Guild movement: Goal vs reality
I remember a post from CG that once said their goal was for players to filter up in guilds as they advance so players of equal goals, GP, roster strength, spend, etc end up filtering into guilds together.
However, I have noticed a factor that is working directly against this goal. Namely HSTR rewards. I've repeatedly seen the HSTR rewards, and the need to place top 10 to get really good rewards, hold players in lower guilds than they would otherwise fit in.
Why?
Well let us look at a comparison for other guild based events.
TW: 4 events per month, difference between first and second place, 1 of several gear pieces, 100 of each GET, and 1 zeta.
Monthly difference 400 GET/GET2, 4 zeta mats, 4 omega mats, and 4-6 of several pieces of gear.
TB: I dont have exact numbers for TB, but assuming Geo TB, the difference between a focused guild or a semi casual guild: 2 TB/month, TB rewards likely around 3-4000 GET2, and 1000-1500 GET1 per TB. So 8000 GET2 and 3000 GET1 per month.
Now let's examine HSTR. Most top GP guilds will require 600 tickets a day, or 8 HSTR a month.
Now let's say you average 1 out of 4 of your top 10 finishes gets a fully crafted G12+ piece. The other 3 each net a half piece. So per month you get 2 full pieces and 6 pieces worth of salvage. Compared to a below top 20 win that nets maybe one or 2 full pieces worth of salvage in a month.
So 8 pieces of G12+ vs 2. Plus all the other rewards.
Now to use GET to buy a G12+ piece costs roughly 9600 GET. So the difference in rewards in a month between top 10 and below 20 is roughly equivalent to around 50k GET.
I think with all the new requirements and expectations to gear, it's time to fix sith raid rewards and ALL future raids to make it a GROUP reward and make it good enough that it's still worth doing.
Stop making us compete against our own guild mates for decent rewards
Stop incentivizing players to stay in weak guilds for the raid rewards.
Wither drastically improve all other guild rewards, or spread HSTR rewards a bit more evenly
However, I have noticed a factor that is working directly against this goal. Namely HSTR rewards. I've repeatedly seen the HSTR rewards, and the need to place top 10 to get really good rewards, hold players in lower guilds than they would otherwise fit in.
Why?
Well let us look at a comparison for other guild based events.
TW: 4 events per month, difference between first and second place, 1 of several gear pieces, 100 of each GET, and 1 zeta.
Monthly difference 400 GET/GET2, 4 zeta mats, 4 omega mats, and 4-6 of several pieces of gear.
TB: I dont have exact numbers for TB, but assuming Geo TB, the difference between a focused guild or a semi casual guild: 2 TB/month, TB rewards likely around 3-4000 GET2, and 1000-1500 GET1 per TB. So 8000 GET2 and 3000 GET1 per month.
Now let's examine HSTR. Most top GP guilds will require 600 tickets a day, or 8 HSTR a month.
Now let's say you average 1 out of 4 of your top 10 finishes gets a fully crafted G12+ piece. The other 3 each net a half piece. So per month you get 2 full pieces and 6 pieces worth of salvage. Compared to a below top 20 win that nets maybe one or 2 full pieces worth of salvage in a month.
So 8 pieces of G12+ vs 2. Plus all the other rewards.
Now to use GET to buy a G12+ piece costs roughly 9600 GET. So the difference in rewards in a month between top 10 and below 20 is roughly equivalent to around 50k GET.
I think with all the new requirements and expectations to gear, it's time to fix sith raid rewards and ALL future raids to make it a GROUP reward and make it good enough that it's still worth doing.
Stop making us compete against our own guild mates for decent rewards
Stop incentivizing players to stay in weak guilds for the raid rewards.
Wither drastically improve all other guild rewards, or spread HSTR rewards a bit more evenly
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What part of that math is made up? looks pretty solid to me
This is an issue, but that's why I said assuming guilds are doing geo. However once you climb guilds to get into Geo TB, you then benefit more by staying in a lower end guild doing geo TB if it means top 3 or at least top 10 HSTR.
Some simpler math would be:
For a lot of players, joining weaker guilds to ensure top 10 sith rewards > lost rewards in other areas
And the point was that this is counter to the devs stated intentions of encouraging guilds to be made up of similar GP players.
Thanks! That was basically my TLDR that I was too tired to post last night.
There are really only 3 fixes, 2 of which will be unpalatable to players, or 1 that will not please devs.
1) Make raid rewards standardized for the whole guild similar to TW or TB.
2) Increase the difference in TW/TB rewards between high and low performers (or win vs loss in TW)
3) Extend HSTR rewards to larger pools. Make top 10 rewards extend to top 20, and top 20 rewards extend 21-50.
I do hope the devs at very least learn in the future to make any new raids with a more standardized reward structure
while this math makes more sense, the conclusion doesn't. If you drop down in guilds to get top 10 hsth you are missing out on a lot of better rewards, as you said. in other words, you are making a bad decision imo
That all depends on the guilds involved.
I could move from my 280M into a 240-250M guild and get top 5 raid rewards each time. It would cost a small amount of Tb rewards (a couple of stars). TW could still be a win or loss in either guild and both are in the same rewards bracket anyway.
How about calling for making HSTR simmable? It turned out ok for rancor.
Excellently stated. Please submit this as a question for tomorrow's Q&A.
They would just promise to get an answer then you would never hear from them again like the last proposed. Change to TB
Have you been a member of a big guild? In my 215 mil gp guild, maybe 10 to 15 actually attack HSTR, its not that hard to get top 10 if you are active since the raid lasts about 45 minutes.
