Way to solve the problem with shard chats

xGriiMErZ

Look, its an issue now, having 20 people just protecting each other for easy payout, how is it comp when their are chats for easy payouts? You can fix the SThan "bug" (even tho its doing what it was meant to) but you can't be botgered to try and make arena balanced? Simple fix, refresh shards once a month, boom, sorted, that was hard

6The6Bull6

I am sure reshuffling and moving people from top 20 to somewhere between 1st and 5000th isnt going to cause massive outrage.

DrMaggot

You could just keep ranks and shuffle the players by rank. A player rank 10 stays rank 10 but is mixed with players from 2000 other shards.

Sewpot

It does get very boring playing the same people all the time.

leef

it's not a problem that affects the masses unlike the st han situation in the new raid. So yea, i fully understand why they aren't adressing it. Moreso because most players that are affected by shardchats actually like them, so it's not something they want to see changed.
love the simple fix though, boom, sorted, mass outrage !

Perfxion

I wouldn't shuffle once a month, but older than 6 months get shuffled once every 3 months. Should be a way to slow down any gentleman agreements outside the game, being done in the game. Same reason I say the game should auto zero score everybody who produced raid tolkens when a raid is opened.

Kyno

Shard suffle has been stated to be impossible, so thats not an easy fix at all.

Caljr

I won the first place every day since 2016, both ships and arena, but since 2017 i was massive atacked in my payout, in 30 minutes was locked and fall from 12 to near 49 sometimes, but the worst still the hacks. When the enemy have perfect behavior, resisted everything, did all critical hits even with low critical chance and do more damage than me, with his heroes when i checked have less damage and critical damage.

Last months near my payout many fights against players that combine atacks against me i won, but the game waited minutes to say draw or error, error that forced to restart the game and make my payouts impossible for ships or arena. Sometimes after minutes say that i won, but that minutes was enough to let than lock me and make me fall, loosing the first places every day, but only happen near my payouts, if i fighted out of payout it not happen.

Ships have the most impossible behaviors, my First Order Tie Pilot ship at max (all equipments XII, zeta and mods 5 level 15) doing very low damage, but the enemy FOTP doing all critical hits and more damage, my Imperial Tie Pilot ship not dodged most of time, but enemy Biggs and Vader doing many dodges in the same fights, plus enemies with lot of extra atacks with pilots not even XII.

Interesting that the devs nerfed really fast StHan now, Nut Gun Ray with Jawas in the past and many others just checking the raid numbers, but for months arena and ships have impossible behaviors most of time for the same players, but the devs do nothing and they could easy win fights that should be very Hard.

In the Past some players started with extra turns, i recorded one fight months ago that his Falcon always started first, that extra turn at start seems that not happen anymore, but now the extra turns happen in the second turn for some players, with his fleets hitting twice before my second turn even with all enemy ships with less speed.

Why the devs let so many hacks and do nothing? Many times i recorded fights because some players of my last guild not believed that such behaviors happen, but seems that many players think that was just bad rng, but if you take notes like me become easy see that that behaviors happen most of time against the same players, and If 5-20 fights that players have excepcional behavior something is wrong.

Easybee

Shard shuffle may be unfeasible, but there are practical solutions, and it is a problem that needs to be addressed! One easy way would be to make arena battles anonymous. There are others and many of the people in this thread were a part of that discussion.

Next up, a bunch of people here to claim that control of the top of a shard is part of the game, and if you are frustrated by it, then you must not be playing very well, etc.etc....

Easybee

From another lengthy discussion on this, my summation:

The best options we have heard here in my opinion would be:
- removing names of opponents, but this would require an initial shard shuffle to preserve anonymity
- an endgame arena for people to buy into that would be anonymous, but this would require a lot of development and would nessicarily change the economy, although perhaps not irreparably
- a system that allows for the changing of payout times, perhaps for a fee, to avoid the congestion around certain times
- a system that calculates via averages, although this would take some development and may risks alienating people from their acheivments

Naraic

DrMaggot wrote: »

You could just keep ranks and shuffle the players by rank. A player rank 10 stays rank 10 but is mixed with players from 2000 other shards.

2000 other shards? At the moment it takes 2 or 3 weeks to fill a shard. I know there was a stage they could fill multiple shards a day but 2000 other shards would still be over a year of play experience difference.

Easybee

Yeah, the shard shuffle idea is usually dismissed out of hand due to complexity. There ARE other highly feasible changes that could fix it. The question is: is there the WILL to fix it. From what I have seen, there absolutely is not, and it is tragically disappointing.

Maegor

CG likes shard chats.
1) it's another communal tie players have to the game.
2) if Joe Whale is telling everybody in his shard he's buying the latest and greatest character, it's that much more peer pressure for others to follow suit.

Maegor

Not to mention that some of the biggest guilds in the game have been built through shard chats.

