Battlefront’s Rogue One: Scarif: What we’ve learned today so far

Battlefront producer Paul Keslin has recently shed some light on the Rogue One: Scarif expansion via a couple of reveal livestreams.

First was a stream with Darkness_429. You can watch the archived stream here.

Meanwhile, as I write this, a second stream is currently happening over at Star Wars HQ. What I’ve written below comes mainly from the first stream, but there are a few clarifications from the second stream.

This list below is not all-encompassing, as I’m sure more details will arrive in the coming hours and days. The new hero abilities aren’t 100-percent clear to me yet, so I’ll probably do a second post later on to clarify all that.

As a reminder, Rogue One: Scarif arrives on Tuesday, December 6 for Season Pass holders.

How Infiltration works

• Rogue One: Scarif’s exclusive mode will be three stages: one in space and two on ground.
• First Stage is called “The Approach”.
  • The Rebels must fly U-Wings through the battle and towards Scarif’s Shield Gate.
  • First, a single Rebel is chosen at random to fly a U-Wing. If they fail, two Rebels are randomly picked. If they both fail, three Rebels are randomly chosen. After that, the number of Rebels chosen stays at three.
  • Rebels have 10 minutes to get the U-Wing to the Shield Gate.
  • Corellian corvettes provide moving cover for U-Wings as they navigate between a pair of Star Destroyers.
  • The only flyable ships in this stage are X-Wings, U-Wings and TIE Fighters.
• Second Stage is called “‘The Distraction” and is set on one of three ground maps.
  • Rebels must blow up one of two Imperial cargo transports.
  • Imperials have access to only Director Krennic for their hero for this stage. Rebels have no hero.
• Third Stage is called “The Extraction” and is set on one of three ground maps.
  • Rebels must carry one set of data tapes across the map and reach the extraction point. These tapes are not the Death Star plans.
  • If you activate your jump pack while carrying a set of data tapes, you drop the tapes.
  • Rebels have access to only Jyn Erso for their hero for this stage. Imperials have no hero.

Jyn Erso and Director Krennic’s abilities

• Jyn uses the A180 blaster.
  • One ability switches the mode on the blaster between the pistol and the rifle.
  • Another ability is the Sonic Imploder, which works like the normal version, but it’s more powerful and gives out an armor debuff (see below for the new armor feature).
  • Her third ability is “Truncheon Surge”, which allows her to strike down enemies with her baton. Her trait effects this ability.
• Krennic uses the DT-29 heavy blaster pistol.
  • One ability passively boosts nearby teammates health.
  • The “Armor Breaker” can break through enemy’s armor (see below for the new armor feature).
  • He has a droid that uses scan ping and a mini shield.
  • Two Death Troopers act as his personal guards (like Leia or Palpatine). They use the DLT-19 blaster and come equipped with the cooling cell, rocket launcher and thermal imploder. They are also 6-and-a-half-feet tall and tower over the other character models currently in-game.
• Neither character is voiced by their movie actor (Felicity Jones and Ben Mendelsohn, respectively).

Details on the new weapons, items, and vehicles

• The A180 has three modes outside its standard pistol mode: blaster, sniper, and ion.
  • The modes take up Star Card spots, so you won’t be able to have a hand if the A180 is equipped.
  • Modes have cooldowns.
  • Hutt Contract requirements: Get 25 kills with blaster pistols, get 30 kills with blaster rifles and get 20 kills with targeting rifles.
• The DT-29 is essentially a revolver.
  • No cooldown for the weapon—instead it has six shots.
  • Once all six shots are used up the weapon must be reloaded.
  • Hutt Contract requirements: Get 25 kills as Krennic, use 10 personal shields and get 50 kills with blaster pistols.
• Sonic Imploder is the lone Star Card. It both blinds and damages enemies.
• AT-ACTs are in the background and not on the map proper. This is because they are 40-percent larger than normal Walkers and would be too large for the map.
• U-Wings have boost, shield, and radar jammers.
  • When flying as a U-Wing gunner, you only have access to the shield and radar jammer abilities.
  • When playing as the gunner, the U-Wing is on rails, similar to AT-ATs in Walker Assault. The player has a set amount of time in the U-Wing.
  • U-Wing gunners can be sniped.
• TIE Strikers are only available as pick-ups.
  • After activation, it’ll make multiple passes on nearby Rebels.

The mode list for Rogue One: Scarif

Modes in the playlist are:

• Infiltration
• Walker Assault (shortened to two uplink phases)
• Blast
• Turning Point
• Fighter Squadron

Details on rank cap & skins

• The new rank cap is 100.
• At level 100, you’ll be able to unlock the Shoretrooper Captain.
• No new Rebel unlocks.
• The regular shoretrooper is the default Imperial skin for Scarif maps.

