The Marquee release structure owns bones.

Replies

  • NicWester wrote: »
    Tactyou wrote: »
    Marquee event was nice from its initial launch. It was like dating a hot girl for the first time and she was sweet. Only to learn later that if you don’t drive a Ferrari, can’t afford to dine on a fancy restaurant, can’t afford first class seat....

    Okay, but the entire point of this post is that it's ALWAYS been this way. It's just that with marquee events we get 50 shards and wait a couple months; before marquee events we got 0 shards and waited even longer.

    People have this notion that some day in the past there was a point where characters were released directly into stores and that they were never paid for. It's also completely and demonstrably false.

    But it’s not false at all. New characters were released all over the place. Usually there were multiple characters released, and a lot of them were free while 1 had to be paid for. I forget what it was called, but it was a different pack type that doesn’t exist anymore. And yes, this was usually the best of the new characters to come out. And what I hated was that we had no idea when he would be available, and they didn’t become available in order. Rex was locked away forever. B2 went free in like a month or 2. It had its own problems. But yes, new characters went directly to the store all the time.
  • NicWester
    8928 posts Member
    NicWester wrote: »
    Tactyou wrote: »
    Marquee event was nice from its initial launch. It was like dating a hot girl for the first time and she was sweet. Only to learn later that if you don’t drive a Ferrari, can’t afford to dine on a fancy restaurant, can’t afford first class seat....

    Okay, but the entire point of this post is that it's ALWAYS been this way. It's just that with marquee events we get 50 shards and wait a couple months; before marquee events we got 0 shards and waited even longer.

    People have this notion that some day in the past there was a point where characters were released directly into stores and that they were never paid for. It's also completely and demonstrably false.

    But it’s not false at all. New characters were released all over the place. Usually there were multiple characters released, and a lot of them were free while 1 had to be paid for. I forget what it was called, but it was a different pack type that doesn’t exist anymore. And yes, this was usually the best of the new characters to come out. And what I hated was that we had no idea when he would be available, and they didn’t become available in order. Rex was locked away forever. B2 went free in like a month or 2. It had its own problems. But yes, new characters went directly to the store all the time.

    Dude, I talked about that. Read the post.

    New characters were released primarily to Chromium and Aurodium packs, or for a brief period to tournaments. You're misremembering them as being "released all over the place" because you're only remembering the poin where you had access to them, not the point where they were actually released. They could debut in a pack that you had to buy with crystals, but since any of us didn't pay for them it was easy to ignore the character. Months later, if we were lucky, that character would be placed into a store or a node and then we would start farming. But that was MONTHS later and what people are doing is convincing themselves that THAT was the launch of the character. It would be like saying Darth Maul is only as old as ships because that's when he became free.

    New characters categorically did NOT go directly into the store unless that store was just created. Jawa Scavenger, Chief Nebbit, Bodhi Rook, Colonel Starck, Wompa. That's it for new characters in existing stores. Maaaybe Magmatrooper, but going through the updates as I did, I couldn't find an announcement of when he was put into the galactic war store. Five, potentially six characters out of 159. Jawa Engineer, Gamoran Guard, Hermit Yoda, and General Greivous were added directly to stores when those stores (Guild, Guild Event, and Shard Shop, respectively) were created. We'll be generous and include those as well--though I think if they added a new store every time they wanted to add a new character, people would get more than a little mad--and we still only hit double digits if we include Magmatrooper, who is iffy.

    Look for yourself. The history of the game is written in the Game Updates and Developer Announcements threads.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • Waxx25
    62 posts Member
    Hate to be a downer but the suggestions OP put down are nothing new. In early 2016 the same things were also suggested and as in 2016 nothing will be done about it. Good idea though, again.
  • 18 whales liked this post. I think the OP enjoys cool stuff and doesn't want others to get them too, nothing wrong with that on his perspective, not so much on everyone else's
  • 18 whales liked this post. I think the OP enjoys cool stuff and doesn't want others to get them too, nothing wrong with that on his perspective, not so much on everyone else's

    Then the market has spoken. Capitalism still works!!!
  • Rebel_yell wrote: »
    18 whales liked this post. I think the OP enjoys cool stuff and doesn't want others to get them too, nothing wrong with that on his perspective, not so much on everyone else's

    Then the market has spoken. Capitalism still works!!!

