DICE and Electronic Arts may have taken a step in a very dark direction with Star Wars: Battlefront. No, I'm not talking about the content of the game or the story (or lack thereof), I'm talking about the game's lack of a server browser.
Gamers were asking about whether or not Star Wars: Battlefront would allow for server browsers, server rentals and establishing dedicated servers for dedicated community play. Well, the community manager for Electronic Arts dropped a comment in the official sub-Reddit for Star Wars: Battlefront stating...
Star Wars Battlefront will not offer a server browser, but will utilize a new skill based matchmaking system.
The community did not like this decision at all.
While it's easy to dismiss gamers being angry as another case of “oh those gamers are always angry” but the Reddit thread has a lot of intelligent responses that bring out some issues not everyone may have thought about.
One Australian gamer mentions that he and his friends often play together using a dedicated server, and that they prefer it that way because matchmaking in the South Pacific is not that great. Another user also commented that they have their own community that plays Battlefield and that they planned on moving that community to Star Wars: Battlefront, using their own servers. However, that wouldn't be possible if the game uses an automated matchmaking system instead of allowing users to manually choose the servers to play on.
Ultimately, the question becomes: why would EA and DICE remove the option to select a server that you feel comfortable playing on?
I rarely ever like playing in automated matchmaking games because the scale is based on numerical stats, which aren't always representative of a player's skill (especially those who may be skilled at particular tasks that don't always include having the highest K/D ratio).
The complaints were far and wide and spanned not only the likes of the Star Wars: Battlefront sub but also across Twitter as well. The official EA Star Wars Twitter account responded to the complaints, saying...
Hopefully EA can rectify this problem because there's really no benefit in it for the people who pay $60 to have fewer options in how they can join and participate in the game's multiplayer servers.
For instance, why can't the new matchmaking system be available alongside the old server browser? Why not both?
Some conspiracy theories were being shopped around that the removal of the server browsers was so that if EA wanted to shut down Star Wars: Battlefront they could do so and force everyone to move over to a new game. The only problem with that theory is that EA loses out on a ton of recurring revenue from those who rent servers from them. As mentioned in the Battlefront thread, there are dedicated communities still pumping money into Battlefield 4 servers to play the game.
We'll see if EA addresses this issue before the game launches this November for PC, Xbox One and PS4.
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