Today, the public beta for Star Wars Battlefront starts at 1PM EST for PS4, Xbox One and PC. Many of you will want to play it straight, as you would any other first-person shooter. But Battlefront is not like most shooters!
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In most shooters, when you see an enemy, you take a second to aim down the scope/zoom in—that way, you can make sure the shot actually lands. Most games grant you a small bonus in accuracy, lack of recoil, and so on, whenever you stop to aim down the sights. Battlefront is a little different, as YouTuber jackfrags explains below:
In Battlefront, you don’t gain much of an advantage when you aim down the sights. Instead, you lose a second that you could have used to shoot, and your character slows down to boot. It’s actually more beneficial to shoot enemies right away, even if you’re running around/jetpacking, since your aim will more or less be the same as when you stand still and aim down the sights. Jackfrags says he spoke to a weapon designer in the game, who confirmed this information.
I tested it out myself, and found that I could kill enemies way more efficiently if I followed his advice. Hell, I straight up doubled my K/D thanks to this tip. It almost seemed to me that the game grants you extra aim assist when you don’t zoom in, but it may just be that hip fire automatically shoots from the center of the screen instead of being off-center, as most games would do it.
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To go along with all this, it also helps if you play Battlefront third-person. Now, I realize this will be a preference thing, but personally, I like that third-person mode gives you a better field of vision—and it can also make it easier to get into the habit of shooting right away instead of aiming down the sights. On PS4, you hold down on the D-Pad to activate it, if that helps.
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Finally! Let’s talk about playing Walker Assault On Hoth. I won’t mince words here: it’s actually harder to be on the Rebel side than it is being the Empire. Empire is straightforward; they almost always win. Rebels on the other hand have to take down AT-ATs, something which is practically impossible unless you’re playing the objective (and even then, it’s pretty damn hard.) Helpfully, GameSpot outlines the big things you need to do to win as Rebels in the video below:
First, you’ll want to arm your uplinks. The game points them out to you; just go to those locations and it’ll tell you what to do once there. After you arm the uplink, defend it! It’s best if you use a bubble shield here, since the enemy team will try to stop you the second things are armed.
In the second phase, you’ll want to start firing at the AT-AT. This is where the Ion Shot comes in handy, but you can make use of other stuff—like aircraft and smart rockets—too. Just know that you alone probably can’t do a ton of damage, so coordination will be key.
In the last phase, you’ll want to make use of your snow speeders, as they can take down ATs pretty quickly. Of course, this is easier said than done...even with your entire team playing the objective, it’s still really easy to lose. Hopefully this gets rebalanced a bit once the game actually launches, because right now, it kind of sucks to play as Rebels. So don’t feel bad if you lose, Rebels.
Good luck!