Star Wars Battlefront Drop Zone Details
It was revealed, last week, that the Star Wars Battlefront beta would be coming early in October, ahead of the games November release date. They also announced that a previously unseen mode called Drop Zone would feature in the beta. Well we now have new details on exactly what Drop Zone entails, and in summary it’s Battlefront’s take on King of the Hill. The reveal was made on EA’s blog where they offered more details on this new “tactical” mode. Basically small pods fall from the sky and small 8v8 teams, made up of the Rebels and the Empire, have to fight for control of the pods. To win a team must either control five pods, or the majority, by the time the ten minute match ends. If a pod is constantly switching between the control of the two teams, and no progress is being made, another pod will drop to break the stalemate.
There’s no gameplay, but here’s a Drop Zone picture.
This new mode is designed with the games fast action philosophy in mind and forces players to think on their feet. You run the risk of being punished if you don’t, for example “though captured pods need to be defended, static players standing in a cluster to close to their pod always run the risk of being hit by explosives or a well-placed Orbital Strike.” Of course you could always tactically deploy a turret to defend your pod so you don’t personally need to go near it. If you decide to stick around a freshly captured pod, instead of running to the next one, it will start to open, revealing a Power Pickup which might encourage players to stick around and defend. The blog doesn’t actually confirm what maps this mode can be played on in the beta, but it does say at one point “whether you’ll be playing Drop Zone on Tatooine, Hoth, Sullust, or Endor,” so perhaps all of those maps will be in it. Regardless of whether all those maps are available in the beta or not they will be in the full game when it launches on November 17th.