I made this account just to say that the ship update is really bad. When you say improve the quality of life, it should mean that it would improve the game, not ruin it for a lot of players.
With a new release, there's always the instant uproar of the community. They have to let it sink in and see what we do with it once we stop grumping about it. There's no point in a knee-**** reaction to appease the community's reaction, as that would do more harm than good in the long run.
I would tend to agree with this point if the whole release package was delivered upfront.
However one major key piece, pve ship tables, aren't there so the perception is based of what has been delivered, not was is being promised.
This skews the whole conversation as CG sees their vision and the complete delivery where as the players only see a portion of it.
With a new release, there's always the instant uproar of the community. They have to let it sink in and see what we do with it once we stop grumping about it. There's no point in a knee-**** reaction to appease the community's reaction, as that would do more harm than good in the long run.
I like how @CG_Carrie gets straight to the point thanks for the update! It's good to know what's going on.
I agree, however the feedback on 2.0 in particular is less "we don't like this because it's different" and more "you've made a bad situation worse".
Granted, based on what CG says they intend to do it MIGHT get better as more stuff is rolled out. However, NO ONE outside of CG knows what the Hell any of that unreleased content is so we're going off of hearsay, guesswork, and subtle hinting from CG. Didn't work out well for the initial 2.0 rollout, won't work any better once more completely non-communicated change comes through.
Straightforward communication this isn't. CG is playing things close to the vest for some reason, and the general perception is because they KNOW the players won't particularly like what comes next. Either @CG_Carrie actually needs to level with the community, or drop the pretense that the new "open" communication strategy will actually be implemented.
So far all I hear is a lot of "we can't talk about specifics" and sending the actual communication guy out of the office in a furor...
I feel like I'm on repeat... all of us...
1st - a 10 second reduction over all battles (when the timer was reduced by 2.5 minutes) is not a healthy indicator. Like, you upended ships for a 10 second reduction?
2nd - as was mentioned, people were holding on for another 2.5 minutes (ish) in ships 1.0 - clearly they can't wait that long now. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This. This is why we know you don't actually play your own game.
Oh, no, I know you go on, and you run a few battles with different comps, etc, but you don't play it like we do. You are not getting the same experience. And it shows with responses like this.
3rd - Still no response on the RNG fest?
Well... I guess we'll have to wait for the "entire picture" of what ships will look like. Let me guess though, smaller, faster, 3vs 3 ... uh...
Thank you CG_Carrie for responding. I look forward to the upcoming improvements. In particular, the daily challenges issue for lower level players was a necessary fix.
I just want to say that I am surprised with people with type statements, when it was ship 1.0 I was in 100th place, and now when it is 2.0 I'm in 1st place. And what? I'm in the first place then, and the conclusion of this? Is it supposed to be on the principle that we sacrifice a thousand people to make 1 happy?
It is typical to draw money, the tactics are similar, the strengths are the same: Tie, biggs, Vader. Once it is so that I beat the same opponent quickly, and others that I can not win 5 times in a row. Where's the tactic here?
On the whole ship fighting times have reduced by upwards of 10 seconds across all segments, there are significantly more people engaging in battles, and a number of other metrics we consider healthy.
nuff said statistics > complaints - leef, 2016
Nah, you know folks will just claim that the statistics are made up if they contradict what they feel. Complainers hate facts.
To be blunt, I adapted to the changes after experimenting. I paid attention to the reinforcement abilities and adjusted to maximize them. Vader is no longer in the initial wave because he wreaks far more havoc when brought in (same with Reaper to a lesser degree). Boba is now in the starting lineup because it forces opponents to address him early. I do not retain my final placing through 24 hours, but I win FAR more than I lose.
This cuts to the heart of the biggest problem with 2.0: Players' unwillingness to accept it. I hated 2.0 the day it finally released, go back and look at my first few posts, but over a week later I've come to really enjoy it and look forward to more stuff to do. I had to change my entire lineup because the capital ship I invested heavily in (Endurance) is complete and total garbage now, but I adapted and genuinely like fleet battles now.
I'm suffering in rank because my other admirals are g8, but that's something that will get better over time.
@CG_Carrie might be prudent to point out that those battle timers can easily be skewed by two factors.
1. Old ship fights lasted 7 minutes and during payout you have cross locking which will always run full battle time duration.
2.Unless you are taking out all fights 10 (give or take) minutes before payouts which last max fight time your numbers will be incorrect.
You're forgetting a third factor, though: Players who retreated or force-quit the ap as soon as possible. For every player who waited out a full 7 minute timer to maintain rank at payout, there are more than one who only "played" for a handful of seconds.
To be fair, though, both extremes are probably noted someplace, but have their times factored out of the final equation when it comes to average battle length.
If part of the goal is to have varied fleets, then the ability to change up a fleet must be facilitated.
From my perspective, the limiting factors to changing up my fleet is the need to farm, level, and gear an entirely new set of pilots.
To be fair, I had most every ship at 7 stars and level 85. The exceptions are Episode 7 Millenium Falcon, and Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle. They've been joined by Lando's Millenium Falcon.
But pilots are so much more difficult to level and gear. If you want to encourage us to try out new pilots, we will need more ways to gear them up than are available. Getting stuck for multiple weeks farming one salvage because drop rates are bad and the shard shop refuses to have it means that advancement toward that goal is glacial.
