Where is the love for the Dark Side?
I’m not sure if a post has been done like this, but I’m going to breakdown the state of the toons after today’s announcement of a legendary Chewbacca.
First: how many light side and dark side characters are there? Currently, there are 91 light side and 69 dark side. When the new Chewbacca and Jango come out, it’ll be 92 light to 70 dark. Which means 56% of the total amount of toons are light side. That’s SOMEWHAT even, but could be better. It literally wouldn’t hurt to focus the rest of the year on adding dark side toons.
Second: how many duplicates of characters are there? For the light side…
2 Ahsokas, 3 Chewbaccas, 5 Hans, 2 Kenobis, 2 Landos, 2 Leias, 2 Lukes, 2 Reys, & 2 Yodas. And when the new Chewbacca is added, that’ll be 4 Chewbaccas.
Now the dark side…
2 Kylos & 2 Palpatines (Sidious)
That’s… not even close. There could EASILY be two versions of Vader/Maul/Phasma, just as examples.
Third: let’s get into the character events now…
BB-8 (LS): 5 First Order Needed
Emperor Palpatine (DS): 5 Rebels Needed
Grand Admiral Thrawn (DS): 5 Phoenix Needed
Grand Master Yoda (LS): 5 Jedi Needed
R2-D2 (LS): 5 Empire Needed
Commander Luke Skywalker (LS): Specific Characters
Jedi Training Rey (LS): Specific Characters
So, of the current 5 “legendary events”: 2 are dark side, 3 are light. Okay, that’s even, except with the addition of the new Chewbacca it’ll be 2-to-4. That’s not particularly even. On top of that, the Thrawn event is the worst in terms of who is needed because there’s only 6 Phoenix to actually choose from. Plus, people are speculating that the new Chewbacca will lead to ANOTHER “Hero’s Journey”. That makes sense since R2-D2 was needed for CLS and BB-8 was needed for JTR. But who would that toon be? Most likely another light side toon.
Fourth: “Common” Characters. I define these characters as having only 3 abilities. Some examples include Biggs, Clone Sergeant, Coruscant Underworld Police, First Order Officer, Gamorrean Guard, & Geonosian Soldier (you get the point by now).
LS – 14
DS – 28
The dark side has DOUBLE the amount of “Common” Characters. 92 light side total (because let’s be honest, the new Chewbacca will not have 3 abilities) means roughly 15% are common on their side. As for dark? Well 70 dark total means 40%! 40% of the dark side are “Common”. 5 are in First Order alone, as an example. That’s pretty rough.
Fifth: Let’s go even further. This time with number of zetas. To make it fair, I won’t even include CLS or JTR because that adds six zetas to the light side alone.
LS – 59
DS – 48
You know what? Fair enough here. Based on the number of toons available and such, that’s pretty balanced. Especially since the dark side has a disadvantage in everything else.
Overall: where is the love for the dark side? IF we do get another “Hero’s Journey” can we get 3 “Villain’s Journeys” in a row to make up for it? I’m not even one of those people crying “WHERE’S REVAN?!”. I just want the game to have some sort of balance. Is that so much to ask for? And before anyone goes “Well dark side are meta at the moment, so your points are invalid!” Just wait for more people to farm Bastila. Once she became farmable, I noticed a significant increase in my shard’s Bastila usage.
Devs, please tell us, are you planning on showing more love to the dark side? The new Bounty Hunters are nice, but if you run out of ideas for specific factions, just remember you guys put FIVE Hans in the game. I’m sure you can afford other versions of dark side toons.
First: how many light side and dark side characters are there? Currently, there are 91 light side and 69 dark side. When the new Chewbacca and Jango come out, it’ll be 92 light to 70 dark. Which means 56% of the total amount of toons are light side. That’s SOMEWHAT even, but could be better. It literally wouldn’t hurt to focus the rest of the year on adding dark side toons.
Second: how many duplicates of characters are there? For the light side…
2 Ahsokas, 3 Chewbaccas, 5 Hans, 2 Kenobis, 2 Landos, 2 Leias, 2 Lukes, 2 Reys, & 2 Yodas. And when the new Chewbacca is added, that’ll be 4 Chewbaccas.
Now the dark side…
2 Kylos & 2 Palpatines (Sidious)
That’s… not even close. There could EASILY be two versions of Vader/Maul/Phasma, just as examples.
