A G11 4* toon is almost as good as a 7* G12 toon, which is why I'm mostly okay with the marquee model.
That being said, the marquee to hard node farming is just...boring
Nest gains about 20k health at g12 lol. From a feeble attacker to a strong tanky attacker with devastating firepower that needs to be controlled.
This one gets it.
We really need to define 'usable' in some context, and that context really depends on the character and their purpose. If you are trying to achieve a high arena rank, then a three or four star character is unlikely to help in a mature shard UNLESS they provide some type of unique skill AND their own stats aren't that important. So characters like Bastila (leadership), Nihilus (Annihilate doesn't care how many stars he has), and MT (Plague, unlike truth, IS Plague) are arena viable at low stars, but it takes something unique in their kit to make that true.
Please run Nest at low stars and G11.4 - she's one shot easily by many different characters. Get her to 12, put on the medpac and give her the zeta and my goodness she's troublesome (especially in a Traya comp, but I digress).
Low star marquee characters might be useful in *some* contexts but, with a few exceptions, will not be able to participate in much end-game context successfully - whether it's Arena, TB, TW or raids.
I'm really looking forward to 3 months and 4650 crystals worth of refreshes to get Range Trooper to seven stars. (assuming 30% drop rate for 280 crystals = 3 crystals / day = 93.3 days * 50 crystals per refresh). And I think this is the depressing part - all of these cool new toons that we won't be able to make the most of for a very long time because of their accessibility. I think moving some of the existing hard node toons to the GW / Squad / Guild stores to make room for multiple new toons on these nodes makes a lot of sense and would be met with applause. Give me 2 range trooper nodes for a bit and I'll gladly pay 100 crystals per day to move that timeframe up to six weeks.
I realize that yes, and i have the ship yes. But again its on a node that essentially makes it an 8 month farm without refreshes which i wont get because even if i finish vets before deadline thanks to the whales i'll be about of the spot i farmed for in fleet arena. So what do i do now?I can accept that theres nothing to do, accept it or try to say things that are just bad and get unnoticed like everyone else on this forum. Not to many options right? Especially counting in that Bossk is a really bad character that has minimal use in the game.
Sure you can keep a long term goal and focus on a specific thing whatever it may be, but you need a certain amount of crystal/credit both normal and fleet credit to be able to sustain that. And no matter how many times anyone says something it doesnt go through. Not to mention 99% of the forum users are better game designers than anyone who ever worked for CG which is sad. The uncensored places like reddit and discord have better ideas day by day than CG designers have on their best days.
Talking is not game design, game design is game design. Sure there are good ideas out there, but that doesnt mean they would actually work, or could be implemented in the real world.
You seem to be focused in whales as your only competition. If you cant swim with the big fish, that's not something anyone is going to or should have to hand you. They pay for an advantage, if you want to keep up with that advantage there is a way, but it's not anyone's job to hand that too you. Many f2p and light spenders do a great job of keeping up, through planning and focus. Hoarding to keep flexible. It's not for everyone, but it is certainly doable.
If you want to play a team of bounty hunters Bossk is key, the only tank, has regen, and one of the easier leader contracts, with a very decent boost. The game is not only about arena, they have uses other places and being a pilot adds to that. IMHO.
I don't think we'll ever agree because I don't think that people should be able to pay for advantage. There're tons of freemium games out there don't relay on P2W mechanics. Not that this game it too bad in that regard since I'm F2P and can still get 1st place in both arenas.
Other than that yeah, planning, focus and hoarding can get yuo to the top. Also yes, Bossk is a good char, not meta but still a good tank and leader.
I said nothing about should, but they can and do in this game. Time=$$. That is the basis for many games out there. Not everyone is interested in new skins for $.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
You can't make long term plans. I did it now for almost 3 years. But all this bad updates and only marquee events make you think, if you still play when they release the character f2p and then there is a few month farm also.
They could do that if we had good updates, some positiv we see and can focus.
Yeah, it was great back in the day when you had to spend $200 just to have a chance to use crystals to buy a toon that had no timeline for release and would just go away for a year, or 3 months (that always felt great when you bought those ones).
