Hi CG developers. This is going to be a rather long post and I understand you won't be able to respond to everything in it straight away but I hope you'll at least review it seriously.
After playing this game almost daily since the 28th or 29th of November 2015, I've come to the conclusion that my guild and I are not your target audience.
My guild is predominantly free to play with our level 85 player GPs ranging from 400k to 2.9mil. Rather than trying to group together the most powerful players we can to grind out raids at a rate of 2% damage per player, we act more like a community of Jedi Masters educating young Padawans. The current raid structures you have implemented are not compatible with our guild's structure. When some players are 7x more powerful than others, there's no way you can expect balanced damage distribution between your members. This results in some players being grossly overpowered for content and others being grossly underpowered and basically everyone getting upset or disappointed in some way shape or form. As has been mentioned in the past by other users, whenever you introduce a new raid your current raid structure results in guilds being ripped apart as players chop and change trying to find ways to access the new content and rewards.
In the interest of reinforcing the "community" aspect of guilds and reducing the destructive nature of the content you're adding, I'd like to propose one main idea plus a few quality of life improvements:
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Can you please investigate ways in which you may be able to balance content for mixed progress guilds like my own. The best idea I have come up with so far is for you to enable a Master/Padawan raid access system:
Players entering a raid normally would have a "Master" rank. For each "Master" attacking the raid, other guild members would have the option of becoming a disciple of a "Master", enabling them to enter a lower tier of the raid for lower rewards as a "Padawan". There would be a limit of one "Padawan" per "Master".
The damage the "Padawans" dealt in the lower tiers would add to the progress of the primary raid phase % completion but the "Padawan" could never contribute more % damage to phase progress than the Master they are discipled to. This would encourage more "fun" participation in mixed level guilds as weaker roster players would get to attack a raid better matched to their current progress in the game. Their rewards would be worse but they would get to experience the content without having to leave their friends and guildmates to find another guild.
"Padawans" participating in a Heroic raid would need to be banned from refreshing their roster the same as "Masters" to avoid double use of "optimised" teams. eg: You would need to stop "Padawans" from double using their Jedi Training Rey team on a lower tier version of the Heroic Sith raid.
Some people focus on the journey, others only on the destination. What I mean is, some people want to play and experience the raid and feel like they're contributing towards the guild's progress, others are only interested in accruing the final rewards. Any players wanting to actively contribute to the raid completion and to experience the content your teams have crafted could become "Padawans". Any players more interested in leeching rewards off the effort of others could still enter the raid as a "Master" and deal 0 damage the same as the current system and just leech off their guild mates' damage.
The above mechanics should in theory discourage players from trying to exploit the system to complete higher tier raids than the guild is capable of for the following summarised reasons:
1. The "Master" to "Padawan" ratio would max out at 25:25 therefore you would need at least 25 members capable of tackling the primary raid.
2. "Padawans" can't deal more damage per phase than their "Master" counterpart, once again reinforcing the requirement that you would need at least 25 members capable of tackling the raid.
3. The damage limit could be changed to a different percentage if it was found that guilds were exploiting the system. eg: Start the "Padawan" max damage per phase as 100% of their "Masters" damage per phase. Collect data and if you find that guilds are exploiting the system, reduce the limit proportional to your data. You might need limit the "Padawan" damage to 70% or even 50% of the contribution of their "Master" depending upon what your collected data found.
4. "Padawans" would have to accept lower tier rewards therefore only half of the guild maximum would gain a benefit from trying to exploit the system to kill higher tiers.
5. Guilds would still be expending the number of tickets required to raise the "primary" raid but would be getting worse rewards per raid ticket due to the "Padawan" lower reward system.
6. Keeping the Heroic Raid 0 refresh system on "Padawans" would limit the effectiveness of trying to exploit the system to clear Heroic raids.
In addition to the above, I really hope you will also implement the following:
Automatic 0 damage scores for anyone who contributed raid tickets towards starting the raid.
In order to enable this you'd need to check:
1. The last time a raid was started by the guild.
2. The start time of the new raid.
3. If players had accrued any tickets for the guild in the timespan inbetween.
Right now, our guild is having to implement a 24-hour, 0-damage period for the Rancor. Unfortunately when newer and less experienced players join the guild, they have a tendancy to see the raid and just attack it. If we had automatic 0-damage for all ticket-contributing players, we could ditch the 24-hour, 0-damage period and just go for it as soon as the raid gets started. Anyone who didn't contribute any tickets, tough. I've got no sympathy for freeloaders.
If request 2 isn't possible, and even if it is possible, enable a raid "lock". Raids could be set to start in a "locked" no damage state so people can sign up. Officers would then be able to start the raid damage phase or stop it at their discretion. I mean, officers are allowed to abandon raids, why shouldn't they be allowed to lock them down to prevent access?
This game is diverse. There's new and old member p2p and f2p. People will progress faster than others. It's the nature of it. If the lower levelled players aren't pulling their weight or feeling under matched maybe they should find a guild that suits their capabilites
The argument you have provided is the core reason I am proposing this idea. You have just suggested that the guild pull itself apart. Either boot the lower power members for "not holding their weight" and booting players who aren't adhering to the 24hr 0 damage rule which if the raid system was setup better, would not need to exist.
I face the same sorts of issues at work: A large number of people feel that if people are making mistakes, punish them. Instead I believe that improving the infrastructure to prevent the mistake from being able to happen is a better solution.
Also, if you had read the whole post you would have realised I already made suggestions of ways to prevent exploitation through adjusting of the maximum contribution "Padawans" can make. 50% was a possible option depending upon what data CG is able to collect. If that ended up being the case then the 3.1mil GP player would contribute twice the amount that the 1.5mil GP "Padawan" could contribute.
Person 1 attacks the tier 6 and does 10% of phase 1.
Person 2 "disciples" themselves to person 1 and chooses a tier 3 AAT raid.
Example 1: CG decides on a 1:1 ratio.
If the "Padawan" attacks their tier 3 AAT raid and does 5% damage, 5% worth of damage progress would be added to the tier 6 raid. If the Padawan does 10% damage, it's the same as their "Master" therefore it adds 10% progress to the tier 6 raid. If they do 15% damage, only 10% counts towards the tier 6 unless their "Master" does more damage.
Example 2: CG decides on a 50% limit or 2:1 ratio.
If the "Padawan" attacks their tier 3 AAT raid and does 5% damage, 5% worth of damage progress would be added to the tier 6 raid. If the Padawan does 10% damage, due to the 2:1 ratio limit, only 5% worth would count towards the tier 6 raid.
The game already involves high level players carrying low level players. Deciding how you want people to play and then forcing them is illogical and forces people out of the ecosystem. It's more logical and profitable to accommodate as many play styles as possible while making the most profitable for the company play style the most beneficial to the player.
I really like SWGOH but the current implementation of the Sith Triumvirate raid is killing the community. No community, no game.
My guild has been running 0 damage on the Rancor for a long time, but it's a stupid manual process to work around a flawed raid system and wouldn't be required if we had better tools.