There is a point that you saturate the game too much and overload people and they stop caring about the game because they feel,like they will never catch up without breaking the bank. That point is here! 14 new characters in three months, most of which are completely useless, is way too much. Only the whales are spending their money to level them and I am willing to bet that even those are spending less. I know I am.
There are many other changes you could make to the game to keep people’s inter#ts and allow characters to be built. Like gettin* rid of the **** low,level gear in challlenges no one needs anymore except to gear the new characters that most people do not even care about..
And maybe change your restar time to like 2 am when most people are not playing instead of in the middle of prime raid time and ruining people’s raid runs. I’m sure nobody will,complain that they had to wait 8 hours to get that new toon they are likely never going to use in the near future. My guild is not a huge whale guild but we have our dolphins and we also have our minjows that we are trying to help get to our level. Unfortunately the state of the game is overwhelming them and they are starting to quit. Same in other guilds. Too much content turns the game into a job. Most of us already have a job and we get paid for it. Blizzard lost a boat load of players for turning WoW into a daily job. Don’t be Blizzard.
Take a step back, slow down and maybe introduce new content a few times a year instead of every month! While your at it, maybe fix the insane power creep being introduced. 3 & 4* toons should NEVER be able to win against full 7*, g12 best modded teams. Ever. I am sure it has already been rumbled about but it seems to the majority of players who are not whales that those grumbling fall on deaf ears. Those grumbling may soon add empty pockets to the deaf ears of the developers who cater to a few and screw the majority.
I am thankful Embo is in the game now, but many of the other new characters recently I agree is too much. One doesn't need to get every character, but when the game is flooded with so many characters so rapidly it completely dulls the impact of characters joining.
I was literally thinking that exact thing yesterday while unlocking Embo. It was like "meh". The impact of unlocking a toon shouldn't be a "meh". You should be very excited to unlock a toon.
I think they should release less toons, and instead make each marquee event something special.
Good luck getting some if these toons once they go to hard ship battle nodes 5c and up,Only superwhales are gonna be able to farm them.I have a pretty versatile ship lineup and I cant even 1 star them and Ive tried alot of things at 20 energy a pop.
I have to agree. I feel like there was a bit of a character overload recently. I like new characters but I think the fact that every single one was a marquee event has left a bad taste in my mouth. If one or two were released via an event of some sort it would have been better, but as it is is, the only thing I’ve looked forward to with the billion marquee events is the blue health mods that you get. There is something wrong when your player base looks forward to the mods more than the character.
I've recently started wondering if anyone has done the math on whether or not the additional new toons getting leveled, moderately geared, and modded offset the loss in points accumulated from platoons and thus combat missions.
Or, maybe a more appropriate question is, "do the new toons increase the difficulty to reach another star in TB?"
it's a difficult problem to solve, but necessary given I see more commentary referencing simply not being able to complete a platoon vs not reaching more stars.
back to the original point, all this new content is great for new players that focus on specific factions that they love the most from star wars. The toughest part about this game is focus and realizing it's not designed to have everything. The more players that embrace this and focus on their favorite factions the more enjoyment they'll have and the game will see greater retention. Mobile games are like a giant social experiment on human behavior and CG has collected data over the last 2+ years. Being a data nerd, I'd love to get my hands on it and look at patterns based on game modes, characters, start dates, etc.
My only arguement was pointed out before, I enjoy the new content but it's completely lame that a 3* gear 10 lvl 85 toon can dismantle a full squad of 7* g12 ledgendary toon teams in arena.. im talking about you Bastila
Considering she is not doing it standing alone, that statement is not accurate.
i'll put myself in the "agree" column here. from a gameplay perspective i wish they'd take the resources they're using to give us all these new characters and dedicate them to improving the game elsewhere and keeping the scores of characters we already have properly balanced. i get why they do it, and while they'll continue to do it ($$$), and i'll continue to roll my eyes and yet another new character cash grab that frankly does nothing for me.
other people love the new characters, and bully for you. i wish i could say the same for me.
There is a point that you saturate the game too much and overload people and they stop caring about the game because they feel,like they will never catch up without breaking the bank. That point is here! 14 new characters in three months, most of which are completely useless, is way too much. Only the whales are spending their money to level them and I am willing to bet that even those are spending less. I know I am.
Given what I've bolded here, why does it matter? If they are mostly useless, then it makes no difference. It's when you are trying to farm 5 relevant toons all at once (phoenix) that it becomes burdensome.
As for whales, I'm perfectly content for them to be enticed to spend money so I can continue to play for free.
