It takes an estimated 720 loot boxes to unlock 12 guns...or pay for loot boxes (angry joe)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne4CnyNW9O4

Or an estimated 3600 hours of playtime. The maths start at 10:59 in the video. Angry Joe made a rant about the loot box issue in this game. These aren't cosmetics but actual gameplay changes including unlocking guns.

Average of 15 crafting material(CM) per loot crate
900 CM per class for 2 weapons
3 guns per class
4 classes
3x4 = 12 guns
12guns x 900 CM
10, 800 CM to unlock 12 weapons
10,800 CM /15M per loot crate =720 loot crate openings

It took them 5 hours to open 2 loot crates on average and you don't unlock them faster if you play better.

Wow...just fucking wow. I'm really hoping this is altered by the time the full game is released because that's insane.

Ugh, this system may be one of the worst progression systems I have seen in a game. Its baffling.

And the crap train just keeps on rolling.

I’m at work so can’t watch thit video, but Is that the full game or the beta he’s playing? I recall the bf1 beta doing something when you hit a certain level it was an insurmountable task to level up again. I just posted in another thread, Blind boxes are fine for cosmetics when in service to giving everyone free maps. but putting actual equipment in them or “pay to win” abilities is a very poor implementation of the system. I’m going to judge the game when it comes out as opposed to now but hopefully they find time to adjust this to a more player friendly model.

They do this since the Battlefield 3 beta or alpha(?).

I've got more of an issue with this than the shit in Shadow of War.

Guess I'm not buying Battlefront 2.

Eh, this guy calls himself angry joe so i can never take his opinion on stuff seriously. Game isn't even out yet, how about people let the publisher/developer know in feedback and see if it hits the full game before stirring up a lame shit storm about every damn thing. It is a beta that's what they are traditionally for.

Then if it gets ignored and the game comes out, shit storm away.

Because most publishers actively ignore that stuff unless it becomes headlines and a lot of people complain about it. That's what it's like in the beta and he's commenting about that. If they didn't want people making videos then they shouldn't had sent beta codes out to youtubers. He also clearly says he really hopes that it's different in the final version.

In the first two minutes of the video, I just couldn't understand all his praise. He's gushing again. I feel like we played different games. I thought the beta was boring crap.

As someone who has never played BF, I don't like the beta. I was getting killed a lot, and the map was boring. The third person view isn't very good. The flight controls were weird. Why couldn't they just copy Rogue Squadron's?

It also has chromatic abberation. Because every AAA game needs to have it now. Noticed it right away. Ew. As usual, there is no option to disable it.

For me, [the reason the third person view is bad is] because all they did was pull the camera back and to the side. It doesn't benefit from the more lifelike animations and movement that third person usually has. The character moves just as robotically. The regular cam is too close and the zoomed cam, which makes your aim effective, is WAY too close. It feels like a mod instead of proper third person.

I find it hard to be annoyed about loot boxes when most multiplayer games in 2017 are boring and have mediocre mechanics.

This is letting the publishers know? Telling them it sucks, is exactly that? Its not "stirring up a lame shit storm".

Also how are you going to argue about not judging a beta? Its a representation for what the game is, its what is supposed to convince you to buy it. Its the representation we have of the game, and blindly hoping "well things can change for the final game!" is silly.

Battlefront? More like Battledung.

If this holds true for the final version of the game then this is a hard pass. I would love to see a follow-up to this after the game is released to confirm if the numbers remain the same. I'm definitely going to hold off purchasing until I know one way or another.

I really enjoyed my time with the beta but the loot crate thing was by far my biggest concern. The maths here seems a little weird because it doesn't appear to factor in guns dropping? But even if you took that into account, the crafting costs are way too high and in general I don't like the random progression versus the first game's much more straightforward system.

I'm also not a fan of there being four different strengths of card - in the first game you just got the card, then upgraded it once. Now it's a random 1-in-4 roll of how good your drop ends up being on top of the actual random nature of the crates. Here's hoping they rectify it going forward. There's a while until release and no doubt they're getting a ton of feedback about this stuff.

@metal_mills: There are a lot of things wrong with this analysis. (Although I do agree that a lot of the progression, at least in the Beta, is messed up)

First: Crafting materials are not the only thing that you get from loot boxes. You get guns and star cards and emotes. So right away that will drop down the 3600 hours considerably.

Second: Completing challenges for specific classes gives you a class specific crate. In my beta experience each of those crates gave me the second class weapon. So I think guns are not going to be the issue with this game, its star cards that are.

