Anakin Nerf or not instead of "maybe"
I definitely appreciate the attempt at clear communication from @CG_Erik in the development post entitled "Your Focus Determines Your Reality" with regards to Anakin, and I don't want to sound like I'm having a go at him because it was definitely an attempt to be clear and honest however unfortunately all it has really done is to suggest that "Anakin won't be getting nerfed YET"
When players are potentially assigning significant amounts of time, in-game energy, crystals, gear, ability mats etc. to a character we really need the company behind the game to be clear on whether or not all of that time, effort, and resources is going to end up being wasted or not.
It needs to be clear:
Either Anakin is NOT going to be nerfed or existing abilities and values etc. altered, and the only change will potentially be 'new' abilities or ability levels via new Zeta-level upgrades to abilities or completely new uniques/specials,
OR:
Developers should be telling players to hold off on investing in any resources into that character until they can definitively apply any needed changes or state outright that there won't be any.
Saying "we aren't planning any immediate changes...but we're continuing to consider some changes" seems very much like either you want to relax/encourage people into investing in JKA and Padme and only then apply a nerf once players have wasted their investments, or that the developers/testers have no idea what's going on or how to properly test/release characters or reworks/tune-ups.
Statements about character changes, and releases of future characters/reworks need to be something that players can rely on being accurate and definitive - not just being accurate for a few days until someone changes their mind.
When players are potentially assigning significant amounts of time, in-game energy, crystals, gear, ability mats etc. to a character we really need the company behind the game to be clear on whether or not all of that time, effort, and resources is going to end up being wasted or not.
It needs to be clear:
Either Anakin is NOT going to be nerfed or existing abilities and values etc. altered, and the only change will potentially be 'new' abilities or ability levels via new Zeta-level upgrades to abilities or completely new uniques/specials,
OR:
Developers should be telling players to hold off on investing in any resources into that character until they can definitively apply any needed changes or state outright that there won't be any.
Saying "we aren't planning any immediate changes...but we're continuing to consider some changes" seems very much like either you want to relax/encourage people into investing in JKA and Padme and only then apply a nerf once players have wasted their investments, or that the developers/testers have no idea what's going on or how to properly test/release characters or reworks/tune-ups.
Statements about character changes, and releases of future characters/reworks need to be something that players can rely on being accurate and definitive - not just being accurate for a few days until someone changes their mind.
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Discord: Iona Starbound#5299
Of course a large part of the issue is CG/EA's attempts to artificially support and maintain a Whales Meta. If they weren't doing that then they could just release new or reworked characters and let them fall where they may in the meta and let the weird and wonderful squad compositions all battle it out freely - but if you're trying to bolster a false single-squad meta then you make a rod for your own backs in terms of every single little interaction or weird squad composition that you may have to nerf or ban or power-up the meta etc.
An organic meta that allows players to be creative and use what's there would give them far less of these kind of "what do we do now" issues
And also: what about instead of anakin nerf anakin buff so we're going to pay either for Padme or for the upcoming GR marquee because they're actually meta?
I'm not saying a definitive statement is "forever" but given the current characters and interactions, and given that they can ensure Padme or other Jedi/Republic etc. take into account existing ones it shouldn't require 'existing' characters to be changed/nerfed in future except in extreme unforseen circumstances. They control when they release new characters and new re-works, so they can take as much time and testing as they like before releasing them. Also it's not as if JKA is stupidly OP, even their own observations of the data show that he does no more than 'compete' a certain percentage of the time, so make sure before they release Padme that they are testing properly and don't need to do subsequent fix after fix after fix like has been the case recently.
P.S. You got a chuckle out of me for the "Save water..." footer comment
You might not think it’s forever, but if you spend any time on the forum you very quickly see that people will jump down their throats about exactly this sort of thing on a regular basis even if they put the qualifiers there. And they can’t say there are no unintended interactions with current characters either when there are 170 characters and people come up with new strategies and ideas all the time.
So instead of worrying about what the future will hold, decide if using gear on him right now is value-added. If so, use it and get that value. If you don't use the gear, you won't get the value (and therefore your account will have fewer resources than it would have). Even if Anakin become irrelevant again a month from now, if you got value (even 50 crystals a day extra) for a month, that's 6,000 extra crystals you wouldn't have had.
That depends on the definition of unintended interactions, infinite loops and utterly undefeatible (is that a word?!) are one thing, but "sometimes wins some matches in Arena" shouldn't even have been an issue worth mentioning.
Take JKA: He clearly isn't overpowered in the sense that he can always beat other squads, and always hold/win on defence. Their own figures show that actually squads with JKA are losing on defence 80% of the time, and on offence only winning 50% of the time.
As a counter-point to that CG deliberately gave us a situation where for months we had a virtually unbeatable Jedi Revan meta that resulted in nearly 90% of the top squads were JKRevan, and that seemed to be perfectly acceptable to them and not "over-powered" or in need of fixing or nerfing at any stage.
Then they delivered a new DRevan meta, with not only new characters but multiple reworks and "fixes" to deliberately prevent a competitive rock-paper-scissors meta after the new characters/reworks weren't over-powered enough for their liking (even after saying that was their aim!) and now we have a DRevan meta with over 70% of top squads being DRevan led.
So I'm not sure how they can justify nerfing a character that loses 80% of the time on Defence, and only makes it into 13% of top squads despite many many more players having JKA already than have DRevan.
If they're worried about interactions with Padme then...test it properly, including the new testing they're doing with select players, and only announce & release new characters once they've properly done so.
Then, if they genuinly are aiming for a rock-paper-scissors style Arena situation only utterly "freakish unanticipated over-powered squad setups" that cannot be beaten would need nerfing/fixing, and anything alse that's within the realms of "sometimes wins, sometimes loses, and has viable counter(s)" could just be left for players to get on with the game and enjoy playing instead of investing in characters/gear/zetas etc only to then be told "oh no, you can't have a half-decent character: nerfed"
The only reason for the vast majority of the "fixes" (i.e. nerfs or over-powering of new toons) is a rod they make for their own back of prioritizing a manufactured meta instead of the overall health and balance of the game.
Or to put it another way....it looks like CG need to remember to bring balance to the force!
50×30=/=6000
I don’t understand what you’re saying here. They didn’t know those numbers until they looked into it. They said “hey we’ve heard about this team, we are going to look into it,” then they looked into it, then they said “here are the numbers, we don’t feel they justify a nerf.”
So I’m not sure why you’re asking how they can justify nerfing it with those numbers when..... they said they aren’t going to nerf it based on those numbers.
But they also aren’t going to say unequivocally that nothing will change because things can change at any time, including those numbers. Maybe as more people figure out the team and gear/mod it better, the numbers go up, and the distribution changes. Maybe somebody finds a weird combination using JKA and Lobot and it destroys everything. Who knows.
Exactly this!
I know you're being deliberately unlikely there, but now I really want to see that squad, haha!
Once people use resources to earn the specialty offense/ crit damage mods and place g12+ on him, zeta him, two to three weeks afterwards when Padmé and the additional reworks are in place is when the staff will 're-evaluate' and then can nerf him as a sound business decision. They have to convince the playerbase to sink massive resources into him first before any nerf occurs, or the whole point in nerfing him becomes moot.
This is helpful. Thanks.
I am not a droid expert but after a lot of forum group think when DR was first released I finally noticed that droids may be one of the fastest teams in the game and with a new damage powerhouse like GG, should always be really good. May not be the best but really good means something.
Sounds like I'm a bit late to the party on that, but I'm slow. They are probably my next all in project.