    Failed equivalency, capitalism only works without monopolies
  • 5000+ people have viewed this post, 20 people have liked the OP which is perfectly within the top 1/2 of 1% which would most likely classify them as very wealthy and most likely able to purchase whatever they want. I wouldn't use this as pro OP indication. In fact I would use it as the opposite, a decisive confirmation that only whales love Marquee event structure.
  • NicWester wrote: »
    Releasing characters via Marquee event is the best thing to happen to this game. You get the character to 3* for free, you get a chance to test them out with any squad, you get a bunch of mods that you're probably going to sell but sometimes get a few to keep, you get an omega. i wasn't paying attention to the amount of credits I got off this one, but in the past I remember getting a few hundred thousand. If you like the character there's a bundle you can get for an instant boost, and if you really like the character you can guarantee yourself 5 shards for a bunch of crystals. But, if you're like me, your job doesn't pay enough and your landlord wants too much, so you don't buy these bundles or packs. Instead, in 4-6 months you farm them up free. In the meantime, you get them to G11 and work on their abilities--That's a lot of gear and an increasing nuber of zetas each time, but you have a minimum of four months to do it. There's time.

    There's a myth out there that there was a magical time when characters were released in other, better ways. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Pao, Chopper, Bistan, Scariff Rebel Pathfinder, and Dengar were released through the daily login, giving you 30 shards if you logged in every day. Chopper and Bistan had separate events every day for their release month where you would get an additional shard if you completed it. The consensus was this was too slow, and the one shard a day events were "a slap in the face" because no one who plays this game has ever actually been slapped in the face and doesn't know how silly they sound to those of us who have when they say that.

    Baze and General Greivous were released to the Shard Shop--Baze for a limited time, then moved exclusively to Chromium packs and shipments. The consensus with shard shop characters was that they only rewarded "whales" because no one else had that many 7* characters laying around. (Fun side story--I started farming Greivous the day he came out despite having only been playing for about 6 weeks at the time. I already had at least one 7* character in each store and figured, eh, why not?) Baze made people suuuper mad because he was a limited time purchase and people felt that since he was so good, they were being forced to spend.

    The only time you were actually forced to spend money to unlock a character (and even then, "forced" is a bit of a strong statement, since you could always just not unlock it) was Chief Chirpa, who was given a pack that cost $5, if I'm remembering correctly, as part of an Earth Day charity promotion. All proceeds from his pack went to the World Wildlife Foundation to, I don't know, feed pandas or whatever.

    Technically you didn't have to spend money to buy Aurodium packs, since they were bought with crystals and crystals are given freely in the game. But in order for Aurodium packs to show up in your store you had to first spend $200 in the game. If you were free to play, or even if you were just a light spender, too bad, so sad, you didn't get a chance at Aurodium packs, which is where Tusken Shaman, Wedge, Geonosian Spy, and B2 all debuted. I have to admit that I'm a little more iffy on the history of Aurodium packs because I hadn't spent $200 and wasn't even allowed to look at them with my dirty unwashed peasant eyes, so I'm reconstructing it from Game Updates and what I remember people talking about on the forum at the time.

    When Guilds were announced they gave us four new characters, and people were mad. They were mad that it took dozens of Heroic Rancors to unlock Han Solo, and then they were mad that he was bad, and then they got mad again when they made him good much later. They were mad because Gamorran Guard and Jawa Engineer shared a slot in the Guild Store. For funsies, search for "Has Engineer Been Removed" on the forum and take a look at how many people were certain that the Engineer was stealth removed. Sun Fac was also added at this time, but not to the Guild Store--no, he was put directly into Chromium packs along with nearly every other character in the game at the time, albeit with increased odds of opening him. So the only way to get him was to buy Chromium packs and hope you got him 10 shards at a time--but don't unlock him! Once you activate a character, if you open the full version later you got less shards, so it behooved you to hold off on unlocking him until you'd cracked enough packs that the full 4-star character unlocked. On the plus side, you'd get shards for a whole mess of other characters, which you could then turn into shard shop currency for General Greivous or Baze Malbus.

