On a “Sense of Pride and Accomplishment” and Gen Ani
October 15, 2019 1:42AM
edited October 2019
Tldr: the infamous pride and accomplishment quote at least demonstrates that’s EA knows how to monetize their games.
- Gen Ani release fails to create value and only dangles exclusivity (which isn’t enough for non-collectors)
- The best way to deal with this may be to figure a fix for increasing his viability while at the same time re-releasing him to try to allow more players to unlock him.
On November 12, 2017, a community account for EA, CG’s parent company, made the most downvoted comment in Reddit History. When asked if the price tag equivalency of $80 made sense for unlocked Darth Vader, an EA Community account responded that “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.” This quote makes more sense than the current Gen Anakin release, and not just because of the price tag. Let that sink in.
EA gave players an option, to trade their valuable time or money to achieve access to a powerful character. This makes sense, it both created an atmosphere of exclusivity (having him before the “masses” unlocked him) and gameplay. To parallel this, Gen Ani at the moment allows players who unlocked but could not 7* him exclusivity (until the event invariably rolls around again), but gated the usage until their ability to 7* him. This creates less value in the mind of the customer, compounded if they could visualize the literal mountain of gear equivalency that the GET could purchase. This reduces the amount of players willing to spend on him. And yes, we saw a massive uptick in spending, which I am sure is expected every single major event. But for the number of tracked unlocks (as we as a community only have part of the picture), we can still conclude there were considerably less unlocks and spending than previous events. In business terms, this means that a 50% jump in weekly sales is great, but not as great if you were expected to pull a 75% jump (not to mention fatigue in spending following events OR lost players resulting from an event, of which there are some vocal and known players).
Additionally, CG forgot the one biggest rule of freemium games. For (almost) any content, you must allow players to purchase their way past any gates. I get it, the GET is about stalling an entire currency and capitalizing on the increased spending while that currency is tied up. But you’re losing money if there is no way for players to skip that farm. Moreover, due to event fatigue and frustration, you may discover that the timeline means many players will slow their purchases until they see the next event/how things play out. We cannot pay to gear characters if there have been no new character releases to gear.
Final thought, is that I’m sure many of us assumed that the emphasis on world first Geo TB was supposed to be a big deal. This probably won’t happen until Ep 9 drops a new viable FO team (and the associated GP increase that comes with). Why on earth you are having the Gen Ani 7*, g13 timeline be possibly AFTER that event (and after LS Geo TB drops in Nov) is beyond me. I would have thought that pressuring resources right now would make sense, as you can always create new gear bottlenecks via new teams and reworks.
Hopefully, CG will issue a statement early next week that will address this lack of viability (for their sakes, hopefully one that doesn’t cause mass refunds). There are obvious solutions (GET swaps, GET awards, even moving the gear gate of 7* higher to relics), and there are less obvious or desirable ones (a kit change, mass upgrading of shards). Either way, CG, I implore you to follow the good side of the team that CG_Carrie embodied and address the community with some statement. Actions would be better, but a statement is probably your bare minimum.
Tldr;
CG is making the EA statement of “pride and accomplishment” seem reasonable.
We could really use actions to address this Gen Ani issue.
- Gen Ani release fails to create value and only dangles exclusivity (which isn’t enough for non-collectors)
- The best way to deal with this may be to figure a fix for increasing his viability while at the same time re-releasing him to try to allow more players to unlock him.
On November 12, 2017, a community account for EA, CG’s parent company, made the most downvoted comment in Reddit History. When asked if the price tag equivalency of $80 made sense for unlocked Darth Vader, an EA Community account responded that “The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.” This quote makes more sense than the current Gen Anakin release, and not just because of the price tag. Let that sink in.
