I retire with my hands above my head clapping to the devs…!
TL;DR. Love it or hate it, game or chore, gambling/reward addict or entertainment, the stats don’t lie: I have never spent so much time and so much money on a mobile game. And I had a lot of fun doing it, but I’ll quit now. Congrats devs! Very happy customer and will continue to recommend the game into the future.
Building teams, developing players, and reminiscing about all the Star Wars characters and how their skills compared to canon was a lot of fun. Researching on forums, websites, reddit, blogs was a new and fun experience. I felt like I had an edge because I had done research. My SWGOH excel file got to be a dozen or so tabs in size.
My stats: I played every day since download in Nov ’15. Spent about USD$45 total plus hundreds of hours. I’m in my mid-thirties and a very casual gamer.
In the end, it wasn’t a particular update or bug or characteristic of the game that made me quit, it was a stubborn little fact that wouldn’t go away, like a pebble in your hiking shoe: The incentives of the devs are misaligned with the incentives of the player base. Because there’s always opportunity to extract more revenue, the player base will always be pushed and pulled by the devs. The characteristic of the ever-evolving, remotely updatable game is that revenue can be extracted over and over again. So developers must keep milking the player base by ever so slightly adjusting the rewards/difficulties/levels and competitiveness of the game.
I don’t really have a solution to the current business model. I understand that it creates more revenue. You can’t put Pandora back in the box. In yesteryear games, you paid a predetermined price for a full game. The game promised puzzles, challenges, entertainment and a sense of achievement after you ‘beat the game’. SWGOH doesn’t have that sense of beating the game. Will anyone, ever, ‘collect them all’? (All toons, all gear, all stats, all mods, all all?) It’s always ‘you must collect more characters’, ‘now you need more gear to win’, in other words, ‘you gotta keep up in order to not fall behind’, so it never ends. (Again, incentives. Game is designed to tickle your urge to collect so that you’re more likely to spend.) If I could buy a $75 dollar ‘SWGOH membership’ that would guarantee a full game, with an endgame, I would’ve bought it on the spot.
Certainly the Star Wars skin was a huge driver. If this were wizards and dragons instead of Jedi and droids, I would’ve played no more than a few days. But how could I not have Grand Master Yoda, one of the wisest and most powerful characters in all of popular culture. I need five Jedi? I can do that! (Good thing I’m leaving before ‘Hermit Yoda’ makes an appearance! And, of course, R2-D2.)
Probably the part that dove me the most to quit was the countdown aspect of the game and the need to play at a certain time to get ahead. That was the biggest drag on my attention and time. It’s that you had to play before payout. Or you had to play when a raid is on. You had to complete the dailies to get that precious Omega, and after 5 days one of your characters can be a little better. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you miss out on rewards and on the chance to advance. That caused me to play not just during ‘idle time’ (waiting in line, commuting, etc.) which I’m fine with, but also during ‘productive time’. The game started to get very expensive. It would’ve been great to somehow get the rewards on your preferred daily time.
I really enjoyed the interaction with the devs. My applause to @CG_JohnSalera , @EA_Jesse , @CG_NotReallyAJedi and all the rest of the guys that deal with hordes of complaining gamers. It was great to really ‘feel’ that you’re part of a game, because I felt like my feedback affected how the game took shape. That’s one of the things that yesteryear games could never offer. My very few interactions with the devs were professional, courteous and productive. I really believe these guys are passionate about what they do and trying to balance multiple crisscrossing tensions. The complaining gamers speak with such authority in their posts, yet no one can come even close to the amount of data that the devs have…
Guilds and guildmates was also a new experience for me. Really proud and happy for my guild: The Consulars, headed by @Qeltar . It has been great to quickly interact with a group of strangers about things that we could talk about in great detail regarding a game we all loved and were all spending hours a day on. My guildies were respectful, fun, supportive and good teammates. I was always amazed about what 50 guys who coordinated in a chat room were capable of! There is more to explore there. Power to coordinated people!
Anyways, I’ll remain as a general reddit user and hope to cross paths again in the future. Hope the game continues to be very successful.
Regards to all and may the Force be with you.
Consular RelishYoda
Building teams, developing players, and reminiscing about all the Star Wars characters and how their skills compared to canon was a lot of fun. Researching on forums, websites, reddit, blogs was a new and fun experience. I felt like I had an edge because I had done research. My SWGOH excel file got to be a dozen or so tabs in size.