    Sun Fac wasn't the only character exclusive to Chromium packs, though. Lando, Rex, Maul, Aayla, Old Ben, Qui-Gon, Cad Bane, Leia, Kit Fisto, Tarkin and probably others were Day 1 characters, but they took their sweet time trickling down into cantina nodes and stores. For that matter, Sun Fac wasn't even the only character released directly into Chromiums--Echo, Zam, Cody, (and more, but I've been at this for too long) were all exclusive to the packs.

    So who got put directly into a store upon their release? Well, historically speaking, Baze and Greivous in the Shard Shop; Chief Nebbit in Arena, Jawa Scavenger in Cantina. Bodhi Rook was a free gift to us, and then put into Galactic War after a little while.

    Not going to lie, there might be more, and if there are bring them up and we can discuss them individually. But I started this post 72 minutes ago and I'm only through August 2017's Game Updates, (and I haven't even touched on Tournaments yet!) so you'll forgive me if I'm a little tired of opening new tabs to see who was release when and to where. So let me sum up to my main point:

    Marquees own bones, guys, don't even act like they don't. Is it annoying that you have a level 85 3* character for a couple months? Of course. But it's better than the alternative that we've had in the past--dozens of characters that released initially and exclusively to players who had spent $200, then trickling down to players who spent crystals for a chance at them, and then onto the board or into stores. It would be nice to have more Legendaries and Hero's Journeys, but do you remember what the board is like when those first launch? Because I remember each one distinctly--"What a blatant money grab, forcing us to farm Phoenix Squad for Thrawn, when they're useless everywhere!" "What a blatant money grab making us farm First Order Stormtrooper for BB8!" People always want more Legendaries, and then get upset when they don't have the characters for them because those characters weren't on some reddit checklist of "Get These, Ignore Everyone Else."

    Marquees are great. This post is taking too long and already crashed once (thank you, Drafts!) so I'm done.

    Im impressed, i found something to agree with u on. Good post.

    To those still complaining, u guys are either fairly new to the game (like, starting in late2016/early2017 or later), or forgot the old days where getting a toon u really wanted was usually all about rolling the rng dice through chromium packs.

    Is the marquee event still a money grab? YES, OF COURSE - IT’S A BUSINESS. But is it better than what it was previously? Definitely. At the very least, u now have a choice AND certainty given the amount of cash u have to spare. No cash? U still have a 3* toon for free - remember the days when 3* DN flooded the arena? Have someee cash? U can get it to 4* FOR SURE without having to open 10k crystals worth of chromium packs. Loads of cash? Well u can do whatever u want with it, but u definitely know that for the amount of crystals u’re throwing into the pack, u will be getting shards of the toon that u actually want.

    As for those who are hoping to win the 330 shards lottery, u probably won’t. Yes it is like gambling (shouldn’t be allowed imo but yea), and hence the logic is the same. Don’t gamble expecting to win, hence gamble with what u are willing to lose. Have 10k crystals but really wanna keep 5k for emergency uses? Try ur luck with 4 packs maybe, and stop there or before if the odds are bad. It’s simple as that.
  • Rebel_yell wrote: »
    SoonerJBD wrote: »
    I don’t mind the marquee releases as long as they follow the cadence they have established to get them to farmable locations. What I do mind is the continued marketing of shard packs as having a chance to drop 3-330 character shards without the disclosure of odds for the various drop rates. It’s predatory, it’s essentially gambling, and I thought Apple was going to clamp down on it. The loophole of forcing people to convert their real money into virtual currency before spending it on packs and pretending this makes it something other than an impermissible “loot box,” is ridiculous and insulting to players. If you simply priced the packs more reasonably and were honest about the odds, I expect you could generate a similar amount of revenue. But instead, the choice is to continue using the worst business model in gaming.

    I agree with OP and you. Marquee accompanied with staying true to release cadence is a great. It's not right they don't publish the probabilities for shard drops in the 5 - 330 packs. Especially with such a wild range. The crystal cost I'm less concerned by, just tell people the odds.

    Han disagrees with your recommendation. Never tell him the odds.

    Simple logic will give u a rough idea of how much each shard will cost through the pack on average. Take a look at shipments.

    Old toons - 50crystals per shard
    New toons - 80crystals per shard

    It goes to show that u are at the very most gonna get an average of 10 shards per pack (assuming 120 crystals per shard) to 12 shards per pack (assuming 100 crystals per shard). It’s not cheap, but if u want it before f2p u either have to shell out the cash or hoard the crystals for it.
  • How about changing up the toons in the shops now? Arena and GW toons are stale. With soooooo many marquee toons being released in such a very short amount of time, add a few into the shops. Sell the packs to whales to instantly 7* then put them in the shops or make them farmable.

