Oh EA...*sighs*
In case you haven't heard by now, Star Wars Battlefront II is in a bit of a controversial position at the moment. After changing some of the progression necessary loot box system to be a bit more fair to non-paying players, EA (or DICE its not very clear which at this point) have driven another stake right through the Star Wars Battlefront community.
This time around, the controversy involves hero characters (and the progression system around them as well). During the beta and pre-launch events held by EA, certain hero characters like Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker specifically were locked behind a credit paywall. The buy-in to unlock those heroes was 10,000 credits. To be fair, this is an easily obtainable amount of credits for playing the game. Upon the early access trials launching on EA and Origin Access respectively, it was noticed that the cost to unlock a hero had ballooned to 40-60,000 credits per hero. Spreadsheets also shared on social media showed that it would take a player on average about 40 hours to unlock a single hero.
This caught the ire of fans all across social media but no place caught more ire than the Star Wars Battlefront Sub Reddit where a comment made by the EA Community Team made history as the most down-voted comment in reddit's existence, garnering over 400,000 downvotes in less than a day.
Their response to all of the criticism over progression and heroes has been incredibly lacking to be honest, with employees towing the company line and speaking in talking points rather than giving actual answers. Its frustrating for fans of the series, who have praised the game for its gameplay and content, but have noted that the progression system and the hero unlock mechanics are based on greed and more shady behavior than anything else with other fans taking a step further and cancelling their pre-orders for the game promising not to buy or play it until EA fixes the issues in game.
Only time will tell if this will actually have a negative impact on the sales of the game and whether or not EA will actually respond to the criticism. We can only hope that EA sees the problem brewing for them and gives fans the answers they deserve.