http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-battlefront-beta-armed-and-operational

"Star Wars Battlefront Beta: Armed and Operational – UPDATED!
Get ready for the ultimate test drive.

UPDATED 9/24:

Here’s some vital information to store in the memory banks of your Artoo unit: EA has announced that the Star Wars Battlefront Beta will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and on PC via Origin between October 8 and October 12. The Beta will offer three playable modes, allowing players to fight for both the Empire and the Rebellion:

Walker Assault on Hoth: Fight in epic 40-player battles as a Rebel to destroy the Empire’s onslaught of AT-ATs by calling in Y-wing bombers. Or, side with the Empire and protect your walkers while utilizing their mighty weaponry to crush the Rebel objective.

Drop Zone on Sullust: Escape pods are crashing down and you and your team must fight to control them. With its frantic 8v8 matches, Drop Zone is sure to put your combat and strategy skills to the test.

Survival Mission on Tatooine: Play alone offline or with a friend via co-op or split-screen as you battle to hold off waves of Imperial forces including AT-STs, TIE fighters, elite stormtroopers and more.

So prepare for battle on October 8, whether you’re looking to crush the Rebellion, restore freedom to the galaxy, or both.

ORIGINAL POST:

Star Wars Battlefront is almost here — but you don’t have to wait until its November 17 release to play it.

EA has announced that Star Wars Battlefront beta will be coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and on Origin for PC in early October. It will feature the Walker Assault on Hoth, a massive 40-player battle that will also give gamers a chance to play as either Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, and the Survival Mission on Tatooine, where two Rebels must find a way to combat waves of Imperial forces. In addition to the two battle simulations will be a new mode appropriately named “Drop Zone.” More details on that in the weeks ahead.

Also set to debut during Star Wars Battlefront beta is the Star Wars Battlefront Companion Experience. Available at www.StarWarsBattlefront.com, the Star Wars Battlefront Companion experience will feature the strategic card game Base Command, and allow both Rebel and Imperial players to multitask and receive various notifications while playing Star Wars Battlefront. The Star Wars Battlefront Companion will be available in the Apple App Store and Google Play prior to the release of Star Wars Battlefront on November 17."

Pretty damn bummed that only the one-off BF3 style coop missions have AI but it is what it is.

They are streaming the beta on the PS4 stream now:
http://www.twitch.tv/playstation

Looks pretty fun so far, looking forward to trying out the beta on Thu.

Just to let yall know you can preload the beta through origin. It will unlock tomorrow.

SW Battlefront beta:

http://starwars.ea.com/en_AU/starwars/battlefront/beta

Preloading starts in a little while, game is open not too long after that.

played it, very simplistic reminds me why i didnt play the others.

I played a couple of rounds and enjoyed it. VERY much like the original games, it's what it's supposed to be. Movement is better, controller works pretty well. Improvements to gunfire: faster rounds (older games the rounds were super slow) and it takes fewer rounds to get a kill. I'd still like to see a hardcore mode though.
And it's got first person.
Haven't gotten to try any vehicles yet or the missions, just Hoth.

What about squading up? Is it possible?

S

I saw a party set up in the upper left, much like in Rainbow Six at the menu where you select MP or missions.
Don't know how many though.

Looks like 4 total. Got to level 3. Arcady, twitchy...but a lot of fun. The sound modeling is perfect.

The sound is amazing. First time hopping in an AT-ST and I got goosebumps firing the guns. Yep I'm a Starwars nerd.

Still need to play more to get used to it, but last night I felt really old and slow.

Very fast. Almost too fast, to the point of frustration. It's never been tactical, but I haven't played a twitcher in quite a while, and having to re-adapt is painful. There's a good game in there, I'll just need to accept it for what it is.

Yeah, the twitchyness got to me pretty bad last night. It also seems that every weapon is a little too accurate first shot not matter the distance. With the absolute randomness about everything, I couldn't figure out how the heck it was possible for people to go something like 38 - 6.

S

Yeah I think the maps are too small and don't have enough cover and the rifles are too accurate at range, so you get killed without even knowing where the enemy is.

BattleField 4 conquest large maps which I usually play are bigger and have more cover, so you can at least get a bearing on where the enemy is and can use cover while you get to the objectives, the buildings and structures can also be destroyed, here the maps were tiny and there was no cover and no destructible environments so it's missing alot of what makes BF4 fun for me...

It looks and sounds amazing, but it was hard to enjoy.

I may cancel my pre-order, so far the maps are very disappointing.

I'm reserving judgment because I'll be really disappointed if I can't play this thing, but I may end up canceling too. I'm not going to pay $60 to just get frustrated with a game.
IMO, the guns just have too much range. Not that I want a close up shooter, but somewhere in the middle.

My biggest problem was I had no idea where the enemy was coming from. That may improve as I become more familiar with the maps but I just don't know the spawn points. I got so frustrated last night I went and logged onto BF4 with my level 3 (YES LEVEL 3) character to calm down.



I know we keep going back to BF but at least in there (large conquest) there are a set number of places you can spawn. Sure there is the spawn beacon and squad spawn but in general most people are coming from one of the set locations.