And, from where I sit, the solution shouldn't be to spend money/crystals. We have several stagnant shops. We have resource piling up that aren't useful for this goal. Give us a way to tap into those resources to get these new pilots geared. As it stands, I don't use anyone who wasn't in my fleet before simply because gearing is so difficult.
I don't want to undervalue player experience and feedback - that is 100% something we factor into all the decisions we make. But it isn't the complete picture. On the whole ship fighting times have reduced by upwards of 10 seconds across all segments, there are significantly more people engaging in battles, and a number of other metrics we consider healthy.
However, I want to caveat this heavily, that doesn't mean everything is hunky dory OR that the things that we're seeing is indicative of your experience, it just means we need more time and to validate some more things. We also want to see how behavior changes after the release of the table, and once people can upgrade more ships - the likelihood that the meta will start to shift. Ultimately, we want to see a lively and interesting daily ship meta. If we don't see interesting play developing, we will re-evaluate.
-Carrie
Hi @CG_Carrie !
First, thank you for wading into this discussion finally.
As others have mentioned, when many people play to lock at payout when the battle timer was 7 minutes and now only 5 - shaving the timer by 2 whole minutes and only seeing -:10 is statistically insignificant and kind of a fail. Personally, my battles times have increased by around :60 on average. Also - across all segments??? So Fleet arena and... TB where there's only 1 round now instead of 3? The 1 TW since where a great many guilds don't even get to ships? In daily/Capitol ship challenges where almost every lvl 85 player autos them to begin with?
When you say significantly more people are engaging in battles... Can you be more specific about this? My feeling (after talking to shard and guild mates) is you are seeing total number of battles increasing across the player base because we're buying more refreshes in attempts to rank higher - but that's not the same thing as more PEOPLE engaging. I've really tried with this update. Whereas in ships 1.0, I could typically get to first at payout with only 3 battles in a day, I'm losing so often now that (in the first week... I've cared much less this past week) I've had to buy a refresh several times and still struggle to get to 1 with 8+ battles in a day - not with being knocked back beyond 20... but losing rng fests. For troll reference... ALL of my ships are 7* lvl 85 and many g11+ pilots with zetas - in other words, plenty of juice to explore options beyond 1.0's meta and field strong ships (my current lineup is over 380K and doesn't include many of my top "power" ships - top by power would put my lineup over 400K).
Can you talk about what those other metrics are? I'm honestly just curious.
So what I'm getting from "once people can upgrade more ships" is... You have no plans to tweak ships any time soon. Specifically, not for more than another month after ships pve table is introduced. That's disappointing frankly. I think many of the issues we're having (rng factoring too much, lack of variety) is a relatively simple fix: go back to 5 ships in your starting lineup.
Finally... and this is a legit question: What would you consider "interesting play" in regards to ships? There's been the stated goals for the ships 2.0 changes... but I have a feeling you mean something else here and I'm genuinely curious.
Just variety in the starting lineups or something more?
If part of the goal is to have varied fleets, then the ability to change up a fleet must be facilitated.
From my perspective, the limiting factors to changing up my fleet is the need to farm, level, and gear an entirely new set of pilots.
To be fair, I had most every ship at 7 stars and level 85. The exceptions are Episode 7 Millenium Falcon, and Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle. They've been joined by Lando's Millenium Falcon.
But pilots are so much more difficult to level and gear. If you want to encourage us to try out new pilots, we will need more ways to gear them up than are available. Getting stuck for multiple weeks farming one salvage because drop rates are bad and the shard shop refuses to have it means that advancement toward that goal is glacial.
And, from where I sit, the solution shouldn't be to spend money/crystals. We have several stagnant shops. We have resource piling up that aren't useful for this goal. Give us a way to tap into those resources to get these new pilots geared. As it stands, I don't use anyone who wasn't in my fleet before simply because gearing is so difficult.
Do it better.
I don't believe that pilots are any more difficult to gear than any other character.
The difference is, you need to basically gear, level, skill increase, and mod pilots in addition to leveling a ship and increasing its skills.
I agree with you on gear is too slow (as are credits really unless you're maxed out.) And I agree with you the solution isn't more crystal spend.
Another method would be to remove pilots out of the equation completely and have just "ships". Increase the number of ships available, etc. (A-wing, B-wing, etc from every era.)
I'm sure others have suggested this in the past.
But, some of those pilots are only geared and used because they are pilots, not because they're useful. As long as the quantity of ships to level/skill up replaces the pilots it shouldn't be a revenue loss.
Progression cadence is slow for revenue reasons, but I think the balance is off. Quite honestly, the cadence should be that any player can max out all characters available (excluding specialty farms [wampa, etc]/raid only/legendary) in 2 years. That could viable increase player base (not that it's probably hurting too bad.) As I've mentioned before, if I wasn't a star wars fan the slowness would've turned me off and deleted the game long ago.
Whales who want to short cut that, they're going to spend the money. They already have blocks in place to prevent free to play from gaining a character too quickly. For example, right now, it's 4-6ish weeks before farmable. They could change that to 12 weeks so there's still benefit for whales.
If part of the goal is to have varied fleets, then the ability to change up a fleet must be facilitated.
From my perspective, the limiting factors to changing up my fleet is the need to farm, level, and gear an entirely new set of pilots.
To be fair, I had most every ship at 7 stars and level 85. The exceptions are Episode 7 Millenium Falcon, and Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle. They've been joined by Lando's Millenium Falcon.
