Okay so i'm sure we all know the whole EA hate train going on and to be completely honest, it's really annoying, especially when people look passed what really matters and hold that grudge for what happened prior.

What i mean is, with the launch of Star Wars Battlefront 2 i do feel the way they had set things was a bit ridiculous, but they soon changed it and lowered the grind significantly. People may not want to admit it, but EA listened, sure it's still an option to buy crystals, but it's also obtainable through milestones and such, but i can get over the crystals seeing that the DLC is all free for all players. Not to mention that the Graphics and Game play of the new Battlefront is amazing, IMO of course.

I can understand getting upset but to take it to the length it's at? Especially when companies like Activision have done this for the past 3-4 games and haven't changed, even going to the extent of making a patent to shove micro-transactions down our throats. Yet, the internet still bands against EA, i don't get it.

I've noticed that gamers nowadays have become very picky and demanding compared to the earlier years, we can't just inform companies on the things we dislike, we must bash them until they're nothing. Really? I don't know about some of you, but some of the greatest games in my past are EA games. Like Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King, Sims, Dead Space 1 & 2, etc.

And finally, when people claim they eat and destroy smaller companies, all I have to say is that the smaller company shouldn't have sold out. And if they had no choice, maybe it's for the best so the developers can still have a job in the long run, it's these things people miss.

I'm not completely defending EA, but i just think that people are cherry picking them out of a whole cluster of AAA developers that do the same things. It's getting kinda annoying to see YouTube and Reddit filled with the same arguments and nobody actually taking the time to see what's changed

The progression system is fundamentally broken - making the grind less tedious doesn't change the system's inherit flaws.

Also EA didn't listen as in listen to the player base - they reacted to non-gaming related press outlets picking up on the story and initial sales being significant below expectations.

Personally I agree hate is never the right emotional reaction to games, game developers or publishers.

Then again I never get much emotionally invested in any game series or movie franchise as the cynical part of my personality always reminds me that these are forms of entertainment done for commercial reasons by an industry.

Not that I don't love certain games but I never get mad if the screw up the successor. I simply don't care and move on.

Same is true for BF2. Personally I checked a couple of in depth reviews and came to the conclusion there are too many good games available at the moment for me to spend my time and money for a rather mediocre one.

Battlefront 2 progression is flawed at its core the longer you play the stronger you become not only is it unfair to new players its P2W with mtx the criticism is justified.

And to be clear mtx are not the problem the top selling games are riddled with them even if their shoved in you face like COD WW2, but as soon as you mess with progression that's when you have a problem.

Activision have not yet tied progression to mtx which is a difference but Bungie are experts at community backlash and flip flopping.

@platypon: EA has made some incredible games that have, in the last decade, been my favorite games of a year. Dead Space 2, Titanfall 2, and Mass Effect 2. When they throw money at someone, sometimes it works out very well.

But then, more often than not, they start to meddle and you watch as the thing you like slowly burns upon the shareholder sacrificial alter. If feels at times as though someone in a boardroom just asks how can we destroy this thing you like. Maybe it's not that they make bad games, they just kill good things.

There's a lot more motivating the EA hate train than microtransactions in battlefront 2.

- Mass effect andromeda was a complete debacle. It's clear that the game was rushed out to shelves before it was ready. And the troubled development of the game went public thereafter.

- People are also unhappy with them buying up developers and then shutting them down as they did with Visceral. They have a very long history of doing this too.

- They are also pivioting away from single player games and onward to games as a service. This has naturally irritated quite a few people.

EA did listen on the Battlefront II outcry and I think that really, that shows the degree of outcry was necessary. That instead of seeing it as a bunch of hot air, we should see it as consumer action which made a difference, and so, should be replicated. It's not as if that entirely fixed the problem though. F2P elements are often not just modules entirely separate from the rest of a game's play that can be snapped off at a moment's notice. The entire structures and loops of games are often built with them in mind, frequently in ways that are more concerned with coaxing the player into handing over money than giving them a good time. EA may have walked the F2P elements back, but you're also seeing a sizeable number of players still upset about the effect that the whole business model had on the "core" design. Obviously, we also can't view this as an isolated incident. If people seem especially mad about this companny, it's because it came on the back of years of business practises from EA that hurt the consumer. I think games consumers do lose perspective on these issues and at the point they're threatening developers, they need to seriously stop and think about what they're doing, but if EA seems like they're gotten it worse than others, it's because they've been dishing it out worse than others. I would agree that companies like Activision-Blizzard also need to be taken to task somewhat better, but that doesn't mean that EA should be criticised any less or that there hasn't been significant criticism of the practises of those companies.