Third: let’s get into the character events now…
BB-8 (LS): 5 First Order Needed
Emperor Palpatine (DS): 5 Rebels Needed
Grand Admiral Thrawn (DS): 5 Phoenix Needed
Grand Master Yoda (LS): 5 Jedi Needed
R2-D2 (LS): 5 Empire Needed
Commander Luke Skywalker (LS): Specific Characters
Jedi Training Rey (LS): Specific Characters
So, of the current 5 “legendary events”: 2 are dark side, 3 are light. Okay, that’s even, except with the addition of the new Chewbacca it’ll be 2-to-4. That’s not particularly even. On top of that, the Thrawn event is the worst in terms of who is needed because there’s only 6 Phoenix to actually choose from. Plus, people are speculating that the new Chewbacca will lead to ANOTHER “Hero’s Journey”. That makes sense since R2-D2 was needed for CLS and BB-8 was needed for JTR. But who would that toon be? Most likely another light side toon.
Fourth: “Common” Characters. I define these characters as having only 3 abilities. Some examples include Biggs, Clone Sergeant, Coruscant Underworld Police, First Order Officer, Gamorrean Guard, & Geonosian Soldier (you get the point by now).
LS – 14
DS – 28
The dark side has DOUBLE the amount of “Common” Characters. 92 light side total (because let’s be honest, the new Chewbacca will not have 3 abilities) means roughly 15% are common on their side. As for dark? Well 70 dark total means 40%! 40% of the dark side are “Common”. 5 are in First Order alone, as an example. That’s pretty rough.
Fifth: Let’s go even further. This time with number of zetas. To make it fair, I won’t even include CLS or JTR because that adds six zetas to the light side alone.
LS – 59
DS – 48
You know what? Fair enough here. Based on the number of toons available and such, that’s pretty balanced. Especially since the dark side has a disadvantage in everything else.
Overall: where is the love for the dark side? IF we do get another “Hero’s Journey” can we get 3 “Villain’s Journeys” in a row to make up for it? I’m not even one of those people crying “WHERE’S REVAN?!”. I just want the game to have some sort of balance. Is that so much to ask for? And before anyone goes “Well dark side are meta at the moment, so your points are invalid!” Just wait for more people to farm Bastila. Once she became farmable, I noticed a significant increase in my shard’s Bastila usage.
Devs, please tell us, are you planning on showing more love to the dark side? The new Bounty Hunters are nice, but if you run out of ideas for specific factions, just remember you guys put FIVE Hans in the game. I’m sure you can afford other versions of dark side toons.
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If anything this should mark the close for the dark side (for now) with a push back towards the light side culminating in a Jedi rework and Jedi Luke Skywalker.
... just that one version is light side.
I'm fond of alliteration.
I'd also go as far to say that BH may be the best overall faction in the game now. They have 10 characters and 10 leader abilities and recent reworks. Jango will allegedly give more arena viability. If that is true they literally work everywhere because they are the Swiss army knife now because of so many leader options. TB, TW, events, heists, Raids, fleet arena, and perhaps, arena.
Dark side is up there already.
"And before anyone goes “Well dark side are meta at the moment, so your points are invalid!” Just wait for more people to farm Bastila. Once she became farmable, I noticed a significant increase in my shard’s Bastila usage."
I know you said you skipped the last half. Meta is fine and dandy, but that's still only one aspect to the game. Considering it's grown beyond just "having the best team" for arena.
But even with them power-boosting the dark side, you're okay with the 92 light to 70 dark? There's still Snoke, The Grand Inquisitor, The Fifth Brother, The Seventh Sister. But no, let's get... more Hans and Chewbaccas.
so you have the past 2 metas,
- Palp w/empire & sith
- Treya with sith
- Possible future BH meta (we can hope)
The DS are running fleet finally.
the credit heist, and now the resource heist are some of the best RIO for any toons in game.
I am not trying to say this makes up for a legendary or anything like that, but there is DS love out there.
The numbers you’ve gathered do say much, but you fail to notice the reason for it. Many of the dark side characters are troopers, minions, or genetics of some type, and a great many of them have 3 abilities, commons, as you call them. This comes from the problem in the Star Wars universe of the villain situation. I hardly consider this a problem, however in a game like this it becomes readily apparent.
