DICE to look at possible Vader-Luke imbalance in Battlefront; talks Skirmish

Since the last update to Battlefront, Darth Vader has proved to a formidable opponent, while Luke saw a slowdown to his top sprint speed.

All told, the specific tweaks from Tuesday’s update are:

Darth Vader

• Can now use his Saber Throw and Heavy Strike when Force Choking
• Increased Trait radius from 10 meters to 15
• Trait no longer affect enemies
• Trait values now correctly match the UI description, Level 1 20%, Level 2 50%, Level 3 80%

Luke

• Decreased speed at Trait level 3 from 80% to 70%
• Shield Deflection can now block Krennic’s Armor Breaker ability

This possible imbalance has seen in influx of calls from players for DICE to tweak these specific heroes. These calls have not gone unnoticed.

First, hero designer Guillaume Mroz responded on Twitter:

@Oreo_Monroe hum, I'll check it out

— Guillaume Mroz (@guillaume_mroz) January 18, 2017

Later on, the game’s community Mat Everett replied to a thread on the official forums discussing the Vader-Luke matchup. Everett wrote that he had “pinged the team to take a closer look” at the situation.

This is certainly an interesting situation. I will say that I’ve experienced tricky Vader players since the patch, but he still does require some skill to operate.

One thing to note from DICE’s responses is that it appears that the dev team will continue to support this game with at least one more balancing patch.

Additionally, Everett also recently discussed the possibility of more Skirmish arriving to Battlefront.

“Skirmish was a free update and something the team feels passionately about,” he wrote on the forums. “Between the forums, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit our team has answered what questions we could. We simply have no update for you at this time.”

Personally, I wouldn’t bet on more Skirmish to come to this Battlefront. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Battlefront arrived with a beefier single-player portion right off the bat.

Finally, another recent comment to note is this comment from Everett regarding a random teleportation glitch:

“The best thing the community can do for this reported issue is share video of it happening. Our team has been trying really really hard to reproduce this issue without being able to do it.”

I’ve yet to experience this glitch, but I’ve seen numerous reports of it happening. What appears to happen is a player will spawn as a hero. Then, at a random point, they will teleport and spawn as a normal infantry. You can see it in action in this video.

(Top image by Cinematic Captures. Check out their Flickr page for more awesome Battlefront screenshots. Second image taken in-game.)