Nobody has bashed EA into oblivion here. On the contrary, they're an absurdly profitable company whose shares are trading higher than ever. The people who are at greater risk are the consumers. EA are a stupidly large outfit with a lot of economic weight to throw around, but their customers are just people who are often worried about being treated unfairly by a media industry that is ever more monopolised and arbitrarily reducing their freedoms. Now, you can say that people selling on companies to EA is a strategically poor move, but if EA shut down a studio then they also have a huge part in that closure; they're responsible. Those closures are also often bad for the workers, they lose them jobs. The AAA industry has been treating developers awfully and we need criticism which pushes them to be way better.

I suspect Mass Effect Andromeda, Visceral closure, Amy Hennig's SW game cancellation, and Need for Speed: Payback somewhat entered into the equation as well. EA out did itself this year.

Personally I find Activision to be far more annoying and overrated. COD should've died games ago (or at least not be yearly anymore), Overwatch should be a free to play game, and Destiny is never worth $60 - Bungie relies too much on the DLC to make it a worthwhile experience and Destiny fans allow them to get away with it. All the big studios deserve some hate, but I think it gets overblown with EA and it seems like Activision usually gets a pass.

It's not a EA game, but Shadow of War got too much hate for its loot boxes. I played the game for over 12 hours and I wouldn't have known paying for boxes was a feature if the internet didn't blow up about it.

I can get why people get annoyed with a company's shitty practices or reluctantly rectifying shady attempts to squeeze more money out of them or even just running franchises into the ground and forcing them out half-finished and half-broken due to demands and constraints they've forced onto developers. What I can't get is why someone would bother getting annoyed on the company's behalf at these complaints.

My advice is: dont pay attention to which gamer hates which developer because it's all completely and totally meaningless and ineffectual and publishers as large as EA aren't a person at whom hate can be directed anyway they are organizations with staff that rotates so frequently and with responsibilities so widely divided that no single person can bear the brunt of any of the blame for any one thing so why even fuckin bother getting mad about others being mad at nobody in particular

also EA, one of the largest corporations in the fuckin world, doesn't need anyone's defense and doesn't care if anyone hates them as it hasn't mattered in the least for over a decade so why should it matter now

I personally like EA always have and i think i always will, but i love Bioware (Edmonton). They have developed/published some of and my most beloved game(s) Mass Effect 2 is everything i love as human being in video game form, but i can admit to my bias i live in Edmonton where Bioware started i met the Doctors once at a lan party in the 90's. And maybe its my age (46) but i rarely find myself agreeing with the outrage and hate that spent on EA as company no matter what the cause is. So i try very hard to stay out of it.

Agreed on all counts.

CoD: WWII is a pretty bad game overall (with unimpressive visuals on even the One X to boot), and it has some really in-your-face loot box garbage. The Headquarters "loot spectator" crap is perhaps the most brazenly odious effort to try and actively encourage loot crate purchases by making a social spectacle of it (which is some real Black Mirror shit), and I've barely heard a peep about it. Destiny, meanwhile, is literally patenting ways to exploit its players by shoving better gear they don't have in front of them so they'll hopefully try to buy it. And Overwatch arguably popularized this trend with their loot crates, but seemingly everyone completely gives that game a pass on its undeniable role in normalizing the loot crate b.s. because its loot is "only cosmetic".

Fuck that. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. I'm not about to defend EA for the shit they tried to pull with Battlefront II, nor Shadow of War, Forza, etc. for playing "me-too" on this awful trend to add wholly unnecessary loot crate systems to their games, but I take real issue with this selective criticism horseshit. The internet ignores or even praises loot boxes in games they like (despite these games being designed specifically around loot) and then goes on indignant tirades if they show up in games they don't like (even when employed to much less nefarious effect). EA, Microsoft, et al. clearly make for more preferable targets of ire than precious Activision Blizzard, so there are seriously people who went apoplectic at other games' inclusion of loot crates and then resumed throwing money at Destiny/Overwatch loot bullshit the same fucking day. It's asinine.

