Where is the balance?

Gr1evous

This is my first topic ever on this forums, but I think the game is reaching a status almost no one is happy with, with +25 speed mods dominating arena, the falcon dominating ship arena for several months now, lack of new content and awful matchmaking on grand arena, and actual raids being more an obligation than a diversion, so I really started to wonder about the problems of this game, as I think probably many of you have.

The thing I really don't understand is why developers are so against balance in this game, I understand that they have to make money with new characters, but as CGCarrie has already said if I'm not wrong, whales will expend money no matter what, then why not make them expend money on characters by more reasons than just be on top of the arena, why we have to see every time that a new character comes around the meta changes towards the new team/faction?, and related to this, why are the developers of this game unable to bring balance to every other characters?, I don't know if they release adjustemnt sometimes to the characters statistics from time to time, but I have never seen regular balance adjustments as other games do, and if they do, why not being entirely transparent about it and posting it on the forums? And I dont mean entire reworks, which I consider are one of the best things the developers have done in the past year or so, I mean balance adjustments for us to have a diverse game, more or less balanced but competitive. I know I'm talking mostly about PVP (arena), which the developers have said before is not everything in this game, but I disagree, arena is actually the mode that allows every player to progress faster and better, and without it it's impossible to follow the rythm of other modes, so for me, it is the mode where it should be the most important that we had balance.

I don't know the opinion of the community about this, maybe this game is not built for this and it has never been, but why not change things to keep the game alive, fun and diverse, why not making more teams fun and competitive, and maybe earn money from mod packs (hopefully more accesible for everyone), gear packs, and the whales will still put the massive amounts of money on the new characters, Why not bring balance to the Galaxy of Heroes?

I already sent this question in an abbreviated version to the developers and I hope they answer the community, but I leave this here for everyone to give their opinion and maybe show the developers this is what we want, or maybe I'm wrong and we don't, in any case, I hope things get better in the near future.

Liath

I know I'm talking mostly about PVP (arena), which the developers have said before is not everything in this game, but I disagree, arena is actually the mode that allows every player to progress faster and better, and without it it's impossible to follow the rythm of other modes, so for me, it is the mode where it should be the most important that we had balance.

Part of the problem is that this part of what you’re saying isn’t and can’t be true. Arena is the mode that allows players that do extremely well in it relative to the average to progress faster and better. But you can’t balance things in a way that allows that to be true for everyone. For a lot of people hanging out in the multi-hundreds ranks, arena really isn’t very important at all. If you try to make it so that everybody can be at the top, you destroy the game.

There are different metrics by which games can allow players to distinguish themselves from others. In some games, that metric is time spent in the game on a daily basis (e.g. a system by which you rack up points every time you do a fight and can keep fighting continuously all day long if you want, or where you grind gear/mats by playing battles all day long) but that’s a fundamentally different style of game than we have. The metric in this game is having the right teams (which generally requires planning/predicting properly and/or spending money), having the required gear/zetas/whatever on those teams (same), and having good mods (energy spent farming, plus luck, and sometimes money). If you want to get rid of those distinguishing metrics you have to replace them with something else, which is likely too fundamental of a change at this point in the game’s life cycle.

Gr1evous

Liath wrote: »

Part of the problem is that this part of what you’re saying isn’t and can’t be true. Arena is the mode that allows players that do extremely well in it relative to the average to progress faster and better. But you can’t balance things in a way that allows that to be true for everyone. For a lot of people hanging out in the multi-hundreds ranks, arena really isn’t very important at all. If you try to make it so that everybody can be at the top, you destroy the game.

There are different metrics by which games can allow players to distinguish themselves from others. In some games, that metric is time spent in the game on a daily basis (e.g. a system by which you rack up points every time you do a fight and can keep fighting continuously all day long if you want, or where you grind gear/mats by playing battles all day long) but that’s a fundamentally different style of game than we have. The metric in this game is having the right teams (which generally requires planning/predicting properly and/or spending money), having the required gear/zetas/whatever on those teams (same), and having good mods (energy spent farming, plus luck, and sometimes money). If you want to get rid of those distinguishing metrics you have to replace them with something else, which is likely too fundamental of a change at this point in the game’s life cycle.

I don't know if maybe I haven't explained myself properly, but with bringing balance I mean balancing teams in order to be able to be competitive with a wider variety of setups and a more diverse meta, focussing the efforts on mods and gear, bringing also balance adjustments to the character statistics in order to keep it balanced.

