'Star Wars' devs had a whole bunch of non-answers for gamers in today's Reddit AMA

Amidst a deluge of complaints against EA for installing a loot box system that is clearly designed to drain players' wallets into the publisher's forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront II, the devs at DICE went on Reddit today to partake in an AMA. Unfortunately, as the PR-laden responses poured in, it did not go well.

The thread was opened in advance of the AMA, and players began dumping in their biggest concerns. The top-voted comments were based on the sheer economics of EA's ploy, as outlined by user thesomeot:

In this user's edits, they traced out the inability of the developers to answer this question as a sign that they didn't have a good one.

Whether this is true or not is unclear, but their general refusal to answer the most pressing concerns in a transparent way points to a larger trend in the AMA, hilariously predicted by user Newell00:

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This was more or less the tone of the whole AMA.

Here we see a developer responding to a father's concerns about needing the time and money to play the game effectively, with a simple: "matchmaking" and "[o]ur data will tell that story and we'll make adjustments."

A similar concern by AsexualAmeba was met with the same: "[w]e will be looking at data continually and make adjustments to make things as balanced as possible."

They do the same here in regard to the star card class level requirements (you'll need roughly 40 hours of gameplay before you can unlock either one hero or villain), as well as here.

The tone of these responses is part of EA's larger PR battle with the public as concerns over microtransactions in gaming continue to grow. During the UBS Global Technology Conference, EA's chief financial officer Blake Jorgensen said that people "need to be patient" with Battlefront II's microtransactions, as they try to listen to the community to "develop great gameplay." Jorgensen notes that players are no longer playing a game as much as they're "playing [a] live service" and that this business model has "incredible value" for the consumer.

Leaning on this idea of a "live service" is consistent throughout the AMA, as well. And while the developers involved in the AMA likely had no room to give more information, people are understandably upset that this defense is being used as a way to avoid providing meaningful answers to what are by far the largest concerns to gamers. Jorgensen's idea of demanding "patience" feels hollow in light of how obvious it is to consumers and the public at large that microtransactions are so frequently used to exploit players.

To make matters worse, Battlefront II's producer Paul Keslin told YouTuber Angry Joe that the team doesn't know the math behind how long it'd actually take to unlock everything for free (although Reddit user thesomeot referenced a couple links in his above post that attempt to work out the math to about 4528 hours or $2100 to unlock everything).

On the Battlefront AMA Overview, user Zacharuni took one of the developers' answers (Dennis Brannvall, the design director, who received the most applause for the relative candidness in his answers), and used it to point to how Overwatch has a pretty clear model for how to make loot boxes into something that doesn't exploit players, but rather empowers them to make fun cosmetic choices:

Going into the Reddit AMA, there was no way the thread wasn't going to be squarely focused on the topic of loot boxes and microtransactions that has taken not just the gaming community by storm, but popped up in conversations outside of it, too. The developers that were selected to answer these questions weren't necessarily even qualified to answer questions based on business practices that are influenced and likely controlled by their publisher, EA.

Whether or not the choice to send producers, programmers, and/or designers relatively unequipped (aside from their go-to "we're working on it" responses) into the fray of angry gamers was intentional isn't certain, but it sure feels like a great way to evade answering in a transparent way.

It's clear that EA and DICE were not prepared to answer the most pressing questions from their diehard fans, and this will likely fail in mitigating the larger problem. At least so far it has.