I'm not saying we need this structure, but the current release structure has allowed for people to plan. We all get the toons, and any toon worth its salt has been just fine at 3-4*. You can build the gear up and have a toon viable if you wish, and then worry about more accessibility (* count) as the time moves on.
Yeah, you don't get the point. I know you are in defense for marquee events. Better then before doesn't make it good.
They HAVE to mix things up. Over a year straight marquees is baaad, really bad!
Just try and it the food you like every day and nothing else. Tell me how it went.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
I like that marquee events give everyone new toons every time they are introduced. I always enjoy new content (toons included). Im fine with the exclusive period during which new toons stay p2p since the game has to be massively profitable, or it will go away. And I totally understand at least some characters going to single hard nodes, because we always need something to work towards.
My issue is just the sheer number of characters going to single hard nodes, especially the 20 energy variety. It would be nice if there were a bit bigger percentage of characters that were easier to get. There is a giant gulf between having everything handed to you for free, and making everything so brutally difficult/expensive/time consuming that it's too much work to be fun.
Another legendary would help. A few characters with multiple farm locations would be nice. (2 hard nodes isn't as bad) An occasional new toon (if they are mediocre/filler toons with a niche use anyhow) straight into one of the old forsaken shops would be nice. I know they have said the last one won't happen, but there isn't a law saying they can't change their minds.
People who hate on marquees need to remember the old days where you had zero access of any kind to p2p toons for maybe a year. Marquees are fine. It's what happens after that is getting monotonous. And even that isn't totally unreasonable. Mixing in a few slightly easier farming options might do the trick.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
No it doesnt comes down to that. For example i spent a lot of time/resources along with half of my guild to farm geonosians and their ships. Focused everything entirely on them and theorycrafting an optimal reinforcement set for them. Now all that down the drain because of the new ship that is basically says to us "we want money all of you can suck it". And if you are not a whale thats the only place to get crystals to farm the still useless veterans to get JTR to start hsr and not even counting the rest of the teams.
He is absolutely right about marquee's beeing way too frequent. So as everyone who believes the forum is **** thanks to bad moderations and no communication which is prevelant in the content updates that come is.
So you regret the plan and that is their fault? No one forced you down that road, that was your choice.
You do realize you are getting the ship too, right?
I'm glad yo see you are trying to be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Keep up the good work.
I realize that yes, and i have the ship yes. But again its on a node that essentially makes it an 8 month farm without refreshes which i wont get because even if i finish vets before deadline thanks to the whales i'll be about of the spot i farmed for in fleet arena. So what do i do now?I can accept that theres nothing to do, accept it or try to say things that are just bad and get unnoticed like everyone else on this forum. Not to many options right? Especially counting in that Bossk is a really bad character that has minimal use in the game.
Sure you can keep a long term goal and focus on a specific thing whatever it may be, but you need a certain amount of crystal/credit both normal and fleet credit to be able to sustain that. And no matter how many times anyone says something it doesnt go through. Not to mention 99% of the forum users are better game designers than anyone who ever worked for CG which is sad. The uncensored places like reddit and discord have better ideas day by day than CG designers have on their best days.
Talking is not game design, game design is game design. Sure there are good ideas out there, but that doesnt mean they would actually work, or could be implemented in the real world.
You seem to be focused in whales as your only competition. If you cant swim with the big fish, that's not something anyone is going to or should have to hand you. They pay for an advantage, if you want to keep up with that advantage there is a way, but it's not anyone's job to hand that too you. Many f2p and light spenders do a great job of keeping up, through planning and focus. Hoarding to keep flexible. It's not for everyone, but it is certainly doable.
If you want to play a team of bounty hunters Bossk is key, the only tank, has regen, and one of the easier leader contracts, with a very decent boost. The game is not only about arena, they have uses other places and being a pilot adds to that. IMHO.
Sorry but its extremly bad game design, incompetent development(just look at every single bug that comes in after each content update) and the lack of communication that creates the gap beetwen f2p and p2w players. Also Nobody expect anything given at max star or anything, but for example updating the arena and gw store with some of the newer characters instead of always putting them on hard nodes would be nice. Also the fact that there are characters that completely break the game like bastila is nonsense, idk who designs these character kits but the one whos responsible for bastila and nest should receive a slap in the face with a burning hammer that has nails in it multiple times.
