The latest update for EA’s Star Wars shooter, Star Wars Battlefront II is now live. Update 1.2 brings about a new game mode, new content and balance tweaks for Heroes, Classes, Locations and Game Modes.
The new game mode, dubbed Jetpack Cargo is a limited mode whereby players strap on jetpacks and make use of rocket launchers for a full round. It seems like it’s going to be a ridiculous amount of mayhem. Other than that, other notable changes include: credit payout for duplicate items increased, squad members are more easily distinguished in the colorblind setting, lightsabers glow brighter and AI fixes.
Check out the full list of changes down below:
Heroes and Villains Balancing:
Boba Fett
We’ve made a substantial change to the way Boba Fett’s jet pack feels when flying. We think you’re going to love the increased maneuverability! Furthermore, we improved his efficiency at distance with the EE-3. Previously, it could be frustrating to try to shoot with the EE-3’s high dispersion, especially while flying. As a result, we improved the EE-3 in a few areas and we hope this will combine with the jetpack changes to make Boba Fett even more fun to use on the battlefront.
- Jet Pack – Jet Pack controllability improved
- EE-3 – Reduced the minimum dispersion angle from 0.6 to 0.4
- EE-3 – Reduced the maximum dispersion angle from 1.2 to 0.8
- EE-3 – Increased End Damage from 20 to 25
- Increased damage drop-off start distance from 15 to 20 meters
Iden Versio
We’ve heard your feedback that Iden’s Droid Stun was very difficult to predict. We’ve made it much snappier and feel this should be a significant improvement to Iden, even though the droid’s damage has been slightly reduced.
- Fixed an issue where Iden’s Droid Stun didn’t give damage on the first attack
- Droid Stun – Reduced the time between the ability activation and shock
- Reduced the damage from 40 to 50
Bossk
Bossk’s Relby V-10 had a somewhat awkwardly high recoil. We reduced it a bit while adjusting the animation to make it feel more responsive. We also reduced the damage output of the Explosive Traps as we felt it was a bit too high. The Multi-Trap Star Card values were incorrect and the Epic Star Card could increase the radius of the damage past what was listed on the card. This unintentionally lead to Bossk having very high AoE damage.
- Relby V-10 – Reduced recoil from 5 to 2.2
- Explosive Traps – Reduced damage from 80 to 76 per trap
- Multi-Trap – Fixed the Blast Damage Radius to fit the star cards numbers
Rey
Rey’s signature Ability Insight had an incredible range and could go as far as 75 meters when paired with certain Star Cards. This was a bit too much and we’ve decided to reduce it drastically. We’ll monitor how this change affects Rey’s performance.
- Mind Control – Reduced Mind Control radius from 20 to 18 meters
- Insight – Reduced Insight radius from 50 to 30
- Far Sight – Reduced bonus by 10% (now 10, 20, 30, 40%)
Kylo Ren
Kylo Ren had two of his Abilities on a 25 second timer, effectively making him less efficient and fun to play than other characters. As such, we reduced the cooldown for Pull and Freeze. We also felt he needed some damage absorption while being close to his targets, so we gave him some while Frenzy is active.
- Pull – Reducing Pull recharge time from 25 to 20 seconds
- Freeze – Reducing Freeze recharge time from 25 to 24 seconds
- Frenzy – Kylo Ren now has 40% damage absorption while Frenzy is active
Luke Skywalker
We heard your wishes to have Luke traverse faster so we increased his sprint speed as much as possible without breaking the animation. Related to that update, we decided to push Luke more towards a “Hit & Run” game style. He’ll quickly jump into a skirmish and then bounce out to regain health before heading off for the next battle.
- Increased Luke’s sprint speed by .6 meters/second
- Increased Luke Health from 700 to 750
- Increased Health Regeneration rate from 50 to 110
- Decreased Regeneration delay from 5 to 2.7
- Decreased Max Regeneration amount from 250 to 200
Emperor Palpatine
Emperor Palpatine now requires line of sight on his target to trigger damage with his Dark Aura and default Lightning ability. Both abilities will no longer go through obstacles and walls. While we loved the fantasy fulfillment there, the frustration of not knowing what was damaging you was too high for us not to act on.
- Lightning – Increased reach of the ability from 12 to 14 meters to compensate for the tighter collision check
Chewbacca
Chewbacca had one of the longest stun duration abilities in the game and it made him quite powerful. However, we wanted the stun to be a bit more tactical, so we reduced the duration.