But pilots are so much more difficult to level and gear. If you want to encourage us to try out new pilots, we will need more ways to gear them up than are available. Getting stuck for multiple weeks farming one salvage because drop rates are bad and the shard shop refuses to have it means that advancement toward that goal is glacial.
And, from where I sit, the solution shouldn't be to spend money/crystals. We have several stagnant shops. We have resource piling up that aren't useful for this goal. Give us a way to tap into those resources to get these new pilots geared. As it stands, I don't use anyone who wasn't in my fleet before simply because gearing is so difficult.
Do it better.
But, some of those pilots are only geared and used because they are pilots, not because they're useful. As long as the quantity of ships to level/skill up replaces the pilots it shouldn't be a revenue loss.
I believe that's what Wycross meant. A lot of the pilots have some limited utility elsewhere, but many of them are geared for no other purpose than for fleet, which just adds 3-5 toons to gear up on top of any other toons that need to be geared for other aspects of the game.
This then either puts players into a forced choice to concentrate on a SINGLE aspect of the game for weeks at a time until the toons associated are geared, or a vastly slower progression all around. Spends provide a shortcut, which is the intent, however I think CG has verged more into "pay to win" territory (which is EA's MO).
Then CG comes in and completely undercuts player time, effort, AND spends by doing things like 2.0, or outright nerfing. Sometimes both.
If spending time and money in the game only leads to temporary improvements, what motivation to players with limits on both have to spend either?
RNG and time-of-battle issues aside, there's another aspect of Ships 2.0 that is quite concerning - both in the short term and the long term if this becomes the MO moving forward.
The nerf of several hard to farm ships is much worse than simply nerfing a single character. People were up in arms when Barris was nerfed (both times, for you "old school" players). Players lost their minds when certain zet abilities were either "fixed" or "reworded to match their functionality" - but nerfing ships is far more disconcerting for players for a few reasons:
1) Multiple ships were nerfed (both actively and "passively").
2) A nerfed ship, in effect, nerfs not only the ship, but the pilots who were geared to pilot that ship - sometimes 2 or even 3. That makes nerfing a ship 3 to 4 times worse - at least as far as fleet is concerned.
3) Making other, less utilized ships suddenly more "necessary" or better means gearing and leveling not just a ship, but the requisite pilots as well (i.e. the inverse of point 2). Meaning it will take 2-3 times longer to bring a ship up to max levels compared to a character.
4) This all is exacerbated by the gear crunch. Pilots need gear. Sometimes 2-3 pilots for a single ship. This just makes the shortage of gear all that much worse.
5) The bigger concern is whether or not this intentional "meta-flipping" through direct manipulation is going to keep occurring, as it basically nullifies months of time and resources and intentionally forces players to re-invest in a game area they had already invested in.
Honestly, I completely understand the need for game balance and reworking aspects of a game that don't "work". But Ships 2.0 didn't do any of that. It simply manipulated the meta. Most players (at least the many I am in contact with via guild chat, shard chat, fleet chat, etc.) don't seem to enjoy Ships 2.0 more - most, far less. Fleet is not suddenly balanced (many rightly argue that Vader and Biggs are more important/powerful now than they were.) Which ships are OP and which ones are useless simply shifted.
I also understand the need for a business model that brings in income. But making players buy again what they have in effect already paid for is generally not a way to do so and keep your playerbase happy. Telling people "Thank for spending time/resources on Tie Reaper/DT/Shore or ITF/TFP - now they are useless....do it again, this time for Geonosians" is not exactly filling whales, dolphins and even minnows with confidence regarding the soundness of future investments.
In game name: Lucas Gregory FORMER PLAYER - - - -"Whale blah grump poooop." - Ouchie
In game guild: TNR Uprising I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
*This space left intentionally blank*
Just to illustrate my point about gearing pilots a little better, let me try this situation.
In Ships 1.0, I geared up Biggs, TFP, FOTFP, Vader, Shore Trooper, and Death Trooper so that my opening lineup would be set for Fleet Arena, This process took many months altogether.
In Ships 2.0, if I want to switch to try out new ships, I would need to star, level and gear, from scratch, Geonosian Spy, Soldier, Sun Fac, Gar Saxon, Imperial Super Commando, Kylo Ren Unmasked, FOSFTFP, FOST, Phasma, and more. That's another multiple month or year-long investment at the current rate of gear acquisition. It's daunting and frustrating.
So I'm stuck investing on the characters that are already there, like most other people. The current fleet arena seems to bear this out with Chimaera leading Vader, TFP, and Biggs all over the place.
If the goal was to get me to try out other teams, make it easier and faster to get them online.
The game is demanding more and more teams be geared for various aspects. Often times these teams are useful only in the one aspect: TW, Raids, Arena, Fleet, TB. It's difficult to know what to invest in, especially since the payoff often comes MONTHS after the investment begins.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to get a First Order Team ready. Most of that time was trying to star up FOST. He's still not geared because the barrier to it is so high that I couldn't devote resources to it or more vital areas would suffer.
We are in an age where anything less than G12 feels ineffective. Your opposition certain seems to demand G12 in order not to get steamrolled out of the gate. In a TW a few back, I threw in an undergeared fleet to try and chip away at a particular team. I never took a single turn before my entire starting fleet was dead. More fool I.
