Explain How Card Packs Aren't Worth It
So I basically work my life away so any spare time I have I pour into the game and I recently saw a post while just glancing at the forum. Which discusses how the card packs are a waste and crystals are best spent elsewhere, but did I poor job explaining. So if someone could give me a quick rundown.
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Imagine getting 7 drops of shards for characters you don't want and can't farm. Then for your 1 guaranteed character you get Ewok Scout and since you already have him it converts it to 7 shards.
From a time investment standpoint, they can greatly shorten the length of time it takes to farm certain characters, but from a pure ROI perspective, they're not good at all.
The moral is if you have lots of disposable income (minimum a couple grand) then go for it. Otherwise stick with refills.
You will spend 200$ in packs and will have virtuslly nothing. A bunch of low star guys that you can't farm any further, or a bunch of farmsble guys that you could had got without spending.
Packd are worth it if you plan to spend 2000+ $. For s smaller purchase, just use the crystsls to refill cantina and normal energy
The problem is ROI. If you spend $40 on chromium, the absolute best case scenario is you get a strong farmable 4* character that is also difficult to farm like Rey or Daka. In that case, it was probably worth it but thats a 2% outcome for $40. Likely you get some shards for chars you want, some for chars you dont want, and some for chrome only chars you cant progress anyways. Net average about 30-40 useful shards per pack.
If you used that same $40 on pure crystals for refreshes, you could do a cantina refreshes every day for 56 days, roughly 4 extra shards a day for a specific character and 2.5 from shipments. That's a 6* character of your choice from battles and a 5* character from shipments just for doin a cantina refresh and a minute of sim ticket pressing completely up and over your standard free farming. Just have to be willing to stick with it.
True, but how do you get Old Ben to 7*? Only by buying Chromium Packs. If you do not activate him, you can get him to 7* if you pull him as a character three times. But how many 8 packs do you have to buy for that to happen?
I am only trying to say that the game is bigger than Sid, Lumi, Phasma and Geo, and you can have as much or more success without them.
Any character who you can't get to at least 6* is essentially worthless in the big scheme of things.
Unless you plan to spend enough dough to 6* several chromium only characters (~$1200-$2000 or more), your crystals are better spent upgrading farmable characters via refreshes.
THAT IS, UNTIL
You have enough farmable characters to A) maintain a decent arena rank (<100-200), and B ) get close to clearing GW daily.
At that point, I would argue chromium packs are just as useful as refreshes because there are diminishing returns after your character roster gets passed a certain size. If you are purely a collector, refreshes always wins. If you want diversity and a unique roster, build up to a certain point with refreshes and then go Chromium.
FWIW I've spent probably....$500ish on Chromiums and have nothing to show for it except 5* Leia, 5* Aayla, 6* Cad Bane, a good headstart on QGJ (5*) before he went freemium, and numerous other 2/3/4*, characters who are all essentially useless. I have a total of 56 characters unlocked and only ~14 are useful in any way beyond being GW fodder. 75% of characters you unlock will sit unused for six months until you can slowly level them up, and even then they will *still* only be 4* or 5* because you will be pouring all your resources into your "A-players". If I spent another $500-1K I might be in business but refuse to do so with a constantly revolving meta, new characters, and ever-increasing level cap. It is a neverending whirlpool designed to take.your.money
The argument wasn't against diversity in the game. Everyone wants diversity in the game but not every character is a stud at 7*. There is a reason you never see a 7* Mob Enforcer or Ugnaught. The people who have dropped a lot of money on chromiums most likely have these characters at 7* too and they never use them.
I also disagree about being competitive with a fully synergized 5* team in arena. You must be on a newer server. My server is from mid-December so not even from launch and there is no way you'd make it into the top 200, probably not even top 500. A team with that low of power will not be able to hold rank and you'd drop so easily. Everyone in the top 50 has a full 7* team. Of course synergy can beat power but only to a reasonable extent.
As for OP, chromiums are nice when you are starting out because they could give a character that may (not guaranteed) help you get past some hard battles but if you are not planning on sinking thousands of dollars into this game you will most likely end up with characters you cannot make stronger. Once you progress in the game your hard earned crystals are better used on cantina/energy refreshes so you can get more gear/shards for the characters that can be built up for free.
That along with EA gearing this game towards whales to line their pockets with every update made me stop spending on it all together. If I could choose which shards I'm getting that could change. Slightly.
Remember the AI are not smart. I bet even most #1 teams could get defeated by a good amount of players on each server. Having different characters just means your AI gets targeted more.
I am not F2P nor am I a whale. I have a team around 24k power and finish usually in the 20-40 range. I have been playing since the end of Dec on this account. I also run a F2P account on my tablet, both of them I buy packs because without them you are missing out on some great characters. Most toons can be farmed aside from a few (Leia, Rex and Vader come to mind) for the others you are not going to get without packs. Which is the topic here and to advise that new players don't buy them is foolish and adding no diversity to the arena.
If your team has 24k power I doubt you are running only 5* characters. I never said synergy doesn't matter, I actually acknowledged it is more important than power but only to a certain extent. Also getting a synergized team through chromiums is harder than farming a synergized team. Vader is not obtainable from chromiums.
If you are not going to become a whale then yeah it's nice to collect characters and have diversity but realistically you won't get Leia up to a star level where she can compete in end game arena without dropping money. The odds of pulling any useful character are slim, especially when you will mostly get only shards. I never said that he had to spend his crystals on Lumi or Sid (I assume you are talking about these two) or other prevalent arena characters. Diversity can still be achieved by farming hard nodes or cantina nodes.
That depends. I have a lvl70 7* G8 (not quite maxxed) at 5656 power, and a lvl70 5* G8 (maxxed) at 4523, so clearly a big difference. It depends on the character.
And it's not like the packs are completely useless. Every now and again you are bound to get something good. But, in the narrow focus of Arena, you cannot hope to be competitive with a synergized team of 2, 3, and 4* characters.
In the grand scheme of things, the game is moving more to a model where having a larger bench is more beneficial than having 10 extra strong characters. As such, if you are missing a lot of characters, chromium packs will have a higher ROI than if you have most of them. 2* and 3* characters still have uses, just not in the Arena.
Problem is not that they are random, is that they give you nothing. If you could get a guaranteed char per pack, even random, it could be ok. Right now you spend 20$ to get 1 single random char, and some shards. If your rsndom char is Ewok Scout, or some other scrub, or a non-farmable guy, you spend 20$ and get nothing.
I'd rather spend those 20$ in refills, this levelimg faster and fsrming gear faster. Chrome are worth it if you plan to buy 100 packs (2000$), so the random bundles of 10/shards end adding up
Is that right?! If you don't activate and get the char again it gives you the activation shards (25, 50 or 80) again rather than the lousy 7?? That is a terrific trick to know if so. Can someone confirm for me?
On the 5 or 7* debate, it depends what the char is there for. I am f2p first time today #1 in arena, 3 droids who are 7* then poggle and poe 5* and 3*, *s only boost damage and health, so support chars don't need them.