Let me open by saying I really want to love this game but every time I find myself really enjoying it I discover something that makes me question what on earth DICE were thinking. I also dearly hope I am missing something so please correct me if I'm wrong.
So some cards like Ion shots and personal shield operate on a charge system which is more or less ammo for that skill. I knew that you could collect extra charges from power ups around the map which add to this pool. This made sense to me: with a semi-limited number per game players wouldn't spam them and have to use a bit more thought.
What I didn't realise however is they don't replenish between rounds. Ie. If I start with 10 and use 4 in a game leaving me with 6 when the game ends. At the start of the game I will still have 6. And if that number hits zero my options are buy more with in-game credits or spend the round being totally useless to my team as I hunt for charge tokens.
What the fuck. Effectively I have to choose between unlocking new items or restocking my skills so I'm not a burden on my team. That's seriously messed up.
It gets even worse when you consider that players that play more than others will amass more credits and unlock all the cards faster than other players. Excellent work DICE, let's widen the gap between players by not only having more experienced players have more items but also the ability for them to use them more than other players. In Drop Zone mode the personal shield is pretty much 1 free cap/recap of the pod. Anyone who's played this mode understand how important it is for winning games. By tying charges to XP/playtime the sides become seriously stacked in favour of the team who has the most charges for their shields. This is the sort of situation you'd expect to see in f2p games not proper retail games.
It seems even more ill-conceived when you find out the only way to buy more of these from the collection menu which can only be accessed out of a game. So not only do the way these charges are obtained influence single matches they also influence long series of matches. Players who are serious about winning will want as many of these charges and want to buy them when they run out, which they inevitably will over a string of matches. This means you'll have people, likely experienced players, dropping out of their games to restock at the shop. I can't be the only person who sees how insane that is right?
The only way to balance this fairly with be to remove it entirely which I have no doubt DICE is unwilling to do so I offer a compromise: Set a minimum number of charges which these sort of Star Cards is reset to after a game ends. This allows all players a fighting chance and allows the power-players to use their extra credits to get an advantage over people who don't have the credits to spare. Additionally to not break the flow of ongoing matches please allow charges to be replenished from the spawn menu that appears at the start of games. I sincerely hope this is given the consideration it warrants as I feel this is not a small issue.
This isn't the only one of those sorts of balance issues and I don't believe I'm smarter than DICE so this must have occured to them so why have they gone ahead with it? This was immediately apparent to me let alone years of design and testing. I'm a bit worried this game will end up getting a free pass from a largely uncritical games press.
What do other people think? Is there something I am missing? Let me know.
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