In a big movie release like, for instance, rogue one, the movie is mainly focused on the rebels. We see new additions in cassian, jyn, k2, Chaze, and many more minor and major characters. On the other hand, the dark side features kennic, an obvious choice for a character addition, Vader, already in the game, and Tarkin, also already in the game. There are also the new troopers, those being the death and shore troopers, but those can only be released once as generics. The TIE reaper was also released, although that was pushing it, as the ship had a grand total of about 15 seconds of screen time. You see the problem here, there just isn’t as great an opportunity to release new characters. The original trilogy has many villains to choose from, but their appearances hardly change. The heroes on the other hand have several different appearances, many very iconic and memorable, and more importantly certainly more acceptable of an alternate appearance for general veers, per say.
You also brought up the considerable gap in the number of toons on both sides. This is somewhat deflated by the points made above, but also by the percentage of those characters in the top tier positions (I am basing my statements off of ahnaldt101s ranking table and cubsfanhans top 25 rankings, both of which are regarded as very accurate and telling of the characters they represent and their abilities.). The dark side, while not as numerous as the light, have a much higher percentage of viable or useful characters, with the herd of unviables being thinned with each faction pass the devs ink out. First was imperial troopers, after that nightsisters, and now bounty hunters (all at one point or another considered worthless).
That’s not including the meticulous care the devs have put in to maintain the first order, sith and empire in the realm of viability, (more so the latter 2) and the complete and total dominance that the dark has had in the fleet arena for nearly a year now.
Additionally, I know you said not to mention it, but there’s no overlooking the arena right now. There are a few holdouts, like Nest, Bastilla, and Rey, but there’s no denying the complete and utter dominance that the triumvirate is asserting over arena right now. The last time dominance of a single team was this absolute was the initial release of CLS, who in case you forgot, was crushed under the boot of Vader and Sidious.
Speaking of those two, they are still at large, maybe not in the top 50, but they are far from being gone. Same goes for the nightsisters. The bounty hunters also look like they will have a comfortable niche in the arena once jango is released.
In conclusion, the dark side have had a great deal of love the last few months. I can understand your unhappiness however, as many are angry about jangos marquee status, and Chewbacca’s legendary right after this displeasing news is like pouring gasoline in the fire. Don’t fret, more is sure to come in the future. There are rumors of maul, revan, Malik, and the separatist rework (that’s been hinted at since 2016) to look forward to. As of now, I’d just say you should enjoy the darkness right now. It didn’t always used to be this way.
I am welcome to open another possible Rebel meta-like team . Bring on Chewie, I hope he has great synergy with Raid Han. Because we have so many teams... there is always a counter option.
~D
They have improved the balance some. While it still has more ls total, it is not nearly as bad as it once was. I would be ecstatic if after jedi luke they release darth revan and darth malak. That woukd make ds meta again but probably wouldn't happen until feb.
The real solution to the problem is to only release ls characters that are actually good. Rose and Holdo come to mind. Did we really need them? There are also about half the rogue one characters we could do without. Like Pao and bohodi for example. Then there are several useless jedi. Why do we need jedi who were only in the movie to be killed by sideous in five seconds? Or generic jedi when we have several named ones?
They could just spend time on quality characters that are badass in the universe and leave the ones that are minor unimportant characters out. That would also lead to more balance.
That is Darth Bane’s rule of two. Old Republic era Sith have no such limitation and actually have a Sith Academy as well as a ruling Dark Side Council. Darth Bane is 200 years prior to A New Hope.
Old Republic era Jedi have an academy as well, just not on Coruscant. Jedi Knights may only have one apprentice at a time.
actually your off with the number of zetas. lightside has about 66, darkside has about 51 total
(according to my list)
but i agree that lightside has too many compared to dark, and that even after they got like 5-10 new zetas with all of these bounty hunters
I'll give you that, but since it's not in the same alignment, does that really count as a duplicate? Lol.
I'm not saying the numbers need to be split 50/50. I just think, as always, there's too much on the light side. Partly in fact that there are so many duplicates. I do agree that Bounty Hunters are the best overall faction. That is for now. Dark side are rising sure, yet it should stay that way. And we should still get some sort of 3-zeta dark side character before we get another light side. (Not new Chewbacca, potential new Hero Journey one).