Goodness, no.
With Rancor the gear rewards are equivalent to 11th place, but in HSTR the gear rewards are terrible unless you're in top 10, and they're not good unless you're in the top3. Even then I've had quite a few top3 finishes net me mostly garbage. It's not that the 3 or so salvage of all those g12 pieces are useless, every salvage adds up, but they're not enough when the rest of the gear is so frequently bad.
In my guild p1 takes about 20-45 minutes depending on who is hitting when. Then p2 goes in 5 minutes and p3 in another 5. If you don't have time to simply refresh over and over waiting for the moment to put in the best team for whatever your strategy is, you're not going to do well.
You can't expect people to enjoy sitting on their thumbs for up to half an hour, just tapping refresh and checking the percent left in the phase. And if you're in the lower half of your guild, it's NOT easy to finish top 10, even if you do engage in sitting around waiting for your optimal opportunities.
If I was Merc'ing I could score 60M easy, and I don't know what my best score would look like. As it is, I haven't gotten 60M even once. My best ever is only 57M, and as time goes on getting up that high gets harder, not easier, because more people have teams ready that can whomp p2 and p3 quickly, so it's ever more likely that you'll miss your moment.
I can finish 15% of p1 and then do 25% of p2 with JKR Jedi, I can take another 20% with one other squad (there are a couple options), if I don't want to save it for p4 kitchen sink, then I can finish 40% of p2 with clones. My clones aren't good enough to completely finish p3, but my death storm squad does 100% of p3 and then scores big in p4. But I never get a chance to do all that because everyone else is hitting as well.
Now imagine if you don't have great squads. Say you're in my guild, but hitting for about 12-16% in p2 as your best team. If you hit first with RJT in p1 that might be enough to get you in the top 10, but probably not. And we only have about 20ish people hit each HSTR.
Do you really want to sit on your thumbs for half an hour doing refreshes so you have a 10% chance of getting in the top 10?
Probably not.
So maybe it just seems easy to score in the top 10 because
a) the people who can't score in the top10 know that and they're the ones who aren't trying,
and
b) your 215m guild isn't like mine, and p2 and p3 aren't gone in 10 minutes flat, so everyone who wants to hit has time to hit before the next phase starts. I guarantee you it's not like that in more competitive guilds. And we're only 235-240m.
It's the difference between 1-2 people who can crush the raid and can afford to allow others a chance to hit before they go in and having 8-10 people who can crush the raid, so they have to jump in right away or someone else is going to solo the phase. Sure only 4-5 of those people actually score 35m+, but people have work, etc. or just walk away for a couple minutes and miss an entire phase. The people who are competing for the top3 make it incredibly difficult for the rest of folks to get in good hits.
So when people choose to blow off the raid instead of spending an hour fighting for a 10% chance (or less) at decent rewards, I don't criticize them. It's a choice that makes sense. And they sure as heck aren't "leeching". I get top 5 rewards every time I'm around to actually play the raid, and my rewards aren't dragged down even a tiny bit by the 25-30 who don't register damage.
The problem is as the OP says. If you want to grow as a guild together, then you have to have much less drop off in Raid rewards. You can still have better rewards for top3/top10/top20, but the current difference is so steep it practically begs people to change guilds rather than stay with the same people over a long time and develop friendships and mutually helpful relationships.
I am someone who moved from a smaller guild to a much bigger guild. My first big guild was very competitive and my current big guild is more casual. The competitive guild did not allow cheese in phase 3, that was the only difference between the two and I can score in the top 10 of both no problems. The raid dies so fast there is no need to wait for anything. (I am assuming people are actually big enough to join a big guild 3.5 mil GP and up, at this size, does it matter what phase you hit? Your roster should be good for all phases?)
As for growing with a guild together and developing friendships, that's more on a guild's leadership than anything CG can do to make things easier for a guild to retain members. If leadership allows folks to miss events and/or do minimal participation. The more aggressive members will feel they are being held back and will start to think about joining a group with more similar goals to their own.
I am in a mid size guild. I like my guildies and don’t want to move. We do LS Hoth as we have a few ftp with smaller rosters. So I am stuck with 5* Malevolence. I get first every day in fleet arena, I beat 7* Negotiator regularly. Yes, I have maxed my Seppies and fleet to do so, but it can be done. You don’t hold on defence, but the offence is enough to take pretty much every battle on offence because the AI is not great. And that’s the key - the AI is not good, so use it well and you should still find a way to the top.
YIKES! Gotta make sure I'm not in your guild!
I know right now my advice to any player who can post 30M+ damage but isnt making top 10 in their guild HSTR, would be find a more casual raid guild who is still doing well in TB. Honestly TW rewards mean nothing. It's one extra zeta every 5 months. 2 a year. Not really worth losing out on much more lucrative HSTR rewards.
Is that what you want CG? Players advancing more by moving into lower guilds?
Most of this is true for me as well, though I have actually been boosting my squad arena rank. (Moving up in Squad has been a long slow process of getting a little bit better every few months instead of any huge quantum leap).
On the plus side, though, I'm finally at 7* on Negotiator and taking 1st is easy again. That doesn't negate the real struggles I faced in a lot of battles over the last month when other people had 7* Nego and mine was sitting at 6*, it's just a relief it's over. I definitely wouldn't want to sacrifice TB stars and GET/2 for raid rewards. But I have the luxury of saying that as someone who solos hAAT and can score top3 hSTR whenever she has the time to actually play the raid.
If I couldn't score that high? It might just be that better gear on my pilots would help me more than quicker progress on the Cap ships.