Details on new blasters, trait system & Rogue One playlist count for Battlefront

While we got a ton of info regarding Battlefront’s Rogue One: Scarif expansion yesterday, some minor news arrived today.

Most of this way comes by way of the game’s weapons designer, Christian Johannesen. If you’re out of the loop and need to get caught up on how some of the new weapons will work, I recommend checking out this post.

To start, Johannesen teased how the new revolver-like DT-29 pistol will work with the Cooling Cell Charge Card:

@HJBattlefront The Cooling Cell gives it infinite energy. We decided it made more sense than a Star Card not working on your own weapon.

— Christian Johannesén (@phatseejay) December 3, 2016

As of right now, the Cooling Cell allows weapons to fire longer and quicker without overheating. The DT-29 doesn’t have an overheat method (instead, it just has an energy pack with six bolts; once those bolts are used up, the weapon needs to be reloaded), so I’m glad to see that they figured out a way to make this pairing work.

Keeping with the DT-29, Johannesen also confirmed that the pistol is a counter to the Disruption Charge Card:

@russelllambRRT @ChristoR20 @TheVestalViking Since the DT-29 has an energy pack rather than a heat system, it remains unaffected yes.

— Christian Johannesén (@phatseejay) December 2, 2016

As Disruption’s primary function is to overheat weapons, this rule makes sense. It’s also cool to see a weapon be introduced that immune to that, erm, pesky Charge Card.

Johannesen also confirmed that the cooldowns on the A180 blaster will be affected when paired with the Bounty Hunter trait:

@OM_226 Yes. Gameplay wise they work like regular Star Cards, so the bonuses applies.

— Christian Johannesén (@phatseejay) December 3, 2016

As the A180 will require users to drop a Star Card hand (its three alternative methods each take up a card slot), so it’s nice to know that this trait can still be beneficial.

Speaking of traits, Johannesen went into further detail as to how the system has been revamped.

“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,” he wrote. “You can now also see the progress to the next trait level through a small progress bar that fills around the trait icon.”

Johannesen then added a few more specifics.

“If you get a scoring event – Headshot, Bacta Heal and so on- you gain one tick on the trait. You need six per [level],” he wrote. “It will only go up one tick per successful bacta bomb heal, regardless if it’s 1 or 20 people healed, to avoid exploiting.”

However, stacking together different scoring events is possible.

“That is on top of regular kills. So if you kill someone with a headshot, that counts as two ticks for the trait,” Johannesen wrote.

The trait level will also reset after you die:

“Yes the progress resets to [zero] when you die,” Johannesen wrote. “We experimented a bit with keeping trait level if you had progress, but was a bit risky.”

This is a fantastic change for the game, in my opinion. Previously, obtaining trait levels was only possible through kills (three kills per level). Hopefully, this tweak will lead to an increase in objective play.

Next, producer Paul Keslin also confirmed that the Rogue One playlist and the DLC’s new mode will be 16-versus-16:

@DigitalDoberman @phatseejay 32 players for Scarif

— Paul Keslin (@TheVestalViking) December 2, 2016

A couple of other things I previously wrote about, but just wanted to mention again:

• “Your Bacta bomb will provide a hero with a chunk of 10% bonus health, so you will soon be able to support them too!” However, the hero’s bonus health fills up over time, so if they take damage, the refilling stops. Bacta Bombs also won’t cause heroes to go over 100 health. Bacta Bombs/Medical Droid also affect hero guards now.
• Regarding the TL-50: It will do “less damage against heroes & vehicles. The cooling flush skill game is harder & the max dmg radius is shrunk slightly.”

Other fixes/tweaks Johannesen also confirmed:

• The K16 Bryar Pistol has had its rate of fire and cooling power boosted a bit.
• The flash effect on the Flash Grenade will still be stronger than the flash effect on the Sonic Imploder.
• The Sonic Imploder will blind Bossk when he has his Predatory Instincts active.
• Turrets and droids won’t be “as resilient to lightsabers and Force powers with the patch.”
• Traits getting stuck at level three should be fixed.

Finally, some details on hero guards from hero designer Guillaume Mroz: Hero honor guards will get a cooldown reduction when close to their respective hero. This seems that it’ll work like how being in close proximity to your partner as normal infantry affects your Star Card cooldowns.

That’s all I have for now! I’m planning to write some more detailed posts on new content (i.e. Infiltration, weapons, heroes) tomorrow.