My only arguement was pointed out before, I enjoy the new content but it's completely lame that a 3* gear 10 lvl 85 toon can dismantle a full squad of 7* g12 ledgendary toon teams in arena.. im talking about you Bastila
Considering she is not doing it standing alone, that statement is not accurate.
yeah bastila can't do that by herself...enfys nest on the other hand...
I've recently started wondering if anyone has done the math on whether or not the additional new toons getting leveled, moderately geared, and modded offset the loss in points accumulated from platoons and thus combat missions.
Or, maybe a more appropriate question is, "do the new toons increase the difficulty to reach another star in TB?"
it's a difficult problem to solve, but necessary given I see more commentary referencing simply not being able to complete a platoon vs not reaching more stars.
back to the original point, all this new content is great for new players that focus on specific factions that they love the most from star wars. The toughest part about this game is focus and realizing it's not designed to have everything. The more players that embrace this and focus on their favorite factions the more enjoyment they'll have and the game will see greater retention. Mobile games are like a giant social experiment on human behavior and CG has collected data over the last 2+ years. Being a data nerd, I'd love to get my hands on it and look at patterns based on game modes, characters, start dates, etc.
If I remember correctly from at the time they changed that, assuming you can do 4/6 with no platoons, you needed roughly 10-12 fully geared toons (est fully geared at 18-20k) per person, per zone.
That was before g12, and other factions becoming more viable, so there are more places of natural growth than just the new toons.
Just ignore any new characters that you're not interested in.
Really not difficult.
Some like them, others don't...all good. The game would get very stale (and people would complain like heck) if nothing new was ever introduced.
It becomes impossible to ignore new characters when they become required in late stages of Tb platoons.
I also did not say to stop new content, I said to slow it down. There has been more new content added in the last year than ever. Ea/CG are introducing at a rate that has killed other games. I am in an alliance of 12 guilds and though not all are full, there are still over 500 people in that alliance and the majority of them feel the same about the character overload. Statiscally, that would indicate that there is a close number of people in the game that feel the same way.
Or it would show that guilds are groups of like minded people.
The game has many people at different stages of the game. It's a balancing act to keep content fresh for those at one end and not overwhelming for those at the other end. I feel like a a wave of new characters was needed, and since the overall number of characters is a moote point (many of them have very low usefulness), this was a good move. I'm sure we will see a lull in characters after a bit, much like we did before this push.
They also do not have control over outside sources of materials, like the movies. They have to add those characters when it comes out and either base the nee content/events on them or just make them additional toons like they did.
IMO, the flood of toons means much more dynamic squad makeups and adds some needed variability in TW.
This exactly. More characters means more diversity in squads. We see that with Bastila already. Everything used to be nightmare, now we are getting more variations.
I think they should add as many as humanly possible and keep it rolling. People will find out what works well and what doesnt.
I don't mind the influx of characters. I enjoy spending on the game. I don't enjoy feeling like I won't be competitive in TW or other guild events unless I spend on all of these new toons.
I am also not a fan of 3 star benchwarmers. What would be nice is if they either A. Increased the amount of stars that they unlocked at (4 with a pack that takes you to 5 would work), or B. made the gamble packs not necessarily less of a gamble, but made them worth it. It's kind of disheartening to spend 1,299 crystals on a pack and get 5 shards. That's basically 260 crystals per shard. Either lower the price to be on par with the 80 crystals per shard that these toons cost when they move into the shop, or lower the price of the packs.
I couldn’t disagree more. I love love LOVE all the marquees and I appreciate every single one of them. You are entitled to you’re opinion and I respect it. My opinion is the marquees are great because I love unlocking a toon for free and I love the free mods. Keep the marquees coming EA you’re doing a great job with them!!
I couldn’t disagree more. I love love LOVE all the marquees and I appreciate every single one of them. You are entitled to you’re opinion and I respect it. My opinion is the marquees are great because I love unlocking a toon for free and I love the free mods. Keep the marquees coming EA you’re doing a great job with them!!
This. I wonder if the people complaining about free characters have played other games where they block major characters behind a paywall where you can never unlock them without paying. In this model we get the character, relatively good mods, and even an omega.
The overload is do to everyone wanting new characters then they give filler. Like T3 is just novelty,only use is debuff invisibility,it’s certainly not his 6k damage.So we get what people ask, sometimes at a low quality. I think anniversaries could easily be celebrated with 1 or 2 toons and maybe a special event rewarding loot and gear. It would make less work for devs and free up plenty of time to fix real game play issues.
I can relate a bit to feeling like there's a lot of content coming out of a firehose, but on the other hand, I like getting new toons. Personally, I don't care about Embo, but I loved the KOTOR toons, even if they're not meta defining. Everyone has some toons they love and some they're not into. I just accept that.
