So after listening to the RSG lunch hour today, I’ve changed my mind on the hard node changes. I think they hit the nail on the head on several counts.
Firstly, we’re all entitled to agree or disagree with the changes but should respect everyone else’s point of view and refrain from attacks on eachother and CG for that matter.
Second, CG doesn’t owe us anything. This game is very F2P friendly and if you’re not spending then you’re most certainly not owed a single thing. For those of us who do spend, we always get what we pay for. If I buy a chest of crystals, I get 2800 crystals. I received everything that was owed to me. How this game functions is not for me or anyone else to dictate.
Third, at the end of the day this game is a business. Businesses are in business to make money, not to break even. There has to be profit to make supporting this game worthwhile to the people who own it. I’ve seen the sales figures for the game, but I honestly have no clue what the operating costs are. For all we know, this change may very well be integral to the lifespan of this game. We the players are not in the best position to make those calls. I’d rather this game carry on for a few more years then for it to go belly up in 6 months. I’m sure CG lost a lot of money on Darth Revan(despite the new gear, which was shady AF btw), and a lot of people think this is punishment for what they lost on DR. But you know what, if they’d railroaded DR and sent out a bad product, they would have been crucified. The pitchforks would be a lot higher then they are now.
The only place RSG and I differ is their opinion that this is not going to hurt newer players. And if I’m being honest, their holier than thou argument about how bad they had it back in the day w/3 attempts came off very condescending and stuck up. I’ll concede the point that 3 attempts must have been absolutely terrible. But the veteran players did that at a time when the game was in its infancy. Here we are 3+ years later and a lot of you are sitting pretty. New players like myself are coming in at a time when this game has basically been marked for death. Remember the 5 year plan? With all the knew content and subsequent new content over the next few years, it will be extremely difficult to catch up. So yes, this will be very detrimental to newer players. And I do feel this change could possibly hurt CG in the long run on account of that. It’s not even remotely reasonable to compare farming what was in this game at 3 hard node attempts over 3 years ago, to what’s in the game then plus now and what’s to come at 5 attempts. But, that’s just my opinion.
Lastly, I’d like to thank CG for all they do for us and apologize for all the hate they’ve received over this decision. To be clear, I do not support it and I’ve said it both on these forums and on reddit, I will not spend crystals refreshing nodes. And thus will probably not need to buy crystals because of that, the value just simply isn’t there for me anymore. These changes(should they be somewhat permanent) have made it clear to me that I have zero chances of ever catching up and should just have fun and play the game, there’s no need to try so hard anymore. But that’s just me. I hope CG knows what they’re doing and if this is what they need to do to keep their company and this game healthy, then I will support their decision.
They see this as validation. So many people saying “I could have never gotten X to 7* if I had been limited to 5 hn tries.” Exactly. That’s the point.
Secondly, if we’re on here fussing, we are obviously still engaged and willing to take the abuse. “Please, sir, may I have some more?”
The paywall in this game is quickly becoming the barrier to having fun. Eventually people will move on to a game that isn’t fracking us so hard you can hear pelvises cracking.
I am the jedi dog battle droid C-3PO could not kill.
Agreed. I also worry for new players but I hope they have a plan for this. Possibly some new events like rebel round-up, the contract one, etc where they can get tons of shards to help them out.
To me this change is just a course correction. Obviously they aren't doing this to punish anyone. They are doing it to give a greater reason to spend money. If you don't want to spend money, you of course feel punished.
The most recent events obviously did not generate enough revenue, while still giving many players the fresh new toon. That cannot be allowed to continue, because that is the only incentive that paying customers have to continue paying, and without it they will change into free2play, if the rewards are the same. Everyone and their grandmother having Revan is enough evidence for me that this is what happened - they can't all possibly have decided to pay for it.
I don't personally like the change and I spent all my (free) crystals on node and energy refreshes while it lasted. I will likely do so less now, and build up crystals for packs and shipments instead, which may very will be exactly what they intended.
Dropping from 8 to 5 may also mean that they can do double drops as a fun event on occasion. At 8, that would be way too generous. We will see what they have planned to make us happy again. I hope there is something.