We all understand the need for new characters but to release them in a marquee and right before it gets to a f2p point you release 10 other characters instead of finishing the mod rework is annoying at best. We have a necessary alredy year late update that gets release in parts but useless marquee stuff comes in every week now it feels like.
It just sounds like you want things to be easy.
Also who said that the people working on the mod stuff have anything to do with character development? Just because you link to things does not mean they have anything to do with each other. I'm pretty sure this also conflicts with your previous point about bugs. You want them to release content faster, maybe they are doing testing so that it can meet a better standard than before, have you thought about that.
I have not seen a broken toon released since CLS. Not a single toon has overnight changed the playing field in any single (or multiple) game modes like he did, and they acknowledged that and have seemed to be making an effort to not repeat that mistake. To add to that, with the release structure, everyone gets the toon and is able to gear and use them if they see fit or feel that a toon is super OP. While not the most elegant solution is does eliminate the huge divide created when a good toon is released.
If you feel you need every toon that comes out, I don't know what yo tell you. Be patient or $$, that's what the rest of us do. Yes HN farms suck, ship table is a new level of that. Grind the grind, it all works out in the end.
The stores are a hand out, I dont expect them to do that, because it's not fitting the pace of the game and it allows players to alleviate the gear crunch.
I too like the marquees vs the old way. remember those stupid tourneys where u had to use ally points, and the only person to get the toon was the one who came in first (looking at you Jyn Erso), would you rather it go back to that, because I wouldn't. in fact I'm way more angry that they locked nest behind whale wall in ships 5 d hard... I mean I have a decent enough number of ships to flirt top 50 in an old shard, like 3 months after the game started old and still cant beat 5a hard.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
You can't make long term plans. I did it now for almost 3 years. But all this bad updates and only marquee events make you think, if you still play when they release the character f2p and then there is a few month farm also.
They could do that if we had good updates, some positiv we see and can focus.
Yeah, it was great back in the day when you had to spend $200 just to have a chance to use crystals to buy a toon that had no timeline for release and would just go away for a year, or 3 months (that always felt great when you bought those ones).
I'm not saying we need this structure, but the current release structure has allowed for people to plan. We all get the toons, and any toon worth its salt has been just fine at 3-4*. You can build the gear up and have a toon viable if you wish, and then worry about more accessibility (* count) as the time moves on.
Yeah, you don't get the point. I know you are in defense for marquee events. Better then before doesn't make it good.
They HAVE to mix things up. Over a year straight marquees is baaad, really bad!
Just try and it the food you like every day and nothing else. Tell me how it went.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
I saw the scrennshot that says: people really liked marquees a the beginning. This means they made a lot of money.
Then she said people responding not like before. Made less money, obviously.
Why they make less money? Because of the points I already made. To much, always the same, no diversity, blabla...
Always forcing us in panic farms want help them either. This hole situation comes from greed.
They could easily hand out minor characters in a different way, like play an event for a month and you have the character at 7*. Our use energy to repeat the event and get more shards.
But they stay the same, because it worked the first time..
Just because a company is for profit does not mean everything is based on greed.
You are right that too much of one thing can lead to boredom, and they need to find a balance. It's great that they seem to be listening too us, but from a business stand point they will always start on the aide of caution which means more money making opportunities for them and then dial it back to find the "somewhat happy medium".
They actually cant "just hand out" characters. They cannot know the whole value and future usefulness of a toon at release.
It is a pretty fair system to release everything at this level at the "same cost" and let the game/community decide its value. I'm sure they see toons not being bought at much and not being farmed as quickly.
I would also think the community doesnt want them setting the price based on what they see as the value. That would increase the p2p/f2p gap as really good toons would cost even more (if that's possible), really locking out f2p(crystal hoarders), and light spenders.
I like the Marquee events, but yes, it's a bit too much right now. I'm still working on gear for my other toons that I just purchased (gear is harder than shards, in dolphin terms). Right now, I'm tapped out until my current project toons are geared up to 11-12 (likely 12, because Sion don't play no games in HSTR).
