devtrackers.gg
Want to drop a few notes in here.
First up, let’s not take things to a personal level. There are far too many comments floating around that are stepping over the line. It’s fine to disagree with someone, but let’s not directly attack someone. Let’s keep it civil. Above all else, any witch hunts should absolutely stop. One of my favourite metrics that’s come out of our Community Surveys is that toxicity and disruptive behaviour is on the decline within the community, let’s keep it that way. There is a fine line between having fun and being a jerk, let’s all be careful we don’t cross it – myself included.
Regarding BB-8 and BB-9E. Since we announced they were both arriving as heroes we’ve been sent plenty of comments telling us to remove them from the game. A lot of the time these comments keep coming from the same sources, who believe that constantly asking for something means we as developers are contractually obliged to fulfil, and as soon as we decline we hear “never listen to the community” being touted.
We will not be removing them from the game, nor will we be removing them from specific game modes such as Heroes vs Villains. I know there’s an argument that a Droid could never beat the likes of Vader, but if we are being honest with ourselves, and if we operated under this mindset then the roster pool in HvV would be very small.
This is where us being a game comes into play. Because we are a game, it allows us to bend the acceptance of reality a bit. Allowing for match ups to take place that on paper probably would never happen.
I love Chewie as a character, but could he realistically take on Vader or the Emperor? Probably not, but again, we’re a game and in the game world we operate under a different ruleset. It’s also why you can have General Grievous going up against the likes of Rey.
About why we pick certain heroes over others and how we listen to the community.
A lot goes into making a hero, and this includes when we’re coming up with a shortlist. We knew we wanted to add two heroes into our Age of Resistance updates, so naturally we looked at who would be a good fit.
With any shortlist drawn up we then factor in other aspects such as development time, as some heroes do take longer than others. You can imagine that the animation work on someone like Grievous is a lot more complicated than your regular humanoid. Would a hero impact one team more than another, and if so, how does that affect the other stuff we are working on. All these things must be considered.
There are also other areas we need to consider, such as can we get the right voice actors into the recording booth in time, do they even want to record and much more.
The whole process is hugely complex with many things working in parallel. Of course, while all this is happening, we have deployment dates that we want to hit. From day one we are always up against the clock and in some ways it’s a race against time.
Of course, we could always push content into other updates or delay the updates entirely but that’s something we rarely like to do. We moved the recent update a few days, but if we wanted more time to build a hero then you’re probably looking at the hero moving to a future update all together. Cast your mind back to the reaction around us moving Supremacy, and how volatile that was.
Making a hero is the combined effort of so many different crafts. Whether it’s Design, Animation, 3D Art, Lighting, Software Engineering, UI Programming, QA, Production, Audio, VFX Artists and many more.
Some additions to the game might only require a smaller subset of the team to work on. For example, if we are doing gameplay tweaks or balancing of heroes it’s very unlikely that 3D Artists would need to be involved.
When it comes to Heroes, they are one of the most complex things we can add to the game. Also keep in mind that while the above teams are working on heroes, they are also working on other areas of the game as well.
This comes back to my note about things working in parallel. A 3D Artist might be doing work on a new hero, but they might also be working on getting some bugs fixed.
This is when priority comes into play. Everything we do boils down to a priority list, but it’s also balanced up against the time individual people have.
Sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where to do more work on something, you’re waiting on someone else to finish their work. As I’ve said multiple times before, game development is a team sport and we all rely on each other.
In these cases, someone on the team might find themselves with a spare few hours, so they could potentially use this time to work through our priority list. Now an afternoon isn’t a lot of time, so tackling that tricky bug might not prove a valuable use of time, but it might be possible to chip away at 2-3 smaller bugs.
With regards to listening to the community and delivering content that you want.
We’ve done a lot of updates over the last 2 years or so, many of which have included content that the community has been requesting. Whether it’s the initial wave of Clone Wars content or returning to the OT for Co-Op and Supremacy, or certain planets coming to Heroes Vs. Villains. We always look at our content additions through a community lens.
This also goes for the reactive changes we’ve also carried out, such as re-doing all of our Clone Trooper Legions. Did this have a knock-on effect to our content plans? Absolutely, but was it something we know the Community was passionate about, yes.
Unfortunately, we’re never going to be able to deliver everything that people want, especially within a Star Wars universe that is so rich in story, characters, and worlds. There is always something that someone will want, and even if it’s something uniquely specific to them, it suddenly becomes a “we want this”.
Where possible we always try and bring content that we feel is going to impact the game, and the Community in the most positive way. Sometimes these decisions might seem strange to you, perhaps like the inclusion of BB-8 and BB-9E. But then again, so did the arrival of Dengar in the previous game, and you could even go as far as saying Co-Op wasn’t really demanded by the Community.
Anyway, hope this clears up some thoughts around the discussion that has been happening.
Be excellent to each other.
It's so painful to see how you guys communicate with the Battlefront community as someone who also plays BFV. Really sad you cant be this honest and communicative on both fronts.
For what it's worth, I run the Community setup for both games.
Is there a way for infantry weapons to get on this priority list anywhere? For me, heroes alone don't change the game enough. When I start it it still feels exactly the same as it did 2 years ago, same 5 or 6 viable weapons and setups, and that's it. Reinforcements and heroes are cool but they are such a small percentage of play time when you're in supremacy or galactic assault that it doesn't make much of a difference. Maps are nice but they're just a different location to use the same old guns on.
I loved the game for a long time but without more infantry weapons, I just can't bring myself to play it anymore.
Is there a way for infantry weapons to get on this priority list anywhere?
They are on the list.