Activision Blizzard has played the fuck out of gamers, and it seems like 90% of them either haven't figured that out or refuse to admit it. WoW, Dota, and Overwatch increasingly made this gambling more and more accepted, then Destiny and CoD took it to the insane level of actively employing psychological manipulation tactics, and seemingly no one complained until others starting doing similar things. If all these self-proclaimed crusaders against this stuff had raised a fuss earlier, this trend wouldn't have ever caught on in the first place. Except no one wants to point a finger in the mirror at all their spending on Activision Blizzard microtransactions over the years and makes weak-ass "but, but, Overwatch is fun" excuses for themselves. I'm not saying I'm entirely "above" supporting this shit, either. Hell, I bought Battlefront II, Forza 7, and CoD: WWII (although I'll never buy a loot box in any of them). It's just really annoying to hear people spouting off anti-loot crate harangues about one game while gleefully buying loot crates in another.

EA didn't change Battlefront 2 out of the goodness of their hearts. Battlefront 2 shipped the way it did because EA thought they could get away with it, and enough people called them out on their bs that they had no other recourse. Then they played it off like they're on our side and want to make things right.

So not only is EA trying to weasel more money out of us with micro-transactions in a $60 game, it's also being disingenuous by covering up said greed with pro-consumer lip service.

Let's not forget that EA and every other big publisher cries poor with season passes, deluxe editions, and micro-transactions, but when EA ditched micro-transactions in Battlefront 2 they told their shareholders it wouldn't affect their bottom line. The only thing EA cares about is your wallet and how they can worm their way into it.

I'm personally not cherry picking on EA. They've just been screwing up so much and for so long, they've become the well-deserved whipping boy of AAA publishers (though Warner Bros and Activision really seem to want that title of late).

Are you payed to say this ? Companies arn't your friends there out there to earn good o'll cash. If it weren't for the people who where throwing the pitchforks at EA you would still be grinding for some dumb freemium currency. Balancing your game around a Microtransaction market in 2017 in a non freemium game is MINDBOGGELING !

As far as the things that got EA a lot of heat....outside of the elite preorder bonuses and characters being priced way too high, the loot crate model they went with was fine as they're way too randomized to be useful and don't offer tier four cards. Also, people that say that the progression system is broken don't understand how the game works. The Star Cards are a totally separate thing from the only progression that matters in game and that's the troop specific blaster upgrades and attachments. The progression is fine, it's just there's not enough in the way of bullshit unlocks like CoD had with their icons and tags to make you feel like you're constantly being rewarded.

The Card system though, despite what most people will tell you, is actually pretty great despite the perks offered through them being fairly underwhelming and not something that generally works toward the kill count needed to unlock better guns. The fact that you're given access to anything you want once you get crafting parts instead of having to wait to reach a certain rank is a breath of fresh air....well, for someone that really hasn't played an online shooter since Black Ops 2.

Battlefront II's actually a pretty solid and fun game. It definitely has its flaws, but not the piece of shit some would have had you to believe, especially now that the loot crate issue....which really wasn't much of an issue, is no longer an issue, and still wouldn't be if they turned micro-transactions back on.

I remember having a, at best, optimistic, at worst, naïve "live and let live" opinion about loot boxes about a month or two ago since I'll never buy them despite how pretty certain in-game items may look. Battlefront II (2017) totally changed my mind about that, in addition to how blatantly greedy other developers and publishers are, Activision and Bungie included despite how much I'm enjoying Destiny 2. That, and the whole Mass Effect Andromeda fiasco, Visceral being no more, and me just not being thoroughly impressed with anything they've released sine Mass Effect 2, I can't say that I'll be giving EA my money until they get their shit together.

inb4myhypocrisybecauseIplayDestiny2.

It's too tiring and depressing to get angry anout this stuff. Rather would focus my "anger," as it were, on things that matter. Even more depressing how bonkers vitriolic people get about this stuff, to the point of death threats. I feel bad for the devs subsumed into this that are just trying to create and make a living.