A legendary or two would be a huge relief. But heck, how would even balance them? Some of these marquee toons are amazing.
Marquees are decent but having the last like 25+ toons in a row released this way sucks. Massive marquee fatigue. It’s hard to get excited about any new toon, and takes excitement out of the game.
The release cadence of hard notes is making me hate this game. I understand putting toons like Sion and Nest on hard nodes. But range trooper? He's good, but only in an imp trooper squad. Imp trooper seemed like a perfect candidate for store shards or cantina.
I'd be fine with every character being released, as most probably would, if fixes were the priority. It feels like bait and switch. You want us to fix all the numerous bugs and issues with the sith raid...heres sing instead. Can't even fix the fact that the far right team in arena(where you're picking which team to fight againest) doesn't ever change,which is the 1 most of us are trying to pick, so if you can't beat that team you're not able to move up in the ranks. So many other issues in this game go unchecked. There was a great opportunity to create the best phone game ever
A G11 4* toon is almost as good as a 7* G12 toon, which is why I'm mostly okay with the marquee model.
That being said, the marquee to hard node farming is just...boring
In what reality do you live? It's a massive difference.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
You can't make long term plans. I did it now for almost 3 years. But all this bad updates and only marquee events make you think, if you still play when they release the character f2p and then there is a few month farm also.
They could do that if we had good updates, some positiv we see and can focus.
Yeah, it was great back in the day when you had to spend $200 just to have a chance to use crystals to buy a toon that had no timeline for release and would just go away for a year, or 3 months (that always felt great when you bought those ones).
I'm not saying we need this structure, but the current release structure has allowed for people to plan. We all get the toons, and any toon worth its salt has been just fine at 3-4*. You can build the gear up and have a toon viable if you wish, and then worry about more accessibility (* count) as the time moves on.
Yeah, you don't get the point. I know you are in defense for marquee events. Better then before doesn't make it good.
They HAVE to mix things up. Over a year straight marquees is baaad, really bad!
Just try and it the food you like every day and nothing else. Tell me how it went.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
I saw the scrennshot that says: people really liked marquees a the beginning. This means they made a lot of money.
Then she said people responding not like before. Made less money, obviously.
Why they make less money? Because of the points I already made. To much, always the same, no diversity, blabla...
Always forcing us in panic farms want help them either. This hole situation comes from greed.
They could easily hand out minor characters in a different way, like play an event for a month and you have the character at 7*. Our use energy to repeat the event and get more shards.
But they stay the same, because it worked the first time..
Just because a company is for profit does not mean everything is based on greed.
You are right that too much of one thing can lead to boredom, and they need to find a balance. It's great that they seem to be listening too us, but from a business stand point they will always start on the aide of caution which means more money making opportunities for them and then dial it back to find the "somewhat happy medium".
They actually cant "just hand out" characters. They cannot know the whole value and future usefulness of a toon at release.
It is a pretty fair system to release everything at this level at the "same cost" and let the game/community decide its value. I'm sure they see toons not being bought at much and not being farmed as quickly.
I would also think the community doesnt want them setting the price based on what they see as the value. That would increase the p2p/f2p gap as really good toons would cost even more (if that's possible), really locking out f2p(crystal hoarders), and light spenders.
If someone can remember the last thing that was for the players and not only to generate money, please tell. I can't.
Mod drop rates being increased to 100%. Free mod energy generating each day (that one isn't here yet, but still) More free bonus energy (we used to get less). An increase in the type/amount of gear from challenges that eliminated the need to farm several annoying low level pieces. Reduced crystal cost of energy refreshes (3x50 and 3x100 for cantina). An increase to the number of places that get crystals from fleet arena payouts. 1-2 Zetas, more crystals, more credits, and more character shards for free from the daily log in. Um... marquee character release where everyone gets a 3* version of every single character instead of... nothing like we used to get when they were added.
The problem with marquee events is that most of those new toons get added to single hard nodes when they become farmable. At least they could throw a bone to the players by making old useless hard-node-only toons farmable on GW shop, arena shop or cantina shop. I mean toons like Lobot or Urorrurrururur. With all the marquee toons getting added to hard nodes, the oldest ones should be made easy to get for platoons.
