Despite EA and DICE announcing tweaks to the progression system in Star Wars Battlefront II before launch, apparently it is still bad. As reported from players who are now playing it via EA Access and Origin Access, you still need to grind too long or throw money at loot boxes to unlock the hero characters.
One thread in Reddit has discovered that it takes up to 40 hours to unlock a hero through regular play. EA responded with a comment in a different post also about the problematic hero unlock price, saying it is “to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes”. That respond is now one of the most downvoted post on Reddit.
EA backed down and has now issued another blog post stating all hero unlock price are reduced down to 75% ahead of its official release on November 17. Though early reports suggesting that the rewards are also dropped down 75%.