There may be fixed locations in Battlefront, I just have no idea where they are. I'll be playing some more this weekend.

S

Where was the map? All I saw was that scope of the area.

Not the map but maps in a general since (level layout).

As depressing as it is I'm already fatigued by the game just watching gameplay of it. Certainly could have done so much more with the series but they didn't.

It's amazing how popular the "take something and make it prettier and more shallow" is compared to the "take something and release the exact same thing for the current generation of tech". All they had to do was take Battlefront 2 and slap it into the Frostbite engine.

Yea the content is really shallow IMHO. And the best mode from BF2 wont even make the game (space battles) which might be a good thing because the vehicle combat is extremely shallow and reduced from even what it was in BF2.

For me it's hard going from the relaxing pace of warships and even armored warfare, and going to the crazy pace of a respawn game. I can sleep after playing those other games, but games like this make me frustrated.
Not happy, I was really looking forward to this.

Really not liking the pick-up system for grenade weapons and emplacements.

I think that's my problem a well, the enemy can spawn in behind you and you won't even know it til it's too late, which was a bad design decision. But, it's only one map and one game mode (I can't even play walker assault due to the now well known 100% CPU bug!), so I'm gonna reserve my judgement, as well as my ca$h.

I rarely agree with Mack, but in this case, he nails exactly what's wrong with the game. I just couldn't put it into words.
Beautiful, sounds great...total chaos.

Gets into it at 4:40.

Yep I watched that too. I also saw an AngryJoe first impressions that was along the same lines.

S

I'm really disappointed. Cancelled my order. I was really looking forward to this.

Ditto cancelled my order last night and Green Man Gaming already refunded the money to my paypal this morning, hopefully they can do like BF4 and salvage it down the road, oh well at least my other pre-order that comes out same day should be better (Fallout 4).

Uhm, honest review. Not going to drop money on this. Shame, capital S.

Damn. I had a hundred bucks in cash sitting in a drawer since July to buy this. Well--thanks for the beta! I know now not to buy it. Hmm... now... Elite Dangerous season two is looking tempting. CQC is fantastic and perhaps it will draw more PvP oriented players into the game to fuel open.

I watched my friend stream it yesterday, and wasn't impressed at all. It doesn't bring ANYTHING new to the table; it's simply *insert online fps here* with a Star Wars skin. Definitely not worth $60+ IMO.

It's also interesting how the recommended system req. are just completely overboard...GTX 970 4gb, Core i5 6600, and 16gb of RAM??

It looks\feels like a cash grab

To be fair, there is a good game here, it's just buried under a metric ton of bull #%&*$#. For me, only one thing can save it from becoming a joke, and that's if DICE can either change the spawning functionality, or at least give us the option via filtering to choose a type of spawning preference.

I was extremely unimpressed. There is a decent shooter in there certainly, but it's absolutely buried under bizarre design decisions.

AGREED. That's what is so frustrating.
Give us a map (needs one anyway), and a map before spawning in, with a choice of spawn points..such as Rebel bases, hangers, OR a squadmate shown on the map with an icon so you know if it's safe enough or not. Also, don't let people spawn in on someone within ___ feet of the enemy. It's not fair to take someone out just to have their squadmate spawn in facing you.

Put the ships in a hanger to be taken out as normal, not just finding perk symbols out in the wild. Give us a battle line, like the video said. Put us on sides, not just thrown into chaos.
These are things they can do and it will save this thing. Maybe they will? If so, I'll buy. There's just no point in pre-ordering to find out. Really, there isn't much point in pre-ordering a downloaded game anyway.

There's still hope.

Yeah we need a more high tech map than what we have, something similar to bf4. I feel like I'm playing Goldeneye on N64. I get it they want it as a throwback to the original Battlefronts but I agree I would like for some more tactical gameplay.

It's not even the old Battlefronts, they had the spawning right.

There are no classes like the old battlefronts. It's more like Call of Duty: Star Wars Sell Out Edition.

Put game in trash bin you will.....

this is not the game you are looking for...

Good, Good.

Let the hate flow through you.

I'm going to the dark side anyway Feetwet...they've got cookies.

Teehee.

So Lonestar, now you see evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

So Feetwet are you my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate?

Which makes us...

Absolutely nothing, which is what you are about to become.


Played some more over the weekend. There is some fun in there. Just currently not 60 dollars of fun. FTP in its current state maybe. As I have said before, my biggest issues are the weapon accuracy especially at long range NON-ADS and the ridiculous way they handle spawns.

If every weapon did not shoot with pinpoint accuracy, maps like Hoth would be better. If you had to stop and go to ADS to achieve good accuracy, that would also help. It's the circle strafing, jump jetting, ahole that can kill me before he lands that irritates me. There is a reason I don't play quake and unreal. As far as I am concerned (and this may be because I am older and crusty), the guy who stops, goes to a knee, and aims ADS should almost always win a duel.

S

I would pay ten bucks for this game. Sixty? No way! I paid sixty for Elite Dangerous and for that... I've played over three hundred hours so far.