Star Wars Battlefront May 4th content and May client update detailed

Tomorrow is Star Wars Day - "May the fourth be with you" - and in celebration EA has gifts planned for Star Wars Battlefront. Don't get too excited.

They are: 4,444 credits given for logging in; Jabba the Hutt stocking a new Bacta Bomb Star Card (not free); and a free, four-hour Origin trial. This is a trial for PC players only and does not include the paid Outer Rim content. The trial spans multiple game sessions so you needn't use the four hours all at once.

In addition, the May client update for Star Wars Battlefront has rolled out on all platforms. It mostly addresses things introduced to the game - either as free or paid content - last month. Paid new hero Nien Nunb, who builds turrets, has had his abilities dialled down a bit. But on the other hand, new weapons like the Dioxis Grenade, the Relby and the DT-12 have been buffed up.

Luke Skywalker's health and blocking time have both gone up, incidentally, and there are some adjustments to the newish Combat Roll.

There are "various tweaks" to auto-balance and matchmaking systems, too, which are always welcome.

There's a full list of fixes below, taken from the game's official forum. There's a follow-up post over there that discusses, from a developer point of view, some of the changes in the patch. Not seen that before; nice touch.

Geeral:

• Added a system which allow players to see if an enemy currently has a charge card active by adding an icon above the enemies' health bar.
• PC: Made it so that combat roll triggers on press, and not on release.
• PC: Pressing enter will now open the chat channel.
• Vehicles: Resolved an issue which would make players invincible after attempting to enter a vehicle.
• Vehicles: A timer has been added to Imperials exiting vehicles. Before they could instantly leave certain vehicles.
• Vehicles: Increased the time to enter a speeder bike from 0.3 to 0.5s.
• Combat Roll: Performing a melee attack at the same time as a combat roll will no longer break the animation.
• Combat Roll: Resolved an issue in which players couldn't see another player performing a combat roll.
• Combat Roll: There's now a 1.5s cooldown.
• Deluxe Edition: Resolved an issue in which the upgraded version of Ion Torpedo was awarded instead of the regular version.
• General: Various tweaks to the auto balance and matchmaking systems.
• General: Updated various error messages used in game.
• General: Updated the localization to resolve various text bugs.
• General: Resolved various clipping issues.

Stability:

• Disconnect: Fixed an issue in which players were getting disconnected after observing another players profile in the social hub while playing In game.
• Disconnect: Pressing the up arrow in the private match lobby would cause players to disconnect to the menu if they hadn't visited the game modes screen.
• Crash: The player will no longer crash when observing the Shadow Trooper diorama figurine.
• Crash: Resolved a rare crash issue which could occur if a player joined another server while waiting in the in-game lobby.
• Crash: Resolved a crash issue which could occur when reaching max rank and getting to the End of Round screen.

UI:

• UI: The issue with score and credits being displayed as 0 = 0, has been resolved. Now the correct amount of score and credits obtained will now be displayed in the End of Round flow.
• UI: Resolved an issue which would occur when a player is Rank 60, but the End of Round flow would display the rank as 59.This also resolves other various desync issues with stats.
• UI: Soldiers heads aren't obstructed anymore in the appearance menu by the unlock price.
• UI: Removed a blur effect that was present over the soldier in the deployment screen on certain levels.
• UI: The kill card will now show which trait card the enemy currently has equipped.

Weapons & Star Cards

• Personal Shield: Players can now use the shield at the same time as the Jump pack.
• Personal Shield: Players can now swap weapons at the same time as the shield is active.
• Charge Cards: The duration timer would be decreased by half when standing close to the shipment in the game mode Extraction. Now it's only the charge card cooldown that is decreased by half when standing close to the shipment.
• Dioxis Grenade: Added a new scoring event for when you deal damage.
• Dioxis Grenade: Now the player will not be able to inflict self-damage when throwing a Dioxis Grenade next to a vehicle and then entering it.
• Dioxis Grenade: Increased the inner radius from 3 to 4m.
• Dioxis Grenade: Increased damage ticks. Increased inner radius damage from 6 to 7. Outer radius damage increased from 4 to 5. A total of 12 health will be dealt each tick when standing in the inner radius.
• DLT-19X: Removed a moment penalty that would occur when zooming in.
• DT-12: Raised rate of fire from 180 to 220.
• Relby-V10: Raised max damage from 24 to 25.
• RT-97C: Lowered weapon sway, Min 0.25 to 0.2, Max 2 to 1.5.
• Blaster Cannon: Increased inner explosion radius from 1 to 1.5m and the outer explosion radius from 1.5 to 2.5m.
• Blaster Cannon: Increased explosion damage from 25 to 34.
• Active Cooling: Made the fields slightly wider to make it easier even on the harder levels
• Ion Detonator: Will explode on impact instead of after a delay.
• Ion Detonator: Lowered inner explosion radius from 6 to 2m and the outer explosion radius from 7 to 4m.
• Ion Detonator: Lowered the damage multiplier towards soldiers from 0.5X to 0.4X.