Giving us a mechanism that everyone can make use of is not a good way to allow newbies to catch up - it actually makes it harder, because the oldies are using the exact same mechanism to widen the gap. They need to introduce something that the newbies can take advantage of, that the oldies cannot. Having double drops on older toons, or events that generate gear that the oldies no longer need, etc. Not a blanket speed up improvement for everyone.
This is not the end of the world. You'll be fine, one way or another.
There was a thread on reddit recently asking input from new players and the OP assumed that it must be terrible being a new player unable to ever catch up. Well, there were many replies from brand new players saying that isn't the case at all. They are on brand new servers with people that started around the same time as them so there is no "catch up". The playing field is even. Being a veteran player of over 3 years, I can't speak to it personally but as far as I can tell, new players are happy with the game and this change doesn't change anything since it's the same for everyone.
32 pages of complaints and we finally get somebody from EA, not to address the issue but to ask us to curb sarcasm
Is that surprising?
33 pages of, "I don't like it," and varying degrees of, "I am angry," is not new or unexpected information and does not bear response. Players would obviously prefer eight, but the devs have concluded that game pacing and economy concerns prevail for the health of the game. There's nothing to say.
The incredible levels of toxicity on this forum and in this thread, however, are an issue in need of remark.
Also, CG does listen to these forums, and the sarcasm undermines their ability to glean useful feedback.
Gear XII salvage is now farmable from Light Side Battles Stage 9 and Dark Side Battles Stage 9 in the upcoming update at what drop rate? 0.01% would be just as useless as the current rate.
Given the trend of decreasing drop rate with respect to increasing gear rarity and that the current lowest drop rate for gear has been tested out to about 11%, I would guess it will be 9%, but it will need to be tested once it releases.
The snark and presumption of bad faith are not useful. Statistics and testing, however, can be.
Man, nice wall-of-text but it didn't change the math, it's 6 months to get a single char, if the guy will farm 2 or 200 in parallel it will take 6 months. That said, the game isn't about PVP (arena/tw) only where is possible lower stars. There's PVE (Raids/TB) content and the number is stars are important.
Again, 3 months to get a single toon is boring for sure, but we can take it, 6 months is too much. It's the main feedback here, they can listen or not, they can also look to the market and see what happened with some games when they ignored the community. It's my feedback and they can add more 49 voices from my guild mates.
You (and a few people) can disagree, and that's good we all are free to do that. But there are 32 pages (until now) of feedback and the majority are not agreeing with you.
So again... math.
Places where you need seven-star heroes:
Heroic raids. Day six of territory battles. The top tiers of certain events.
Places where you can use sub seven-star heroes:
Non-heroic raids. Days 1-5 of territory battles. Most tiers of most events. Arena. Grand arena. Fleet arena. Galactic war. Territory war. Light side, dark side, cantina, mod, and fleet tables. Mod challenges. Fleet challenges. Daily challenges.
In other words, most of the game.
Units who are useful to me right now below seven stars? Bastila fallen, Sith Trooper, Jango Fett, Houndstooth, TIE Silencer. IG-1000 and Xanadu Blood are about to get me the Millennium Falcon sub-seven, and I will use the Millennium Falcon in fleet arena sub-seven. And when I finally get around to mucking with him, my sub-seven C-3PO will be useful, too.
You don't need seven stars to make good use of a unit. You don't need to wait until a unit is seven stars to play with them.
Well I guess the response proves EA is alive and reading posts... They just don't care about **** off their player base and instead would rather make snarky comments about sarcasm...
The most recent events obviously did not generate enough revenue, .
You show the me licence fees, employee salaries, marketing (if any) and put it against revenue.
Just like you I have no idea how profitable this game is. My opinion is they make a fortune. And as long as people are here in the forums going "hey they did not make enough money, hey they did not make enough money" they can read those forums and say hey...I think tensions are not that bad (if they even care) lets see if we can squeeze out a few hundoK here....
Again..just like you I Have no idea how much money they actually stick in the bank.... It's just MY opinion that they clean house and there is no reason they cannot add some decent PVE stuff in the game
But yeah saying they are not making enough money.... Prove it ?
Even if the quarterly earnings are down because of some BAD CALLS... Even if quarterly is down a lot I bet they still bank a decent profit.
Knock it off with the sarcasm please, keep it polite and on topic.