I do feel that you (the OP) are saying some contradictory things, however: new toons are useless on the one hand but ridiculous power creep on the other. So which is it?
As a f2p myself, I actually really love it when a 3* marquee toon has some real use and viability right out of the gate. That's waaay more fun than when they sit in 3* purgatory gathering dust for 3 months. I think that's good kit design when a new toon is useful right away.
That said, I absolutely agree that this game is starting to feel like a job, and I'm at the point where I have to talk myself out of quitting about once a week. But if we're going to talk about parts of the game that make this feel like a job, it's not the marquee events—TAKE NOTE, DEVS— it's the Sith Triumvirate Raid.
I like the new characters, but what is lacking (IMO) is how to acquire them. I don't think we've had a Legendary character unlock at 5-stars since BB-8. They've stopped putting new content in the various shops in the game. The grind is beginning to feel overwhelming, especially for people like me and others in my guild (92M GP) who spend cash regularly, but not at whale levels.
Keep the characters coming, just put some variety into how they are acquired/farmed. Please.
I like the new characters, but what is lacking (IMO) is how to acquire them. I don't think we've had a Legendary character unlock at 5-stars since BB-8. They've stopped putting new content in the various shops in the game. The grind is beginning to feel overwhelming, especially for people like me and others in my guild (92M GP) who spend cash regularly, but not at whale levels.
Keep the characters coming, just put some variety into how they are acquired/farmed. Please.
Still way better than marvel strikeforce. That game had such an annoying grind. Played it for a month and deleted. Compared to every similar style game, SWGOH is the only one with any depth. We all may complain, but we keep coming back, and all the competition is garbage.
The number of toons isn’t the problem. It’s the 24 marquees in a row. It’s not necessary and has killed the excitement for many in the game.
Take the kotor toons as an example. Bastila should be marque and maybe Jolee. Mission should be cantina, zalbar ls/ds node and t3 ship node. I know I’d spend more on crystals to get these farms done. Oh well toss my 3* on the pile with all the others and just wait a few months to start the hard node farm. “Fun”.
Well the thing to consider now is that CG don't have to do any real promotions until the last Jedi which won't be until Dec 2019 so perhaps they'll have time to slow down the rate of character releases, do some reworks and let people catch up a little.
The problem I see is for those who do not have the essential characters and meta teams reasonably geared. (majority of the new player base) Until you have all the current legendaries, can compete in arena, complete somewhat 3/4 of the mythics you have to have gear phoenix, resistance, empire, rebels and jedi.
Once you have JTR, CLS, Thrawn, Yoda, Palp, R2, BB8 and geared, only then the new character release doesn't matter because you can pick and choose your favourite factions to work on.
I would consider this the first stage of your roster development. There after it's your choice on whether you are focusing on arena meta teams, TB/TW or raids.
I think most people's problem is that these new toons appear to be making HSR easier and the fact is they are chasing the 7th * to make them viable and being stuck behind a paypall until they become F2P is the clutch issue. Then even if you farm them to 7* it could take 90 days and by that time an even better toon could be released.
That's my 2 cents.
Edit; Another thought, Traya is going to be the meta for a while so we are essentially being told to gear everything then CG are saying, "if you want to get Traya faster, here look at what this character can do in P1,2,3,4...but the catch is you have to pay for it". So the issue I see is the game content is become stale because everything is focused on the Heroic Sith Raid and Traya to place 1st in arena. Way to balance the overhwelming amount of marquees, put them in other areas of the game. eg add them as a reward to other special missions in TB, give shards in TW win or lose, heck you could even rework GW and give shards to beating 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000 teams...
Edit 2; This may bump the engagement of guild members TW and TB if you aren't ready for HSR. Progression for guilds is needed right now we have entry level and elder level, nothing in the middle. Many players think they are elder level and ready for HSR then they are probably not.
Replies
No
I was literally thinking that exact thing yesterday while unlocking Embo. It was like "meh". The impact of unlocking a toon shouldn't be a "meh". You should be very excited to unlock a toon.
I think they should release less toons, and instead make each marquee event something special.
Qi'ra isn't anything special, but if you want her she's on a cheap node.
Bastila is clearly going to be on one of those late game fleet nodes, so I won't see her for a while.
This
Or, maybe a more appropriate question is, "do the new toons increase the difficulty to reach another star in TB?"
it's a difficult problem to solve, but necessary given I see more commentary referencing simply not being able to complete a platoon vs not reaching more stars.
back to the original point, all this new content is great for new players that focus on specific factions that they love the most from star wars. The toughest part about this game is focus and realizing it's not designed to have everything. The more players that embrace this and focus on their favorite factions the more enjoyment they'll have and the game will see greater retention. Mobile games are like a giant social experiment on human behavior and CG has collected data over the last 2+ years. Being a data nerd, I'd love to get my hands on it and look at patterns based on game modes, characters, start dates, etc.