Since it's go big or go home, maybe it should be easier to get big. There SHOULD be a catch up. G11->g12 should still be there, certainly, but G8->G9 shouldn't be such a stumbling block. It is, though.
Carrie has often likened the game to a MMO. I have played WoW for 14 years. When Tier X comes out, Wow puts in shortcuts to Tier X - 1. GoH doesn't have those. Because, through a flaw in design, G9-G12 all need the same gear for some reason. Once you hit G12, it's better with the pieces only being used there. But Tiering up grom G9 to G10 and needing the same 100 stun guns again is a blow to morale that is difficult to overcome once, let alone 100+ times for every character.
@cg_carrie what happens if you take out all battles in the old format that lasted over 7 mins and did a similar thing where any battle over 4 mins 15 secs?
I would venture to guess you would see an aggregate increase of about 20-35 secs. Any numbers without relevance can state whatever you want them to. But hey transparency won't ever be your thing and since the rewards "improvement" that was a nerf you need to provide evidence to support your claims please.
@CG_Carrie I know you have probably read this a thousand times, but the freakin’ RNG element in the ship arena is really messed up. In ships 1.0 I would easily finish in first place. I have all ships lvl 85, 7* etc. I have the strongest fleet in my shard.
Now I still have the strongest fleet in my shard. I have the fastest ships (Chimaera speed at 152). Still I loose countless battles on the extraordinary TM gain of far lesser fleets. I do NOT attack ITF until the end, neither directly nor aoe. There’s no other reason for me to loose on TM than rng. I have had matches, where the defense capital shop had 2 turns before Mine even had its first turn. How messed up is that algorithm??
You are by no means motivating anyone to invest in ships nor pilots when battles are based on pure rng luck. Rather your are de-motivating players immensely who have already invested immensely in having the strongest fleet.
What do you think would happen if you messed up the arena the same way?
We have also heard your feedback that the Level 60 Ship Challenges are too difficult. We are making these significantly easier in today’s update and the first challenge tier should be completable by players who reached this tier recently. This should also make the daily activity to complete this challenge more achievable.
Although this is a step in the right direction, it seems you haven't heard our feedback that the executrix challenge tier 4 especially is way too difficult.
It is designed for players in their early stages still, with 4* ships lvl 75 required.
But it just isn't manageable with those.
Some people say that the next tier is doable but they already have won their tier 4 before.
Without 5* executrix we cannot get ship materials tier 3, and therefore we can't upgrade the ships beyond a certain point.
So we need way better ships to go through tier 4 but we can't upgrade skills anymore.
Is it intended that we have to get like 7* ships and maxed out 7* pilots to pass that challenge?
I mean considering the requirements and the idea that this is still a tier for newer players.
So I often fight exact mirror teams that are within 5k power. The Team Make up is Chimera, Biggs, TFP and Tie Advanced, with Slave1 then Scimitar as replacements. Yes we are all gear 12 to 12.5.
I never shoot the Tie fighter so he doesn't dodge to give AI Chimaera TM. In the first round my Chimera can win the coin flip and go before the AI some times or right after. So how does he get his ultimate off 2 rounds before mine is ready? What is the AI doing to reduce CD of that ability? I have to be missing something or the AI is cheating, anyone else have this issue?
So I often fight exact mirror teams that are within 5k power. The Team Make up is Chimera, Biggs, TFP and Tie Advanced, with Slave1 then Scimitar as replacements. Yes we are all gear 12 to 12.5.
I never shoot the Tie fighter so he doesn't dodge to give AI Chimaera TM. In the first round my Chimera can win the coin flip and go before the AI some times or right after. So how does he get his ultimate off 2 rounds before mine is ready? What is the AI doing to reduce CD of that ability? I have to be missing something or the AI is cheating, anyone else have this issue?
No you are not alone. I had my opponent use their Chimera ultimate today, and then when it was my ship's turn, I still had 1 CD ... so it wasn't just that their ship was faster, it was more than a full turn ahead (which is not possible, since we were both going turn-for-turn reinforcements, other abilities, etc) So I was to wait an additional turn before I could use my ultimate. Something is not right with that, but it needs to be reported properly (if it hasn't been already) rather than mentioned here
So I often fight exact mirror teams that are within 5k power. The Team Make up is Chimera, Biggs, TFP and Tie Advanced, with Slave1 then Scimitar as replacements. Yes we are all gear 12 to 12.5.
I never shoot the Tie fighter so he doesn't dodge to give AI Chimaera TM. In the first round my Chimera can win the coin flip and go before the AI some times or right after. So how does he get his ultimate off 2 rounds before mine is ready? What is the AI doing to reduce CD of that ability? I have to be missing something or the AI is cheating, anyone else have this issue?
No you are not alone. I had my opponent use their Chimera ultimate today, and then when it was my ship's turn, I still had 1 CD ... so it wasn't just that their ship was faster, it was more than a full turn ahead (which is not possible, since we were both going turn-for-turn reinforcements, other abilities, etc) So I was to wait an additional turn before I could use my ultimate. Something is not right with that, but it needs to be reported properly (if it hasn't been already) rather than mentioned here
I see, so if you loose the coin flip at the beginning of the battle with a Chimera that is also the same speed you might as well retreat, because you will get annihilated first. This is great news I will be able to finish 50% of my battles 2-3 minutes faster now, GOOD GAME!
