Battlefield Heroes



Battlefield Heroes is a cartoon-style action video game developed by EA and DICE. It is played from context-specific third- and first-person shooter perspectives. The game is less demanding on computer specifications than the previous games of the series to increase the audience base. In addition, the game match players of similar levels together for fairer play.

EA recently announced that the game had reached three million registered users.

Heroes is the first Battlefield game to be released under Electronic Arts' new "Play 4 Free" model, which will see the game released for free with revenue generated from advertising and micropayments. Advertisements appear on the website and the 'front-end' of the game although none appear while playing, while micropayments may be made for additional items to customize the appearance of players' avatars or to buy stronger weapons. Furthermore, purchasable BattleFunds can be used to redeem rate boosts to experience points along with other items.

Gameplay
Battlefield Heroes features a modified conquest mode providing each team 50 lives and eventually one flag at the start of the round. Killing enemies and holding more flags than the opposing army will progressively reduce their number of lives. The game also features matchmaking, to keep players of the same level together. Developers of the game have talked about levels going as high as 40 or 50, although the current level cap is 30. The two armies are called the National Army (possessing a red base color flag) and the Royal Army (possessing a blue base color flag). The game is third-person only at this point, but senior producer Ben Cousins has stated if first-person is really wanted, it may be added in at a later date. Spawn times are 5 seconds (compared to the 15 seconds of previous Battlefield games, except for the map "Midnight Mayhem."), allowing for less waiting and more action. Players do not pick spawn points since the game has an "Intelligent Spawn System" putting players closest to the nearest battle. Sometimes the player will be parachuted behind enemy lines. There is also a new mode called "Conquest V2." The goal of this mode is to take hold of a rocket ship for 5 minutes. This doesn't mean at once, it just means 5 minutes in total. There is only one map (Midnight Mayhem) for this mode and has a 15 second spawn time. Like previous Battlefield games Battlefield Heroes has a class system, which has been reduced to three basic classes: the Soldier (a mid speed, mid health mid ranged weaponed medic), Gunner (a heavy weaponed, high health slow class), and Commando (a low health speedy snipe and knife specialist).



Players may also purchase bandages to regenerate health and wrenches to regenerate vehicle armor points (which is the same as health for out of vehicle players).

There are several vehicles in the game, all patterned after real vehicles of the Second World war. Included are two "light tanks", in the style of the M4 Sherman and the Panzer III/IV. Wheeled Vehicles are also in game, and are patterned after the Kubelwagen and the Willys Jeep. Finally there are two aircraft, these are also made to look like the Messerschmitt BF 109 and the Spitfire. All vehicles have passenger slots, the tank with passenger space in the turret, the wheeled vehicles hold three passengers, and the aircraft with a slot on each wing. All passengers, except the driver, can fire their normal hand-held weapons, and use abilities, from inside the vehicle.

Players can be awarded achievements by a mission system which allows missions to be completed in order to get valor points.

Closed beta
On May 6, 2008 the first phase of the game release was an invitation-only closed beta and the invitations were given to professional beta testers only. Following the selection of beta testers, the amount of traffic caused the site to crash for a short time. Once the website was placed back up it was revealed that third-party professional testers would be testing the game, and several open beta phases would begin in the near future. The purpose of these beta phases is to test server capacity as players download the game and whether the servers provided can handle the intense use. The current closed beta players are under a non disclosure agreement, disallowing them from releasing information about the beta. On August 29, 2008, hundreds of beta keys were given out at the EA booth at the Penny Arcade Expo on small cards to anyone in attendance. The closed beta ended on November 14, 2008.

Beta key
DICE stated in a post, that they would be handing out extra closed-beta keys for the first 20 comments on their new posts. This was posted on the official Battlefield Heroes website on July 31, 2008. It was revealed that the first of these posts would be made on August 4, 2008. This caused so many users to be on the Battlefield Heroes website at the same time waiting for a beta key, that it caused the Battlefield Heroes server to crash, delaying the release of the keys until maintenance could be completed. Two days later on August 6, the method was changed so that users had to solve a riddle to win a beta key (although the first 20 comments were still awarded beta keys on this occasion, since it was not made clear that the format had changed).

On August 9, the second beta-key riddle was released (being harder, this riddle was available for a longer 5 minutes). Users were told that the riddle would be released at 7 pm, however, there was a degree of confusion over which time-zone was meant (being based in Sweden, DICE used the GMT +1 hour time zone, which was clarified later with the third riddle).

On August 27, 2008, DICE released another set of keys, this time 400 were given out. Another 200 were released on September 11, 2008; these were used up in 22 minutes.

Delayed
On July 29, 2008, it was announced that Battlefield Heroes will be delayed until sometime 2009 in the first 4 months of the year. EA CEO John Riccitiello stated that the company is going "to increase its focus on some of the social networking features."

Closed beta part 2
In January 2009, the Battlefield Heroes Beta Key Signup page was opened with another set of Battlefield: Heroes keys on a "first come, first served" basis. The closed beta has already started, and users may stand in queue for a beta key. On February the 6th; it was announced that the Battlefield Heroes Closed Beta Sign-Up had reached over 100,000 in participants.

On February 10, 2009, it was announced that the closed beta would be re-opened on the 11th of February, 2009. Many fans incorrectly assumed that thousands of beta keys would be handed out on that day, however, only testers from the first phase of the first phase were able to access the beta on that day.

On February 16, 2009, 2000 beta keys were given out to some of the fans who had signed up for the previous stage on QABoss, and an additional 2000 the next day. On February 24, it was announced that the QABoss beta keys were all handed out and have moved on to those who signed up on the site. Some fans seem to be having problems: there are still those who have signed up on QABoss and did not receive a key. DICE said that either they signed up too late or it was just a simple mistake.

On April 2, 2009, DICE sent out 50,000 new beta keys to people who registered for the beta.

Open beta
On June 25, 2009, Battlefield Heroes was moved to open beta allowing anyone who missed out on a beta key to play the game. Currently anyone can register and play Battlefield Heroes, without any form of beta key.

Pricing model
While Battlefield Heroes still follows the "free to play" business model, changes in late 2009 altered the balance between free and paying users. On 30 November 2009, Electronic Arts altered the price structure in the game's online store, raising the cost of most items bought via free-to-acquire 'Valor Points'. At the same time, EA lowered the price of the majority of items available to buy with BattleFunds, an in-game currency that must be purchased with real money. Ars Technica wrote about the recent update,"'...this update has a very real chance of ending the game. Now EA has forced gamers to make a choice between three options: quit, start playing for hours a day, or get out the wallets.'"

However following the update official Electronics Arts representatives have claimed that the negative impact to the audience size is minimal.

The referral scheme was introduced on 14 April 2010. By referring friends on Facebook or via a web-link the referral and the referrer would gain 1350 Valor Points and an extra 1 day XP Boost. If the referral buys 2800 or more Battlefunds within 60 days, the referrer gains 700 Battlefunds and the referee gains another 1000 Valor Points.

Reception
On Metacritic, Battlefield Heroes received an average score of 69 out of 100 based on 24 reviews, meaning mixed or average reviews. On GameRankings, the game has an average score of 74.07% based on 14 reviews. Critical game reviewing website IGN rated the game 8.0 / 10, calling it "Fun, frantic and free but not, unfortunately, flawless".