New legendary events would be nice, too. My favourite part of the game was preparing for them: getting the toons, gearing them, testing them to learn how to play with them... Now that part of the game is lost.
This. They could have an event twice a week for all I care. The problem is that they then release it on a single hard node farm which will take months to a year to 7*.
I think the biggest problem with the nodes though is the drop rate, it's super discouraging sometimes to do all 5 tries and get 0-1 shards. This on top of the soul crushing experience of tier 1-6 of the sith raid just kills motivation.
I've got a bunch of toons I'm trying to gear and star but with so many good toons on 20 energy hard nodes I have little left to farm gear without refreshes. Making it worse is that sith raid rewards are so terrible the raid is just a mindless time sink that doesn't help with the farming of raid only gear. So if you want raid only gear you have to buy it with crystals (less refreshes) or guild currency (less currency to devote to high demand but farmable gear you can't really farm owing to so many good toons you need to star for tw, tb, or raids sucking up the energy).
Tl;dr Sith raid pretty much set up a perfect recipe for apathy. We devote time to content whose rewards do absolutely nothing to help us gear our toons. New toons on hard nodes too frequently get 0 shards a day which adds to the demoralizing impact of the sith raid. Topping it off is looking at tons of toons that all need the same gear whose farming has slowed to a snails pace because shard farming sucks energy away from it plus a useless raid that might as well give us 20 ally points for the lot of good the gear loot does us.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
You can't make long term plans. I did it now for almost 3 years. But all this bad updates and only marquee events make you think, if you still play when they release the character f2p and then there is a few month farm also.
They could do that if we had good updates, some positiv we see and can focus.
Yeah, it was great back in the day when you had to spend $200 just to have a chance to use crystals to buy a toon that had no timeline for release and would just go away for a year, or 3 months (that always felt great when you bought those ones).
I'm not saying we need this structure, but the current release structure has allowed for people to plan. We all get the toons, and any toon worth its salt has been just fine at 3-4*. You can build the gear up and have a toon viable if you wish, and then worry about more accessibility (* count) as the time moves on.
Yeah, you don't get the point. I know you are in defense for marquee events. Better then before doesn't make it good.
They HAVE to mix things up. Over a year straight marquees is baaad, really bad!
Just try and it the food you like every day and nothing else. Tell me how it went.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
I saw the scrennshot that says: people really liked marquees a the beginning. This means they made a lot of money.
Then she said people responding not like before. Made less money, obviously.
Why they make less money? Because of the points I already made. To much, always the same, no diversity, blabla...
Always forcing us in panic farms want help them either. This hole situation comes from greed.
They could easily hand out minor characters in a different way, like play an event for a month and you have the character at 7*. Our use energy to repeat the event and get more shards.
But they stay the same, because it worked the first time..
Just because a company is for profit does not mean everything is based on greed.
You are right that too much of one thing can lead to boredom, and they need to find a balance. It's great that they seem to be listening too us, but from a business stand point they will always start on the aide of caution which means more money making opportunities for them and then dial it back to find the "somewhat happy medium".
They actually cant "just hand out" characters. They cannot know the whole value and future usefulness of a toon at release.
It is a pretty fair system to release everything at this level at the "same cost" and let the game/community decide its value. I'm sure they see toons not being bought at much and not being farmed as quickly.
I would also think the community doesnt want them setting the price based on what they see as the value. That would increase the p2p/f2p gap as really good toons would cost even more (if that's possible), really locking out f2p(crystal hoarders), and light spenders.
It's straight out greed, if they use every chance to milk everyone willing to spend.
If someone can remember the last thing that was for the players and not only to generate money, please tell. I can't. That on top of that marquee Massacre.
Please explain, other than TBs, not a single one of these toons is required for anything. We can ignore them with no issues.
You can actually have every single toon they have released without any $$.
If they wanted to just do it to make money pure and simple, they would release them and then require them for an OP legendary while the packs were still available but the toons could be required no other way. Or to be nice, announce the legendary when they are packs only, then have the event when they are only available in the crystal shipment, or just went farmable forcing crystals use or paying for shards or refreshes.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
No it doesnt comes down to that. For example i spent a lot of time/resources along with half of my guild to farm geonosians and their ships. Focused everything entirely on them and theorycrafting an optimal reinforcement set for them. Now all that down the drain because of the new ship that is basically says to us "we want money all of you can suck it". And if you are not a whale thats the only place to get crystals to farm the still useless veterans to get JTR to start hsr and not even counting the rest of the teams.