So I often fight exact mirror teams that are within 5k power. The Team Make up is Chimera, Biggs, TFP and Tie Advanced, with Slave1 then Scimitar as replacements. Yes we are all gear 12 to 12.5.
I never shoot the Tie fighter so he doesn't dodge to give AI Chimaera TM. In the first round my Chimera can win the coin flip and go before the AI some times or right after. So how does he get his ultimate off 2 rounds before mine is ready? What is the AI doing to reduce CD of that ability? I have to be missing something or the AI is cheating, anyone else have this issue?
No you are not alone. I had my opponent use their Chimera ultimate today, and then when it was my ship's turn, I still had 1 CD ... so it wasn't just that their ship was faster, it was more than a full turn ahead (which is not possible, since we were both going turn-for-turn reinforcements, other abilities, etc) So I was to wait an additional turn before I could use my ultimate. Something is not right with that, but it needs to be reported properly (if it hasn't been already) rather than mentioned here
When they use their strategic dominance it increases the cooldown of yours. Its WAI.
The coin flip and RNG fest to use it first however is awful.
I see, so if you loose the coin flip at the beginning of the battle with a Chimera that is also the same speed you might as well retreat, because you will get annihilated first. This is great news I will be able to finish 50% of my battles 2-3 minutes faster now, GOOD GAME!
Yup. I use Chimaera vs Tarkin and Tarkin vs Chimaera.
I never go Chimaera vs Chimaera or Tarkin vs Tarkin.
First time I've ever lost the LS TB P5 ships mission. Thanks ships 2.0!
Was it really your intention to make something to heavily RNG dependent all or nothing rewards?
I went in with g12 biggs, g11 wedge, and g8 ghost. Ghost is dead before I even get to take a turn. Try to use the special ability on the tie and it resists... no chance of recovery after that.... 0 points.
It was bad enough that ships 2.0 has made ship arena incredibly frustrating. Now it's ruining another part of the game I really liked.
We overhauled your car
Here's a part of your car, yeah it's terrible now, but sometime in the future you get the rest and it will be great
LOL No no no. It's like this: "Your car did not need to be fixed, but we took it apart and fixed it anyway."
Or here's one even better: You go to the shop (if you are not a do-it-yourselfer) and the mechanic says: "Well, we rotated your tires, changed the oil, and checked the transmission. Oh! We also rebuilt your radiator that did not need it, and we fixed the struts and tierods which did not need to be fixed. Your total bill: $2500."
I feel that ships have greatly improved, but everyone is complaining because their Tie advanced, biggs, Chimaera is so RNG...well develop something else. Everyone just tried to upgrade the units they already had maxed gear wise, try some of the other ships you had not focused on and you will find variety.
PS: Majority of my battles last 1 to 2 minutes, just gotta find the right team.
WTH! I. Can't. Win. One. Battle. Only way I win is if I drop a couple ranks, and then try and "gun" for the lower squads of Slave 1, Biggs, and Plo with Wedge, Poe, Ahsoka, and JC in reserve. Paired mostly with GMT or Adm Ackbar.
I feel that ships have greatly improved, but everyone is complaining because their Tie advanced, biggs, Chimaera is so RNG...well develop something else. Everyone just tried to upgrade the units they already had maxed gear wise, try some of the other ships you had not focused on and you will find variety.
PS: Majority of my battles last 1 to 2 minutes, just gotta find the right team.
WTH! I. Can't. Win. One. Battle. Only way I win is if I drop a couple ranks, and then try and "gun" for the lower squads of Slave 1, Biggs, and Plo with Wedge, Poe, Ahsoka, and JC in reserve. Paired mostly with GMT or Adm Ackbar.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a completely different experience. Currently ranked at 19th for the evening and my daily fluctuation goes anywhere from 8th to 30's. Fights are fast and it's rare that I lose more than one battle a day. I never cancel out of a battle and have pulled off some surprising/close wins at the end of matches that didn't look good early. I don't play the odd reindeer games that I've seen referred to in this thread -- like waiting for the timer to wind down before taking a final kill-shot, etc. Don't have that kind of extra time on my hands.
For the record, Tarkin is also the most powerful toon in my roster -- heavily speed-oriented potency mods and one Zeta short of being maxed out completely. Starting lineup (Boba/Biggs/Sun Fac) is a modification of my previous 5-ship lineup (Biggs/Sun Fac/Vader/Reaper/Cassian) with Reaper, Vader, and Consulate waiting in the reinforcement ranks. 90% of the time, I call in Vader on the first reinforcement wave to eliminate their taunting Biggs, then Reaper to debuff their typical Boba call-in and start removing TM from their capital ship with each kill.
I can't relate to those upset about not being able to get to #1 in three fights every day. I've never been that guy. I've always had to work to climb and retain and I thought that was half the fun? Sorry that you top-5 folks can no longer sit like Jabba owning the world with a hookah in your hand.
Replies
I would tend to agree with this point if the whole release package was delivered upfront.
However one major key piece, pve ship tables, aren't there so the perception is based of what has been delivered, not was is being promised.
This skews the whole conversation as CG sees their vision and the complete delivery where as the players only see a portion of it.
I agree, however the feedback on 2.0 in particular is less "we don't like this because it's different" and more "you've made a bad situation worse".
