Datacron is killing GAC fun.
June 23, 2022 5:33PM
edited June 23
I hardly belong to the people who love to rant in the forum. But this time I have to write about it.
I have been playing this game without break since 2018,. And besides a short period during the DR meta, when I was stupid enough to spend few bucks to catch up with the Malak event. I have been largely playing this game without giving CG any cash. Still, I managed to build up an 8m account with all the required toys to be competitive in GAC. I won't call myself a good player, but I do decent and stabalized myself around 3900+ SP in Kyber1.
My opponent this round was a 10m+ whale account. I one-shot everything as usual (because why not, that's why you spend time studying opponent, right?). But then I opened the back wall and saw an all R8 Inquisitors line-up with Level 9 datacron for 5th Brother. Went in with my SLKR+Wat and lost, hardly taking a turn.
I'm not mad with my opponent. He won fair and square. Would have done the same if I'm in his shoes. The point I want to make is however, until now you stood a chance in GAC with any opponents, long as you do smart investments in characters, mods and relic levels and spend sufficient time studying your opponent. But then come the datacrons, and all you have to do is to spend spend spend. I can't help but to say GAC competitiveness is reduced to who has more and bigger datacrons.There is no way I can compete against that spending rage. Especially when that advantage resets again in few months.
To cut it short: Datacron is killing GAC for F2P players.. What is the point to spend time in modding, scouting your oponent and do efficiency play if one datacron decides the match? The balance between spending money and spending time has been seriously destroyed.
I have been playing this game without break since 2018,. And besides a short period during the DR meta, when I was stupid enough to spend few bucks to catch up with the Malak event. I have been largely playing this game without giving CG any cash. Still, I managed to build up an 8m account with all the required toys to be competitive in GAC. I won't call myself a good player, but I do decent and stabalized myself around 3900+ SP in Kyber1.
My opponent this round was a 10m+ whale account. I one-shot everything as usual (because why not, that's why you spend time studying opponent, right?). But then I opened the back wall and saw an all R8 Inquisitors line-up with Level 9 datacron for 5th Brother. Went in with my SLKR+Wat and lost, hardly taking a turn.
I'm not mad with my opponent. He won fair and square. Would have done the same if I'm in his shoes. The point I want to make is however, until now you stood a chance in GAC with any opponents, long as you do smart investments in characters, mods and relic levels and spend sufficient time studying your opponent. But then come the datacrons, and all you have to do is to spend spend spend. I can't help but to say GAC competitiveness is reduced to who has more and bigger datacrons.There is no way I can compete against that spending rage. Especially when that advantage resets again in few months.
To cut it short: Datacron is killing GAC for F2P players.. What is the point to spend time in modding, scouting your oponent and do efficiency play if one datacron decides the match? The balance between spending money and spending time has been seriously destroyed.
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Replies
Isn't that a good thing for f2p though, because it means whales have to whale every few months to get a new lvl9?
I mean I saw some math on how much resources it takes to roll a lvl9 on the toon you want a lvl9 on. It takes a lot. I'd be fine if I run into someone like that in GAC. It is what it is.
I already put nail in the GAC coffin as a f2p player. Lol. The new format means you are going to land in a range where you win around 50% of matches anyway. So my new way of playing is just set the same defense, not even bother with studying opponent. As long as you can stay in Kyber 1, why bother?
I am a Dec 2015 f2p player. My old GAC score was 1m+, now I don’t care GAC anymore, and will gladly collect my 50% win rate Kyber 1 rewards without doing as much as before.
If you check my profile, you see I put absolutely 0 GAC omicron on my toons. It is not worth it to invest for GAC anymore.
Kyber 1: $500-$1000/month
Kyber 2: $250-$499/month
Kyber 3: $100-$$249/month
The leagues will become less about rosters and mods and more about your “Season Pass” in the form of datacrons to maintain your ranking. No proof of any of this, but it’s a good business model. It’s best to find your comfort zone and make your peace.