He is absolutely right about marquee's beeing way too frequent. So as everyone who believes the forum is **** thanks to bad moderations and no communication which is prevelant in the content updates that come is.
Between ability block, Tarkins ship, stuns and buff immunity it's not that difficult to beat. If you keep him stunned he cant fire off special and therefore cant get the buff train going. Oh and btw instead of tarkin use thrawn and he is just dead.
Alot of this comes down to long term plans. If you are trying to keep up with the release pace, be ready to $$$.
The game is a grind with a long cycle and a marathon pace, just make a plan and stick to the plan. Dont worry about the new and shiny unless that fits your plan.
You can't make long term plans. I did it now for almost 3 years. But all this bad updates and only marquee events make you think, if you still play when they release the character f2p and then there is a few month farm also.
They could do that if we had good updates, some positiv we see and can focus.
Yeah, it was great back in the day when you had to spend $200 just to have a chance to use crystals to buy a toon that had no timeline for release and would just go away for a year, or 3 months (that always felt great when you bought those ones).
I'm not saying we need this structure, but the current release structure has allowed for people to plan. We all get the toons, and any toon worth its salt has been just fine at 3-4*. You can build the gear up and have a toon viable if you wish, and then worry about more accessibility (* count) as the time moves on.
Yeah, you don't get the point. I know you are in defense for marquee events. Better then before doesn't make it good.
They HAVE to mix things up. Over a year straight marquees is baaad, really bad!
Just try and it the food you like every day and nothing else. Tell me how it went.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
I saw the scrennshot that says: people really liked marquees a the beginning. This means they made a lot of money.
Then she said people responding not like before. Made less money, obviously.
Why they make less money? Because of the points I already made. To much, always the same, no diversity, blabla...
Always forcing us in panic farms want help them either. This hole situation comes from greed.
They could easily hand out minor characters in a different way, like play an event for a month and you have the character at 7*. Our use energy to repeat the event and get more shards.
But they stay the same, because it worked the first time..
Just because a company is for profit does not mean everything is based on greed.
You are right that too much of one thing can lead to boredom, and they need to find a balance. It's great that they seem to be listening too us, but from a business stand point they will always start on the aide of caution which means more money making opportunities for them and then dial it back to find the "somewhat happy medium".
They actually cant "just hand out" characters. They cannot know the whole value and future usefulness of a toon at release.
It is a pretty fair system to release everything at this level at the "same cost" and let the game/community decide its value. I'm sure they see toons not being bought at much and not being farmed as quickly.
I would also think the community doesnt want them setting the price based on what they see as the value. That would increase the p2p/f2p gap as really good toons would cost even more (if that's possible), really locking out f2p(crystal hoarders), and light spenders.
It's straight out greed, if they use every chance to milk everyone willing to spend.
If someone can remember the last thing that was for the players and not only to generate money, please tell. I can't. That on top of that marquee Massacre.
Please explain, other than TBs, not a single one of these toons is required for anything. We can ignore them with no issues.
You can actually have every single toon they have released without any $$.
If they wanted to just do it to make money pure and simple, they would release them and then require them for an OP legendary while the packs were still available but the toons could be required no other way. Or to be nice, announce the legendary when they are packs only, then have the event when they are only available in the crystal shipment, or just went farmable forcing crystals use or paying for shards or refreshes.
Single hard node farms are essentially what you described, though. Unless the legendary is released over half a year after the characters, there is no way (barring insane luck) to have them ready without spending crystals. And the new pack seems to point towards something requiring the Solo characters, my personal guess being the original Falcon...
I wish Carrie wrote what she wrote on reddit, on here. She basically said the marquee order this year is something they won’t do again. And we ll have less marquees in the 2nd half of the year with more legendary and hj “like” events.
