Let’s look the community’s reaction to cross-era heroes in Battlefront II

Late last week, EA revealed that we’ll get a glimpse of cross-era heroes with Rey duking it out against battle droids in EA PLAY’s build of Battlefront II.

This realization was met with some discussion in the Battlefront community, as people flocked to both sides of the conversation. Some seemed eager to live out their Star Wars fantasies of mixing and matching heroes, while others proclaimed that immersion is paramount.

With such a heated debate, there have been numerous community polls. I thought it might be fun to go over the results of some of these polls and try to gauge the general feeling within the community. Note that these polls have small sample sizes and are in no way scientific. As such, they do not definitively show the community’s feelings. However, they might provide some clues as to how the community generally feels.

First up is this poll I ran on Twitter shortly after EA’s blog post went live on Thursday. Here, it seems a majority are okay with Rey taking on battle droids, but a sizable portion still feel that infantry and cross-era heroes should be separate:

This is a hot topic on Twitter, Reddit, etc so I'm curious: Do you like the idea of BF2 cross-era heroes w/infantry (such as Rey vs droids)?

— Star Wars GO (@swgameoutpost) June 1, 2017

Interestingly, a similar poll by Star Wars HQ was flipped, with 57-percent of the 2,357 respondents saying “No” to Rey in the Clone Wars era and 35-percent saying “Yes” (8-percent didn’t care). However, this poll was worded differently as its prompt read: “Do you want to see cross era hero play on 40 player game modes (like Rey in the Clone Wars era)?” While both polls essentially asked the same thing, it’s interesting to see how different wording may have impacted its final results.

General Star Wars Twitter account Star Wars Stuff also posed a similar question and—with two hours to go in the poll at the time of writing—”Yes, sounds fun!” holds a solid first position with 60-percent of the vote:

The Battlefront community have been discussing this all night, how do you feel about BF2 Cross-Era heroes/gameplay? (Rey vs droids etc.)

— Star Wars Stuff (@starwarstuff) June 1, 2017

So at this point, it seems like the community remains pretty split as to if cross-era heroes should be included in Battlefront II—at least in the bigger, more cinematic modes.

One place the discussion moved to in response to this split is the idea of allowing cross-era heroes only in hero-centric modes (i.e. Heroes vs. Villains or a Hero Blast-type mode), but keep the larger modes like the Assault on Theed free from cross-era mixing. With this in mind, I wrote up a new poll on Twitter:

Bit of a spin on yesterday's poll: Based on available info, which method below do you prefer for cross-era heroes in #StarWarsBattlefrontII?

— Star Wars GO (@swgameoutpost) June 2, 2017

A similar poll also went out through the Battlefront subreddit and saw roughly the same results. Out of the poll’s 1,857 respondents, 63-percent said they’d like to see cross-era hero gameplay “Only in hero-specific modes (e.g. Hero Blast, Heroes vs. Villains, etc.)”. 25-percent said they’d prefer to have cross-era heroes in all modes, while 8-percent didn’t care and 4-percent wanted no cross-era heroes at all.

Based on this, it seems that the community is generally in favor of some form of cross-era heroes (in both the last two polls, less than 10-percent of respondents wanted no cross-era heroes at all). As such, the hero-centric modes could definitely benefit from cross-hero gameplay.

However, I think the jury is still out on how the bigger modes should best include heroes. Personally, I would most want to see cross-era heroes only in the hero-centric modes. The Star Wars fan in me would just find it too weird to see Rey versus battle droids or Yoda slicing down First Order stormtroopers. That said, I fully understand the other side of the coin. Limiting which maps heroes appear could restrict gameplay choices and put a damper on replayablity.

Ultimately, it’s simply too early to have a strong opinion either way, as we’ve yet to even see multiplayer gameplay of Battlefront II. Once EA PLAY rolls around this coming Saturday, June 10 we’ll be able to come up with a more informed opinion of how to feel about Rey facing off against battle droids. It’s also possible Rey’s inclusion was meant as a marketing tool (she shares the cover with Maul) or a way to gauge the community’s opinion on cross-era play.

I’m sure the developers at DICE will be taking in the community’s feedback as we get closer to the game’s launch. While it’ll be impossible to appease everyone, hopefully the developers’ll be able to come up with a solution to make the most people happy. I know I don’t envy their future decisions!

Do you think there’s an answer to how DICE should handle cross-era heroes? Share in the comments below, or ping SWGO on Facebook or Twitter.

Battlefront II arrives November 17 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Check back often with SWGO for all the latest Battlefront II news.