The current and past Sith/Empire meta are one thing. But how about light side running it for so long anyway? The Wiggs meta... CLS introduction meta... JTR introduction meta... If I wanted to research back even further I could. I remember when QGJ was a meta because of his zeta. At least in my shard.
I'll probably respond to more people later. But I'm off to work. I'm liking this discussion. At least, the people actually contributing something. Not like the person "Stop complaining". Great contribution there.
But while we're at it, let's rework my Jedi (the useless ones) like we did the Bounty Hunters. Make them viable everywhere. And let's rework CLS, Raid Han, and R2 to retake the arena. Let's give the light side as much power as the dark has. You can have all the marquee grinds. I'll take the reworks.
http://swgoh.gg/u/Corrog/
http://swgoh.gg/u/Talshin/
Yet, it is 100% that the dark side has been ALWAYS behind the light side in terms numbers. There are like 30 more light side characters than dark side, including different versions of said characters.
I do understand that from a design standpoint differently clothed rebel versions of the same character make more sense than 3 OT Vaders in the same armor.
BUT there are ways to give them things to distinguish between them, even if it‘s just the way he holds his light sabre and his abilities.
Point is: I want a badass Vader (Rogue One cutting through rebels with ease Vader) as much as a force choking Vader (to spurn on those annoying imperial officers that think the force is a mere superstition)
We‘re missing out on so many Storm Trooper variants, we‘re missing out on so many other dark side characters that could be incorporated, and so on....
Why not give us dark side lovers an edge at least in some part of the game? Let us have more ships (which the dark side has been known for ever since ALWAYS: masses of droidships, masses of TIEs in the OT, even the FO numbers are bigger than the Resistance‘s)
AND even more (I personally do not count Heroes Journeys as legendary, they are their own style):
It is 2 - 0 in regards to characters of epic epicness - this is not about meta worthiness or mere strength! This is acknowledging the development of the characters in the movies and their fandom.
Palpatine and Vader deserve as much a “Villans Rise“ event as Rey and CLS and the more than 100% safe bet of Jedi Knight Luke‘s “Hero‘s Journey“.
Thus we can basically state: 100% we know of 3 light side Hero‘s Journeys while there is only a MAYBE Darth Revan one (if it‘s not even just a legendary again ...)
I‘d also speculate that we‘d get a Old Jedi Knight Luke as Hero‘s Journey at some point
So my point is:
This debate shouldn‘t be held regarding the powerlevel of the characters released, but the fandom behind the Star Wars characters and some are si p,y more noteworthy than others although everyone has their own favorites.
Through Passion I gain Strength.
Through Strength I gain Power.
Through Power I gain Victory.
Through Victory my chains are Broken.
The Force shall free me
Woo hold on CLS, raid han, and R2 dont need reworks. They can retake arena without actual reworks, they just need a fresh new toon thats powerful (chewie maybe).
Personally there kits are good enough (minus han should have a lead like other raid characters) as they are, they dont need buff to anything
I agree to an extent. But I don't want 3 vaders in the same armor. Gearing 1 is enough. I think periodic reworks to keep ep and vader relevant is a much better way to go.
There are plenty of ds characters to add without doing ones that are almost identical. So maybe just rework vader to get additional abilities for ones he uses in each movie. Like adding a force choke ability would be cool.
For heroes journey like characters, you could do a presuit vader. That is different enough to warrant a new character. Darth Revan and Darth Malak are good choices. Probably Darth Malak a legendary and Revan a hero's fall. Then there's Darth Bane or Darth Plagueis. You could argue snoke but they kinda ruined that with ep 8. They could have made kru a heroic but that ship has sailed. But they could do a heroic villian along with the new rey for ep 9.
Jedi Luke is definitely coming but if you did revan and malak and maybe bane or plaguis before the ep 9 hype starts and then do two heroics a jedi rey and a sith kylo then it is pretty well balanced.
We also don't need a heroic for old luke. Maybe for legends grand master Skywalker but ep 8 pretty much ruined cannon Luke after Rotj. So he can be kinda like a hermit yoda farm but not legendary.
I think it'd be pretty cool to have a "redeemed" Vader, post-killing-Palpatine, with his armor all scorched up. With a power set similar to Hoda, either no basic attack or a very weak one with some other effect attached to it.