battlefield 4 unlocking the soldier shortcut bundle

I would have settled for the shortcut offering double xp with vehicle usage (if it had to happen), or not offer it at all (if it didn’t), anything to protect the metagame. Hurting the metagame of a deeply competitive system is unbecoming of microtransactions, even if it adheres to the concept of skipping the grind. They have premium Gems that were objectively, hilariously better than the default set. This particular microtransaction is tantamount to what Capcom did with Street Fighter x Tekken’s Gem system. In this manner the metagame was compromised, and this shortcut was pay-to-win by definition. You see since vehicles aren’t tied to a player’s loadout, as they are procured on the battlefield, the shortcut pack was for the vehicle perk unlocks. The one area where shortcuts falter was with the vehicle unlocks. I personally don’t mind paying to skip grinds, I liked that WWE12 had such an option to unlock everything so I didn’t have to play some uninteresting season mode thing.įor a few dollars you too can be Starscream. The metagame was safe, players still worked for the important attachments, and EA got a way to bank off a player’s option to cut corners. Couple this with the fact that these weapons aren’t objectively stronger than weapons you start with, especially if you’re grinding them against default weapon players who already pimped out their firearms.

Any Battlefield player could tell you it’s with the add-ons you use that a weapon shines in the hands of a player. You see the weapons were unlocked, but you still had to grind to unlock the add-ons for each weapon. People justifiably seen this as an affront to the game’s balance… except it didn’t harm balance at all (except in one case to be discussed). You paid the grind away, skipping over the length of time it would take to get to a weapon you had your eyes on. What these shortcuts did was unlock weapons pertaining to each class. But we can’t just vilify the concept in an all inclusive manner, like many ideas in games it can be done terribly or done right.

Just so we’re clear I do agree that most microtransactions are ridiculous – particularly in regard to certain Free to Play games on fancy little phones.

There’s also the element of what this means to competitive balance, how these shortcuts effect the all-important metagame of Battlefield 3. This raised some controversy at the time of its announcement, which stems from an industry wide conversation about nature and ethics of in-game microtransactions. I wanna start with Shortcut Pack, Battlefield 3’s go at microtransactions.

Battlefield 4 unlocking the soldier shortcut bundle