Are you kidding me? You must be out of your mind. How about YOU START TAKING US SERIOUSLY. How much of a **** do you have to be to say this on a thread filled with legitimate concerns. No wonder EA is the worst gaming company of all time, they have people like you working there. Oh and to keep it on topic, this change is a cash grab from a bunch of greedy filthy pigs. How’s that for on topic?
Pretty sure the EA rep you quoted isn't involved with the game, and is mainly here in a forum mod role.
Correct, he is an EA employee that moderates forums.
Knock it off with the sarcasm please, keep it polite and on topic.
Are you kidding me? You must be out of your mind. How about YOU START TAKING US SERIOUSLY. How much of a **** do you have to be to say this on a thread filled with legitimate concerns. No wonder EA is the worst gaming company of all time, they have people like you working there. Oh and to keep it on topic, this change is a cash grab from a bunch of greedy filthy pigs. How’s that for on topic?
Pretty sure the EA rep you quoted isn't involved with the game, and is mainly here in a forum mod role.
I thought it was more of a punting the hornets’ nest role.
Weirdly, the TB nerf makes me more optimistic. Such nerfs across the board really make it sound like some new ways to get shards are coming, be it the long-needed revival of the stores, return of shards in shard store or something new entirely. But it's EA we're dealing with, so my optimism is still cautious...
I feel the same way. For TBs anyway.
I still think 8 sims per hard node is the way to go for us players. But I’m sure that ea/cg has data that they need to justify this change.
Knock it off with the sarcasm please, keep it polite and on topic.
Knock it off with the disrespect please, keep it polite and respectful to your player base by not posting this crap on a Friday and completing ignoring them.
The best part of all this Rage that's exploding here and on reddit with people having taken enough and standing up and demanding some respect from the people they pay.....
Is that on friday or in a day or two they will release road ahead....and everything goes back to normal like nothing happened..
That's where corporations excel...you mad bra....you mad bro...u mad..... you gonna EXPLODE... wait here is a cookie you can now move from the lobby to waiting room one (OK I'M IN A WAITING ROOM NOW...CALM DOWN)....time goes on...time goes on....... what happened did they forget about me.....ANGER RISING...RAGE BUILDING..... Hello sir would you like a doughnut or coffee...you can find that in then next waiting room the (whatever CEO, Doctor, clerk whatever)....
Oh ya wanna vent n rage and go all SSJ3 SSGSSswgohplayer...but friday they will hand you alllll cookies and move you to another waiting room...
It's actually a Psych Majors dream studying this stuff.
They can't lose... even the ones who lost get bailed out....they always win
There was a thread on reddit recently asking input from new players and the OP assumed that it must be terrible being a new player unable to ever catch up. Well, there were many replies from brand new players saying that isn't the case at all. They are on brand new servers with people that started around the same time as them so there is no "catch up". The playing field is even. Being a veteran player of over 3 years, I can't speak to it personally but as far as I can tell, new players are happy with the game and this change doesn't change anything since it's the same for everyone.
Congrats on finding a very small sample of new players who know nothing about the game and know nothing about how much farming they have ahead of them. Congrats on finding new players that will have 0 chance of ever seeing HSTR completed and have 0 chance of ever being above rank 10 in the raids. Congrats to the new players who were never able to do many of the things that we have been able to do, congrats to the new players that have never seen double drop rates, the weekly shipment actually being good, Zfinn in his prime. Congrats to the new players who don't know how good ships used to be before Falcon, congrats to the new players who will be dominated and probally stay at rank 1000 because of paying players getting characters like Revan and Darth Revan and Falcon that makes them have to farm for TWO YEARS just to be able to compete with the current meta.
lets see how well player retention lasts when new players actually learn about the game and are not ignorant. The real question is anyone starting now lasts 2 years so that they can actually do anything.
Places where you can use sub seven-star heroes:
Non-heroic raids. Days 1-5 of territory battles. Most tiers of most events. Arena. Grand arena. Fleet arena. Galactic war. Territory war. Light side, dark side, cantina, mod, and fleet tables. Mod challenges. Fleet challenges. Daily challenges.
In other words, most of the game.
