Catch Up Mechanics
Hello there.
I've been playing daily since the last week of October 2017. I am about to hit account level 85 in a couple days. I achieved this by completing all dailies, daily, and doing 3 refreshes daily in both cantina and normal energy. 4.5 months is a long time to reach level cap and unlock content, including nodes I've wanted to farm.
But the bigger issue is other resources to create viable teams. TB, TW, and the new raid require many, many level 85 teams with maxed abilities, and mods. I am constantly strapped living paycheck to paycheck (in game, not real life) on credits, purple mats, and of course gear.
I understand there needs to be some bottlenecks, and gear is obviously there. But at this point in the game in order to align with most game design philosophy over time, there should be catch up mechanics on account level, character level, the abilities level 1-7, and gearing to G9 or G10. Omegas and of course zetas can stay rare, higher level gear, etc. but something should be done to allow new players to become useful in a reasonable amount of time.
1. Account leveling from 70-80 should be flattened to match 40-70.
2. Character leveling should also be flattened.
3. Purple mat challenge (plus bounty and droids) should go to 5x, and drops be added to all nodes in GW.
4. Some of the G8-G10 requirements for carbantis, stun cuffs, stun guns should be removed or modified to the more abundant versions. Some of the other challenge gear like mk6 chiewab syringes shoudl be dropped from 50 to 20.
5. This could be a larger discussion, but adding mods to higher energy cantina nodes and halving the energy cost of mod challenges would align with normal energy. I.e. farm both shards/mods are higher energy, or mods only at lower energy (mirroring hard nodes with shards and gear, and normal nodes with just gear).
All this will help someone catch up to current content. The newest content will of course require significant time or money investment and should not affect your bottom line.
I've been playing daily since the last week of October 2017. I am about to hit account level 85 in a couple days. I achieved this by completing all dailies, daily, and doing 3 refreshes daily in both cantina and normal energy. 4.5 months is a long time to reach level cap and unlock content, including nodes I've wanted to farm.
But the bigger issue is other resources to create viable teams. TB, TW, and the new raid require many, many level 85 teams with maxed abilities, and mods. I am constantly strapped living paycheck to paycheck (in game, not real life) on credits, purple mats, and of course gear.
I understand there needs to be some bottlenecks, and gear is obviously there. But at this point in the game in order to align with most game design philosophy over time, there should be catch up mechanics on account level, character level, the abilities level 1-7, and gearing to G9 or G10. Omegas and of course zetas can stay rare, higher level gear, etc. but something should be done to allow new players to become useful in a reasonable amount of time.
1. Account leveling from 70-80 should be flattened to match 40-70.
2. Character leveling should also be flattened.
3. Purple mat challenge (plus bounty and droids) should go to 5x, and drops be added to all nodes in GW.
4. Some of the G8-G10 requirements for carbantis, stun cuffs, stun guns should be removed or modified to the more abundant versions. Some of the other challenge gear like mk6 chiewab syringes shoudl be dropped from 50 to 20.
5. This could be a larger discussion, but adding mods to higher energy cantina nodes and halving the energy cost of mod challenges would align with normal energy. I.e. farm both shards/mods are higher energy, or mods only at lower energy (mirroring hard nodes with shards and gear, and normal nodes with just gear).
All this will help someone catch up to current content. The newest content will of course require significant time or money investment and should not affect your bottom line.
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Replies
The game is much more a treadmill than it is a marathon.
If this game weren’t a grind it wouldn’t be worth my time
Like this, you’re always waaaaay behind, and most likely discourages new players to become paying customers.
I’m in favor of adjusting it a little for new players to catch up a bit, but still feel like a worthwhile grind.
been playing since 2015, so thankfully does not apply to me, but made a new alt acc in November 2017, so know how awful the grind is atm.
Who, exactly are you behind that you need to "catch up" to?
In your arena shard, you compete against people who started the game at the same time as you - so you are even with them. The same goes for when you opened fleet arena.
In TW you are matched up against guilds that are similar to you based on a variety of factors (GP is only ONE of those factors).
