if nothing else are pretty optimized. 

Hooray! Looks to me like EA did a stellar job, and really learned from Battlefront. Most of the issues I've heard about seem to have been fixed.  

[TVwazhere]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Hooray! Looks to me like EA did a stellar job, and really learned from Battlefront. Most of the issues I've heard about seem to have been fixed.  

The first game for never ran poorly, it was just the content that made the game not fun after a while. If they fix that, people will continue to play this game past one calendar year

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

The first game for never ran poorly, it was just the content that made the game not fun after a while. If they fix that, people will continue to play this game past one calendar year

Yeah, most of what I heard was that it massively lacked content, but it looks like they've fixed that here. And the new campaign mode looks awesome! It'll be cool to see everything from an Imperial trooper's perspective. 

[typographie]

On 7/10/2017 at 9:52 AM, TVwazhere said:

I think the game was capped at 60 fps though.

Sounds like someone at DICE just didn't bother to change the cap, or they were using 60 for testing purposes in the alpha. Frostbite 3 engine games usually seem to release with default caps of 200 FPS, and even that can be changed or removed with the console command, gametime.maxvariablefps 0. For all that DICE may be prone to screwing up, I wouldn't be worried about something like this.

 

I know it's too late but just for future reference, you can use perfoverlay.drawfps 0 to toggle an FPS overlay in other Frostbite games (and it seems highly likely that extends to Battlefront 2) if third-party utilities aren't working, or if you'd just rather use the in-game option.

[TVwazhere]

Just now, typographie said:

Sounds like someone at DICE just didn't bother to change the cap, or they were using 60 for testing purposes in the alpha. Frostbite 3 engine games usually seem to release with default caps of 200 FPS, and even that can be changed or removed with the console command, gametime.maxvariablefps 0. For all that DICE may be prone to screwing up, I wouldn't be worried about something like this.

 

I know it's too late but just for future reference, you can use perfoverlay.drawfps 0 to toggle an FPS overlay in other Frostbite games (and it seems highly likely that extends to Battlefront 2) if third-party utilities aren't working, or if you'd just rather use the in-game option.

I looked for in game options for ping and FPS but couldnt find any. I figured that was the case that it was capped for the Alpha; it didnt bother me too much, but it would have been nice to say "With this gpu on these settings I get X fps". Still satisfied with the experience, and was happy to give feedback.

[typographie]

7 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

I looked for in game options for ping and FPS but couldnt find any.

Yeah, it's not usually exposed in the options UI. Hitting ~ should open the console, where you can then type in those commands. Alternatively you can create a User.cfg file with the commands you want to use and place it in your install directory so that the game automatically applies them at each launch (which might work even if the console is inaccessible).

 

Of course I'm just speculating that any of this would work with an unreleased game I haven't played. But most of this worked with Battlefront 1, as well as Battlefield games dating back at least as far as BF3. It's probably just a feature of Frostbite. But yeah, if you get another opportunity like this, try removing the cap that way.

[jjohnthedon1]

Is it dx12 ? 

[TVwazhere]

Just now, jjohnthedon1 said:

Is it dx12 ? 

I'm not sure. I didnt look for that feature

[jjohnthedon1]

Just now, TVwazhere said:

I'm not sure. I didnt look for that feature

What fps did u get at ultra with the 970 ?

[TVwazhere]

Just now, jjohnthedon1 said:

What fps did u get at ultra with the 970 ?

On 7/10/2017 at 9:52 AM, TVwazhere said:

shadowplay didnt recognize the game though and I dont use fraps so I'm not sure what the frame rate was

 

[TVwazhere]

@Zando Bob Remind me in nine hours to get screen shots of this game, I keep forgetting 

[Zando_]

10 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

@Zando Bob Remind me in nine hours to get screen shots of this game, I keep forgetting 

Will do. I've set a reminder on my phone. 

[typographie]

On 7/10/2017 at 9:52 AM, TVwazhere said:

Assault, Heavy, Officer and Specialist [sniper]

Could you get into some specifics on what the classes actually do differently from each other? I see that the specialist is the sniper class, and I can make some educated guesses about the heavy. You mentioned they had class-specific cards, but are there class-specific weapon loadouts like Battlefield as well? I'm particularly interested to see how the officer plays.

[TVwazhere]

30 minutes ago, typographie said:

Could you get into some specifics on what the classes actually do differently from each other? I see that the specialist is the sniper class, and I can make some educated guesses about the heavy. You mentioned they had class-specific cards, but are there class-specific weapon loadouts like Battlefield as well? I'm particularly interested to see how the officer plays.

If there were class specific load outs, they weren't available in Alpha, at least not that I could tell. Each class had designated primaries and were not changeable to other options. This might be updated in the beta though.