Granted, based on what CG says they intend to do it MIGHT get better as more stuff is rolled out. However, NO ONE outside of CG knows what the Hell any of that unreleased content is so we're going off of hearsay, guesswork, and subtle hinting from CG. Didn't work out well for the initial 2.0 rollout, won't work any better once more completely non-communicated change comes through.
Straightforward communication this isn't. CG is playing things close to the vest for some reason, and the general perception is because they KNOW the players won't particularly like what comes next. Either @CG_Carrie actually needs to level with the community, or drop the pretense that the new "open" communication strategy will actually be implemented.
So far all I hear is a lot of "we can't talk about specifics" and sending the actual communication guy out of the office in a furor...
1st - a 10 second reduction over all battles (when the timer was reduced by 2.5 minutes) is not a healthy indicator. Like, you upended ships for a 10 second reduction?
2nd - as was mentioned, people were holding on for another 2.5 minutes (ish) in ships 1.0 - clearly they can't wait that long now.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This. This is why we know you don't actually play your own game.
Oh, no, I know you go on, and you run a few battles with different comps, etc, but you don't play it like we do. You are not getting the same experience. And it shows with responses like this.
3rd - Still no response on the RNG fest?
Well... I guess we'll have to wait for the "entire picture" of what ships will look like. Let me guess though, smaller, faster, 3vs 3 ... uh...
It is typical to draw money, the tactics are similar, the strengths are the same: Tie, biggs, Vader. Once it is so that I beat the same opponent quickly, and others that I can not win 5 times in a row. Where's the tactic here?
Nah, you know folks will just claim that the statistics are made up if they contradict what they feel. Complainers hate facts.
This cuts to the heart of the biggest problem with 2.0: Players' unwillingness to accept it. I hated 2.0 the day it finally released, go back and look at my first few posts, but over a week later I've come to really enjoy it and look forward to more stuff to do. I had to change my entire lineup because the capital ship I invested heavily in (Endurance) is complete and total garbage now, but I adapted and genuinely like fleet battles now.
I'm suffering in rank because my other admirals are g8, but that's something that will get better over time.
You're forgetting a third factor, though: Players who retreated or force-quit the ap as soon as possible. For every player who waited out a full 7 minute timer to maintain rank at payout, there are more than one who only "played" for a handful of seconds.
To be fair, though, both extremes are probably noted someplace, but have their times factored out of the final equation when it comes to average battle length.
From my perspective, the limiting factors to changing up my fleet is the need to farm, level, and gear an entirely new set of pilots.
To be fair, I had most every ship at 7 stars and level 85. The exceptions are Episode 7 Millenium Falcon, and Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle. They've been joined by Lando's Millenium Falcon.
But pilots are so much more difficult to level and gear. If you want to encourage us to try out new pilots, we will need more ways to gear them up than are available. Getting stuck for multiple weeks farming one salvage because drop rates are bad and the shard shop refuses to have it means that advancement toward that goal is glacial.
And, from where I sit, the solution shouldn't be to spend money/crystals. We have several stagnant shops. We have resource piling up that aren't useful for this goal. Give us a way to tap into those resources to get these new pilots geared. As it stands, I don't use anyone who wasn't in my fleet before simply because gearing is so difficult.
Do it better.
Hi @CG_Carrie !
First, thank you for wading into this discussion finally.
As others have mentioned, when many people play to lock at payout when the battle timer was 7 minutes and now only 5 - shaving the timer by 2 whole minutes and only seeing -:10 is statistically insignificant and kind of a fail. Personally, my battles times have increased by around :60 on average. Also - across all segments??? So Fleet arena and... TB where there's only 1 round now instead of 3? The 1 TW since where a great many guilds don't even get to ships? In daily/Capitol ship challenges where almost every lvl 85 player autos them to begin with?
When you say significantly more people are engaging in battles... Can you be more specific about this? My feeling (after talking to shard and guild mates) is you are seeing total number of battles increasing across the player base because we're buying more refreshes in attempts to rank higher - but that's not the same thing as more PEOPLE engaging. I've really tried with this update. Whereas in ships 1.0, I could typically get to first at payout with only 3 battles in a day, I'm losing so often now that (in the first week... I've cared much less this past week) I've had to buy a refresh several times and still struggle to get to 1 with 8+ battles in a day - not with being knocked back beyond 20... but losing rng fests. For troll reference... ALL of my ships are 7* lvl 85 and many g11+ pilots with zetas - in other words, plenty of juice to explore options beyond 1.0's meta and field strong ships (my current lineup is over 380K and doesn't include many of my top "power" ships - top by power would put my lineup over 400K).
Can you talk about what those other metrics are? I'm honestly just curious.
So what I'm getting from "once people can upgrade more ships" is... You have no plans to tweak ships any time soon. Specifically, not for more than another month after ships pve table is introduced. That's disappointing frankly. I think many of the issues we're having (rng factoring too much, lack of variety) is a relatively simple fix: go back to 5 ships in your starting lineup.
Finally... and this is a legit question: What would you consider "interesting play" in regards to ships? There's been the stated goals for the ships 2.0 changes... but I have a feeling you mean something else here and I'm genuinely curious.
Just variety in the starting lineups or something more?
I don't believe that pilots are any more difficult to gear than any other character.
The difference is, you need to basically gear, level, skill increase, and mod pilots in addition to leveling a ship and increasing its skills.
