DICE and EA have revealed the sweeping changes being made to Star Wars:

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EA is hoping to put to rest "pay-to-win" concerns by making progression linear. Classes, heroes, and ships you use in multiplayer now individually earn experience points. Experience points help you level up, and each level awards a Skill Point, which can be spent on gameplay-changing Star Cards.

Star Cards and other gameplay-changing unlocks will not be purchaseable with either Credits (currency earned through gameplay) or the returning Crystals (paid currency). Star Cards will also no longer be found in Crates.

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Crates will now only contain Credits or cosmetic items like emotes or victory poses. Crates can also not be purchased with any currency, and will only be awarded as a daily login bonus, for completing timed challenges, or completing Milestones.

Everything players have earned before this update will remain theirs and unchanged.

After the update, the Crystals currency will return, but with only one function - to buy new, cosmetic-only skins for classes and heroes (which can also be purchased with Credits). "If you’ve ever dreamed of being a part of the Resistance as a Rodian, your chance is right around the corner", reads the update statement. These new appearances will begin to arrive in April.

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It's a starkly different system to the one that EA was forced to promise to change. Originally, the primary source of progression in the game was tied to Crates, making it essentially random, and benefiting those who would pay to instantly unlock loot boxes with real-world money. Even without paid currency, the system was slow and unintuitive - our review called it "bafflingly terrible".

Progression was sped up somewhat in the interim, but the growing backlash against loot boxes, including from national legislators, has led to this change. The controversy has reportedly led to DICE ensuring the next Battlefield game's microtransactions will be cosmetic-only.

The statement makes clear that this isn't the end of DICE and EA's attention to the game. They promise "a number of new modes", some of which will be "radically different than anything you've experienced in the game before".

Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and next he wants world governments to tackle the issue of the option to invert the Y axis being much too hidden in pause menus. Follow him on Twitter.