Third: You do earn more credits for playing better and completely challenges will earn you even more. 5 hours to get 2 boxes is not representative of my time with the game. (Also you get a daily box)

So I think 3600 hours and 720 boxes is a ridiculous claim to make, especially if you are only talking about guns. But I do agree that the beta's crate drops seemed bad. I consistently only got level 1 and 2 star cards, max level of star cards is 5. Also I rarely got any crafting materials. However all of this "economy" stuff is subject to change, there's a disclaimer on every crate that you open.

Overall people should just be focusing on whether they enjoyed playing the game, personally I did. Its not a super competitive experience, in fact its really really casual. The e-sports style marketing for this game is not accurate for the experience. Some people can dump a whole lot of money into it but I really do think it will not have a huge effect on my enjoyment of it.

I don't like Angry Joe, and this seems like yet another video from him based on an extremely flawed premise.

I'm sure there's going to be a lot of debate surrounding the progression and impact of loot boxes in Battlefront 2, but trying to have that discussion based solely on the beta seems like a very bad idea.

Agreed. Especially in this day and age, where this doesn't even qualify as a beta. It's a demo. Judging the next hundreds or thousands of hours of an unreleased game based on a demo doesn't prove much.

You guys understand that this isn't an official review right? Its more of a first impressions video. Which seems perfect for a beta.

That said, I want to play this game. Its fun, it feels good, they've fixed and fleshed out a lot of the first game's problems. Buuuuut, unless they speed up progression significantly I'm gonna pass. Hopefully they've just slowed it down for the beta like a few people have suggested.

This is what I immediately noticed - playing with a class and getting it up to level 2 or 3 I got the second class gun. It seems like his entire hypotehesis is flawed. Regardless I honestly had fun with the "beta" and am looking forward to it. Also go Hawks.

This is a shame as from what I've played, this is game is good fun. Hopefully they drastically change it for the release.

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Oh and let's say that it even took that long to unlock everything via lootboxes and crafting. Regardless of the time that's how long it would take you that's how long it would to unlock EVERYTHING FOR FREE. For a game that's expected to have a 2 year plus cycle that isn't that bad. Also I don't care to unlock everything in the game. I typically stick to a set load out or two per class so I don't need nearly that much progression.

Also outside of the Legendary Brawler card for Assaults I didn't see any cards that seemed game breaking or Overpowered. Most of them increased Radius for explosions, cooldowns, or durations. The brawler card was the only one that seemed a little OP in that at it's highest level would restore 100% health for melee kills.

I definitely did a double take when I saw that Battlefront 2 had loot boxes. It doesn't seem to make sense in this game. I don't plan on playing the multiplayer in this anyways.

I find it interesting that this video apparently takes the absolute worst possible case, and, as others have pointed out, actively ignores other ways to get loot boxes.

Angry Joe, is in fact angry. I take everything he says with a grain of salt. Jimquisition too for that matter. They are masters at riling up people, and over inflate most of their points.

Angry Joe? Thanks, I can ignore this entirely.

On one hand, angery joe. The other hand, this is fucking EA and their track record with this shit isn't stellar. As soon as they said DLC was free I knew they were pulling some shit. Honestly isn't surprising.

This.

Keep in mind, the game is out in 5ish weeks so there is still time for DICE to adjust loot boxes and Star Cards so until the game is officially released, the jury is out for me.

^

SWBF2 is pay to win no doubt about that. Mobile gaming is really going to kill AAA gaming I just didn't know it would be like this well at least we still got our good old favorites to fall back on.

I knew the comments would tell me more about the real situation than AngryJoe would be able to. But being able to say it takes 3600 hours will get clicks for sure.

What I want to know, is what made Joe so angry in the first place?

Regardless of how long it takes, random lootbox based progression is utter BS. I won't be wasting my time on this game either.

In the beta I unlocked the second gun in each class just by levelling that class up - it seemed like buying the gun with the crafting material is only necessary if you want it early? Like, did he even play enough of the beta to unlock a gun before making this claim?

@ungodly: Jim does a lot of great work on copy right, state of youtube and the culture around it, and other overlooked areas of gaming that are more important in the long run than "the progression in this beta" sucks. He's honestly one of the few people I go to outside of GB cuz he actually has interesting opinions.

@bollard: this is what I don't get - I haven't watched the entire Joe video because he's terribly grating for my tastes even though I used to be able to stomach him, but I was able to get each classes second gun after playing roughly one game of galactic assault.

