Star Wars Battlefront's Dropzone Mode Is A Fight For Loot

DICE rolled out a new blog post explaining the Drop Zone mode in Star Wars: Battlefront. The mode sees up to 16 players, eight on the Rebel side and eight on the Empire side, fighting to capture and control the pods like a game of King of the Hill.

The news was made over on the official Star Wars Battlefront blog where they detailed how the Drop Zone mode works.

The default mode is a 10-minute match between two teams. A drop pod will fall from the sky and it's up to the Rebels and Empire to capture the pod. If both teams stalemate while attempting to capture the pod, a new pod will drop down after a set amount of time. If one team captures and controls a pod then a new pod will drop down as well for both teams to fight over. Whoever controls the most pods by the end of the round will be declared the winner.

Lead level designer Dennis Brännvall commented about the Drop Zone mode in Star Wars: Battlefront, saying...

Some of you might be wondering “well what's the point of capturing pods? For the power-ups.

In addition to controlling the match, the pods offer power-ups that drop out after a short period of time, enabling players to get specific boosts.

According to the post on the Star Wars blog, camping doesn't really work because the pods strategically drop where anti-camping spots can be taken up. They also suggest that players can utilize Droids and scouting tactics to disrupt the flow of combat and keep opponents on their toes.

It sounds like a lot of thought went into balancing the mode and it will be playable across Tatooine, Hoth, Sullust and Endor. However, there's one major problem: the pods have predetermined drop points.

If the drop pods were scattered randomly across the map it would definitely create for some uneven match-ups at times but it would likely always be unpredictable. I suppose the pursuit of “balance” is more important than replayability. It's difficult to see this mode being anything more than a newcomers novelty and then quickly forgotten once specific teams figure out where the drop points are and now how to memorize the layout of the map to control those points. In a way, it almost sounds like another form of Conquest/Supremacy... just that you have to wait for the capture points to drop down.

Anyway, maybe we'll see how this mode can differentiate itself from the others once some gameplay is made available. You can look for Star Wars: Battlefront to launch for the Xbox One, PS4 and on PC starting November 17th. For more information about the new mode feel free to visit the official website.