It just goes to show what I know. I thought marquees were doing better because of Nest. Apparently not. Hard node farms are hard because they are soooo long. How many stopped farming holdo or visas for these new toons. Yes it’s a choice but they are extreme choices.
This is the system we have but that’s not to say it can’t be improved.
Talking and giving feedback on the forums does produce change.
Replies
This one gets it.
We really need to define 'usable' in some context, and that context really depends on the character and their purpose. If you are trying to achieve a high arena rank, then a three or four star character is unlikely to help in a mature shard UNLESS they provide some type of unique skill AND their own stats aren't that important. So characters like Bastila (leadership), Nihilus (Annihilate doesn't care how many stars he has), and MT (Plague, unlike truth, IS Plague) are arena viable at low stars, but it takes something unique in their kit to make that true.
Please run Nest at low stars and G11.4 - she's one shot easily by many different characters. Get her to 12, put on the medpac and give her the zeta and my goodness she's troublesome (especially in a Traya comp, but I digress).
Low star marquee characters might be useful in *some* contexts but, with a few exceptions, will not be able to participate in much end-game context successfully - whether it's Arena, TB, TW or raids.
I'm really looking forward to 3 months and 4650 crystals worth of refreshes to get Range Trooper to seven stars. (assuming 30% drop rate for 280 crystals = 3 crystals / day = 93.3 days * 50 crystals per refresh). And I think this is the depressing part - all of these cool new toons that we won't be able to make the most of for a very long time because of their accessibility. I think moving some of the existing hard node toons to the GW / Squad / Guild stores to make room for multiple new toons on these nodes makes a lot of sense and would be met with applause. Give me 2 range trooper nodes for a bit and I'll gladly pay 100 crystals per day to move that timeframe up to six weeks.
Actually better than before is always good. I never said they don't have room to improve, but I will take this and other steps in the right direction over, leaving things bad until they have the "perfect solution" that makes everyone all warm and fuzzy.
They do have to mix things up, but legendary and HJ events require toons to be able to do it, and half the point of those events is to make them difficult to achieve, which comes from in game difficulty and roster building.(i.e.-panic farm) they needed to at least dead the waters before declaring open season.
Carrie posted on reddit. That a bunch of marquee and then a legendary/HJ that require those toons is better than, marquee right into Legendary/HJ, rinse and repeat. I would tend to agree with that. Right now we are given a chance to start planning and working on farming, vs immediately feeling forced into a focused panic farm.
My issue is just the sheer number of characters going to single hard nodes, especially the 20 energy variety. It would be nice if there were a bit bigger percentage of characters that were easier to get. There is a giant gulf between having everything handed to you for free, and making everything so brutally difficult/expensive/time consuming that it's too much work to be fun.
Another legendary would help. A few characters with multiple farm locations would be nice. (2 hard nodes isn't as bad) An occasional new toon (if they are mediocre/filler toons with a niche use anyhow) straight into one of the old forsaken shops would be nice. I know they have said the last one won't happen, but there isn't a law saying they can't change their minds.
People who hate on marquees need to remember the old days where you had zero access of any kind to p2p toons for maybe a year. Marquees are fine. It's what happens after that is getting monotonous. And even that isn't totally unreasonable. Mixing in a few slightly easier farming options might do the trick.
It just sounds like you want things to be easy.
Also who said that the people working on the mod stuff have anything to do with character development? Just because you link to things does not mean they have anything to do with each other. I'm pretty sure this also conflicts with your previous point about bugs. You want them to release content faster, maybe they are doing testing so that it can meet a better standard than before, have you thought about that.
I have not seen a broken toon released since CLS. Not a single toon has overnight changed the playing field in any single (or multiple) game modes like he did, and they acknowledged that and have seemed to be making an effort to not repeat that mistake. To add to that, with the release structure, everyone gets the toon and is able to gear and use them if they see fit or feel that a toon is super OP. While not the most elegant solution is does eliminate the huge divide created when a good toon is released.
If you feel you need every toon that comes out, I don't know what yo tell you. Be patient or $$, that's what the rest of us do. Yes HN farms suck, ship table is a new level of that. Grind the grind, it all works out in the end.
The stores are a hand out, I dont expect them to do that, because it's not fitting the pace of the game and it allows players to alleviate the gear crunch.