    They've already said those stores won't be added to.

    They have said a lot of things. Things can change. Things should change.

    I can’t say for sure but i am expecting the rotation to eventually move some older toons into gw and cantina stores. For now though, expect the empty or single toon nodes to be filled first.
  • How about changing up the toons in the shops now? Arena and GW toons are stale. With soooooo many marquee toons being released in such a very short amount of time, add a few into the shops. Sell the packs to whales to instantly 7* then put them in the shops or make them farmable.

    They've already said those stores won't be added to.

    They have said a lot of things. Things can change. Things should change.

    I can’t say for sure but i am expecting the rotation to eventually move some older toons into gw and cantina stores. For now though, expect the empty or single toon nodes to be filled first.

    Devs have said no new toons will be added to arena store, GW store, or cantina store. New characters will keep going to hard nodes, cantina nodes, and probably fleet nodes soon.
  • NicWester
    8928 posts Member
    Waxx25 wrote: »
    Hate to be a downer but the suggestions OP put down are nothing new. In early 2016 the same things were also suggested and as in 2016 nothing will be done about it. Good idea though, again.
    I didn't make any suggestions. Was there a thread merge?
    18 whales liked this post. I think the OP enjoys cool stuff and doesn't want others to get them too, nothing wrong with that on his perspective, not so much on everyone else's
    Then you think wrong, because I don't spend money on video games outside of the initial purchase or for DLC if I really like the game. (Going to buy the XCom 2 DLC as soon as the next Steam Sale, for instance) I'm currently at 20/100 and 23/100 on Rose and Holdo, and started farming Bossk on non-light energy days.

    If you had read my posts you would see that I like Marquee Events because they're a refined version of the releases we used to have--you used to simply not get characters at all unless you spent, then waited several months for them to become farmable. Now you get them at 3* for free, then wait several months for them to become farmable. This is PURE UPGRADE over the old way that makes things MUCH BETTER for free to play players.
    Failed equivalency, capitalism only works without monopolies
    Capitalism doesn't work even without monopolies. But that's a matter for another thread.
    I can’t say for sure but i am expecting the rotation to eventually move some older toons into gw and cantina stores. For now though, expect the empty or single toon nodes to be filled first.
    The developers have said somewhere (I'm very sorry that I don't have a link, it was a couple months ago. But folks who have been around for a while will corroborate what I'm saying, I promise!) that they're not adding new characters to Galactic War, Cantina, or Arena stores any longer. The purpose of those stores is to give new players access to a wide variety of characters, and to give veteran players a ready source of shards to convert into the Shard Shop and get more gear.

    But that leaves the guild, guild event, and fleet stores for new characters, at least. Potentially the shard shop, since they never said it was closed off, but highly unlikely.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • I do enjoy marquee events. But I think I enjoy them because I hate the alternatives or how things used to be. Idk if someone said it - but there is also a practice mode in the events. So it’s a sand box! Yay! But.. the worst part of marquee events are the platoons. Platoons are just terrible.

    Love legendaries and am feeling 50/50 on hero journies. Vet farming first time around was the pits.

    I would love different ways to farm toons. A bronzium only toon would be great. They don’t have to be amazing but just exist. They don’t have to be needed for something they can just exist. They did a poll a long while ago for which toon it should be and I loved that Tr8tor was there. That’s just fun.

    And I feel like that’s what this game and forums lack in. Fun. Everything is so high stakes because who knows what toon will be needed for what! And now with hard node farming only it’s like choosing a path you will be on for months. That’s a crucial commitment. Will holdo and rose be needed for something? Maybe sion is more pressing. But wait. Here comes an fo legendary and now it’s your fault for not farming holdo and rose they were released for so long. You get the point.

    But shout out to Nic for making this long post :)
  • NicWester
    8928 posts Member
    I do enjoy marquee events. But I think I enjoy them because I hate the alternatives or how things used to be. Idk if someone said it - but there is also a practice mode in the events. So it’s a sand box! Yay! But.. the worst part of marquee events are the platoons. Platoons are just terrible.

    Love legendaries and am feeling 50/50 on hero journies. Vet farming first time around was the pits.

