i think if u can hit rank 1 but isnt in a shard chat, and there are quite a few ppl there. ppl will more likely to hit u, chain u down, or lock eachother and all. its fair to ppl in the chat but, i wouldnt say it's a good form of competition anywhere in swgoh as its so moneydriven that u can literally buy rank 1 without a doubt. think other games mainly on pc is more fair but, there u buy the game upfront and it dont dictate the rules of the game. but often run into squads in bf1 f.ex, it's not fair but on avg. i probably get the squads in my team also, kinda frustrating when a really good team joins the puublic server tho and they have the infamous planewhores ...!
And if they just removed usernames from the arena it would be a lot harder to organize anything. That would make it much more fair for the players that are not invited to these shard chats or just don't want to be a part of it.
Shard chats are unquestionably against EA terms of service.
However, all the biggest spenders in the game use shard chats. So I think the devs take the ostrich head-in-sand approach. As others have said, if they officially gave an opinion, then they would be forced to take action and either ban their biggest spenders when proof of collusion was presented, or they would have to re-design Arena so that collusion wasn't even possible.
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
Literally every game with a PVP element where rewards are based on placement has this going on. It doesn't negatively affect the developers, and it's not like they can prove it's going on anyway, so there's no real reason to do anything about it.
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
You may try to appeal to EA directly. Good luck.
How exactly did they "facilitate the formation"?
By allowing shard search on forums, even making a section for it. Not saying anything against it when it's within their knowledge since day 1. New game chat made things all the easier.
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
You may try to appeal to EA directly. Good luck.
How exactly did they "facilitate the formation"?
By allowing shard search on forums, even making a section for it. Not saying anything against it when it's within their knowledge since day 1. New game chat made things all the easier.
The section wasn't made for finding shard mates, it's called PVP and RIVALRY for.a reason.....
As I said earlier, they simply turn a blind eye to it because they can't do anything to stop it without a bunch of money and resources being spent.... Just look at the dozens and dozens of threads that have been created on this topic.... It once has anyone from CG or EA popped in and given a thumbs up or down... That tells me something....
I mean... you're acquiring virtual currency using methods the developers never intended.
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
You may try to appeal to EA directly. Good luck.
How exactly did they "facilitate the formation"?
By allowing shard search on forums, even making a section for it. Not saying anything against it when it's within their knowledge since day 1. New game chat made things all the easier.
The section wasn't made for finding shard mates, it's called PVP and RIVALRY for.a reason.....
As I said earlier, they simply turn a blind eye to it because they can't do anything to stop it without a bunch of money and resources being spent.... Just look at the dozens and dozens of threads that have been created on this topic.... It once has anyone from CG or EA popped in and given a thumbs up or down... That tells me something....
Action/inaction speaks louder than words. Just like anything they don't like happening on the forums they would have prevented this if they wanted to. This should have happened in the old days of the forum, it would have been marked as an exploit or against fair play with punishing measures and so on.
Besides they've said so many times that noone ever got moved from shards, no shard shuffling happened (except that special ship shard), no shard merging that it's pretty much a given now.
I'm not against this changing (even though I'm in a chat forever) and would love to have a CG statement as well.
Hahaha love it, it is so much against the TOS that even the Devs are in their shard chats and have said many times there is no rules against shard chats
I'm getting this feeling that EA doesn't really have enough knowledge of the nuances in SWGoH to realize what a shard chat is and how it impacts the "pvp" element.
I took No_Try's recommendation and contacted EA customer service. I explained the concept of shard chats, how common they are, and shared my view on it. Then I asked for an official EA stance on the practice of shard chats in SWGoH.
I honestly expected a canned response, but the EA rep actually agreed that it seemed unfair. The most pertinent part of the reply was this (and I'll bold the line that makes me believe EA would consider shard chatting against ToS):
Please let me share that, your concerns, feedback and troubles are important to us. We want to thank you for informing us about the player, we will fully investigate your report. We strive to provide a safe, fun and fair place to play and commit to taking the appropriate action against those who wish to abuse Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes in this manner and those who create applications or cheats which can be used to give an unfair advantage to a player.
They filed it under "Harassment" whereas I actually wrote the ticket under "Game Information" or whatever. Nor did I actually report a player, but the rep was speaking of it as a blanket investigation into player(s).
So... who knows, maybe that's just the copy/pasted response everybody gets.
But if someone feels they're a victim of shard chat targeting, I would suggest reporting the players, timestamps, etc, of when and how you think you're being targeted.