- Stun Grenade – Reduced the shock time from 1.6 to 1 second
- Reduced Bowcaster side projectiles explosive damage from 25 to 21
- Reduced furious Bowcaster side projectiles explosive damage from 12 to 10
Yoda
Yoda’s lightsaber attacks were very weak compared to all other lightsaber wielders, so we have increased his attack damage significantly to bring him on par with the others. Additionally, in an effort to make Yoda feel more true to character, we’ve made a change to his Barrier ability. It now will break immobilizing effects upon activation.
- Lightsaber – Increased damage from 80 to 115
- Barrier – Added the functionality to break out of immobilizing effects on activation
- Unleash – Increased energy holding time from 0.7 to 0.9 seconds
- Unleash – Increased angle from 40 to 45 degrees.
- Unleash – Increased first tier damage from 100 to 110, second tier damage from 125 to 130, third tier damage from 150 to 160, and fourth tier damage from 175 to 190
Lando Calrissian
We felt that Lando needed a boost to increase his effectiveness against lightsaber users. The best tool he had against them had a 25-second cooldown. To combat this, we significantly reduced the cooldown of Disruptor and of Smoke Grenade.
- Disruptor – Reduced recharge time of disruptor from 25 to 19 seconds
- Smoke Grenade – Reduced recharge time from 15 to 14 seconds
Darth Vader
We changed how Choke works in order to simplify comprehension for the player that is Darth Vader and for their target. In an effort to also make Darth Vader more “tanky” we granted him a health bonus when activating Focused Rage.
- Focused Rage – Vader now receives 200 temporary bonus health when activating the Focused Rage ability
- Reduced max health from 900 to 800
Captain Phasma
We took notice of your feedback regarding the utility of Captain Phasma’s staff. We are improving it so that it feels faster and more fluid when used.
- Staff Strikes – Increased the animation speed of the ability
- Staff Strikes – Increased the transition speed between each strike
- Increased how quickly Captain Phasma can use her blaster after performing a Staff Strike
Heroes and Villains Bug Fixes:
- Lightsaber closers are deactivated while blinded
- Fixed an issue where you would be in a “stun” state forever.
- The maximum stun duration is now 5 seconds
- Boba Fett – Fixed an issue that prevented Boba Fett from using his Jetpack ability when “For the Hunt” was activated while his Jetpack fuel was depleted
- Luke Skywalker – Epicenter – The ability will now deal the proper amount of damaged when used
- Yoda – Feel the Force – Edited the description of this ability to make it clear that all friendlies will receive a health bonus when used
- Yoda – Enduring the Force – This ability will now apply the proper amount of bonus time
- Yoda – Master of the Force – This ability will no longer damage players inconsistently and only when released at maximum power
- Finn – Deadeye – The targeting crosshair should be properly removed after the ability has been used
Classes, Special Units, & Infantry Combat:
The Dodge ability has been proven to be too powerful, which was not our initial intent. Dodging granted far too many benefits like damage reduction, the inability to transition into a hit animation, ignoring lightsaber damage, and the inability to be targeted by lightsaber closers.
In order to handle this, we added an “unstaggerable” window during a set period of time when you dodge. You will still receive the same benefits during that window, but now you have a narrow time in which to gain those benefits. Now you’ll need to time your rolls better and predict attacks. While testing these changes, we feel good with the results so far and we really hope that you do too. This is a change that we will monitor closely.
- All Classes – Fixed an issue on Blaster Rifles and the S-5, weapons that can be toggled with a high zoom level through Dual Zoom, where the scope glint would always appear when zooming. It now only appears when the dual zoom scope is equipped and toggled to its highest magnification level.
- All Troopers have now received two default emotes.
- Reduced the time it takes until you can shoot after executing a melee attack
- Assault – Vanguard Shotgun – Lowered start damage per bullet from 14 to 12
- Assault – CR2 – Fixed an issue with inconsistent Super Success triggers compared to other blasters
- Heavy – Supercharged Sentry – Reverted the heat per bullet tweak made for 1.1 patch, from 0.17 to 0.15
- Officer – Blurrg-1120 – Lowered start damage from 37 to 35 and end damage from 20 to 16
Milestones:
Milestones are now claimed automatically upon completion! Furthermore, we changed how Milestones and Challenges are sorted. Now, all completed items are on the bottom of the Career tab and we sort the active items by the amount left until completion.