Heroes:

• UI: Hostile orbital strikes will no longer appear in the blue color while playing as a hero. Now a red color is used.
• Darth Vader: Players killed by Darth Vader's deflection will now correctly see his image in the kill card.
• Darth Vader: Players who are currently being choked will not be able to interact with ingame objects, such as uplinks.
• Darth Vader: Increased the damage output on Darth Vader's Force Choke ability. It also now removes the effect of Adrenaline Stim.
• Leia: Trooper Bane ability will now pass through shields.
• Greedo & Nien Nunb: Other players are now unable to spawn on them when they are being attacked.
• Greedo: Resolved an issue in the UI for the confidence ability which didn't update correctly once the confidence decreases.
• Greedo: Changed Confidence 1 damage multiplier from 1.4 to 1.3. Confidence 2 damage multiplier from 1.9 to 1.7. Confidence 3 damage multiplier from 2.8 to 2.4
• Nien Nunb: Increased Proximity mine cooldown from 8 to 9s
• Nien Nunb: Decreased Rapid Pulse Canon damage multiplier to AT-AT from 150% to 100%
• Nien Nunb: Increased turret Lock Time from 0.8 to 1
• Nien Nunb: Increased Turret Unlocking Time from 0.2 to 0.25
• Nien Nunb: Decreased Augmented Turret damage from 22 to 20
• Nien Nunb: Decreased Turret damage from 15 to 14
• Luke: Increased Health from 925 to 1050
• Luke: Increased Blocking time from 4 to 6s

Game Modes:

• Outer Rim: Increased the frequency of Extraction being played in the Outer Rim playlist from 50% to 75%. Two rounds of Extraction will now be played every other round.
• Hero Hunt: Resolved the issues which allowed there to be two heroes at the same time.
• Hero Hunt: Resolved a rare issue in which the interface would not appear after spawning in as a Hero in Hero Hunt.
• Hero Hunt: Removed the hero selection wheel. Now only showing the score and appointing the top damage dealer to become the next hero.
• Heroes Vs Villains: Decreased rounds required to win from 5 to 3 rounds if played in the Outer Rim playlist
• Heroes Vs Villains: Decreased time until first round starts from 60 to 30 seconds
• Heroes Vs Villains: Decreased time between round end and next one begins from 30 to 10 seconds
• Fighter Squadron: Resolved an issue in which you could spawn in to a different vehicle type in Fighter Squadron if you deploy in exactly at the same moment as another player does it on the opposite team.
• Cargo: Decreased time limit from 15 to 10 minutes if played in the Outer Rim playlist
• Power-ups: Fixed various issues with Power-ups being unreachable or blocked by the Environment.
• Spawns: Fixed player spawns across all modes on Ice Caves & Swamp Crash Site.

Stats & Progression:

• Stats: Resolved an issue in which players didn't get any stats after completing rounds of Hero Hunt in certain instances.
• Stats: Players should be able to observe all unlocked diorama figurines correctly when looking at another players profile in the social hub. Before only multiplayer based figurines would appear unlocked.
• Hutt Contracts: Some descriptions and criteria have been made clearer.
• Hutt Contracts: Updated the Criteria for DT-12, Relby-V10, and Scatter Gun to not require 15 kills in a round but rather 15 kills in total.
• Hutt Contracts: Unlocks obtained during a game round will now become instantly available and will not require the player to leave the server to access them.
• Diorama: Greedo Diorama criteria has been updated and now requires 7 unlocks. All players who have completed the 7 criteria pre-patch will have the diorama figurine automatically unlock next time they play and finish a round of multiplayer.
• Accomplishments: Changed the required amount of kills for the various weapon related accomplishment streaks from 10 kills to 7 kills.
• Scoring: Changed the term "Killstreak bonus" to "Combat Streak"
• Scoring: Increased various objective based scoring events and decreased various combat oriented scoring events.