Units who are useful to me right now below seven stars? Bastila fallen, Sith Trooper, Jango Fett, Houndstooth, TIE Silencer. IG-1000 and Xanadu Blood are about to get me the Millennium Falcon sub-seven, and I will use the Millennium Falcon in fleet arena sub-seven. And when I finally get around to mucking with him, my sub-seven C-3PO will be useful, too.
You don't need seven stars to make good use of a unit. You don't need to wait until a unit is seven stars to play with them.
6 months still to get a single toon. The math didn't change yet. I don't think the math will change because you found a good use for your low star units.
Also, who cares with non-heroic raids?
There was a thread on reddit recently asking input from new players and the OP assumed that it must be terrible being a new player unable to ever catch up. Well, there were many replies from brand new players saying that isn't the case at all. They are on brand new servers with people that started around the same time as them so there is no "catch up". The playing field is even. Being a veteran player of over 3 years, I can't speak to it personally but as far as I can tell, new players are happy with the game and this change doesn't change anything since it's the same for everyone.
Congrats on finding a very small sample of new players who know nothing about the game and know nothing about how much farming they have ahead of them. Congrats on finding new players that will have 0 chance of ever seeing HSTR completed and have 0 chance of ever being above rank 10 in the raids. Congrats to the new players who were never able to do many of the things that we have been able to do, congrats to the new players that have never seen double drop rates, the weekly shipment actually being good, Zfinn in his prime. Congrats to the new players who don't know how good ships used to be before Falcon, congrats to the new players who will be dominated and probally stay at rank 1000 because of paying players getting characters like Revan and Darth Revan and Falcon that makes them have to farm for TWO YEARS just to be able to compete with the current meta.
lets see how well player retention lasts when new players actually learn about the game and are not ignorant. The real question is anyone starting now lasts 2 years so that they can actually do anything.
You don't need to go through content in the order in which it was released.
JKR has been the most free-to-play and new player friendly meta in a very long time ever since the second release. I've even seen reports of new players using Revan to get GMY to seven stars. Once these events enter the rotation, they become something you can work toward whenever you choose to make it the priority.
As for taking part in hSith, it's easier to get into than it has been. All you need to carry your weight in hSith is to do 2% to every phase. The Finn rework means JTR, BB-8, R2, Finn, Scav is a solid hSith team even if you don't have Trooper yet, making it easy to get that team going in hSith on the heels of the JTR event. Revan is an early goal for a new account, and a Revan arena team can top 2% easily on auto. Chex is a low investment way to hit your damage benchmarks, same as it's always been. And Nightsisters are the same as they've been since the Zombie rework.
As to hitting top ten, you're not competing with some absolute all time record. You're competing with the rest of your guild. Just get to about 4% overall damage to hSith, switch over to a guild that's approaching hSith readiness, and become one of the big fish in that small pond. Takes a while, but it ain't like the time in between was nothing.
I'm happy with this change, it could be actually reverted to 3 like in old days. I have most toons farmed and really don't care. I can just buy them in shipments as I buy vaults of crystals each couple of days. New comers and ftp will surely never catch up so permanent #1 for me. Can't complain.
Replies
Firstly, we’re all entitled to agree or disagree with the changes but should respect everyone else’s point of view and refrain from attacks on eachother and CG for that matter.
Second, CG doesn’t owe us anything. This game is very F2P friendly and if you’re not spending then you’re most certainly not owed a single thing. For those of us who do spend, we always get what we pay for. If I buy a chest of crystals, I get 2800 crystals. I received everything that was owed to me. How this game functions is not for me or anyone else to dictate.
Third, at the end of the day this game is a business. Businesses are in business to make money, not to break even. There has to be profit to make supporting this game worthwhile to the people who own it. I’ve seen the sales figures for the game, but I honestly have no clue what the operating costs are. For all we know, this change may very well be integral to the lifespan of this game. We the players are not in the best position to make those calls. I’d rather this game carry on for a few more years then for it to go belly up in 6 months. I’m sure CG lost a lot of money on Darth Revan(despite the new gear, which was shady AF btw), and a lot of people think this is punishment for what they lost on DR. But you know what, if they’d railroaded DR and sent out a bad product, they would have been crucified. The pitchforks would be a lot higher then they are now.
