1 shard a day

trooper521

Come on now devs, the 5 a day hard node attempts is bad enough but to only be able to net 1 shard a day(sometimes none) without crystals is rediculous. If you played everyday and spent 100(20x5) energy it would take 330 days to unlock a single character at 7*. That seems awfully long to unlock a single character. Especially when you typically have to have 5 to make a team. So a full five, farmed one at time would take 1650 days. That's 4.52 years to get a squad of your favorite or needed characters. Grinds are one thing but this is just dumb. I'm not completely f2p so my grind is cut in half and it's still crazy time for a full team 2.26 years. At the rate in which you release content and new characters we are always behind because of the limitations you put on the game and farming. I not asking to instantly get the latest and greatest but just make it reasonable to farm heros. This comment is even excluding legendary content, which is fine. Just make the grind more feasible. I started playing while it was 8 a day and character farming was reasonable. I spent more money then then I do now and I sure others would agree. Hard to attract and retain new players when you can't get your favorite content for years.

Liath

There's no reason to farm them one at a time though. And there are other farming locations besides hard nodes.

RandomSithLord

How do you intend to present an argument when you keep backing it up with miscalculations and unjustifiably pumped up numbers?
With 5 node attempts a day, you will get a toon from 0 to 330 shards in roughly 200 days. That is an obvious increase from the average 125 for 8 attempts (no refreshes calculated), but far from a whole year, as you present it.
As Liath pointed out, you are by no means limited to farm a single toon at a time, unless you purposely waste your daily free energy by not going below 144 energy points. You don't even have to refresh energy for crystals to be able to use more than 100 a day, which is the price of the most expensive hard node muptiplied by the 5 attempts.

trooper521

While true you can farm multiple characters at once. I am merely pointing out the rediculous amount of time it takes to farm in this game. Neither are unjustified nor pumped up and a fair amount of heros there is only a single hard node to farm. Limited characters have multiple nodes but I appreciate the input. At a single shard a day which is roughly a 5x20 for ls/ds hard node 20% drop rate it would take you 330 days. The math is hardly flawed for a single run through. Your assumptions are that rng will be favorable to reduce that time by getting more shards in 5 attempts. I however in my experience take a more pessimistic approach since the devs leave the drop rate so low anyway and like to limit the pace of the game. As a side note you feel that 200 days by your own calculations is equitable or reasonable time for a single character? This IMO takes away from the experience of the game and game play. Especially considering all of the various factions that are possible and needed to attain any goals in the game?

Liath

It's flawed because the drop rate is 33%, not 20%.

trooper521

Are you sure about that? Is it documented somewhere by the devs or are you just saying that.

Liath

trooper521 wrote: »

Are you sure about that? Is it documented somewhere by the devs or are you just saying that.

It's documented by many many players who have actually tracked drop rates over significant periods of time/attempts and under varying circumstances.

trooper521

So again single player data not indicative of the actual programmed drop rate. Hardly a large enough sample size to verify your statement.

cannonfodder_iv

Liath wrote: »

It's flawed because the drop rate is 33%, not 20%.

This. It feels like one per day because that's all you remember. You get 375 free energy per day from the timer and the three free standard refreshes (morning, payout, evening). Assuming you're farming nothing but 20 energy characters, that's 18 attempts per day. Assuming you're not refreshing attempts and you're dedicating your farms that means you're making 5 attempts on 3 different nodes and 3 attempts on a 4th node per day. Assuming you're starting from 0 shards and doing a little rounding cuz math is hard, you need 1000 attempts to get your 330 shards (we can argue drop rate but there are any number of posts you can search to see that it's really really really close to 33%).

1000 attempts / 5 attempts per day = 200 days with no crystal spend at all. But since you're farming 3.6 characters at once what you'll actually have at the end of those 200 days is...

330 shards of first hard node farm.
330 shards of second hard node farm.
330 shards of third hard node farm.
200 shards of fourth hard node farm.

So in a little under seven months, you will have 2/3 of a squad, just from hard nodes. Fortunately there isn't a single squad that is exclusively hard node farms so in reality, in that seven months you've also been able to farm toons from Fleet hard nodes (same math as above, only for a single toon), and Cantina (far more generous as there's no attempt limit) and you have yourself a team. For free. Without paying anything. And hoarding every crystal you've earned through that entire time. (Which, even if you're just finishing top 1000 in squad arena and top 50 in fleet would be 20,000 crystals!)

trooper521

cannonfodder_iv wrote: »

Liath wrote: »

It's flawed because the drop rate is 33%, not 20%.