    And here I'll totally agree with you. I like the Marquee structure for the average character, but I do want more legendaries and journeys and so on and so forth. I don't mind the platoon thing, personally, because my guild isn't a hardcore "we must get every star" guild and we're celebrating that we might hit 24 in the next one--but I can see how if someone was in a guild like that, that it'd be frustrating.

    Preparing this post, I was surprised by a lot of things that I had forgotten--tournaments, for example, or that the first Marquees were the Krennic and Deathtrooper Special Operations events. I feel like folks tend to conflate the farming method and the release method, and while there are very valid criticisms of single-node hard farms, being critical of the release itself is silly.

    (Although I disagree about having a bronzium character, but mostly because I spend my ally points down to 0 every day because there's no point in saving them. It'd be frustrating if characters were put in there that were literally just gatchapon pulls and I was being punished for having followed the established play method before it came out. But whatever, I'd get over it :p )
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • NicWester wrote: »
    I do enjoy marquee events. But I think I enjoy them because I hate the alternatives or how things used to be. Idk if someone said it - but there is also a practice mode in the events. So it’s a sand box! Yay! But.. the worst part of marquee events are the platoons. Platoons are just terrible.

    Love legendaries and am feeling 50/50 on hero journies. Vet farming first time around was the pits.

    And here I'll totally agree with you. I like the Marquee structure for the average character, but I do want more legendaries and journeys and so on and so forth. I don't mind the platoon thing, personally, because my guild isn't a hardcore "we must get every star" guild and we're celebrating that we might hit 24 in the next one--but I can see how if someone was in a guild like that, that it'd be frustrating.

    Preparing this post, I was surprised by a lot of things that I had forgotten--tournaments, for example, or that the first Marquees were the Krennic and Deathtrooper Special Operations events. I feel like folks tend to conflate the farming method and the release method, and while there are very valid criticisms of single-node hard farms, being critical of the release itself is silly.

    (Although I disagree about having a bronzium character, but mostly because I spend my ally points down to 0 every day because there's no point in saving them. It'd be frustrating if characters were put in there that were literally just gatchapon pulls and I was being punished for having followed the established play method before it came out. But whatever, I'd get over it :p )

    Tournies were crap. And I can’t imagine the salt if they stayed. Imagine requirements for legendaries that were locked behind tournaments! You got Vet han to 5* but vet chewy still remains unlocked. No RTJ! But that’s a super simplistic approach.
    I understand platoons to a point. And they really aren’t totally necessary but that doesn’t mean we should leave things just cause. I’m a big fan of improving any way we can. Even if it’s a small little change. But yea again marquees are way better than any old system we had. But still hopeful there are ways to do things better.
  • I don't like it much. Adds borderline useless clutter to my already burgeoning roster.

    The accompanying packs are hate crimes. I could buy 2 full games from GoG for 10 quid not paying for a bit of a character. Don't think I need to talk about the crystal packs, nobody with functioning intellect buys those.

    I'm prepared to do some work for toons I want, but not forking over the numbers to my lucrative offshore holdings (that don't exist).

    Now I expect to be sent to super jail and never be heard from again.
    Hey, it's still better than MSF
  • Monel
    2776 posts Member
    Nadebotfm wrote: »
    Iy4oy4s wrote: »
    As I’ve said before, marquees are fine, but really stale now. Need a new fresh way to get toons.
    Iy4oy4s wrote: »
    Are we ever going to get a new way that a toon is released? Since legendary and hero’s journey are very few and far between, marquees are getting really boring. Time to come up with something new huh? Maybe ( as I’ve suggested before) release a toon entirely in bronzium packs. That way, you give the people a way to spend those Ally points....or maybe as a reward for completing the dailies, 5-10 shards a day for completing them all? I dunno, but we need something new here!!

    i would agree to this, 5 shards a day for completing daily task. MSF does that with Wolverine

    Msf sucks and you need like 5 times as many shards to get a 7 star character. Unless that has been changed since I stopped playing that disaster. Gear and zetas are a long enough grind here for me thank you.
  • Monel
    2776 posts Member
    I have no problem with how they release new characters or where I can farm them. What I dont enjoy is the frequency at which they are released. Because 5 characters are being released a month it does make it nearly impossible to get them all when they finally become farmable.

