Relics – The tale of a Kraken
September 12, 2019 5:02AM
edited September 2019
To give you a little background, I started playing during the last week of November 2017 (less than 2 years ago). Most people categorize me as a Kraken. I currently have 27 G13, 66 G12, and 425 10+ speed mods. I haven’t kept track of the amount I’ve spent, but if I had to guess I would say somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000. Probably around $500.00 a month. I make a good living and the expenditure is not an issue. It has no impact on my life, it doesn’t prevent from doing anything, and I’m not neglecting anything like my bills, retirement savings, etc. I am providing this info so you can better understand where I’m coming from.
Unfortunately, Relics are going to force me to quit the game. I still love the game as much as I did when I first started playing, but the introduction of Relics simply crossed the line. Whereas before I felt I was getting value for the money I spent, I no longer feel that way. The money itself is not the issue. I can afford it. Here are few of the issues:
• Relics were released too close to G13. I have 27 G13, which is a lot compared to most people, but that’s not even close to making me feel like my roster is complete. I have a ton more characters I’d like to G13, but instead I now have to focus on level 7 Relics for certain characters.
• The stat gains from Relics are WAY too high. 80k health Nest? 11k damage DR? 225k+ Health Malak? It makes it an absolute requirement to obtain certain characters’ level 7 Relics to be competitive. This is not a new phenomenon, but its pushed it to the extreme. I’m watching videos of Grievous with a level 7 Relic one-shotting entire teams, including DR, on TURN ONE.
• The damage increases are not relative to the defensive increases. Going back to the previous bullet, I’ve seen GG one shot some of the tankiest of tanks on turn one.
• Speed just became even MORE important. If you have characters that can now one-shot entire teams or even just one-shot single characters on turn one, speed becomes even more important than it was previously (and it was all-important even before this).
• The price point is way to high compared to the value. We were discussing this in Discord earlier, and we (by we, I mean my guildmate, Ender) came up with a rough estimate that it will take anywhere from $360-$900 to take a single character from 0 to max (the variance depends on if you buy shards, packs, or farm the character). Emphasis on rough estimate. CG has always stressed that they want you to be able to utilize all of your characters, but what they are doing with Relics completely contradicts that.
• Lastly (I could go on forever but lets just leave it with this last bullet), we don’t receive enough information to know where to spend our money. I understand this on purpose to get people to spend money, but I simply can’t justify spending several hundred dollars on a character today, that may not even be meta tomorrow. Do you have any idea how angry people would be if they bought all those packs in the store and leveled up the Relics for DR and Malak, and General Anakin is released next week and the meta shifts? Additionally, I don’t even know which characters to focus on because we don’t have a sandbox mode. With the prices so high, even whales and Krakens are only going to level up Relics for a couple characters first. Which characters though? It’s anyone’s guess because we can’t do full testing. Imagine taking DR’s relic to 7 today, and tomorrow someone finds a Grievous team with a level 7 Relic that outperforms it on both offense and defense. Now I have to spend another couple hundred dollars for GG in order to remain competitive?
I absolutely love this game still. I want to keep playing but you’re forcing me to quit. You crossed a line where the content and price of that content just simply isn’t greater than the value. That line is different for everyone, but I have a feeling you crossed it for a LOT of people this time. You just went one step too far. I’d love to keep playing, I have the money to keep playing and remain competitive, but I simply can no longer justify it. Unless something changes in the next day or two, you just cost yourself at least $500.00 a month.
Unfortunately, Relics are going to force me to quit the game. I still love the game as much as I did when I first started playing, but the introduction of Relics simply crossed the line. Whereas before I felt I was getting value for the money I spent, I no longer feel that way. The money itself is not the issue. I can afford it. Here are few of the issues:
• Relics were released too close to G13. I have 27 G13, which is a lot compared to most people, but that’s not even close to making me feel like my roster is complete. I have a ton more characters I’d like to G13, but instead I now have to focus on level 7 Relics for certain characters.
• The stat gains from Relics are WAY too high. 80k health Nest? 11k damage DR? 225k+ Health Malak? It makes it an absolute requirement to obtain certain characters’ level 7 Relics to be competitive. This is not a new phenomenon, but its pushed it to the extreme. I’m watching videos of Grievous with a level 7 Relic one-shotting entire teams, including DR, on TURN ONE.
• The damage increases are not relative to the defensive increases. Going back to the previous bullet, I’ve seen GG one shot some of the tankiest of tanks on turn one.
• Speed just became even MORE important. If you have characters that can now one-shot entire teams or even just one-shot single characters on turn one, speed becomes even more important than it was previously (and it was all-important even before this).
• The price point is way to high compared to the value. We were discussing this in Discord earlier, and we (by we, I mean my guildmate, Ender) came up with a rough estimate that it will take anywhere from $360-$900 to take a single character from 0 to max (the variance depends on if you buy shards, packs, or farm the character). Emphasis on rough estimate. CG has always stressed that they want you to be able to utilize all of your characters, but what they are doing with Relics completely contradicts that.
