Report: Unlocking Everything in ‘Star Wars Battlefront II’ Will Cost $2,100 or Take 4,500 Hours

battlefront-2-emperor

Despite attempts to salve the community’s rage against Star Wars Battlefront II‘s aggressive monetization strategy, the forthcoming game’s progression system is still abusively exploitive.

After EA’s official response to complaints regarding Battlefront II‘s ludicrous in-game unlock rates became the most downvoted comment ever posted to Reddit (by far), the publisher quickly moved to cut the cost of hero unlocks by about 75%. What was intended to stamp out a raging inferno of fan backlash has done very little to prevent further scrutiny. Now, another fan has laid bare the full extent of a brutal business model that calls games a “service” with comical irony.

In a post to SWTORstrategies, a contributor by the name of Soeren Kamper outlined the basic premises of his estimates. He assumed that all one-time bonus rewards — a now-common developer refrain regarding the speed of unlocking content — are earned, giving EA the benefit of outlining the situation in the context of their most devoted consumer.

The news… isn’t good.

The average time to unlock and develop even one single hero reportedly still averages about 126 hours. There are 23 of these special characters, requiring you to either purchase almost 2,000 loot crates or spend nearly 3,000 hours earning them manually. And yes, that is just for the heroes.

While they represent the bulk of Kamper’s calculation, the final tally for unlocking all of Star Wars Battlefront II‘s content is dismal. According to his estimates, “there is a grand total of 324 cards. Upgrading these will require a total of 155,520 crafting parts. This requires opening a grand total of 3,111 loot crates which will require 4,528 hours of gameplay.” Even if you purchased nothing but the $100 credit value packs en masse, that represents a whopping $2,100 just to access the full extent of a product you have already purchased.

Or, as Ian McDiarmid once handily immortalized for the endless amusement in the hallowed halls of Reddit’s own r/prequelmemes: “It’s treason, then.”

Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.

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