Community Transmission - Hero Starfighters Update

[Straatford87]

Incoming Transmission

Coming out of EA Play, we were totally blown away by the sheer volume and positive comments in response to the announcement of more Clone Wars era content.

Thank you for making EA Play one of the teams’ most memorable to date.

Before we jump into new things, we wanted to take the time to address a topic that came up after the new hero announcements at EA Play.

As you know, heroes will cost credits. With our Progression Update in March, we unlocked all available heroes and Hero ships for all players at that time. However, new heroes and hero ships added since then will be unlocked with Credits.

We’re currently establishing the cost of new heroes, but we can confirm that they will not cost more than a legendary appearance. The legendary appearance cost is the upper most ceiling in terms of pricing, and we expect new heroes to come in under this.

We can’t wait for you to be able to play with the new heroes. We will share more details as updates are made.

Now, onto all the great new content released today as part of our July update!

The July update, releasing on July 3 and titled “Hero Starfighters Update,” is focused around Hero Starfighters – a mode similar to Heroes vs Villains but based entirely in space.

Here are all the details.

Hero Starfighters
Prove that you’re the best pilot in the galaxy and put your skills to the test in Hero Starfighters.

We’ve seen a lot of discussion from the community about the potential inclusion of a Starfighter game mode focusing on hero starfighters such as Darth Vader’s TIE Advanced or Yoda’s Jedi Interceptor, and we’re excited to be bringing it to you.

At the start of the round, each player will spawn as a hero ship. Once defeated, you’ll then be able to respawn as any of the regular starfighters.

The first team to defeat all enemy hero ships wins the round. It’s a best of five, so the first team to win three rounds takes the overall victory.

The mode acts as a great way to level up your Hero Starfighters, which we know has been a hot topic amongst the community. To give you a head start, we’ll also be running a couple of double experience weekends. The first of these starts July 6.

Lightsaber Combat
We’ve made some changes to the way Lightsaber combat works. This should help prevent the lightsaber ‘block-off’, where players are able to block indefinitely with no penalty.

The change also gives us more levers to pull, making lightsaber heroes feel different from each other and give them a bit more personality.

For example, Darth Vader is a master of blocking but has a hard time getting stamina back, whereas Kylo Ren is a lightsaber swinging machine but he will need to cooldown before regenerating his stamina.

The changes:

• Added a Stamina cost to triggering block
• Added a constant stamina cost to holding block
• Added a delay before stamina regens after a lightsaber attack or block

Lightsaber Ignition
Not many things are more iconic than the sound of a lightsaber igniting, and once the July update arrives, you’ll be able to do just that. Take control of your favorite lightsaber-wielding heroes and turn the weapon on and off at will.

Appearance Swapping pre-round
Since the progression update arrived, one of the most requested bits of feedback that we’ve seen has been for the option to swap appearances pre-round. Coming in July, you’ll be able to do just that.

Heading to Endor but want to change out of your Hoth appearance for Leia? Consider it done.

Hero Showdown
We’ve made some Quality of Life changes to Hero Showdown, starting with the implementation of a team health widget as part of the User Interface. This will allow you to see the health for all heroes within the game, as well as the current score and time remaining.

The spawn screen has been updated and will now display heroes slightly differently. When selecting the hero to play as, all available heroes will have fully coloured portraits. We’ve also added text to prompt the winning team that they must choose new heroes.

New milestones related to Hero Showdown have also been added.

Limited Time Modes
A small change has been implemented onto the UI within the Operations menu. All limited-time events will now have their remaining duration displayed upon their tile within the game menu.

Also, due to the popularity of Extraction, we have decided to make this mode permanent for the foreseeable future.

And finally, Yavin will be a new map added to the rotation for Jetpack Cargo.

Blast
Included in the next update is a small change to Blast that sees the player count reduced from 20 to 16. This has been done for a variety of reasons, most prominently is that we are preparing for the addition of the new squad system. Because the squad system works with teams of 4, it’s important that the total player count accommodate this.

Wrapping Up
The Hero Starfighters update comes out tomorrow (July 3rd) and you can find the full patch notes here.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think, especially around the Hero Starfighters game mode and the changes to lightsaber combat. Drop your feedback in all the usual places and we’ll see you on the Battlefront.

Punch it