This. It feels like one per day because that's all you remember. You get 375 free energy per day from the timer and the three free standard refreshes (morning, payout, evening). Assuming you're farming nothing but 20 energy characters, that's 18 attempts per day. Assuming you're not refreshing attempts and you're dedicating your farms that means you're making 5 attempts on 3 different nodes and 3 attempts on a 4th node per day. Assuming you're starting from 0 shards and doing a little rounding cuz math is hard, you need 1000 attempts to get your 330 shards (we can argue drop rate but there are any number of posts you can search to see that it's really really really close to 33%).

1000 attempts / 5 attempts per day = 200 days with no crystal spend at all. But since you're farming 3.6 characters at once what you'll actually have at the end of those 200 days is...

330 shards of first hard node farm.
330 shards of second hard node farm.
330 shards of third hard node farm.
200 shards of fourth hard node farm.

So in a little under seven months, you will have 2/3 of a squad, just from hard nodes. Fortunately there isn't a single squad that is exclusively hard node farms so in reality, in that seven months you've also been able to farm toons from Fleet hard nodes (same math as above, only for a single toon), and Cantina (far more generous as there's no attempt limit) and you have yourself a team. For free. Without paying anything. And hoarding every crystal you've earned through that entire time. (Which, even if you're just finishing top 1000 in squad arena and top 50 in fleet would be 20,000 crystals!)

WOW all that in only "7 months", I can't wait to have my favorite faction in only 7 months of farming them straight and then at the end not have gear for them. So in like a year maybe more they will be viable as a team lol. You people kill me, the experience is crap and yet you defend it like it's normal.

EventineElessedil

Exact math aside, I agree with OP. Shard farming without node refresh takes too long. Even at 8 attempts/day, it takes too long. Even buying two node refresh takes too long. With all the new characters being added to hard nodes, we should get unlimited attempts. We still have to buy energy refresh.

Shoot, it's hard to admit, but I still have not finished all the Cantina node characters. Probably never will.

Liath

trooper521 wrote: »

So again single player data not indicative of the actual programmed drop rate. Hardly a large enough sample size to verify your statement.

Uh... you have no idea what the sample size is. This was a group effort among a very large number of players to track the drop rate. It's far more verified than the nonsense assumptions in your OP.

TVF

EventineElessedil wrote: »

Exact math aside, I agree with OP. Shard farming without node refresh takes too long. Even at 8 attempts/day, it takes too long. Even buying two node refresh takes too long. With all the new characters being added to hard nodes, we should get unlimited attempts. We still have to buy energy refresh.

Shoot, it's hard to admit, but I still have not finished all the Cantina node characters. Probably never will.

But you don't need to finish them.

kello_511

Some other flaws in your math:
-most teams don’t have every toon in only hard nodes
-you have enough energy to farm more than 1 toon/day from hard nodes, even without buying refreshes
-buying refreshes with your crystals is the most efficient way to spend them, and also cuts the time down (as does refreshing the nodes, since they are cheap to do).
-miscellaneous events also drop some shards, as did the marquee events (if you played them)

In other words: To make your math work you would have to be farming 1 toon/time, no refreshes, for a team that has all 5 toons in hard nodes, with no event or marquee shards to help you. And you would also have to consistently have a drop rate well below the established average.

EventineElessedil

trooper521 wrote: »

Are you sure about that? Is it documented somewhere by the devs or are you just saying that.

Yes, we are sure about that. Are you? Let's see your data. Real data.
Back in the days of yore, it took more than 6 months to farm FOTP and FOST. Farms of that length (or more) are unreasonable, in my opinion.

kello_511

Also another flaw:

If you are farming 5 toons from hard nodes, the drop from 8 attempts to 5 changes nothing. It just means that your energy is spread out among more toons each day.
If you are only using free energy (I think that’s 375/day), then you are doing 18 battles/day (at 20 energy each).

With 5 attempts/day instead of 8, that means that you are farming 5+5+5+3 (4 different toons) instead of 8+8+2 (3 different toons).
Either way, you will still get the same number of shards each day just spread out differently.
18 attempts x drop rate = x shards/ day, regardless of whether they are for the same toon or not.
And since you are apparently only farming the teams that have every toon in hard nodes, it changes nothing for you.

trooper521

Not that it matters and things could have changed behind the scenes and you wouldn't know because it's not transparent from the devs. Other drops such as anything you spend money on are because they are legally bound to disclose it(loot chest debacle). Just a thought though what do you consider large?

cannonfodder_iv

@EventineElessedil I think many of us agree that those farms are too long, which is why we refresh attempts and spend crystals daily to shorten them. Most new character releases come with 50 free shards, so at 15 attempts per day (75 crystals) you're looking at ~36 days to six star a character (180 shards averaging five per day) and an additional 20 days to seven star it. So, about two months of dedicated farming. I think it's up to the individual user as to whether or not that's a quality experience.