 

Assault:

 

Your standard "Jack of all trades, master of none" class, and the easiest to get into. I have the most experience with this class so I'll go most in depth with this. Blaster has good rate of fire, decent damage (about five hits or so to kill an enemy) recoil and spread are pretty tight and it takes a lot of shots before overheating (the star wars version of reloading) These every-day storm troopers get thermal detonators, a speed and small damage buff, (i forget the third) and a "toughened" passive ( i forget what it's actually called) but for each enemy killed it increases your health. Not sure if this was health regen or max health increase.  200 HP seems to be the base number for health

 

The rest of the classes have other passives and more cards but I didnt get a chance to look into them

 

Heavy

 

Is there a big group of enemies you need to mow down? This guy's got you covered. Big ass machine gun with high rate of fire, semi low damage but you're spraying and praying baby. He gets a deployable mini shield in front of him to lead the charge with your squad, which is pretty tough (I actually didnt play this guy at all so I dont know what his other card are, sorry) I think they also have more health than the Assault class as well, but only 50 points

 

Officer

 

MEDIC!!! As the official support class, Officers have lower health (IIRC, only played him twice), only a pistol with low damage, and no thermal detonator. However, they do have a deplorable turret and their AOE "Rally" (i think thats the name) that gives you and your allies a +50 shield, noted as gold on your health bar, as well as your character raising it's fist when in the circle well marked around the officer. This class is a must if you've got a big group of allies and you need a bit of HOO RAH in your life.

 

Specialist

 

Pew Pew! Specialists are your glass cannon snipers, long range sniper rifles. For the life of me I cant remember what their cards were. I might have some gameplay footage I'll go back and look at since I definitely played this class second most... He doesnt have a pistol for a secondary though so you're stuck with a long range rifle. Like the officer he has lower health 

[Zando_]

9 hours ago, TVwazhere said:

@Zando Bob Remind me in nine hours to get screen shots of this game, I keep forgetting 

Get screen shots of the game!

[TVwazhere]

PHOTOS @Zando Bob @typographie @jjohnthedon1 @VinZie

Spoiler

Class Select

Also Class Select

This game's got some detail and story already

Pew pew pew

*inhales*

TIM-

BUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

 

[TVwazhere]

12 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

PHOTOS

  Reveal hidden contents

Class Select

Also Class Select

This game's got some detail and story already

Pew pew pew

*inhales*

TIM-

BUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

 

MOAR

Spoiler

So this is really cool. In game you can choose between first and third person, as well as pressing C to change which shoulder you look over. If you notice the tiny little X on the foreground object in front of me, it tells you that your shot is going to hit something in front of you

More Pew's

DARTH MAUUUULLLLL

Shot him in the Achilles ankle........
MY LEG!!!!

There are some places like this hallway that really need more lighting. This is not a visual glitch per say, it's just rendered really dark in the game for no reason...I MEAN, I GUESS THATS MORE LIT UP LMAO

Oh hey Rey

Rey+Han Vs Darth Maul

"Hey frank, hows your rocket holding up?"

"Oh dude its awesome, my wife says it hasnt been this big or good in years, thanks for those suppliments!"

"...... I was..... talking about the RPG......."

"Oh..... I.... Uhm...... got three kills?"

"Nice man! keep it up....... The one on your shouldrer I mean"

Another cool feature, now there's two stages of waiting for the cool down when you fully overheat, provided varying levels of "infinite fire"

 

[TVwazhere]

5 minutes ago, TVwazhere said:

MOAR

  Reveal hidden contents

So this is really cool. In game you can choose between first and third person, as well as pressing C to change which shoulder you look over. If you notice the tiny little X on the foreground object in front of me, it tells you that your shot is going to hit something in front of you

More Pew's

DARTH MAUUUULLLLL

Shot him in the Achilles ankle........
MY LEG!!!!

There are some places like this hallway that really need more lighting. This is not a visual glitch per say, it's just rendered really dark in the game for no reason...I MEAN, I GUESS THATS MORE LIT UP LMAO

Oh hey Rey

Rey+Han Vs Darth Maul

"Hey frank, hows your rocket holding up?"

"Oh dude its awesome, my wife says it hasnt been this big or good in years, thanks for those suppliments!"

"...... I was..... talking about the RPG......."

"Oh..... I.... Uhm...... got three kills?"

"Nice man! keep it up....... The one on your shouldrer I mean"

Another cool feature, now there's two stages of waiting for the cool down when you fully overheat, provided varying levels of "infinite fire"

 

MOAAAAAAAARRRRRRR

Spoiler

"And lets see whats behind Door Number on-"

"OH GOD ITS DARTH MAUL"

"FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK"

"Be gone, THOT"

End screen

Main Menu

Some of the cards. AS you can see theyre class specific, and theyre not all unlocked

Rey is back, back again!

Rey is back, tell a friend!

As the Jump trooper you can jump through the ceiling

 

[TVwazhere]

1 minute ago, TVwazhere said:

MOAAAAAAAARRRRRRR

  Reveal hidden contents

"And lets see whats behind Door Number on-"

"OH GOD ITS DARTH MAUL"

"FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK"

"Be gone, THOT"

End screen

Main Menu

Some of the cards. AS you can see theyre class specific, and theyre not all unlocked

Rey is back, back again!

Rey is back, tell a friend!

As the Jump trooper you can jump through the ceiling

 

Last Set

Spoiler

The lighting is spot on

Pew pew pew pew pew pew pewMoar lighting

Oh, you can also ride in the MTD and fire the canons

"And whats behind Door Number tw-"

"....... Yeah I'm done with doors"

The Tab'd scoreboard

Throne room

Note to self: Grenade is thrown with left hand
Also note to self: Kill yourself