I agree with you on gear is too slow (as are credits really unless you're maxed out.) And I agree with you the solution isn't more crystal spend.
Another method would be to remove pilots out of the equation completely and have just "ships". Increase the number of ships available, etc. (A-wing, B-wing, etc from every era.)
I'm sure others have suggested this in the past.
But, some of those pilots are only geared and used because they are pilots, not because they're useful. As long as the quantity of ships to level/skill up replaces the pilots it shouldn't be a revenue loss.
Progression cadence is slow for revenue reasons, but I think the balance is off. Quite honestly, the cadence should be that any player can max out all characters available (excluding specialty farms [wampa, etc]/raid only/legendary) in 2 years. That could viable increase player base (not that it's probably hurting too bad.) As I've mentioned before, if I wasn't a star wars fan the slowness would've turned me off and deleted the game long ago.
Whales who want to short cut that, they're going to spend the money. They already have blocks in place to prevent free to play from gaining a character too quickly. For example, right now, it's 4-6ish weeks before farmable. They could change that to 12 weeks so there's still benefit for whales.
I believe that's what Wycross meant. A lot of the pilots have some limited utility elsewhere, but many of them are geared for no other purpose than for fleet, which just adds 3-5 toons to gear up on top of any other toons that need to be geared for other aspects of the game.
This then either puts players into a forced choice to concentrate on a SINGLE aspect of the game for weeks at a time until the toons associated are geared, or a vastly slower progression all around. Spends provide a shortcut, which is the intent, however I think CG has verged more into "pay to win" territory (which is EA's MO).
Then CG comes in and completely undercuts player time, effort, AND spends by doing things like 2.0, or outright nerfing. Sometimes both.
If spending time and money in the game only leads to temporary improvements, what motivation to players with limits on both have to spend either?
The nerf of several hard to farm ships is much worse than simply nerfing a single character. People were up in arms when Barris was nerfed (both times, for you "old school" players). Players lost their minds when certain zet abilities were either "fixed" or "reworded to match their functionality" - but nerfing ships is far more disconcerting for players for a few reasons:
1) Multiple ships were nerfed (both actively and "passively").
2) A nerfed ship, in effect, nerfs not only the ship, but the pilots who were geared to pilot that ship - sometimes 2 or even 3. That makes nerfing a ship 3 to 4 times worse - at least as far as fleet is concerned.
3) Making other, less utilized ships suddenly more "necessary" or better means gearing and leveling not just a ship, but the requisite pilots as well (i.e. the inverse of point 2). Meaning it will take 2-3 times longer to bring a ship up to max levels compared to a character.
4) This all is exacerbated by the gear crunch. Pilots need gear. Sometimes 2-3 pilots for a single ship. This just makes the shortage of gear all that much worse.
5) The bigger concern is whether or not this intentional "meta-flipping" through direct manipulation is going to keep occurring, as it basically nullifies months of time and resources and intentionally forces players to re-invest in a game area they had already invested in.
Honestly, I completely understand the need for game balance and reworking aspects of a game that don't "work". But Ships 2.0 didn't do any of that. It simply manipulated the meta. Most players (at least the many I am in contact with via guild chat, shard chat, fleet chat, etc.) don't seem to enjoy Ships 2.0 more - most, far less. Fleet is not suddenly balanced (many rightly argue that Vader and Biggs are more important/powerful now than they were.) Which ships are OP and which ones are useless simply shifted.
I also understand the need for a business model that brings in income. But making players buy again what they have in effect already paid for is generally not a way to do so and keep your playerbase happy. Telling people "Thank for spending time/resources on Tie Reaper/DT/Shore or ITF/TFP - now they are useless....do it again, this time for Geonosians" is not exactly filling whales, dolphins and even minnows with confidence regarding the soundness of future investments.
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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In Ships 1.0, I geared up Biggs, TFP, FOTFP, Vader, Shore Trooper, and Death Trooper so that my opening lineup would be set for Fleet Arena, This process took many months altogether.
In Ships 2.0, if I want to switch to try out new ships, I would need to star, level and gear, from scratch, Geonosian Spy, Soldier, Sun Fac, Gar Saxon, Imperial Super Commando, Kylo Ren Unmasked, FOSFTFP, FOST, Phasma, and more. That's another multiple month or year-long investment at the current rate of gear acquisition. It's daunting and frustrating.
So I'm stuck investing on the characters that are already there, like most other people. The current fleet arena seems to bear this out with Chimaera leading Vader, TFP, and Biggs all over the place.
If the goal was to get me to try out other teams, make it easier and faster to get them online.
The game is demanding more and more teams be geared for various aspects. Often times these teams are useful only in the one aspect: TW, Raids, Arena, Fleet, TB. It's difficult to know what to invest in, especially since the payoff often comes MONTHS after the investment begins.
I spent a lot of time last year trying to get a First Order Team ready. Most of that time was trying to star up FOST. He's still not geared because the barrier to it is so high that I couldn't devote resources to it or more vital areas would suffer.
We are in an age where anything less than G12 feels ineffective. Your opposition certain seems to demand G12 in order not to get steamrolled out of the gate. In a TW a few back, I threw in an undergeared fleet to try and chip away at a particular team. I never took a single turn before my entire starting fleet was dead. More fool I.
Since it's go big or go home, maybe it should be easier to get big. There SHOULD be a catch up. G11->g12 should still be there, certainly, but G8->G9 shouldn't be such a stumbling block. It is, though.