Considering she is not doing it standing alone, that statement is not accurate.
other people love the new characters, and bully for you. i wish i could say the same for me.
Given what I've bolded here, why does it matter? If they are mostly useless, then it makes no difference. It's when you are trying to farm 5 relevant toons all at once (phoenix) that it becomes burdensome.
As for whales, I'm perfectly content for them to be enticed to spend money so I can continue to play for free.
yeah bastila can't do that by herself...enfys nest on the other hand...
If I remember correctly from at the time they changed that, assuming you can do 4/6 with no platoons, you needed roughly 10-12 fully geared toons (est fully geared at 18-20k) per person, per zone.
That was before g12, and other factions becoming more viable, so there are more places of natural growth than just the new toons.
What they can control is TB requirements
This exactly. More characters means more diversity in squads. We see that with Bastila already. Everything used to be nightmare, now we are getting more variations.
I think they should add as many as humanly possible and keep it rolling. People will find out what works well and what doesnt.
I am also not a fan of 3 star benchwarmers. What would be nice is if they either A. Increased the amount of stars that they unlocked at (4 with a pack that takes you to 5 would work), or B. made the gamble packs not necessarily less of a gamble, but made them worth it. It's kind of disheartening to spend 1,299 crystals on a pack and get 5 shards. That's basically 260 crystals per shard. Either lower the price to be on par with the 80 crystals per shard that these toons cost when they move into the shop, or lower the price of the packs.
This. I wonder if the people complaining about free characters have played other games where they block major characters behind a paywall where you can never unlock them without paying. In this model we get the character, relatively good mods, and even an omega.
I do feel that you (the OP) are saying some contradictory things, however: new toons are useless on the one hand but ridiculous power creep on the other. So which is it?
As a f2p myself, I actually really love it when a 3* marquee toon has some real use and viability right out of the gate. That's waaay more fun than when they sit in 3* purgatory gathering dust for 3 months. I think that's good kit design when a new toon is useful right away.
That said, I absolutely agree that this game is starting to feel like a job, and I'm at the point where I have to talk myself out of quitting about once a week. But if we're going to talk about parts of the game that make this feel like a job, it's not the marquee events—TAKE NOTE, DEVS— it's the Sith Triumvirate Raid.
Keep the characters coming, just put some variety into how they are acquired/farmed. Please.
Still way better than marvel strikeforce. That game had such an annoying grind. Played it for a month and deleted. Compared to every similar style game, SWGOH is the only one with any depth. We all may complain, but we keep coming back, and all the competition is garbage.
Take the kotor toons as an example. Bastila should be marque and maybe Jolee. Mission should be cantina, zalbar ls/ds node and t3 ship node. I know I’d spend more on crystals to get these farms done. Oh well toss my 3* on the pile with all the others and just wait a few months to start the hard node farm. “Fun”.
The problem I see is for those who do not have the essential characters and meta teams reasonably geared. (majority of the new player base) Until you have all the current legendaries, can compete in arena, complete somewhat 3/4 of the mythics you have to have gear phoenix, resistance, empire, rebels and jedi.
Once you have JTR, CLS, Thrawn, Yoda, Palp, R2, BB8 and geared, only then the new character release doesn't matter because you can pick and choose your favourite factions to work on.
I would consider this the first stage of your roster development. There after it's your choice on whether you are focusing on arena meta teams, TB/TW or raids.
I think most people's problem is that these new toons appear to be making HSR easier and the fact is they are chasing the 7th * to make them viable and being stuck behind a paypall until they become F2P is the clutch issue. Then even if you farm them to 7* it could take 90 days and by that time an even better toon could be released.
That's my 2 cents.
Edit; Another thought, Traya is going to be the meta for a while so we are essentially being told to gear everything then CG are saying, "if you want to get Traya faster, here look at what this character can do in P1,2,3,4...but the catch is you have to pay for it". So the issue I see is the game content is become stale because everything is focused on the Heroic Sith Raid and Traya to place 1st in arena. Way to balance the overhwelming amount of marquees, put them in other areas of the game. eg add them as a reward to other special missions in TB, give shards in TW win or lose, heck you could even rework GW and give shards to beating 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000 teams...
Edit 2; This may bump the engagement of guild members TW and TB if you aren't ready for HSR. Progression for guilds is needed right now we have entry level and elder level, nothing in the middle. Many players think they are elder level and ready for HSR then they are probably not.