Alternatively, all you shard chatters who think shard chats are completely in line with ToS, put your account where your mouth is. Report yourselves and your fellow chat members to EA. Attach Discord transcripts and timestamps of you and other players targeting non-chat players and agreeing upon payout schedules. If your activities are allowed, then you've got nothing to worry about, and you can come into threads like these and say "see, I told you guys."
(FYI, happy to forward the EA response to anyone who wants to see the reply.)
And if they just removed usernames from the arena it would be a lot harder to organize anything. That would make it much more fair for the players that are not invited to these shard chats or just don't want to be a part of it.
yeah do 1-2 shard shuffles and eliminate all player identification except for titles and you'd straight up kill the shard mafias.
The other option would be to eliminate specific payout ranks and make everything a bracket (like they do for most payouts except top 10) and have your reward be based on top bracket achieved in a 24hr period.
At any rate I think doing something to add some dynamic aspects to shards would be good for overall game health, especially with older shards that have well established mafias. For CG it would be good for the bottom line since it would encourage more players to chase pvp metas with cash if they had real shots at a top payout slot. As it is there isn't much reason to chase a meta if your shard mafia means all that effort goes to waste.
If EA and/or CG are OK with these Arena Shard Chats then they should be open for everyone. Having a top player (or group) of players decide who can join is completely unethical.
You should not be able to buy, bully or manipulate your way to the number 1 spot (or any spot), it should simply be on the strength of your squad and your skill in using it.
Nobody is entitled to these spots regardless of how much money they spend. Upgrade your squad and fight, plain and simple and let the best squad win.
I'm telling you it happens. I'm at 6 now because I went ahead and finished my extra attempts. Once I get up in the morning, promise I'll be out of the top 50. And I know I'll hear that it's my team and defense, bit there are teams way easier to beat out than mine that never get sent back as far as me. The truth is I'm being targeted.
Yep. Only reason you would drop so low is that you’re targeted. Don’t feel bad though, I’m that guy on my shard too. Sad thing is that peeps bought revan and purposely knock me down and they don’t even make their own payout????? Salty much? I guess when you throw that much money into the game, they don’t need to worry about making first.
In my experience your shard chat is only pushing you out of top 20. The rest is taken care of by natural diffusion. I know of no chat that blockades top 50, there's simply no point to that.
I seriously do not hope EA will do anything like shuffling shards. The shard chats are THE biggest point of socialization for many long-term players. For many of us the communication with our shard buddies is even more important than our guilds since we know each other since years now. Also shard chats are great for not being in the need to babysit the phone for a whole our straight during dinner time. Actually that is the main reason for them.
I dunno how other shards are but ours does not exclude anyone from joining. Anyone who wants can come in and join us and he never will be kicked unless he behaves like a **** constantly (what never happened so far).
I swear if shard chats would not be possible anymore a loooot of people including big spenders would quit the game. In top50 there are a lot more players inside the shard chat then outside. And if you don't reach top10 constantly you don't have to bother about shard chats anyway
You should not be able to buy, bully or manipulate your way to the number 1 spot (or any spot), it should simply be on the strength of your squad and your skill in using it.
Nobody is entitled to these spots regardless of how much money they spend. Upgrade your squad and fight, plain and simple and let the best squad win.
Like anyone complaining about shard chats you miss one point: Everyone in the top ranks is able to beat anyone on offense because they have the roster to do so. It is just not possible to build a squad which is so strong that it cannot be beaten on defense. Actually it would even be a flawed game design if this would be possible.
Just throwing this out there, but what if you contacted others that are in the same position as you are and you form your own shard chat? Say you got everyone in rank 51-100 to all work together to get into the top 50 spots. That way you can ignore each other and focus on taking out people in the other shard chat. Seems brutal but its effective when a group of people work together to defeat another group of people. A single stick isn't going to do much against a bundle of sticks, but a bundle of sticks being smashed against another bundle of sticks will do some damage.
Just throwing this out there, but what if you contacted others that are in the same position as you are and you form your own shard chat? Say you got everyone in rank 51-100 to all work together to get into the top 50 spots. That way you can ignore each other and focus on taking out people in the other shard chat. Seems brutal but its effective when a group of people work together to defeat another group of people. A single stick isn't going to do much against a bundle of sticks, but a bundle of sticks being smashed against another bundle of sticks will do some damage.
Please do that, it should be super fun that way xD.