    Because characters are being released so frequently there has to be a better way then a single hard node farm. Cantina is not a problem no matter how much energy is required imo. Why cant we have recurring events like Wicket and MT where random marquee characters show up so we can get 10 shards at a time. You do this event once or twice a month, the player can pick which marquee event they replay and boom 10 shards. Makes the grind a little less grindy but it's not instant 7 stars for everyone either.

  • BrtStlnd
    1094 posts Member
    I couldn’t disagree with the OP more. As has been said the slot machine packs border on criminally misinformative with regard to potential results.
  • NicWester
    8928 posts Member
    edited July 2018
    BrtStlnd wrote: »
    I couldn’t disagree with the OP more. As has been said the slot machine packs border on criminally misinformative with regard to potential results.

    Cool. Glad to see you got your take out there without actually reading what I said.

    We’ve always had characters release to packs. Chromium, Aurodium, occasionally in limited bundles paid with cash. Marquees are no different—what’s different, and better, about a Marquee is that you get a 50 shard head start and get to play with the character in a cariety of teams in order to learn if you even want the character. Use the search function and go back through time to find how many “Is Sun Fac worth it?” “Are Phoenix worth it?” threads where people had to ask players who had bought the character sight unseen.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • Semi
    133 posts Member
    Seriously.... Marquee are greats because they comes with available pack.
    Like you said you get around 50 shards of a new character so f2p.
    And you can select a pack for this character only. So no chance do get CUP or LOBOT or anything else...
    Then wait a few months and start farm them for free.

    They have to make a living so it's normal they gives us the need to spend.

    But **** that was a long thread hehe
  • Vinny_Vader_Vedi
    4626 posts Member
    edited July 2018
    Also to be noted - I missed the visas and sion marquees. And I really miss starting toons at 3* you don’t realize it until you start at 0
  • Tman
    257 posts Member
    NicWester wrote: »
    Releasing characters via Marquee event is the best thing to happen to this game. You get the character to 3* for free, you get a chance to test them out with any squad, you get a bunch of mods that you're probably going to sell but sometimes get a few to keep, you get an omega. i wasn't paying attention to the amount of credits I got off this one, but in the past I remember getting a few hundred thousand. If you like the character there's a bundle you can get for an instant boost, and if you really like the character you can guarantee yourself 5 shards for a bunch of crystals. But, if you're like me, your job doesn't pay enough and your landlord wants too much, so you don't buy these bundles or packs. Instead, in 4-6 months you farm them up free. In the meantime, you get them to G11 and work on their abilities--That's a lot of gear and an increasing nuber of zetas each time, but you have a minimum of four months to do it. There's time.

    There's a myth out there that there was a magical time when characters were released in other, better ways. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Pao, Chopper, Bistan, Scariff Rebel Pathfinder, and Dengar were released through the daily login, giving you 30 shards if you logged in every day. Chopper and Bistan had separate events every day for their release month where you would get an additional shard if you completed it. The consensus was this was too slow, and the one shard a day events were "a slap in the face" because no one who plays this game has ever actually been slapped in the face and doesn't know how silly they sound to those of us who have when they say that.

    Baze and General Greivous were released to the Shard Shop--Baze for a limited time, then moved exclusively to Chromium packs and shipments. The consensus with shard shop characters was that they only rewarded "whales" because no one else had that many 7* characters laying around. (Fun side story--I started farming Greivous the day he came out despite having only been playing for about 6 weeks at the time. I already had at least one 7* character in each store and figured, eh, why not?) Baze made people suuuper mad because he was a limited time purchase and people felt that since he was so good, they were being forced to spend.

    The only time you were actually forced to spend money to unlock a character (and even then, "forced" is a bit of a strong statement, since you could always just not unlock it) was Chief Chirpa, who was given a pack that cost $5, if I'm remembering correctly, as part of an Earth Day charity promotion. All proceeds from his pack went to the World Wildlife Foundation to, I don't know, feed pandas or whatever.

    Technically you didn't have to spend money to buy Aurodium packs, since they were bought with crystals and crystals are given freely in the game. But in order for Aurodium packs to show up in your store you had to first spend $200 in the game. If you were free to play, or even if you were just a light spender, too bad, so sad, you didn't get a chance at Aurodium packs, which is where Tusken Shaman, Wedge, Geonosian Spy, and B2 all debuted. I have to admit that I'm a little more iffy on the history of Aurodium packs because I hadn't spent $200 and wasn't even allowed to look at them with my dirty unwashed peasant eyes, so I'm reconstructing it from Game Updates and what I remember people talking about on the forum at the time.