Yea he does videos like this quite often that are more based on getting clicks than anything else (youtube is a hard place right now I get it)

There is certainly a conversation here for sure about look boxes in general but this is almost the definition of fuzzy math

BIG FAT FRIGGIN BETA.

No reason to assume something like progression rate which is almost ALWAYS different between betas and final releases, are accurate in the beta. Why is someone who’s been around for so long even nothing to make content about this before the game is released and why are we paying attention?

ANGRY JOE GETTING THEM ANGRY VIEWS

There's always going to be a new batch of young people to fool.

Loot boxes are barely tolerable in f2p mobile games. They have no business in full price console games.

Thats pretty terrible.

In the Beta it literally says in the description for every crate that the drop rates are for the Beta only and do not reflect the rates of the actual release. To me, it seems super weird to extrapolate a bunch of math from something that tells you explicitly not to do so.

I know everyone thinks youtubers are fucking geniuses who always crack the code, but keep in mind that EA/DICE invested years and tens of millions of dollars into this game and have a lot of smart people trying to figure out how to maximize profits. They aren't going to crater their game by making players grind for 3600 hours so they can maybe squeeze a few more bucks out of players. Nobody will play that game, everyone will drop it immediately or never purchase it when reviews are bad because of it. Its in their best interest to make a great game that keeps people coming back so they maximize opportunities to upsell them lootboxes. Ultimately it's all about money because that's their job, if you think with that perspective you'll never be surprised.

While its possible that the loot crates will be pretty gross, and there will almost certainly be some pay2win issues because the upgrades are straight up better, ultimately we will have to wait and see how the final release comes together. I would encourage everyone concerned to not preorder and instead wait for initial impressions and reviews before jumping in.

Also, as an aside. I recently learned that all the DLC content for the game is going to be free, and they are using the lootboxes as a way to generate additional income instead of selling DLC. I think that is an interesting idea, and it would be nice to have every player able to participate in everything, but it will really come down to how the core game is affected by the desire to sell lootboxes.

The 'I'm angry and I am not going to take it anymore!' of gaming?

Sure like to be in that boardroom when he has that special little talk with 'The Man' Publishing Mogul.

Hey everybody. Looks like Angry Joe can be a little less angry. EA just released some stuff about changes from the Beta and discuss issues with loot boxes.

Article located here.

The big take away from me is that the big stuff is based off player progression or has to be unlocked via through achievements.

From the Article:

• There are many things you can earn in the game, including weapons, attachments, credits, Star Cards, Emotes, Outfits and Victory Poses.
• As a balance goal, we’re working towards having the most powerful items in the game only earnable via in-game achievements.
• Crates will include a mix of of Star Cards, Outfits, Emotes or Victory Poses.
• Players earn crates by completing challenges and other gameplay milestones, or by purchasing them with in-game credits or Crystals, our premium currency.
• If you get a duplicate Star Card in a crate, you will get crafting parts which you can then use to help upgrade the Star Card of your choice.
• And lastly, you have to earn the right to be able to upgrade Star Cards and unlock most Weapons. You can only upgrade or unlock them if you have reached a high enough rank, which is determined by playing the game.

So yes they will have "premium" boxes you can pay real money for but the big items still need to be unlocked from play. Unlocking everything will probably still take a lot of time but hey it takes forever in Overwatch too.

They do address some balance changes that I'm happy to see them working on as well but this isn't the thread for that.

As a general rule, I don't watch anything gaming related on youtube from anyone with the word "Angry" in their name but this seems shitty.

Wow, this is utterly insane.

This is the same guy who basically ignored the alternate means of generating fight money in SFV to act angry about how many raw matches it would take to unlock characters. So given he has a history of making videos with misleading content due to withheld information I'm gonna take this with a shaker of salt.

@sloppydetective: I don't like the Jimquisition, because of how he presents his videos. He just comes across as obnoxious and entitled to me.

@ungodly: Those are fair reasons to not like his videos. He lays his schtick on very heavy. He does some really interesting work though and is legitimately pro-consumer.

I just stopped playing Battlefield 1 which had me hooked for a while, and that game was terrible about giving out loot boxes, and leveling in general was a slog. I think EA does a terrible job about progression, and it made that aspect of the game less fun in my opinion because so much is locked behind levels that take way too long to get, and loot boxes are few and very far in-between. I think Overwatch does a great job of dealing out loot boxes and levels, and it makes it feel like you are getting rewarded at a pretty fair clip, especially since you get like 4 items out of each box.

If Battlefront 2 is like Battlefield 1 in terms of leveling and loot boxes, I may pass, but only if the unlocks affect gameplay. If it's just cosmetic I don't really care.