Star Wars News (Volume 1): Major Battlefront 2 News! Classes, Flying, the "Battlepoint System" and Reinforcements

(image via: EA)
Welcome to Star Wars News volume one. This post will be about the different classes, the different reinforcements and how Flying and the Battlepoint system work. Major gameplay was revealed at EA Play and I encourage you to go check that out if you haven't already. Also I will be doing a post about heroes, vehicles and a more detailed look at the reinforcements.

Gameplay Video One
Gameplay Video Two

Class system

(image via: PVP)

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The class system is one of my favorite things about Star Wars Battlefront 2 and I think it really improves on the first game. It is really cool to get to play as one of the four classes and really choose your different play styles. Each class has two different abilities. The third is for one of your star cards. This is the one slot that can be common to all classes. At EA play the Barrage was the most used star card. The other three were the scout pistol, detonite charge, and disruption.

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Assault-The assault class has 150 health which is right in the middle compared to the others. The thermal detonator makes it's return as one of the assault classes special abilities. The second ability, called Vanguard, gives the player a scattergun-type weapon that deals significant amount of damage and slightly replenishes when you get a kill with it. It also increases your movement speed making useful for escapes. The clones can either have the DC-15a or the CR-2 and the CIS can have the E-5 or the CR-2.

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Specialist-The specialist class packs quite the large punch for only having 100 health. It is the sniping class and it requires a very accurate user. It can do high damage but fires slow. It is the best class for wide open maps as you can easily see enemies to easily snipe. Its first ability is the laser trip mine that is a mine that is useful for blocking enemies or potentially killing them if they don't notice them. Its other ability is a blaster that has a very high rate of fire. This is the specialists only real defense in close quarters and you will want to use this when enemies are very close. The clone specialist got a valken-38 and the droid got a E-5s. Either can choose to use the A280-CFE.

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Heavy-The heavy class has 200 health which is the most out of the classes, but it also can't move as fast as the others. It's primary ability is its shield which defends you while still letting you fire your weapon. It also will not go away until you choose to take it off or it breaks. It does slow you even further though. The other ability is called sentry and briefly gives you a high powered gatling gun but slows you even more. It deals an immense amount of damage. The Clones get the DC-15 and the Droids get the E-5c. Both have the option to use the FWMB-10K.

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Officer-The officer class is the ideal class for team play. With 150 health the officer goes into battle with the battle command and sentry turret abilities. The battle command buffs the players health and the sentry is just the infantry turret from the first game. The clone officer gets a DC-17 while the droids get the RG-4D. Each of the two get the Blurg-1120.

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Battlepoint system

Any person who has played the first Battlefront game knows that dreaded feeling when you are right about get an awesome pick-up and someone else gets it before you. The battlepoint system will replace the despised pick-ups from the first game. The pick-up system was not a horrible idea, it was really satisfying when you got one, it just had a lot of flaws.

For example, great players might not get any hero pick-ups in multiple games while one not as skilled player might get two or three in a row, (I should know, I've got them multiple times before). Also as I said before it is really frustrating when one gets stolen from you. So on second thought, maybe it isn't the best. But the battlepoint system will fix all that.

In the system you get points toward earning vehicles, heroes and special characters by doing almost any good things. Killing enemies, damaging them, healing teammates and even staying by your squadmates will all give you points. If you are playing as a heavy you will get points even when YOU are damaged. Basically you get score just like in the last game except you can use it as battlepoints.

Reinforcements

During the EA play pre-alpha build the reinforcements you could get with your battle points were on the clones side, an N-1 starfighter, V-wing, AT-RT, a clone Jumptrooper, or the two heroes Rey and Han Solo. These two heroes were for EA play and they will be joined by many more for launch. The N-1 Starfighter and v-wing both cost 500 battlepoints, the AT-RT was 1000, The clone jumptrooper was 2,000 and heroes were 5,000. For the droid side (C.I.S) there was the 500 point vulture droid, 1000 point troop transport, 2000 point AA-T tank, 2000 point super battle droid and the two heroes Darth Maul and Boba Fett. These reinforcements are just for the Theed map and they will vary from different maps and eras.

Flying

Fighter squadron in the first game was really fun, but it wasn't maximized to its fullest potential. Star Wars Battlefront 2 will maximize this. The lock on system was scrapped and it will be replaced by a manual one. You can pivot the laser cannons and move them around without changing the direction you are flying. This makes it a bit harder to hit other fighters, but when you are in modes where you are fighting ground troops from the air like walker assault from the first game it will be so much easier to do strafing runs. Another advantage of this is that it is easier to escape enemy fighters.