• Lastly (I could go on forever but lets just leave it with this last bullet), we don’t receive enough information to know where to spend our money. I understand this on purpose to get people to spend money, but I simply can’t justify spending several hundred dollars on a character today, that may not even be meta tomorrow. Do you have any idea how angry people would be if they bought all those packs in the store and leveled up the Relics for DR and Malak, and General Anakin is released next week and the meta shifts? Additionally, I don’t even know which characters to focus on because we don’t have a sandbox mode. With the prices so high, even whales and Krakens are only going to level up Relics for a couple characters first. Which characters though? It’s anyone’s guess because we can’t do full testing. Imagine taking DR’s relic to 7 today, and tomorrow someone finds a Grievous team with a level 7 Relic that outperforms it on both offense and defense. Now I have to spend another couple hundred dollars for GG in order to remain competitive?
I absolutely love this game still. I want to keep playing but you’re forcing me to quit. You crossed a line where the content and price of that content just simply isn’t greater than the value. That line is different for everyone, but I have a feeling you crossed it for a LOT of people this time. You just went one step too far. I’d love to keep playing, I have the money to keep playing and remain competitive, but I simply can no longer justify it. Unless something changes in the next day or two, you just cost yourself at least $500.00 a month.
Post edited by Kyno on
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Replies
If you read the OP's post carefully, while Relics is absolutely outrageous, categorically outrageous, it EXACERBATES every other failing in the game currently when designers seriously believe they could even plausibly get away with Relics.
--Cheating, still a MAJOR problem. I just reported a cheater I found a few weeks ago. He got banned (I only know this from stalking his swgoh.gg profile), but I lost to him in GA and will not get anything back for it.
--Lack of new original content. Somehow other games can come up with new ideas, here the ideas are new ways to monetize making my character collection obsolete and making me pay to make it viable again.
--Two years to design a raid? REALLY?!? Get a development schedule that keeps fresh content coming out.
--Game stability. Every single patch or change that comes out is packed with bugs and stability issues. I've had very few because I'm usually on one of the news phones out, but I even just had a crash trying to do a TB battle, and there is no makeup mechanism for stuff like that. Had a stability issue during TW? too bad, your guild loses. Lost your ability buttons? too bad!
--UI was made worse by this new update. Now need to click more to get a mod loadout change.
--Mods, this is a LONG topic. Mods 2.0 was only supposed to be part of the solution. We're over a year past that with no other improvements in sight.
--Lack of mod RNG mitigation.
--constantly straining the economy to extremes.
--introduction of kyro and then not decreasing the requirement for other bottlenecks.
The list from a player perspective goes on and on.
I'm also a spender, and the entitled behavior of these developers has crossed a very big line with relics when so much of the game is a shambles.
I thought the game needs the whales to stay afloat
If all whales quit there will be no game. So bye bye to you.
You add G13 and you don't simplify access to G12.
Now you add G14 (call it relic if you want) and you stil not simplify old gearing
I make simple table in excel to see how it cost in crystal if I want to increase a lot my gearing on key toon to join a HL guild :
- g8 to g11 => 166k crystal => 1,2 k€
- g11 to g12 => 147k crystal => 1,1 k€
- g12 to g13 => don't want hurt myself...
Is this game supposed to be a f2p?
And Now G14 (relic) => around 109 € for only ONE toon...
I think I will buy a switch, a x-box one and a ps4... and maybe 50 games on this plateform...
After 3 years of Game, I only have 1 G13...
You are too much optimistic for level 7 relics since they also require much more G12 Gears...
If it doesn’t work itself out, then we all know what happens and it’s a worse case scenario.
- "makes our beloved chars more diverse": No, simply makes them stronger. Not a single choice you have. Since you have to invest even more time and resources into a single char, the rooster will stay less diverse as well. So actually it gets less diverse and more boring
- "long time players can use the materials they have thousands of": Yes. Until level 4 relics. After that the needed gear gets scarce again. And in addition the other component needed is only provided by cantina farms again.
- hiding relics behind G13 was discussed enough. Simply G14
This all makes no sense beyond milking the players. Excitement for relics gone... Give us content CG...
The corner is easy to get out of. Add new daily missions that provide this hard to acquire gear. Make it pretty difficult to ensure you still have to earn it. But make it available....
You write like Yoda irl!
I agree with the original post, but I also think it's been going downhill for a year and a half now.
Poorly designed character's that take away the opponents ability to fight back is not good design and leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
The only reason I havnt quit so far is it was so hard after investing 3+ years into a game.
Ever since Jedi ray came out it's been getting worse, if Nest was in any other game he would have been nerfed, let alone Malak and then Grevious! So dumb that a droid can one shot an entire team, also a group of Genosian who all take a turn, every turn.
What the hell is relics gonna do to these already lazy designed characters??
Please, this game is dead....
Good bye
They nerfed mods after a week there was a total overhaul of the buffs and stick rey stopped one shotting characters because they said it was unhealthy for the game.
But not because time passed - they nerfed the mods to be only 1/10th of the strength they originally were. You had mods that could double the speed of your character, triple the damage - just exactly as the relics now do. Back then though the mods were RNG based - thus a whale couldn't buy his way out of the predicament. So I unfortunately think this time they will stick with the ....
....and, look at the revenue they have lost since then and the amount of people that have left
That’s fair, and true. They did nerf it. And I agree, I really don’t see them dialing back anything with this.
I’ve been playing since launch, so I’m going to wait and see what happens. I hate to drop everything after investing almost 4 years into this game.
I hate to drop everything as well after all I’ve invested, but there just comes a point where it doesn’t make sense to keep investing. Like I said, that point is different for everyone. For me, this is it. I still enjoy the game tremendously, but this is forcing me out.
Good, I get my free time back