Just throwing this out there, but what if you contacted others that are in the same position as you are and you form your own shard chat? Say you got everyone in rank 51-100 to all work together to get into the top 50 spots. That way you can ignore each other and focus on taking out people in the other shard chat. Seems brutal but its effective when a group of people work together to defeat another group of people. A single stick isn't going to do much against a bundle of sticks, but a bundle of sticks being smashed against another bundle of sticks will do some damage.
they wont be able to touch top10 in most cases. this is pretty naive thinking from you. people who finish around around 50-20 often cant beat me on offense even, and thats even before i moved to revan team. just in the last 2 days i saw few people outside the chat trying to pass me, swapping teams aswell to Zaul, Trio, Nest and still fail. and dont let me start about the traya meta. there were days i woke up at #3-4 and needed a single fight to reach my daily #1.
the top guys who are in the shard chat are the meta deciders for the shard. they get the trayas first, the revans first.. they have the best mods and they can put the best defense team. if you think someone whos placing around 60 daily can pass them easily, you are SO WRONG.
if it was the opposite, and the guys outside the top (and outside the shard) would be able to do good vs those inside the chat *CONSISTENTLY*, the chats would look different.
those within the chat are there for a reason, those outside aren't there for a reason.
Second shard chat will lose hard to the first. if you think about it, they already lose their competition in earlier and easier metas, and thats why they are left behind now.
Just throwing this out there, but what if you contacted others that are in the same position as you are and you form your own shard chat? Say you got everyone in rank 51-100 to all work together to get into the top 50 spots. That way you can ignore each other and focus on taking out people in the other shard chat. Seems brutal but its effective when a group of people work together to defeat another group of people. A single stick isn't going to do much against a bundle of sticks, but a bundle of sticks being smashed against another bundle of sticks will do some damage.
they wont be able to touch top10 in most cases. this is pretty naive thinking from you. people who finish around around 50-20 often cant beat me on offense even, and thats even before i moved to revan team. just in the last 2 days i saw few people outside the chat trying to pass me, swapping teams aswell to Zaul, Trio, Nest and still fail. and dont let me start about the traya meta. there were days i woke up at #3-4 and needed a single fight to reach my daily #1.
the top guys who are in the shard chat are the meta deciders for the shard. they get the trayas first, the revans first.. they have the best mods and they can put the best defense team. if you think someone whos placing around 60 daily can pass them easily, you are SO WRONG.
if it was the opposite, and the guys outside the top (and outside the shard) would be able to do good vs those inside the chat *CONSISTENTLY*, the chats would look different.
those within the chat are there for a reason, those outside aren't there for a reason.
Second shard chat will lose hard to the first. if you think about it, they already lose their competition in earlier and easier metas, and thats why they are left behind now.
Yep, the problem of most guys not in the shard chat is that they think people in top get their ranks for free. All of them have super-effective teams and a powerful roster and modbase. Otherwise they would not be there.
Replies
However, all the biggest spenders in the game use shard chats. So I think the devs take the ostrich head-in-sand approach. As others have said, if they officially gave an opinion, then they would be forced to take action and either ban their biggest spenders when proof of collusion was presented, or they would have to re-design Arena so that collusion wasn't even possible.
How so?
Interferes with fair gameplay....
Crystals = $$. Win-trading, collusion, whatever you want to call it... you are essentially stealing $$ from EA, but mostly from all the players that are artificially and unfairly denied ranking and payouts due to colluding groups of players.
But most of the people engaging in this theft are the people forking over $100s on the regular, so undoubtedly the more profitable path for EA is to just ignore the issue and let the F2P and dolphins or whoever complain about unfairness on the forums.
Here's the tos https://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/
There are several phrases here that can be interpreted as violating the tos (which then again can be interpreted not doing so). In this forums you are addressing CG, not EA. CG obviously never condoned shard chats as they facilitated the formation of such chats in the forums from day 1 of the game.
You may try to appeal to EA directly. Good luck.
Your options include:
A: Beat 'em
B: Join 'em
I know which one I'd go with.
How exactly did they "facilitate the formation"?
By allowing shard search on forums, even making a section for it. Not saying anything against it when it's within their knowledge since day 1. New game chat made things all the easier.
The section wasn't made for finding shard mates, it's called PVP and RIVALRY for.a reason.....
As I said earlier, they simply turn a blind eye to it because they can't do anything to stop it without a bunch of money and resources being spent.... Just look at the dozens and dozens of threads that have been created on this topic.... It once has anyone from CG or EA popped in and given a thumbs up or down... That tells me something....
Action/inaction speaks louder than words. Just like anything they don't like happening on the forums they would have prevented this if they wanted to. This should have happened in the old days of the forum, it would have been marked as an exploit or against fair play with punishing measures and so on.
Besides they've said so many times that noone ever got moved from shards, no shard shuffling happened (except that special ship shard), no shard merging that it's pretty much a given now.
I'm not against this changing (even though I'm in a chat forever) and would love to have a CG statement as well.
The EA will not manifest itself.
A moderator passed by, gave me a warning and did not speak on the subject.
