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EA Flip-Flops On Battlefield: Heroes Pricing, Fans Angry

Posted by Soulskill on from the put-your-money-where-your-gun-is dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ben Kuchera from Ars Technica is reporting that EA/DICE has substantially changed the game model of Battlefield: Heroes, increasing the cost of weapons in Valor Points (the in-game currency that you earn by playing) to levels that even hardcore players cannot afford, and making them available in BattleFunds (the in-game currency that you buy with real money). Other consumables in the game, such as bandages to heal the players, suffered the same fate, turning the game into a subscription or pay-to-play model if players want to remain competitive. This goes against the creators' earlier stated objectives of not providing combat advantage to paying customers. Ben Cousins, from EA/DICE, argued, 'We also frankly wanted to make buying Battlefunds more appealing. We have wages to pay here in the Heroes team and in order to keep a team large enough to make new free content like maps and other game features we need to increase the amount of BF that people buy. Battlefield Heroes is a business at the end of the day and for a company like EA who recently laid off 16% of their workforce, we need to keep an eye on the accounts and make sure we are doing our bit for the company.' The official forums discussion thread is full of angry responses from upset users, who feel this change is a betrayal of the original stated objectives of the game."

7 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Times are a changing.. by saintm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well I guess that the 'stated objectives of the game' have changed then.

    Reminds me a bit of 'Ultimate Team' in FIFA09 (and soon FIFA10) where you can earn points to pay the wages of a top team, but realistically you'd have to buy the card packs in order to fund having a top team, making a two tier system where you can only compete by spending real money.

    It sucks, but it is the way it is.

    1. Re:Times are a changing.. by sopssa · · Score: 2, Informative

      They say that the game is still free, and that you can still have fun without paying a penny. The point is that they destroyed the very core claim of not giving combat advantage to paying customers, and backstabbed the whole user community in the process. Still, no one in the dev/mods team has actually acknowledged it.

      This is actually fairly common style with Korean MMO's and multiplayer games. It seems to work good there and players like it, so it's not a surprise companies want to try it on western markets too.

    2. Re:Times are a changing.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      No, that's not free. Perhaps free to try, but since you do not get to use all the content without paying, it's not free. Essentially, it's a free trial without a time limit, or just Shareware.

      Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free game. Everyone can run a server and anyone can download the client. I think it's even libre nowadays, instead of just gratis.

    3. Re:Times are a changing.. by Jaysyn · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, it didn't change. The more quests you complete for factions, the more Turbine Points you get. Or you can buy them for real money. Or you can pay $15 a month for a subscription & get access to "pay" quests when they come out & an allotment of Turbine Points each month. I've been playing since the beta & haven't spent a dime of real money. You can buy items with Turbine points, but at most the are only slightly better than the items you can find. I.e. a Bull Strength potion that lasts 4x as long as a regular one. I have noticed that while the armor you can buy at the Turbine store looks better (or at least more complex) than the equivalent armor that you can find in dungeons, once you out-level it, you can't do anything with it. Can't sell it, can't trade it to other players & can't "mail" it to other characters in your account. I'm guessing if you bought a shared bank vault for you account you could trade it that way, but I'm not too inclined to find out.

      You don't have to spend any money to have fun in DDO. None. There is nothing in the Turbine store that you "have" to have to get ahead. Quite honestly the equipment in the Turbine store that I've seen pales in comparison to the equipment that you can bid on at the auction house for in-game currency.

      --
      There is a war going on for your mind.
    4. Re:Times are a changing.. by X0563511 · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you liked Quake, you'll probably like Nexuiz.

      Play that for a while, and it will make you realize we don't need those bastards like EA.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  2. Re:So? by Narpak · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sorry, but paying to be playing competitively is something I'd expect in a F2P game with an ingame store, but not in a game that I buy at full price. No sale.

    Battlefield Heroes is more like Quake Live; in that you can play the game for free through a web-browser interface. So you don't buy it "at full price" as such. Instead you create a character, log on, and play for free with some ads on the logon pages and such. However by playing, or paying, you get a type of points that you can use on certain types of items and gear; though these are not essential to playing as it is at the moment.

    I believe that previous stated goal was to finance the game through ads and "micropayments"; so I really can't see why this change comes as any great surprise.

    --
    The Long Now Foundation
  3. Re:BF a dead franchise by AnonChef · · Score: 1, Informative

    Battlefield and Battlefiled 2 has almost nothing in common with Battlefield Heroes.