Just because a company is for profit does not mean everything is based on greed.
You are right that too much of one thing can lead to boredom, and they need to find a balance. It's great that they seem to be listening too us, but from a business stand point they will always start on the aide of caution which means more money making opportunities for them and then dial it back to find the "somewhat happy medium".
They actually cant "just hand out" characters. They cannot know the whole value and future usefulness of a toon at release.
It is a pretty fair system to release everything at this level at the "same cost" and let the game/community decide its value. I'm sure they see toons not being bought at much and not being farmed as quickly.
I would also think the community doesnt want them setting the price based on what they see as the value. That would increase the p2p/f2p gap as really good toons would cost even more (if that's possible), really locking out f2p(crystal hoarders), and light spenders.
A legendary or two would be a huge relief. But heck, how would even balance them? Some of these marquee toons are amazing.
Marquees are decent but having the last like 25+ toons in a row released this way sucks. Massive marquee fatigue. It’s hard to get excited about any new toon, and takes excitement out of the game.
In what reality do you live? It's a massive difference.
Mod drop rates being increased to 100%. Free mod energy generating each day (that one isn't here yet, but still) More free bonus energy (we used to get less). An increase in the type/amount of gear from challenges that eliminated the need to farm several annoying low level pieces. Reduced crystal cost of energy refreshes (3x50 and 3x100 for cantina). An increase to the number of places that get crystals from fleet arena payouts. 1-2 Zetas, more crystals, more credits, and more character shards for free from the daily log in. Um... marquee character release where everyone gets a 3* version of every single character instead of... nothing like we used to get when they were added.
Do you want me to stop?
This. They could have an event twice a week for all I care. The problem is that they then release it on a single hard node farm which will take months to a year to 7*.
I think the biggest problem with the nodes though is the drop rate, it's super discouraging sometimes to do all 5 tries and get 0-1 shards. This on top of the soul crushing experience of tier 1-6 of the sith raid just kills motivation.
I've got a bunch of toons I'm trying to gear and star but with so many good toons on 20 energy hard nodes I have little left to farm gear without refreshes. Making it worse is that sith raid rewards are so terrible the raid is just a mindless time sink that doesn't help with the farming of raid only gear. So if you want raid only gear you have to buy it with crystals (less refreshes) or guild currency (less currency to devote to high demand but farmable gear you can't really farm owing to so many good toons you need to star for tw, tb, or raids sucking up the energy).
Tl;dr Sith raid pretty much set up a perfect recipe for apathy. We devote time to content whose rewards do absolutely nothing to help us gear our toons. New toons on hard nodes too frequently get 0 shards a day which adds to the demoralizing impact of the sith raid. Topping it off is looking at tons of toons that all need the same gear whose farming has slowed to a snails pace because shard farming sucks energy away from it plus a useless raid that might as well give us 20 ally points for the lot of good the gear loot does us.
Please explain, other than TBs, not a single one of these toons is required for anything. We can ignore them with no issues.
You can actually have every single toon they have released without any $$.
If they wanted to just do it to make money pure and simple, they would release them and then require them for an OP legendary while the packs were still available but the toons could be required no other way. Or to be nice, announce the legendary when they are packs only, then have the event when they are only available in the crystal shipment, or just went farmable forcing crystals use or paying for shards or refreshes.
Between ability block, Tarkins ship, stuns and buff immunity it's not that difficult to beat. If you keep him stunned he cant fire off special and therefore cant get the buff train going. Oh and btw instead of tarkin use thrawn and he is just dead.
Single hard node farms are essentially what you described, though. Unless the legendary is released over half a year after the characters, there is no way (barring insane luck) to have them ready without spending crystals. And the new pack seems to point towards something requiring the Solo characters, my personal guess being the original Falcon...
Not sure if trolling...
Gear is not the problem, shards are.
It just goes to show what I know. I thought marquees were doing better because of Nest. Apparently not. Hard node farms are hard because they are soooo long. How many stopped farming holdo or visas for these new toons. Yes it’s a choice but they are extreme choices.
This is the system we have but that’s not to say it can’t be improved.
Talking and giving feedback on the forums does produce change.