This way I understand that the collusion in the arenas will remain.
For me it's good, my arena group is great.
We attack everyone who is not in the group and everyone changes teams by weaker teams when asked.
I will guarantee p1 to p3 every day and never need to spend money on the game again.
What you say is not correct.
Collusion participants get many crystals and do not have to spend money to make progress in the game.
Whoever looks bad in the arena needs to spend money to have crystals and climb in the sand.
Whales do not need good sand positions.
I have 2 whales in my guild and both do not care about arena position
I took No_Try's recommendation and contacted EA customer service. I explained the concept of shard chats, how common they are, and shared my view on it. Then I asked for an official EA stance on the practice of shard chats in SWGoH.
I honestly expected a canned response, but the EA rep actually agreed that it seemed unfair. The most pertinent part of the reply was this (and I'll bold the line that makes me believe EA would consider shard chatting against ToS):
They filed it under "Harassment" whereas I actually wrote the ticket under "Game Information" or whatever. Nor did I actually report a player, but the rep was speaking of it as a blanket investigation into player(s).
So... who knows, maybe that's just the copy/pasted response everybody gets.
But if someone feels they're a victim of shard chat targeting, I would suggest reporting the players, timestamps, etc, of when and how you think you're being targeted.
Alternatively, all you shard chatters who think shard chats are completely in line with ToS, put your account where your mouth is. Report yourselves and your fellow chat members to EA. Attach Discord transcripts and timestamps of you and other players targeting non-chat players and agreeing upon payout schedules. If your activities are allowed, then you've got nothing to worry about, and you can come into threads like these and say "see, I told you guys."
(FYI, happy to forward the EA response to anyone who wants to see the reply.)
yeah do 1-2 shard shuffles and eliminate all player identification except for titles and you'd straight up kill the shard mafias.
The other option would be to eliminate specific payout ranks and make everything a bracket (like they do for most payouts except top 10) and have your reward be based on top bracket achieved in a 24hr period.
At any rate I think doing something to add some dynamic aspects to shards would be good for overall game health, especially with older shards that have well established mafias. For CG it would be good for the bottom line since it would encourage more players to chase pvp metas with cash if they had real shots at a top payout slot. As it is there isn't much reason to chase a meta if your shard mafia means all that effort goes to waste.
You should not be able to buy, bully or manipulate your way to the number 1 spot (or any spot), it should simply be on the strength of your squad and your skill in using it.
Nobody is entitled to these spots regardless of how much money they spend. Upgrade your squad and fight, plain and simple and let the best squad win.
In my experience your shard chat is only pushing you out of top 20. The rest is taken care of by natural diffusion. I know of no chat that blockades top 50, there's simply no point to that.
I dunno how other shards are but ours does not exclude anyone from joining. Anyone who wants can come in and join us and he never will be kicked unless he behaves like a **** constantly (what never happened so far).
I swear if shard chats would not be possible anymore a loooot of people including big spenders would quit the game. In top50 there are a lot more players inside the shard chat then outside. And if you don't reach top10 constantly you don't have to bother about shard chats anyway
Like anyone complaining about shard chats you miss one point: Everyone in the top ranks is able to beat anyone on offense because they have the roster to do so. It is just not possible to build a squad which is so strong that it cannot be beaten on defense. Actually it would even be a flawed game design if this would be possible.
Please do that, it should be super fun that way xD.
I dropped in Arena from 69 back to 280.
It’s wallet warriors and other whales out guilds who feel entitled to the top spots because they think they are the only ones spending money.
they wont be able to touch top10 in most cases. this is pretty naive thinking from you. people who finish around around 50-20 often cant beat me on offense even, and thats even before i moved to revan team. just in the last 2 days i saw few people outside the chat trying to pass me, swapping teams aswell to Zaul, Trio, Nest and still fail. and dont let me start about the traya meta. there were days i woke up at #3-4 and needed a single fight to reach my daily #1.
the top guys who are in the shard chat are the meta deciders for the shard. they get the trayas first, the revans first.. they have the best mods and they can put the best defense team. if you think someone whos placing around 60 daily can pass them easily, you are SO WRONG.
if it was the opposite, and the guys outside the top (and outside the shard) would be able to do good vs those inside the chat *CONSISTENTLY*, the chats would look different.
those within the chat are there for a reason, those outside aren't there for a reason.
Second shard chat will lose hard to the first. if you think about it, they already lose their competition in earlier and easier metas, and thats why they are left behind now.
Yep, the problem of most guys not in the shard chat is that they think people in top get their ranks for free. All of them have super-effective teams and a powerful roster and modbase. Otherwise they would not be there.