My rule is actually very simple: if you're trying to squeeze more money out of me after I've already paid for your product, clearly you won't be satisfied no matter what I do, so I'll save you the disappointment and just not buy your crap.

I don't take kindly to being told to go screw myself.

I'm not angry. It's a video game not an essential service. But I like star wars a lot and would enjoy a decent star wars game.

Battlefront 2 is gambling with a side of shooting and I can see it getting worse in the future not better as companies aim to make games for the 1 per cent or those with poor impulse control. And I can't blame them. They will make more money that way. I just hope that in the future the types of games I like will still exist.

The interesting thing about Battlefront 2 is that people forget that even Battlefield One and 4 had garbage progression.

I hate all big corporations equally

False.

There was no incentive for buying loot crates via the crystals outside of crafting materials. You couldn't get tier four cards from them. Tier three cards rarely dropped. Tier two cards were once in a blue moon. And given how many cards and animations there are, the chances you'd get something you could actually use on the troop class you started off with were pretty f'n slim. They had very little impact on the game early on, and now....this far out, there's even less of a reason to keep the micro-transactions turned off. They're a complete non-issue at this point outside of the folks that would cry foul screaming "EA is the devil" all while not understanding how the game actually works. EA, especially after lowering the costs of the characters, wouldn't be forcing anyone to buy the crystal shards....and there's little reason to as the game front loads you with a ton of credits from completing early modes and challenges.

First of all EA isn't a developer, it's a publisher.

Second, EA has, historically, mishandled every development studio it has touched.

I don't hate EA. That implies a level of investment that I just don't have. But I don't trust them. Every time EA gets up on that E3 stage and says "This next game is gonna be the greatest most innovative thing ever, we've learned from our mistakes," I just roll my eyes and think 'ya sure, whatever.' Invariably EA ends up justifying my attitude.

EA is a joke and, in 2017, everybody's gotten tired of hearing it.

I disagree that EA listened. EA made a calculated risk they knew they might have to backslide from if the fire got too hot, and boy did it ever. Where they ended up at with regard to the point cost of heroes is probably where they always wanted to be, but made it seem like they were conceding something to the fans. If you believe that EA listened, then you're buying into their PR-driven hype machine. To the argument that other publishers do it too, well yeah I'm sure they do. Let's take Activision. I'll keep this just about Call of Duty, since I don't play Destiny. The last COD that I played heavily was Black Ops III. It had loot boxes but the rewards were merely cosmetic and nothing to mess up your level progression or weapon progress/unlocks. Even DLC weapon drops were just variants of existing weapons or classic guns and not like best in class game changing things. Infinite Warfare was probably a little worse in this regard, dropping currency used to forge objectively better guns, but still nowhere near as bad as BF2. So basically what I'm saying is all publishers do scummy things, but EA does them the worst.

EA has put out some great games and some total garbage.

The whole buy-'em-up-and-spit-'em-out approach sucks, and I more just wonder why EA does it. It's got to be for IP ownership. I can't imagine a small studio being absorbed into a massive corporation is an easy cultural transition, and that much of the key talent could leave in response.

I understand cashing out as a small stufio owner, but the risk seems odd for EA.

I'm just bummed out that Mass Effect wasn't protected more, as an IP. They sent that latest game out to die. I think that IP deserves better and the harm to the bottom line would be greater in the long run (unless they just planned to let it die anyhow).

Anyhow, they do some stuff that bums me out, but I just move on, I guess. Their batting record this year has felt spotty, but they're still pretty consistent in the long haul.

Origin access is one of the best value deals around. The complete opposite of a money grab.

I have an issue with games being pay to win, but when it comes to loot boxes in general, which I feel have blown up into a big issue again, I'm cool with them. I think they should show the odds, but people should be responsible for themselves and their own actions. If somebody wants to spend $1,000 a month on lootboxes, that's on him. If some kid buys tons of boxes on their parent's account, that's the parents fault for not teaching their kid properly, or not allowing him access to do such things.

As if this is the only reason...

how are people so clueless...

EA customers...

@sarcasticmudcrab: right there with ya on EA Access. Love the service and saves me a ton of money each year.