Everything else is simply you against content (or your guild against it). No one is at the "finish" line. I would think that knowing that you have a nice long time to enjoy the game without being bored by being maxed out in every way possible would be reassuring. And is, in fact, encouragement to spend, not a deterrent.
As Kyno already pointed out, there is MUCH more available to new players now then there was 2+ years ago - imagine a SWGOH world with no Credit Heist, no "simming", no Yoda or Palpatine events, no mods, no ships or fleet arena at all! And no guilds, raids, TB or TW of any kind. Yet, as barren as that world may seem, many of us survived and even spent money on that wasteland of a place. Back then we had to walk barefoot in the snow, uphill...both ways! Just to fight a LS battle. Nowadays you kids and your fancy "simming".
In game guild: TNR Uprising
I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
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I agree pvp is fine. Im thinking about pve, and mainly raids. I have one team that can get through nihilus's protection. I'll probably do 2 mil damage on t6 this run, so way below my 2%. I'm getting carried and it would be nice to have ways to get a few more g10 teams to do some damage. Not asking for a whale's roster, but a way to catchup to something useable for pve.
I don't think the OP, or myself, is saying, give new people a fully fleshed out roster!
However, even with refreshes and such, the grind CAN be discouraging to new people (myself included at times.) If you turn off those people they can never be paying customers. It's a chicken-egg problem.
I think the OP is onto something with the suggestions.
Another way to help with the grind is instead of reducing requirements is to up drop rates of character shards and some gear.
The people who are spending the money probably aren't spending the money on characters like empire guys and rebel team to get to CLS, as an example. They're more likely buying gear and character shards of the shiny new character released.
Making end game content more accessible quicker actually could contribute to more sales. Right now the feeling of "If I buy this, it's not really going to help me get it any faster" is pretty high. But if that "old stuff" that the people who've been playing 2 years / spending lots of money don't care about anymore was more accessible, there's a chance to increase player population. (It also helps because now guilds have a higher pool of players to recruit, etc.)
I don't know, I've said elsewhere, a game that has a worse grind than Everquest is probably going to follow the same decline path when the next "WoW" with an easier progression comes out.
While players in the 'lead' will often complain about things being 'easier' for those players who follow, there are also significant challenges to trying to play catch up. For example, the original players didn't have the potential roster size that is available now. Most built the same limited available squads and the first Events and Challenges were designed to make use of those squads. Those squads are no longer viable competitively with other choices... but they ARE still necessary for Event play. Thus, the new player has to choose between being competitive OR being prepared for Events. Additionally, Events are cycled back into the schedule with (to players) only a few weeks notice... not enough time, even if you drop everything else, and prepare the squad needed for it. Given that many of the newer best characters are the outcome of multi-stages of event completion (an event unlocked character, raised to 7* that is then used in an event to unlock a newer character) and these events are 6 months to a year apart... this is a huge limitation for players who are playing catch up.
Truthfully, even with pay-to-win options and brilliant game play... the ability to catch up has to be both present and limited. Without it, player burn out and loss at the high end will reduce the competitive pool to an ineffective number of players. With an excess of it, top skilled players would be regularly challenged not by newer similarly skilled players... but simply newer players accelerated by advantages. And with Territory Wars and Battles in the game both requiring not only strong single squads but also great depth of roster, the single best means of catching up (being a raid ticket producer for a guild that raids and getting carried through raids for gear and shards) isn't really 'enough' of a justification for guilds not to drop members in favor of someone who can contribute both strength and depth.
As a rough estimate, a decently skilled and focused player might develop a single squad (5 characters) from activation to level 85, gear 8, with average Health type level 15 mods... in about two months. Higher gear levels and specialized mods take longer depending on a guild's raiding ability and random factors (shop rotation, event availability, etc). If we also estimate that a player needs three squads to 'dominate' all areas of play (one endurance team, one burst team, and one specialized raid team), we only need to give the top players a six month lead to more or less permanently dominate the lead (three squads, two months each, rotating in a newer higher powered squad that does at gear 8 what the previous squad did at gear 10-12). And the means to close that gap from lead to six month point needs to exist... though it will correct itself some simply as the top players run short on ways to grow (as they become the first to finish the newest raids/events) and other top players retire from the game ... with the occasional new paying player or exceptionally skilled on pushing forward into the ranks of the top players.