EA gave players an option, to trade their valuable time or money to achieve access to a powerful character. This makes sense, it both created an atmosphere of exclusivity (having him before the “masses” unlocked him) and gameplay. To parallel this, Gen Ani at the moment allows players who unlocked but could not 7* him exclusivity (until the event invariably rolls around again), but gated the usage until their ability to 7* him. This creates less value in the mind of the customer, compounded if they could visualize the literal mountain of gear equivalency that the GET could purchase. This reduces the amount of players willing to spend on him. And yes, we saw a massive uptick in spending, which I am sure is expected every single major event. But for the number of tracked unlocks (as we as a community only have part of the picture), we can still conclude there were considerably less unlocks and spending than previous events. In business terms, this means that a 50% jump in weekly sales is great, but not as great if you were expected to pull a 75% jump (not to mention fatigue in spending following events OR lost players resulting from an event, of which there are some vocal and known players).
Additionally, CG forgot the one biggest rule of freemium games. For (almost) any content, you must allow players to purchase their way past any gates. I get it, the GET is about stalling an entire currency and capitalizing on the increased spending while that currency is tied up. But you’re losing money if there is no way for players to skip that farm. Moreover, due to event fatigue and frustration, you may discover that the timeline means many players will slow their purchases until they see the next event/how things play out. We cannot pay to gear characters if there have been no new character releases to gear.
Final thought, is that I’m sure many of us assumed that the emphasis on world first Geo TB was supposed to be a big deal. This probably won’t happen until Ep 9 drops a new viable FO team (and the associated GP increase that comes with). Why on earth you are having the Gen Ani 7*, g13 timeline be possibly AFTER that event (and after LS Geo TB drops in Nov) is beyond me. I would have thought that pressuring resources right now would make sense, as you can always create new gear bottlenecks via new teams and reworks.
Hopefully, CG will issue a statement early next week that will address this lack of viability (for their sakes, hopefully one that doesn’t cause mass refunds). There are obvious solutions (GET swaps, GET awards, even moving the gear gate of 7* higher to relics), and there are less obvious or desirable ones (a kit change, mass upgrading of shards). Either way, CG, I implore you to follow the good side of the team that CG_Carrie embodied and address the community with some statement. Actions would be better, but a statement is probably your bare minimum.
Tldr;
CG is making the EA statement of “pride and accomplishment” seem reasonable.
We could really use actions to address this Gen Ani issue.
8
Replies
That's on you.
Ok I will “try harder” and I will just throw out all the testing done in arena and believe in what Your saying
Arena /= GAC
What more do you need than a single hold to win a GA round though? It may even be just a very usefull offense team which allows you to place a different team on def. I fully expect my GACs to become easier with GAS than without. I'd be amazed if over the next couple of moths or sopeople don't bring up GAS while complaining about how bad matchmaking is.
I think it's mostly the expectations that ruined the character for you and many others, not so much the character itself.
Also, you can't really ask others to step their game up and provide actual content/proof without providing any of your own.
I’m not having a go at your opinion but I imagine he might still be pretty decent in an offence Padme team in GW or GAC
A crit damage set with no crit damage triangle is such a waste, that you deserve not getting results.
The result of this ‘experiment’ is that the *only* people who will ever undertake an Epic Confrontation are those who have saved their GET sufficiently to go to 7* straight away. That is going to be an ever decreasing number of people. The days of people panic farming/refreshing/spending to qualify for an event are gone because we now all know that any toon released at 5* is just not worth having for the spend. We will spend the 6 months following initial release FTP farming the requirements, taking advantage of the inevitable ‘touch ups’ to the required toons, saving the needed GET, and will be able to go straight to 7* at the same time as anyone who got the toon first time round but didn’t have GET anyway. Net result is that CG loses money, community laughs at uselessness of Epic toons that CG liken to Raid Bosses, and people quit the game because it’s all too much of a joke.
Good for you - In my guild, which will continue doing Geo TB, I’m looking at 6-9 mths to get enough GET
I’m 100% sure that he’s a pretty useless piece of crap at 5* in GAC against most teams, especially considering how he butchers the other teams to get the toons he needs.
Lol.
CLS Squads...