Bo-Rifle confirmed!

• The Bo-Rifle has been confirmed, but it won’t be coming with the update next week.
• Melee with the weapon is a one-hit kill.
• Will likely be a viral unlock released by devs.

Vanilla hero traits

All vanilla heroes will get traits. They are:

• Luke Skywalker: Name unknown, his trait boosts his sprint speed.
• Han Solo: Name unknown, his trait buffs his DL-44 blaster pistol.
• Princess Leia: Called “Champion of Alderaan”, her trait improves armor for Rebels with kills or hero damage. Leia receives a 20-percent bonus.
• Darth Vader: Name unknown, his trait buffs his armor based on the number of nearby Rebels.
• Emperor Palpatine: Name unknown, his trait recharges his lightening faster.
• Boba Fett: Called “Bounty Seeker”, his trait refills jetpack fuel and a new passive scan ping ability with kills or hero damage.

Hero armor

All heroes can have their armor buffed or de-buffed. Buffed armor increases damage resistance, while de-buffed armor decreases damage resistance.

New modes for the Death Star

The Death Star playlist will get two new modes:

• Droid Run
• Cargo

Heroes vs Villains is getting tweaked

Heroes vs Villains will now be best-of-five, instead of best-of-nine. Also, sides will flip after each map (like Walker Assault or Supremacy). Keslin said:

We wanted to give people the opportunity to play the other side on a map. So we dropped down the number of wins necessary to win a Heroes vs Villains round to three from five. But then we’ll just flip sides, so that way people aren’t stuck on the same side time after time.

Other tweaks

• “Disruption has a 1.5 second charge time before discharging now. Person also can’t shoot during that time.” (per weapons designer Christian Johannesen). The player who actives Disruptions can only not shoot during the 1.5 charge time, they themselves are not disrupted.
• “The TL-50 does less damage against heroes & vehicles. The cooling flush skill game is harder & the max dmg radius is shrunk slightly.” (per Johannesen).
• Edit: “The traits demands a bit more more to level up now, but in turn you now also progress with scoring events, like headshots and bacta heals.” (per Johannesen). “You can now also see the progress to the next trait level through a small progress bar that fills around the trait icon.” (per Johannesen).
• Edit: From the second stream, Bacta Bombs now minimally boost health of heroes.
• Walker Assault multi-hero glitch has been fixed.
• AI hero ship pick-ups still are AI-only; however, they have been nerfed and won’t one-hit ships.

What about Hero Blast?

No Hero Blast in next week’s update. Keslin said:

Sometimes when we’re creating content, we put stuff in the game, in the code, that is unfinished. I think people happen to find references to something that we were working, but haven’t fully developed. Sometimes things that we throw in there won’t always come out, so we don’t know [about Hero Blast]. There’s no official statement on Hero Blast, other than it’s a thing that we’ve been playing around with. If and when it comes out, we’ll let you know ahead of time.

What about Skirmish?

Nothing will be coming with next week’s update. Keslin said:

Unfortunately, no new news on Skirmish. We’re leaving it as it is. But based on your question earlier about “what are we doing further down the line?”,  who knows what’s going to happen there. We’re committed to making sure that people have a good experience all the way up to that next game that we mentioned. We listen to feedback. What can we do to improve for the next game? So even if we can’t get to everything for this one, we’re definitely thinking about these things, taking them into consideration, working with them and trying to figure out what’s the best experience for players in the future.

In the second stream, Keslin added:

Right now, it’s kind of the same as Battlefront 2, we don’t have anything that we can talk about in that area. One thing I can say is that we understand what people want and we know there is a big outcry for things like [Skirmish]. We might not always be able to address it in this game, but it’s things we think about for the future. So, again, I can’t speak to what exactly the future holds for from now until Battlefront 2. But these are things that we are very aware of that people want. We’re trying to figure out what is the best way to bring that to players. So it might not necessarily be this game, maybe it’s in a future thing; again, [I] don’t know, but we’re definitely listening and we’re aware that people want that.

What about new hero skins?

No skins are coming with next week’s update, including the previously mentioned Death Star skins. Keslin said:

Unfortunately, no [new hero skins]. I know it’s something people have asked for for a long time. At one point, we had hoped to bring some Death Star skins to everybody. We didn’t get them to the quality level that we wanted. A lot of the challenge is just timing. With Rogue One, we had to really just dive into that and we had to put all our resources into making sure that we gave you a full Rogue One experience with this expansion pack. Unfortunately, that means sometimes we have to make tough decisions; we have to leave some things behind.