- “Making an Impression” – Changed criteria from 25 to 10 kills
- “Starting Heavy Training” – Changed criteria from 10,000 to 2,500 score
- “Stay True” – Changed criteria from 40 to 20 kills
- “Starting Assault Training” – Criteria changed from “Get 5000 Assist Score with Scan Dart” to “50 Targets Scanned”
Location Design Balance Changes:
- Kamino – Phase 1 and 3 in Galactic Assault has been made easier for attackers
- Tatooine – In Phase 1 of Galactic Assault we adjusted spawn points, added cover, and tweaked the out of bounds area to make this phase easier for attackers
- Hoth – In Phase 2 of Galactic Assault we adjusted spawn points to prevent players from being targeted by the AT-AT
- Naboo – Phase 2 of Galactic Assault has had balance tweaks
- Endor – Galactic Assault has extended the fallback timer from 30 to 45 seconds before the attackers’ spawn points are moved forward
Location Design Bug Fixes:
- Jakku – Fixed an issue in Galactic Assault where the out of bounds warning message would not trigger correctly under certain conditions
- Jakku – Tweaked the combat area on Jakku in Galactic Assault in order to prevent an exploit where players could circle around the map with the AT-ST
- Jakku – Fixed several collision issues
- Endor – Fixed a bug in Galactic Assault that caused the Endor AT-AT Orbital Strike to break
- Endor – Fixed a bug in Strike where players could spawn outside the combat area
- Crait – Added delay before attacker spawns are moved forward in Galactic Assault
- Crait – Fixed several collision issues
- Takodana – Fixed a bug in Galactic Assault that prevented the First Order AT-ST from being available in Phase 1
- Hoth – Fixed a bug in Galactic Assault that prevented players from passing through doors when retreating during the last Phase
- Kashyyyk – Fixed an issue where players could get stuck between containers
- Kamino – Mobility improvements on platform ledges
- Yavin 4 – Fixed an issue where Boba Fett could reach restricted areas
- Fixed an issue where grenades could fall through the floor on Naboo and Kashyyyk
- Fixed various collision issues across all locations
- Fixed issues where players could get outside the intended play areas of various locations
- Fixed an issue where AI units would move through objects in Arcade
- Fixed an issue where environmental fire damage would not cause high enough damage to players standing in it
General Improvements and Bug Fixes::
- Fixed an issue where players would not receive credits for duplicate star cards – Players who encountered this issue previously will retroactively be awarded with the proper amounts of credits over time.
- Increased Credit payout for duplicate items
– Common – From 200 to 300
– Uncommon – From 400 to 600
– Rare – From 800 to 900
– Epic – From 1200 to 3600- Increased the glow of blaster bolts to make them look more vibrant
- Increased the dismemberment probability of the B1 Battle Droids from 20% to 40%
- Reduced the stretched bloom effect for a clearer image
- Improved the glow, thickness, and lighting of lightsabers
- U-Wing – when firing from the gunner position, the gun, muzzle flash, and blaster bolt are now shown properly
- Fixed an issue where the camera would enter a bad state when being the target of Darth Vader’s Choke
- End of Round – Fixed an issue where the map would sometimes overlap with the intro video in Starfighter Assault
- Fixed an issue where the wrong loading screen would be seen when loading a level
- Fixed an issue where some menu options would disappear under certain conditions
- Fixed an issue where the camera would stutter when spawning in with a Hero in Custom Arcade
- Fixed an issue where the AT-RT Repair ability did not work correctly
- Fixed an issue where players would not get the “Heroic Sacrifice” scoring event when defeated by a Hero
- Fixed an issue where Darth Vader would not take any damage from Luke Skywalker’s Push ability if standing near a wall
- Fixed an issue where the AAT would take too much damage when colliding with surrounding objects
- Fixed an issue where Turrets and Grenades could inflict damage after the round ended
- Fixed an issue where players would not receive Score for grenade kills made after their character had died
- Fixed an issue where a friendly First Order AT-ST showed up as an enemy on radar
- Fixed an issue where players could survive when knocked down from a platform in Heroes vs Villains
- Fixed an issue where players could equip class specific Star Cards to other classes
- Tweaked the color-blind settings to make Squad members easier to distinguish on the minimap
- Fixed an issue where Brawler boost card didn’t refresh some ability cards.
- Fixed an issue where players could force respawn during the Heroes vs Villains intro sequence and respawn in a new location
- Reduced the amount of Battle Points you received when attacking the objective on Crait with a Ski Speeder
- Fixed an issue where the character would disappear on the client after combat rolls
- Fixed an issue in the Campaign where the weapon HUD wouldn’t indicate when aiming at an enemy
- Fixed an issue where AI troopers in Arcade would constantly melee attack each other
- Fixed an issue where Assault troopers in Arcade would attempt to use the Scan Dart ability as a regular weapon
- Various bug fixes in Arcade
- Several performance and stability improvements
- Fixed several localization issues
- Various UI improvements and bug fixes
Star Wars Battlefront II is now available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