Carrie has often likened the game to a MMO. I have played WoW for 14 years. When Tier X comes out, Wow puts in shortcuts to Tier X - 1. GoH doesn't have those. Because, through a flaw in design, G9-G12 all need the same gear for some reason. Once you hit G12, it's better with the pieces only being used there. But Tiering up grom G9 to G10 and needing the same 100 stun guns again is a blow to morale that is difficult to overcome once, let alone 100+ times for every character.
Do it better.
I would venture to guess you would see an aggregate increase of about 20-35 secs. Any numbers without relevance can state whatever you want them to. But hey transparency won't ever be your thing and since the rewards "improvement" that was a nerf you need to provide evidence to support your claims please.
Now I still have the strongest fleet in my shard. I have the fastest ships (Chimaera speed at 152). Still I loose countless battles on the extraordinary TM gain of far lesser fleets. I do NOT attack ITF until the end, neither directly nor aoe. There’s no other reason for me to loose on TM than rng. I have had matches, where the defense capital shop had 2 turns before Mine even had its first turn. How messed up is that algorithm??
You are by no means motivating anyone to invest in ships nor pilots when battles are based on pure rng luck. Rather your are de-motivating players immensely who have already invested immensely in having the strongest fleet.
What do you think would happen if you messed up the arena the same way?
Although this is a step in the right direction, it seems you haven't heard our feedback that the executrix challenge tier 4 especially is way too difficult.
It is designed for players in their early stages still, with 4* ships lvl 75 required.
But it just isn't manageable with those.
Some people say that the next tier is doable but they already have won their tier 4 before.
Without 5* executrix we cannot get ship materials tier 3, and therefore we can't upgrade the ships beyond a certain point.
So we need way better ships to go through tier 4 but we can't upgrade skills anymore.
Is it intended that we have to get like 7* ships and maxed out 7* pilots to pass that challenge?
I mean considering the requirements and the idea that this is still a tier for newer players.
I never shoot the Tie fighter so he doesn't dodge to give AI Chimaera TM. In the first round my Chimera can win the coin flip and go before the AI some times or right after. So how does he get his ultimate off 2 rounds before mine is ready? What is the AI doing to reduce CD of that ability? I have to be missing something or the AI is cheating, anyone else have this issue?
No you are not alone. I had my opponent use their Chimera ultimate today, and then when it was my ship's turn, I still had 1 CD ... so it wasn't just that their ship was faster, it was more than a full turn ahead (which is not possible, since we were both going turn-for-turn reinforcements, other abilities, etc) So I was to wait an additional turn before I could use my ultimate. Something is not right with that, but it needs to be reported properly (if it hasn't been already) rather than mentioned here
All stronger players have that issue including myself.
It's supposed to do that
When they use their strategic dominance it increases the cooldown of yours. Its WAI.
The coin flip and RNG fest to use it first however is awful.
Yup. I use Chimaera vs Tarkin and Tarkin vs Chimaera.
I never go Chimaera vs Chimaera or Tarkin vs Tarkin.
Was it really your intention to make something to heavily RNG dependent all or nothing rewards?
I went in with g12 biggs, g11 wedge, and g8 ghost. Ghost is dead before I even get to take a turn. Try to use the special ability on the tie and it resists... no chance of recovery after that.... 0 points.
It was bad enough that ships 2.0 has made ship arena incredibly frustrating. Now it's ruining another part of the game I really liked.
LOL No no no. It's like this: "Your car did not need to be fixed, but we took it apart and fixed it anyway."
Or here's one even better: You go to the shop (if you are not a do-it-yourselfer) and the mechanic says: "Well, we rotated your tires, changed the oil, and checked the transmission. Oh! We also rebuilt your radiator that did not need it, and we fixed the struts and tierods which did not need to be fixed. Your total bill: $2500."
WTH! I. Can't. Win. One. Battle. Only way I win is if I drop a couple ranks, and then try and "gun" for the lower squads of Slave 1, Biggs, and Plo with Wedge, Poe, Ahsoka, and JC in reserve. Paired mostly with GMT or Adm Ackbar.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a completely different experience. Currently ranked at 19th for the evening and my daily fluctuation goes anywhere from 8th to 30's. Fights are fast and it's rare that I lose more than one battle a day. I never cancel out of a battle and have pulled off some surprising/close wins at the end of matches that didn't look good early. I don't play the odd reindeer games that I've seen referred to in this thread -- like waiting for the timer to wind down before taking a final kill-shot, etc. Don't have that kind of extra time on my hands.
For the record, Tarkin is also the most powerful toon in my roster -- heavily speed-oriented potency mods and one Zeta short of being maxed out completely. Starting lineup (Boba/Biggs/Sun Fac) is a modification of my previous 5-ship lineup (Biggs/Sun Fac/Vader/Reaper/Cassian) with Reaper, Vader, and Consulate waiting in the reinforcement ranks. 90% of the time, I call in Vader on the first reinforcement wave to eliminate their taunting Biggs, then Reaper to debuff their typical Boba call-in and start removing TM from their capital ship with each kill.
I can't relate to those upset about not being able to get to #1 in three fights every day. I've never been that guy. I've always had to work to climb and retain and I thought that was half the fun? Sorry that you top-5 folks can no longer sit like Jabba owning the world with a hookah in your hand.