I'm reasonable enough to see I hardly belong to the target customer segment for CG. But I used to love this game and GAC in particular because it's so f2p friendly compared to others. And you can stay competitive as long as you invest and play smart. That charm is gone now. Looks like CG wants to make sure all the whales can play their wallet arms race in GAC undisturbed without being humiliated by f2p players.
Honestly, whales can spend whatever, whenever and whereever they want, as long as you can balance out this disadvantage with strategy, scouting, modding etc. I mean that's what makes GAC so interesting for most of us. To score an underdog gac win against a much bigger acount is what motivates me to invest so much time in this game. But now whales have this shining toy called "Level 9 datacron" which f2p players don't have access to (and I doubt we ever will). This paywall is hurting gac more than benefiting it.
I don't mind the paywall. Im on the side that believes this helps F2P if whales are spending money on temp bonuses instead of permanent ones.
To me the problem is that it's just buffing the most powerful squads in the game as well as the latest paywall squads. CG said this was a way to balance older characters and keep them viable for longer. So far that's looking like a load of crap. I love the concept of datacrons. I hate the execution. And as usual, players are left wondering if CG was flat lying about their intentions or if they just really suck at delivery.
Actually, I'm convinced the "temporary" factor is the main anti-f2p aspect of datacron. I can actually make peace with datacron if the bonuses are permanent. Because then I have at least the hope I can ultimately get Lvl9 datacrons as well if I just keep playing and farming materials in conquest. However, I'm pretty sure given the time window of three month life-cycle this is near mission impossible for f2p players to own lvl9 datacrons EVER.
I have yet to face a GL with Lvl9 Datacron in GAC. But from what I see with the Inquistors, lvl9 datacron basically elevates any team to GL level. Sure, there will be counters out there soon, I'm pretty certain about it. But my point is this is an exclusive advantage for whales, which so far never existed in this game before. And it will break GAC.
That’s a small impact for F2P, that I think is reasonable, considering those who pay do fund the game so we can play for free or small budgets.
That's actually crazy considering that you're still at the ~4000+ area (the tryhard area).
This is easily the dumbest thing they've done. Everyone who's working on this is doing so because they feel they have no choice. The only people I know who are happy are those who got the lucky dice roll. CG is going to a death spiral, responding to declining revenues by trying to squeeze more money out of existing players rather than improve the game to bring them back.
They are also a nice way to fix underperforming/crappy toons like LV or Inquisitors(see below).
So instead of doing 14 battles I can stop probably after 2 and do other stuff that’s not coming from CashGrab or EA. So actually a win situation 😂
Sapped all the fun out of doing it all, combined with lack of effort everywhere else in the game design with the new things or changes its pushing more people and myself to stop playing completely.
If you really are F2P, this is either the oddest flex, or the worst drain on limited F2P resources "out of boredom" ever.
Datacrons a) can't really be whaled on too much - the store only resets weekly
C) will likely pay him back for those resources
I'm lowest go in my pod by over a million. I'm the only one with 2 lvl 9 datacrons so I can equalize to these bigger accounts.
I matched up vs hynsey last gac. The tale of the tape was striking. I was a single battle away from beating him. I definitely spend a fraction of what he spends.
You know if your cat is faster you can get an easy 65 with the mirror and r2d2 without any datacrons?
I've never seen a cash payout in real money back when I was in K1 before datacons - are they doing that now?
From what I've heard, the 3 month advantage (which has diminishing returns as you climb to the point where you're being outspent, as happened with Hynsey) costs about $50-100 per lvl9 datacon, depending on how much you reroll for the desired stats.
Do you really think you're getting a vault of crystals in returns? (even in the worst case scenario where you buy it not on sale, not with any bonuses from May 4th etc) I think you might be trying to convince yourself of the 'investment value' of datacrons, not us.
You can equalize with those larger accounts if they don't use datacrons. If they have larger accounts, spend more money AND use datacrons....how do you plan to equalize that?
That's how you destroy GAC. Thanks again CG.
To me, it's similar to how I felt with the 2021 nerf. Motivation killer