As for @trooper521 - I didn't defend anything, I just pointed out that your math was off and gave you the actuals. If you feel that the experience is crap, then you're under no obligation to play a free game. I just wanted to make sure you understood the truth of hard node farming and could plan accordingly. And yes, full disclosure, I think seven months is ridiculous which is why I refresh attempts if I'm actually hard node farming a targeted character - because 75 crystals for 10 chances at a shard is less than the 80 crystals that shard would cost me in shipments.

If you don't believe the quoted drop rate:
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/196365/new-old-republic-characters-drop-rates-day-28-completed/p1

and

https://www.reddit.com/r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes/comments/b3ak6v/darth_revan_toon_drop_rates/

trooper521

@cannonfodder_iv Kind of interesting to see the amount of fluctuation each person experiences. They say 33% but over what amount of time and with the multiple logins a day there is no guarantee to that exact percent, it's just close. They should just take the rng out and make them flat rewards. Then at least it would be transparent to the player and we could know the time it takes really to farm a hero. I don't think they would do that though.

It's more of an annoyance than anything else. There are a lot pieces I like about this game. This just happens to be one pain point and it's one for many players yet it doesn't ever get fixed. I know as most point out it's a free game, I'm not entirely f2p. I spend a bit cause devs gotta eat to continue making more game content for me to play. For me it's there are certain business decisions that give the game a bad feel(sleezy) or experience. Since I do spend money and even if I didn't as a player I am entitled to provide feedback about said experience. Let's just say I don't get the warm fuzzy of accomplishment when I spent x amounts months farming a single hero.

Kisermiester

Liath wrote: »

trooper521 wrote: »

Are you sure about that? Is it documented somewhere by the devs or are you just saying that.

It's documented by many many players who have actually tracked drop rates over significant periods of time/attempts and under varying circumstances.

That is utter bull crap. The drops for me fall at "0" to one a day at 5 attempts more than they don't. You can't calculate in a bunch of crystals spent to reup the energy to finally scew the numbers to match the 30% crap. The game is built to reward you more as you spend more. This has been shown in the devs reports about the algorithms. If you only use the energy that you accumulate throughout the day for character shards and try to save your Crystal's for gear in the store or by farming them instead of characters, you end up exactly the way this post describes. 0-1 out of five. You are not going to convince me otherwise. The proof is in my daily experience.

TVF

Lol no.

Kisermiester

kello_511 wrote: »

Also another flaw:

If you are farming 5 toons from hard nodes, the drop from 8 attempts to 5 changes nothing. It just means that your energy is spread out among more toons each day.
If you are only using free energy (I think that’s 375/day), then you are doing 18 battles/day (at 20 energy each).

With 5 attempts/day instead of 8, that means that you are farming 5+5+5+3 (4 different toons) instead of 8+8+2 (3 different toons).
Either way, you will still get the same number of shards each day just spread out differently.
18 attempts x drop rate = x shards/ day, regardless of whether they are for the same toon or not.
And since you are apparently only farming the teams that have every toon in hard nodes, it changes nothing for you.

I believe that what he is referring to is one specific toon. How long does it take to get Bossik to seven star and so forth. I've been doing all I can to get him there. I'm not far away. But, I'm putting in my first five attempts and getting 0-1 shard a day on the first five attempts. I'm even using Crystal's to refresh the attempts. Then I'm lucky to get 1-2 shards in that 5 attempts. Then I go for the third round of five which by now I've had to refresh my energy as well. This is when I usually get 2-3 shards. I feel like I have to spend quite a bit to get that characters shard drop rate to start coming up to the 30% range. With the Chewbacca event coming up, the grind is real.

Darthvestor_80

A shard a day keeps malak away

trooper521

I wonder if someone would be able to humor me with some type of reporting from the entire base rather than rely on statistical samples.

Drazhar

Please keep in mind that whales are getting very sensitive about how the game is evolving before posting such complaints. They're in complete denial towards the fact that they have competitive rosters only because they spend with absolutely 0 skills and reasoning involved.

jhbuchholz

Drazhar wrote: »

Please keep in mind that whales are getting very sensitive about how the game is evolving before posting such complaints. They're in complete denial towards the fact that they have competitive rosters only because they spend with absolutely 0 skills and reasoning involved.

What are you talking about?! This is a drop rate thread. What does that have to do with whales and how competitive their rosters are?