Battlefront’s Dennis Brannvall talks more Death Star modes, trait tweaks

Battlefront’s Death Star expansion pack playlist only features three modes: Battle Station, Blast and Fighter Squadron.

As this has been a critical point for some, the game’s lead designer Dennis Brannvall took to Twitter to discuss the topic.

“Each expansion we hear players just want the new mode, so we tried not cluttering it with ‘filler’ and focused on popular modes,” he wrote, before adding: “We’re happy to add more modes. For Bespin all we heard was that people just wanted the new mode, so we focused on that now.”

Brannvall also noted his reasoning for why Blast and Fighter Squadron made the cut.

“Blast is more popular than Cargo and Droid Run together,” he wrote on Twitter. “Fighter Squadron is more popular than Blast.”

However, Brannvall is “certainly open” to including Droid Run in the future. He also responded to Hello Greedo’s somewhat negative view of the expansion:

@TonyOakley_00 Thanks for sharing. We'll get him some Droid Run. 😉

— Dennis Brännvall (@DICE_FireWall) September 21, 2016

Personally, as much as I enjoy Battle Station, I do think adding Droid Run and Cargo into the DLC would help spice up the playlist. Bespin’s playlist might be a tad long at seven total modes, but I really enjoy the five-mode playlist the Outer Rim offers.

Including Droid Run and Cargo would give us more time on the interior maps of the Death Star—which are all gorgeous and fun to play—while also giving us a breather from some of the flying-centric set pieces in the playlist.

Branvall also commented on the recent changes to the trait system, discussing the Scout trait specifically:

@Bagheera2016 @SWBFUpdates @Gameverb Scout got a big boost on trait level 3, but was way better than anything else at level 1.

— Dennis Brännvall (@DICE_FireWall) September 21, 2016

Scout saw its level bonuses changes as levels one and two swapped. Now, level one hides you from enemy scanners when you fire your blaster while level two hides you when sprinting. Level three now scrambles enemy scanners (previously, your blaster’s heat bar reset with each kill).

I was actually thinking about this change last night. While I did enjoy hiding while sprinting at level one, I do understand the changes. Hiding while sprinting is more advantageous than hiding while firing and so it makes sense for you to be more greatly rewarded upon reaching higher levels.

Finally, Branvall talked about the speederbike-teamkilling issue on Endor. This issue has plagued the game for sometime and nothing yet has been done about it. However, Brannvall promises that they “are on it!” Hopefully this means we’ll see the fix soon!