Indominable_J

There's a huge difference between shard chats and the STHan issue. The Han issue affects their newest endgame content which, in addition to going against their design philosophy, can seriously cost them money -- if people can beat heroic without significant additional investment, that hurts their bottom line. As far as shard chats go, there can't be more than one person at any given rank at any given payout time. So the effect on the in-game economy is the same if they were to "shuffle" arena shards as it is now.

phinfan309

A lot of it has to do with the shard you are in. Mine has a very fair setup. We also help each other out with info for things like the new sith raid and new toons. In turn we share that info with our guilds. It helps everyone including cg if it's recommended to go for a new toon. Some people in my guild are in shards that will shut you out if you don't conform to what they want or if they'll even allow you in. It's really only a problem if you are in a bad shard. It's life.

Easybee

Very easy to say if you are on a good shard... Just life.

Arena is supposed to be a competition. The current setup is anti-competitive competitive. Furthermore, as more people near endgame, the more people will bump up against their shard's oligopoly, and become disenfranchised. Left unresolved this problem will eventually kill the game. It needs to be fixed.

Darthpedro

Easybee wrote: »

Very easy to say if you are on a good shard... Just life.

Arena is supposed to be a competition. The current setup is anti-competitive competitive. Furthermore, as more people near endgame, the more people will bump up against their shard's oligopoly, and become disenfranchised. Left unresolved this problem will eventually kill the game. It needs to be fixed.

If your that crazy for PvP content then go play a FPS. It's not real PvP, it can be a competition but since it isnt real PvP it doesn't matter. This is an issue that affects maybe 30 people out 20k per shard way bigger things to worry about in this game than this "issue.

ARougeRogue

To be fair, a lot of these Shard Arena chats are not exactly places where people go and sing Kumbaya while taking turns with the #1 spot. These Shard Arena chats are often pretty hostile and even the more friendly ones always have a couple guys who bust into the scene and go off on insane rants, then start targeting people even when it doesn't boost their payouts. In reality, you often take as great a risk by joining a shard chat as you do by remaining out of it.

There really isn't an easy fix to this and the way it is currently suits most players and the company, so it's unlikely to change. Besides, they've already made efforts toward busting up these Shard Chats and that's by making Nightsisters a very easy and competitive team to creep up and punish these other players. I know there have been NS teams in my shard that refuse to join the arena chat and most in there can't really do much with them, so in a way, something has been done about them already. Palpatine's recent update is another effort, in my opinion, to bring new blood to the top 50.

leef

Easybee wrote: »

Very easy to say if you are on a good shard... Just life.

Arena is supposed to be a competition. The current setup is anti-competitive competitive. Furthermore, as more people near endgame, the more people will bump up against their shard's oligopoly, and become disenfranchised. Left unresolved this problem will eventually kill the game. It needs to be fixed.

I love how you say that like it's a fact. "Left unresolved this problem will eventually kill the game"
While it could be true, i highly doubt it is. I'm reasonably sure that out of all the players affected (possitively or negatively) by shardchats, most of them like them.
I do however agree that the current setup is anti-competative and stimulates working together instead of competing with eachother. Wich not so conincedentily is also the reason why there are shard chats in the first place. Offence is too easy for any real form of competition anyway.

Mesmerize14

So people colluding to the top of crystal payouts is not costing them money? Maybe those same people would buy crystals if they didn't get them so easily. And I don't see how this doesn't go against the competitive spirit of the game.

Waqui

The spirit of the game is decided by players in this regard — not the developers. If players collude, then that's the spirit of the game.

Kyngzilla

xGriiMErZ wrote: »

Look, its an issue now, having 20 people just protecting each other for easy payout, how is it comp when their are chats for easy payouts? You can fix the SThan "bug" (even tho its doing what it was meant to) but you can't be botgered to try and make arena balanced? Simple fix, refresh shards once a month, boom, sorted, that was hard

So you have the code ready to fire up oooooooor?

Mzee

I find shard chats to be a way of making a very frustrating system much more manageable. Everyone wins on offense at the top, and shard chats are the only thing that prevents this very frustrating (and I would argue very unfair) system of locking people out and sniping. I can sit in 1 for an hour and then next thing I know I am locked out and missed the cut off to lock myself out by 1 second before I have a chance to attack back, and then get dropped to 5th for payout. I will sit there refreshing for like 4 or 5 minutes straight till I am unlocked to see if I can win in time. And, it can be by a team that I never have trouble winning on offense, and they drop me to 5 or 2 to 6. I may try to attack back and get 1st 1 or 2 seconds too late, and this has happened to me, and I have also made it in 1 or 2 seconds. If the system was like this where I had to play lock out with someone every day I would have quit this game long ago. Just too much frustration.

If shard chats are to be stopped then the payout system would have to change in my opinion. I would love for the payout system to change as many people may be busy during that last 5 minute window and have stronger teams, but since everyone wins on offense most of the time because AI decisions will not be as good as a human player weaker teams will be able to win.