The 'rest' of the player base should lag somewhere six months to at most twenty four months behind. The best means of going about this would be a reverse scaling approach that approaches parity with regular game play at that 'six months behind' point, but scales up growth and gearing to a faster pace the farther behind the player is. Players being more than 2 years behind the leading curve isn't justification for being behind, its justification for establishing a new starting point for the game.
Best ways to go about this?
1. Player level - scrap it. There's no valid reason for players to have a level cap in a game where everything else is gated by time or resource limitations. The only thing the player level accomplishes at this time is that it prevents focus on getting just one squad to max level before doing anything else. Other resource limitations and time locks are adequate and it would be just as easy to gate access base on arena squad gear level or another calculation.
2. Why start the tutorial with single characters? There is nothing in the game, except maybe 0 pt tagging raid bosses, that uses a single character. Why not start the player with a full squad and use the tutorial to focus less on what a single character does and how to prepare and use squads. Ideally, make the tutorial squad one of the Event ones (say, the group to get R2D2)... and then guide them through the tutorial on how to select the characters for a second squad with PvP potential, and suggestions to work towards a third, specifically designed for raiding the Pit. A good point to be at for completion of the tutorial? Their Event group at 5 star, level 50-60 gear 7 having just completed the first mod Challenges to unlock Health mods. A second arena/galwar squad at 4 star, level 40, gear 5. A third squad unlocked at 4 star, but not geared or leveled yet.
3. Reorganize the Light, Dark, and Cantina mission rewards. Character shards for first tier Event unlocks should be the mission rewards for the low level missions. Light: Luke, Leia, Old Ben, ST Han, Chewie, non-named Jedi, soldiers, and pilots... Dark: troopers, unnamed Sith, officers, pilots ... Cantina: various scoundrels, cops, Jawa, creatures. Use Hard modes for ships and squad leaders or those with special abililties that finish out the squads at those levels. For level 5-6, you should be doing second tier squads (the ones for mod challenges, the ones that unlock more complex Events, and raid squads). By the time you are up to missions at level 7-8, you should be have access for almost everything that isn't new (last six months) or requires an Event unlock. Level 9 missions should only be for cutting edge shards/gear/mods/resources.
4. Add optional challenge level versions of missions. Let the player set a multiplier that scales up opponent level, gear, abilities, and mod settings of a mission. For each multiplier setting up, reward the player with an additional (significant) credit reward.
5. Add a modifier to increase (significantly) the chance for a specific piece of gear or shard to be rewarded from by a mission for each character in the squad running the mission that needs that item. Provide a further bonus to chance / number dropped if the entire squad used for the mission run is level appropriate for the mission.
6. Further scale the energy costs and per day limitations for missions on low level missions (say, for an estimate, a factor of 3 for missions at level 1-3, and at 2 for missions 4-6 (ie for an existing energy cost of 6 in a mission from 1-3, energy cost would be 2... for a mission at 16 energy in level 6 would become 8 cost). This would significantly increase the ability to and speed to fill out the roster and outfit it for use in Territory events, while still not overly pushing them into the realm of challenging top performers (a 40k gp squad doesn't typically get an action off against an 80k team anyway, let alone a 30k squad vs 100k).
7. Once character Events have run twice on the normal schedules (open for a week and then not back again for six months or so), they should be moved to a list of available events that open indefinitely once you meet the minimum requirements to pursue them. This takes the demand to be ready exactly for the one week the event is available off catch up players. It also breaks up the goal setting and accomplishment over a period of time, which significantly helps reduce burn out.
8. Anything that is available via energy should also be available in one of the shops and vice versa. Single access to anything via something other than a skill challenge is one of the biggest sources of game frustration.
I'm sure I'll think of more that could be added to this... and there are lots of aspects of the early game that could be streamlined to more accurately reflect the 'real' game that is played after the first four months or so. And there's a lot of advantage to having the player base less widely spread over progression through the game/roster. And few disadvantages for speeding things up for those that wish to catch up.
Sith raid is end game content. You can't expect to kill it a few months after you started playing.