The only place RSG and I differ is their opinion that this is not going to hurt newer players. And if I’m being honest, their holier than thou argument about how bad they had it back in the day w/3 attempts came off very condescending and stuck up. I’ll concede the point that 3 attempts must have been absolutely terrible. But the veteran players did that at a time when the game was in its infancy. Here we are 3+ years later and a lot of you are sitting pretty. New players like myself are coming in at a time when this game has basically been marked for death. Remember the 5 year plan? With all the knew content and subsequent new content over the next few years, it will be extremely difficult to catch up. So yes, this will be very detrimental to newer players. And I do feel this change could possibly hurt CG in the long run on account of that. It’s not even remotely reasonable to compare farming what was in this game at 3 hard node attempts over 3 years ago, to what’s in the game then plus now and what’s to come at 5 attempts. But, that’s just my opinion.
Lastly, I’d like to thank CG for all they do for us and apologize for all the hate they’ve received over this decision. To be clear, I do not support it and I’ve said it both on these forums and on reddit, I will not spend crystals refreshing nodes. And thus will probably not need to buy crystals because of that, the value just simply isn’t there for me anymore. These changes(should they be somewhat permanent) have made it clear to me that I have zero chances of ever catching up and should just have fun and play the game, there’s no need to try so hard anymore. But that’s just me. I hope CG knows what they’re doing and if this is what they need to do to keep their company and this game healthy, then I will support their decision.
Secondly, if we’re on here fussing, we are obviously still engaged and willing to take the abuse. “Please, sir, may I have some more?”
The paywall in this game is quickly becoming the barrier to having fun. Eventually people will move on to a game that isn’t fracking us so hard you can hear pelvises cracking.
The most recent events obviously did not generate enough revenue, while still giving many players the fresh new toon. That cannot be allowed to continue, because that is the only incentive that paying customers have to continue paying, and without it they will change into free2play, if the rewards are the same. Everyone and their grandmother having Revan is enough evidence for me that this is what happened - they can't all possibly have decided to pay for it.
I don't personally like the change and I spent all my (free) crystals on node and energy refreshes while it lasted. I will likely do so less now, and build up crystals for packs and shipments instead, which may very will be exactly what they intended.
Dropping from 8 to 5 may also mean that they can do double drops as a fun event on occasion. At 8, that would be way too generous. We will see what they have planned to make us happy again. I hope there is something.
Giving us a mechanism that everyone can make use of is not a good way to allow newbies to catch up - it actually makes it harder, because the oldies are using the exact same mechanism to widen the gap. They need to introduce something that the newbies can take advantage of, that the oldies cannot. Having double drops on older toons, or events that generate gear that the oldies no longer need, etc. Not a blanket speed up improvement for everyone.
This is not the end of the world. You'll be fine, one way or another.
33 pages of, "I don't like it," and varying degrees of, "I am angry," is not new or unexpected information and does not bear response. Players would obviously prefer eight, but the devs have concluded that game pacing and economy concerns prevail for the health of the game. There's nothing to say.
The incredible levels of toxicity on this forum and in this thread, however, are an issue in need of remark.
Also, CG does listen to these forums, and the sarcasm undermines their ability to glean useful feedback. Just because they don't give you the answer you want or make the decision you prefer does not mean they don't care. Given the trend of decreasing drop rate with respect to increasing gear rarity and that the current lowest drop rate for gear has been tested out to about 11%, I would guess it will be 9%, but it will need to be tested once it releases.
The snark and presumption of bad faith are not useful. Statistics and testing, however, can be. Places where you need seven-star heroes:
Heroic raids. Day six of territory battles. The top tiers of certain events.
Places where you can use sub seven-star heroes:
Non-heroic raids. Days 1-5 of territory battles. Most tiers of most events. Arena. Grand arena. Fleet arena. Galactic war. Territory war. Light side, dark side, cantina, mod, and fleet tables. Mod challenges. Fleet challenges. Daily challenges.
In other words, most of the game.
Units who are useful to me right now below seven stars? Bastila fallen, Sith Trooper, Jango Fett, Houndstooth, TIE Silencer. IG-1000 and Xanadu Blood are about to get me the Millennium Falcon sub-seven, and I will use the Millennium Falcon in fleet arena sub-seven. And when I finally get around to mucking with him, my sub-seven C-3PO will be useful, too.
You don't need seven stars to make good use of a unit. You don't need to wait until a unit is seven stars to play with them.