I don't think this means in any way that everybody could get to be in the top, but definitely it could mean that the top of the arena could be more diverse and fun, and would give players that are not willing to buy every new character to be competitive against new metas.

I'm currently a f2p player that was able to get DR but not Malak, still competing for top20 if I play every day, but I think everyone agrees that the arena report for the last 8 months has been awful, and things havent improved at all, we have many team setups that could be competitive with a small balance, rebels are really close to the top meta, so does the new galactic republic team, separatists, nightsisters, old republic.

I'm just saying that from a player perspective it would be really good to see that diversity spread all along the arena ladder, and not bring mechanics that break the game every 3-4 months in order to give whales a reason to invest hundreds of dollars.

And I'm not even talking about ships, the worst meta ever seen, not funny, 6-dot mod dependant, rng dependant, falcon dependant, 0 diversity.

Waqui

Gr1evous wrote: »

The thing I really don't understand is why developers are so against balance in this game, ....

The business model for this game is based on power creep - not on balancing everything out. So far CG has implemented their strategy very successfully and has generated great profit.

It's all about the money.

Gr1evous

Waqui wrote: »

Gr1evous wrote: »

The thing I really don't understand is why developers are so against balance in this game, ....

The business model for this game is based on power creep - not on balancing everything out. So far CG has implemented their strategy very successfully and has generated great profit.

It's all about the money.

I agree, but they have also said that whales will expend no matter what, which is not entirely true, and I'm pretty sure that they will stop expending their money earlier if they keep the actual model rather than changing it to a more balanced and diverse status.

I also believe they are wrong with the business model in order to make the biggest amount of money, I understand that they can't change it now, but finding new ways to encourage people to expend small amounts for a reasonable reward is a good thing.

Money comes with people's enthusiasm and the benefits they get from it rather than feeling forced to expend it in order to be competitive.

Liath

Gr1evous wrote: »

Liath wrote: »

Part of the problem is that this part of what you’re saying isn’t and can’t be true. Arena is the mode that allows players that do extremely well in it relative to the average to progress faster and better. But you can’t balance things in a way that allows that to be true for everyone. For a lot of people hanging out in the multi-hundreds ranks, arena really isn’t very important at all. If you try to make it so that everybody can be at the top, you destroy the game.

There are different metrics by which games can allow players to distinguish themselves from others. In some games, that metric is time spent in the game on a daily basis (e.g. a system by which you rack up points every time you do a fight and can keep fighting continuously all day long if you want, or where you grind gear/mats by playing battles all day long) but that’s a fundamentally different style of game than we have. The metric in this game is having the right teams (which generally requires planning/predicting properly and/or spending money), having the required gear/zetas/whatever on those teams (same), and having good mods (energy spent farming, plus luck, and sometimes money). If you want to get rid of those distinguishing metrics you have to replace them with something else, which is likely too fundamental of a change at this point in the game’s life cycle.

I don't know if maybe I haven't explained myself properly, but with bringing balance I mean balancing teams in order to be able to be competitive with a wider variety of setups and a more diverse meta, focussing the efforts on mods and gear, bringing also balance adjustments to the character statistics in order to keep it balanced.

I don't think this means in any way that everybody could get to be in the top, but definitely it could mean that the top of the arena could be more diverse and fun, and would give players that are not willing to buy every new character to be competitive against new metas.

I'm currently a f2p player that was able to get DR but not Malak, still competing for top20 if I play every day, but I think everyone agrees that the arena report for the last 8 months has been awful, and things havent improved at all, we have many team setups that could be competitive with a small balance, rebels are really close to the top meta, so does the new galactic republic team, separatists, nightsisters, old republic.

I'm just saying that from a player perspective it would be really good to see that diversity spread all along the arena ladder, and not bring mechanics that break the game every 3-4 months in order to give whales a reason to invest hundreds of dollars.

And I'm not even talking about ships, the worst meta ever seen, not funny, 6-dot mod dependant, rng dependant, falcon dependant, 0 diversity.

Balancing all the teams against each other would remove the largest of the metrics I discussed that currently differentiates players. It means that having the right team ceases to be a factor. If it’s not the case that anybody can be in the top there has to be some other reason besides not having the right team. Anyone can gear up a team to g12, so the only things left would be mods and willingness to play enough/at the right time. Unless mods are incredibly important regardless of the team compositions (which would be both difficult to pull off and a source of significant complaint), people would just fall a lot farther and the difference would become how many crystals and how much time you’re willing to spend to do more fights each day. I don’t know what player base that’s good for but I know I’m not part of it.