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No More Battlefield 2 Expansions
1up reports that (at the moment) there are no further plans for any Battlefield 2 expansions. Instead, EA and DICE will be releasing 'Booster Packs' with smaller amounts of additional content. Each pack will retail for $9.99 and be downloadable from EA's site. From the article: "Due to the expansion pack cancellation, though, DICE has told investors of slightly lower project revenues for fourth quarter 2005, but they plan on recovering through higher royalty rates through the first half of this year. The packs themselves are fairly substantial; Euro Force contains a new primary weapon, four vehicles (including the Eurofighter) and the Operation Smoke Screen, The Great Wall of China and Taraba Quarry maps. "
The actual article says "It's not known if the packs are a permanent replacement for any possible expansion packs in the future." All this article says is that the plan for a current exapansion pack has been scrapped, and DICE's efforts have been focused into two Booster Packs, which are "fairly substantial."
I play a ton of Battlefield (too much, probably) and I think these are a great idea. Not only are they cheap ($10 US) but they are offered through the EA Downloader. EAD may not be as mature as Steam, but it works just fine for me.
EA is a bunch of money whores.
PC gaming really is going to die if all anybody does is release overpriced expansion after overpriced expansion. Come on, EA, can't we just get some new games?
Or just download them for nice easy payments of nothing....
On the whole though, I quite like BF2, except for the fact that it needs a graphics card about $200 out of my price range. Actually the specs for it confused me ever since it came out, what exactly is so special about the game that it requires all this new stuff to play?
Speacial forces was a big waste of money...
These booster packs do sound promising.
I wasn't too impressed with Battlefield2 anyways because it was eternally buggy and wreaked of poor implentation all the way through.
I pretty much gave up on it when all the game news shifted to the first expansion, rather than on how they were going to fix the original problems.
The new maps are the big thing here. The new weapons and vehicles are not really going change anything in terms of basic gameplay. EA has to officially realease maps for them to be available on 'ranked' servers.
For those who don't know, bf2 has a point-tracking sytem that lets you rank up and earn new weapons/badges, etc. EA makes a HUGE profit on renting ranked servers. They have to be officially managed, and cost several times the normal cost per slot vs. unranked servers.
They will be releasing whatever kind of booster packs they can to try and keep people hooked on the 'ranked' experience as long as possible....keep milking that cash cow. They will be facing some stiff competition in the coming few months as a few MAJOR mods (as in free) are released. Those mods will of course be unranked, so this actually might make for some good competitiveness in the mod/xpack market. EA will be trying to keep us hooked with good content at an appropriate price, otherwise we will all be switching to Desert Conflict (desert combat of bf2) or POE2 or Battlegroup2 or Pirates2 or whatever.
Lets see what EA/Dice can offer up. I'll try the first one. Funny, because I never bought any of the xpacks for original bf1942...
These booster packs are the kind of thing that another company would offer for free. Some have said that these sorts of add-ons used to come free in BF1942, when EA had less control. Might as well download free custom mods which offer more than those booster packs.
BF2 is a fun game, but its had far too many bugs, a number of poor design choices and an awful menu design. The Special Forces expansion pack was met with a bit of disappointment. Good old EA... At least they're consistent, you can expect them to turn anything into crap. It's like the reverse of the Midas touch.
Le Sarge est dans l'arbre?
Is it just me or does it sound like EA is simply trying to goad people back into buying expansion packs again simply by renaming and repackaging them?
When a company gets as big as EA, if it doesnt make big enough profit on low budget products.
Doing smaller packs downloadable only from the web might be their only solution.
This is why I like indy products more, usually better quality, cheaper, and more innovative.
instead of charging $10 for 3 maps you get 100s of maps for $0.
I was going to buy BF2 until i heard about this. BF2 just looks like an amazing game, but they just lost a customer.
this is exactly my opinion - i bought the special forces 'expansion pack' and, while it's fun, the simple fact that it's a whole new 'game' is a bit thin. what would be cool instead is if they had the core 'bf2' game, and then had these new roles, weapons and vehicles integrated into the game so that it expands the core game without requiring that you have every single add-on to play with the same online community.
with expansion packs (at least done like spec forces), you end up fragmenting your existing player base into smaller and smaller chunks comprised of only people that bought the full game & whatever add-on.
providing a way for users to expand the core game gives alot more variation to the game, while keeping the entire community in 'one' game effectively.
much better idea.
only issue with this is preventing users that have NOT purchased the content from using and/or unlocking it once they have it downloaded, but this is a fairly minor detail compared to the benefits.
Gekido's Lair
Ranked servers cannot be free because otherwise people would set up private ranked servers where they and their friends (or other accounts) can point whore in a coordinated fashion or run mods that give them huge bonuses that get entered into the ranking.
You're free to ignore the ranking and play on unranked servers.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I bought BF2. Put it down after a bit for the same reasons others have listed in this discussion. I'm not gonna restate the problems with BF2. I'd rather ask you people this: What games are you looking forward to in 2006?
ET:QW is the only game on my radar for 2006 so far.
Basically, ET play mechanics (which I like) set in a sci-fi Quake universe. Humans vs Strogg.
So far what I think makes it stand out to me:
-Unlimited draw distance, no fog or pop-up
-Asymetrical, yet balanced factions. Meaning, both sides don't have the same (or incredibly similar) weapons. Humans tend to have machine guns and tanks and helos, while the Strogg will have a big-ass walker (heavy armor, heavy damage, but slow) and laser guns and shit. This could be cool, each side having distinct, unique gear, instead of carbon copy armies fighting with the same pallet-swapped eq.
-Not Sucking on Foot. I've read numerous times about how the devs are taking great care to make it so you can stil kick ass and succeed if you didn't get a vehicle.
-No Ranked Server BS
Links:
Typical id/Activision pre-launch site. Has trailer.
Dev's Site
Decent summary of tidbits
BF2 is a travesty. The gameplay is sluggish, most of the weapons aren't acurate...the recoil algorithm is ridiculous, even with the MG in prone position...the interface is atrocious...it's still full of unaddressed(read ignored) bugs. The game has more problems than I care to list. Instead of focusing on new and better ways to take cash from their customers, these jokers should be fixing the broken product many paid good money for.
DICE and EA will get nothing more from me.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
This pretty much marks the end of the BF2 game... what DICE and EA has done here is an interesting innovation, though. Sell a basic game where the weapons suck and sell expansion packs where you get access to better weapons (the SF unlocks are quite nice, I expect the boosterpack guns to be even better). So, unless you like playing public at a disadvantage you are forced to buy their packs. Then, the only reason to play public is to keep up your aim between the matches and in the matches no unlocks are used. So .. all serious players are forced to play public at a disadvantage to the n00bs with using unlocks. No fun, the serious players will leave BF2 and then the game will die. Too bad, it could have been good.