And mob outrage is not justification. That was not snark.
You show the me licence fees, employee salaries, marketing (if any) and put it against revenue.
Just like you I have no idea how profitable this game is. My opinion is they make a fortune. And as long as people are here in the forums going "hey they did not make enough money, hey they did not make enough money" they can read those forums and say hey...I think tensions are not that bad (if they even care) lets see if we can squeeze out a few hundoK here....
Again..just like you I Have no idea how much money they actually stick in the bank.... It's just MY opinion that they clean house and there is no reason they cannot add some decent PVE stuff in the game
But yeah saying they are not making enough money.... Prove it ?
Even if the quarterly earnings are down because of some BAD CALLS... Even if quarterly is down a lot I bet they still bank a decent profit.
If not NONE of us would be here now
Pretty sure the EA rep you quoted isn't involved with the game, and is mainly here in a forum mod role.
Correct, he is an EA employee that moderates forums.
I thought it was more of a punting the hornets’ nest role.
I feel the same way. For TBs anyway.
I still think 8 sims per hard node is the way to go for us players. But I’m sure that ea/cg has data that they need to justify this change.
Knock it off with the disrespect please, keep it polite and respectful to your player base by not posting this crap on a Friday and completing ignoring them.
IPD is in the second part of Galactic Bounties.
- Grand Admiral Thrawn
Is that on friday or in a day or two they will release road ahead....and everything goes back to normal like nothing happened..
That's where corporations excel...you mad bra....you mad bro...u mad..... you gonna EXPLODE... wait here is a cookie you can now move from the lobby to waiting room one (OK I'M IN A WAITING ROOM NOW...CALM DOWN)....time goes on...time goes on....... what happened did they forget about me.....ANGER RISING...RAGE BUILDING..... Hello sir would you like a doughnut or coffee...you can find that in then next waiting room the (whatever CEO, Doctor, clerk whatever)....
Oh ya wanna vent n rage and go all SSJ3 SSGSSswgohplayer...but friday they will hand you alllll cookies and move you to another waiting room...
It's actually a Psych Majors dream studying this stuff.
They can't lose... even the ones who lost get bailed out....they always win
Congrats on finding a very small sample of new players who know nothing about the game and know nothing about how much farming they have ahead of them. Congrats on finding new players that will have 0 chance of ever seeing HSTR completed and have 0 chance of ever being above rank 10 in the raids. Congrats to the new players who were never able to do many of the things that we have been able to do, congrats to the new players that have never seen double drop rates, the weekly shipment actually being good, Zfinn in his prime. Congrats to the new players who don't know how good ships used to be before Falcon, congrats to the new players who will be dominated and probally stay at rank 1000 because of paying players getting characters like Revan and Darth Revan and Falcon that makes them have to farm for TWO YEARS just to be able to compete with the current meta.
lets see how well player retention lasts when new players actually learn about the game and are not ignorant. The real question is anyone starting now lasts 2 years so that they can actually do anything.
Also, who cares with non-heroic raids?
JKR has been the most free-to-play and new player friendly meta in a very long time ever since the second release. I've even seen reports of new players using Revan to get GMY to seven stars. Once these events enter the rotation, they become something you can work toward whenever you choose to make it the priority.
As for taking part in hSith, it's easier to get into than it has been. All you need to carry your weight in hSith is to do 2% to every phase. The Finn rework means JTR, BB-8, R2, Finn, Scav is a solid hSith team even if you don't have Trooper yet, making it easy to get that team going in hSith on the heels of the JTR event. Revan is an early goal for a new account, and a Revan arena team can top 2% easily on auto. Chex is a low investment way to hit your damage benchmarks, same as it's always been. And Nightsisters are the same as they've been since the Zombie rework.
As to hitting top ten, you're not competing with some absolute all time record. You're competing with the rest of your guild. Just get to about 4% overall damage to hSith, switch over to a guild that's approaching hSith readiness, and become one of the big fish in that small pond. Takes a while, but it ain't like the time in between was nothing.
Ha, even better. But now you're saying.. Why is it that there's only a single dark side character in there? Conspiracy, conspiracy..
- Grand Admiral Thrawn
How does increasing the cost and time of collecting characters make the game fun and engaging?