    When Guilds were announced they gave us four new characters, and people were mad. They were mad that it took dozens of Heroic Rancors to unlock Han Solo, and then they were mad that he was bad, and then they got mad again when they made him good much later. They were mad because Gamorran Guard and Jawa Engineer shared a slot in the Guild Store. For funsies, search for "Has Engineer Been Removed" on the forum and take a look at how many people were certain that the Engineer was stealth removed. Sun Fac was also added at this time, but not to the Guild Store--no, he was put directly into Chromium packs along with nearly every other character in the game at the time, albeit with increased odds of opening him. So the only way to get him was to buy Chromium packs and hope you got him 10 shards at a time--but don't unlock him! Once you activate a character, if you open the full version later you got less shards, so it behooved you to hold off on unlocking him until you'd cracked enough packs that the full 4-star character unlocked. On the plus side, you'd get shards for a whole mess of other characters, which you could then turn into shard shop currency for General Greivous or Baze Malbus.

    Sun Fac wasn't the only character exclusive to Chromium packs, though. Lando, Rex, Maul, Aayla, Old Ben, Qui-Gon, Cad Bane, Leia, Kit Fisto, Tarkin and probably others were Day 1 characters, but they took their sweet time trickling down into cantina nodes and stores. For that matter, Sun Fac wasn't even the only character released directly into Chromiums--Echo, Zam, Cody, (and more, but I've been at this for too long) were all exclusive to the packs.

    So who got put directly into a store upon their release? Well, historically speaking, Baze and Greivous in the Shard Shop; Chief Nebbit in Arena, Jawa Scavenger in Cantina. Bodhi Rook was a free gift to us, and then put into Galactic War after a little while.

    Not going to lie, there might be more, and if there are bring them up and we can discuss them individually. But I started this post 72 minutes ago and I'm only through August 2017's Game Updates, (and I haven't even touched on Tournaments yet!) so you'll forgive me if I'm a little tired of opening new tabs to see who was release when and to where. So let me sum up to my main point:

    Marquees own bones, guys, don't even act like they don't. Is it annoying that you have a level 85 3* character for a couple months? Of course. But it's better than the alternative that we've had in the past--dozens of characters that released initially and exclusively to players who had spent $200, then trickling down to players who spent crystals for a chance at them, and then onto the board or into stores. It would be nice to have more Legendaries and Hero's Journeys, but do you remember what the board is like when those first launch? Because I remember each one distinctly--"What a blatant money grab, forcing us to farm Phoenix Squad for Thrawn, when they're useless everywhere!" "What a blatant money grab making us farm First Order Stormtrooper for BB8!" People always want more Legendaries, and then get upset when they don't have the characters for them because those characters weren't on some reddit checklist of "Get These, Ignore Everyone Else."

    Marquees are great. This post is taking too long and already crashed once (thank you, Drafts!) so I'm done.

    Amen,
    I am more powerful than the Chancellor- Anikan Skywalker and Tman
  • I may or may not agree with the OP - I haven't really thought long enough on it to decide.

    I am, however, very entertained by your wit, impressed by your homework, and strangely enough, feeling rather nostalgic right now with the walk through the game's history.

    Excellent post!!
  • Geshtianna
    240 posts Member
    edited July 2018
    Remember when the first marquees were 3- to 4-star unlocks (Krennic)?
  • @NicWester I'm mostly in agreement with you. You missed that brief period when some new characters (Baze) was initially released by the Tournament - numerically speaking, only 0.05% of the player base had a chance to unlock... up there in the worst ways Toons have been released.
    So mostly, I totally agree.
    On the flip side you are ignoring some of the toons that went straight to store, some easy to nab, low power, but with nifty ability, toons for collectors. So many new toons coming out on single hard-node farms is not cool. It's too slow. And with every toon going that way, it's just an eye rolling grind with no let up that's reminding me a little too much of my own issues with the STR.
    I dislike how the game seems to be dragging things out for the sake of dragging them out - or so it seems.
    #AcolyteShootsTwice
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