My stats: I played every day since download in Nov ’15. Spent about USD$45 total plus hundreds of hours. I’m in my mid-thirties and a very casual gamer.
In the end, it wasn’t a particular update or bug or characteristic of the game that made me quit, it was a stubborn little fact that wouldn’t go away, like a pebble in your hiking shoe: The incentives of the devs are misaligned with the incentives of the player base. Because there’s always opportunity to extract more revenue, the player base will always be pushed and pulled by the devs. The characteristic of the ever-evolving, remotely updatable game is that revenue can be extracted over and over again. So developers must keep milking the player base by ever so slightly adjusting the rewards/difficulties/levels and competitiveness of the game.
I don’t really have a solution to the current business model. I understand that it creates more revenue. You can’t put Pandora back in the box. In yesteryear games, you paid a predetermined price for a full game. The game promised puzzles, challenges, entertainment and a sense of achievement after you ‘beat the game’. SWGOH doesn’t have that sense of beating the game. Will anyone, ever, ‘collect them all’? (All toons, all gear, all stats, all mods, all all?) It’s always ‘you must collect more characters’, ‘now you need more gear to win’, in other words, ‘you gotta keep up in order to not fall behind’, so it never ends. (Again, incentives. Game is designed to tickle your urge to collect so that you’re more likely to spend.) If I could buy a $75 dollar ‘SWGOH membership’ that would guarantee a full game, with an endgame, I would’ve bought it on the spot.
Certainly the Star Wars skin was a huge driver. If this were wizards and dragons instead of Jedi and droids, I would’ve played no more than a few days. But how could I not have Grand Master Yoda, one of the wisest and most powerful characters in all of popular culture. I need five Jedi? I can do that! (Good thing I’m leaving before ‘Hermit Yoda’ makes an appearance! And, of course, R2-D2.)
Probably the part that dove me the most to quit was the countdown aspect of the game and the need to play at a certain time to get ahead. That was the biggest drag on my attention and time. It’s that you had to play before payout. Or you had to play when a raid is on. You had to complete the dailies to get that precious Omega, and after 5 days one of your characters can be a little better. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you miss out on rewards and on the chance to advance. That caused me to play not just during ‘idle time’ (waiting in line, commuting, etc.) which I’m fine with, but also during ‘productive time’. The game started to get very expensive. It would’ve been great to somehow get the rewards on your preferred daily time.
I really enjoyed the interaction with the devs. My applause to @CG_JohnSalera , @EA_Jesse , @CG_NotReallyAJedi and all the rest of the guys that deal with hordes of complaining gamers. It was great to really ‘feel’ that you’re part of a game, because I felt like my feedback affected how the game took shape. That’s one of the things that yesteryear games could never offer. My very few interactions with the devs were professional, courteous and productive. I really believe these guys are passionate about what they do and trying to balance multiple crisscrossing tensions. The complaining gamers speak with such authority in their posts, yet no one can come even close to the amount of data that the devs have…
Guilds and guildmates was also a new experience for me. Really proud and happy for my guild: The Consulars, headed by @Qeltar . It has been great to quickly interact with a group of strangers about things that we could talk about in great detail regarding a game we all loved and were all spending hours a day on. My guildies were respectful, fun, supportive and good teammates. I was always amazed about what 50 guys who coordinated in a chat room were capable of! There is more to explore there. Power to coordinated people!
Anyways, I’ll remain as a general reddit user and hope to cross paths again in the future. Hope the game continues to be very successful.
Regards to all and may the Force be with you.
Consular RelishYoda
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Replies
I cant help but agree with this statement, I've seen it before and it just isn't worth investing time.
Personally I would much rather burn out on a game, with the successful feeling of completing it, because you can always return whenever you wish to and when there is new content its fun starting at the previous threshold, instead they put you in a near perpetual limbo towards the end-game of getting almost nowhere unless your willing to invest money, then you get a little more content.
They really make up for it with this great "auto" feature, which I have never seen for any other mobile game, you don't have to sit there and press buttons all the time so its easy to afk, and that's why I keep playing
This is one of the most well thought-out posts I've seen here. Constructive, calm, understanding, and true on all counts (IMHO). Thank you for expressing the frustrations we're all feeling without making the developers think we're all ragebeast trolls hating on their opus of love.
Devs: I don't believe I'm wrong when I say this person speaks for all of us. Despite all our complaining, thank you for everything you do for this game. Here's hoping it continues to evolve, along with the relationship between us fans and gamers, and you.
AND, they both have names that end with 'hero'. Coincidence? I think not!