Addressing the Mod Update
July 15, 2016 5:45PM
edited July 2016
Hello there, this might be too long for you to read, but I hope that I can bring clarity to those that stay through the end.
A few bullet points before I go deep into the discussion:
- Mods are not overpowered.
- Gear is not obsolete.
- Pre-craft 2.0 happened and it is bad.
- Energy per Mod ratio needs to be adjusted.
- Potency was not nerfed.
I'll start with the "mods are overpowerd" and "Gear is obsolte" argument first. Lets remember the state of the game pre-mods.
- Equiping gear gives you better stats
- Character gear is pre-defined. That means every character performs the same at equal Gear Levels.
- Some Gear values have % based stats that go higher than 100% (Qui Gon for example).
- You need Gear to stay relevant at the end game.
- Meta is defined by using specific characters at specific gear levels. The usual way to beat that meta is to use the same teams and pray for RNG.
- Limited number of usefull characters and team compositions.
- Meta shifts by tuning existing characters or introducing new ones.
Now, post update:
- Equipping gear still gives you better stats, as do Mods. Mods scale out of Gear, Level and Stars.
- Character Mod choice is up to the player. The means every character perfoms according to your strategy. Better gear, level and stars will gives you an advantage.
- Potency/Resistance values normalized inside the 0%-100% range, so now you can know for sure your chances of debuffing, stripping buffs, resisting. (Resistance never falls bellow 15%).
- You need Gear and Mods to stay relevant at the end game.
- Meta is defined by using smart strategies and character/team builds. The new way to beat a meta would be to build a counter strategy looking for their weakness.
- A lot more usefull characters and team compositions.
- Meta shifts by players finding new and better ways to use the roster of characters and their skills.
Does sound like an improvement right?
While I do think that the flat stats provided by mods do have a significant impact on health pools and damage, and could be tuned a bit, I don't understand people that complain about % stats. Those are in direct correlation with Gear. They could see a balance in relation to one another at some point (how much % offense you get compared to how much % protection you get).
In a nutshell, you are just seeing bigger numbers. If you think mods should effect 10-15% of your characters abilities, then they won't be powerful enough to enable character tailoring.
Now, onto Pre-Craft 2.0.
Yes, you made a boo boo EA/CG. You let people farm the mods at a 100% drop and decided to nerf. I completely agree with how big of a mess the deployment of this new content was. I banked cantina energy pre-patch (because I like to keep myself informed of what is going on in the game) and did farm a good number of mods before the nerf and other players didn't thats their problem. They would catch up to me in a week after all. With this nerf, the gap is a lot bigger.
Energy/Mod Ratio.
I don't like this. We all know how simple the RNG system is for Gear, you either get a piece or you don't. Simple. But when you get a gear piece, it is the piece that you need and it performs the way you expect it to perform.
Mods are completely different. You need to farm random slot mod for a set, that has a random primary stat, and up to 4 different substats, and leveling that mod randomly give you random upgrades to those substats (lol right?). That alone put mods energy spending above everything else in the game.
You should either lower the cantina refresh cost to what normal energy currently is, keeping your lower drop chance and random rarity drop, or you should revert back to a guaranteed drop of MK4 and MK5 only.
Trust me, I know where you took mods from, and I've been there for 2 years. Your implementation does not work with their system.
Potency/Resistance "Nerf".
Please, don't even start. You character did't get nerfed. It got fixed. Does it really make sense to you that Qui Gon had 240% Potency? Or that characters had potency without having any skills in need of potency? It now works under the 0%-100% range. A lot easier to understand. Bear in mind all characters have a built-in 15% chance to resist at all times, they never go lower than that.
So a charcter that lands a debuff with 100% potency has an 85% chance of doing so. And the new mods make it so that you can choose who to give that potency/resistance.
I feel like those complaning/threatning about the update (with exception for the pre-craft 2.0 mess), either:
1- Don't understand mods yet but will be more keen on the idea in a week.
2- Didn't prepare and got steam rolled by those that did.
3- Were big spenders and had a confortable place on top of the leaderboards. Now refuse to have to think/strategize/adapt in face of the new content. (Lazy)
If you don't fit one of those 3 categories please do share your opinions, I'm up for any civilized discussion.
Ending my post, the game needs to progress and evolve. Do you really want them to re-tune Rancor or do you want a new raid?
Thank you for your time.
Zurin Fet. Team "I speak for myself".
A few bullet points before I go deep into the discussion:
- Mods are not overpowered.
- Gear is not obsolete.
- Pre-craft 2.0 happened and it is bad.
- Energy per Mod ratio needs to be adjusted.
- Potency was not nerfed.
I'll start with the "mods are overpowerd" and "Gear is obsolte" argument first. Lets remember the state of the game pre-mods.
- Equiping gear gives you better stats
- Character gear is pre-defined. That means every character performs the same at equal Gear Levels.
- Some Gear values have % based stats that go higher than 100% (Qui Gon for example).
- You need Gear to stay relevant at the end game.
- Meta is defined by using specific characters at specific gear levels. The usual way to beat that meta is to use the same teams and pray for RNG.
- Limited number of usefull characters and team compositions.
- Meta shifts by tuning existing characters or introducing new ones.
Now, post update:
- Equipping gear still gives you better stats, as do Mods. Mods scale out of Gear, Level and Stars.
- Character Mod choice is up to the player. The means every character perfoms according to your strategy. Better gear, level and stars will gives you an advantage.
- Potency/Resistance values normalized inside the 0%-100% range, so now you can know for sure your chances of debuffing, stripping buffs, resisting. (Resistance never falls bellow 15%).
- You need Gear and Mods to stay relevant at the end game.
- Meta is defined by using smart strategies and character/team builds. The new way to beat a meta would be to build a counter strategy looking for their weakness.
- A lot more usefull characters and team compositions.
- Meta shifts by players finding new and better ways to use the roster of characters and their skills.
Does sound like an improvement right?
While I do think that the flat stats provided by mods do have a significant impact on health pools and damage, and could be tuned a bit, I don't understand people that complain about % stats. Those are in direct correlation with Gear. They could see a balance in relation to one another at some point (how much % offense you get compared to how much % protection you get).
In a nutshell, you are just seeing bigger numbers. If you think mods should effect 10-15% of your characters abilities, then they won't be powerful enough to enable character tailoring.
Now, onto Pre-Craft 2.0.
Yes, you made a boo boo EA/CG. You let people farm the mods at a 100% drop and decided to nerf. I completely agree with how big of a mess the deployment of this new content was. I banked cantina energy pre-patch (because I like to keep myself informed of what is going on in the game) and did farm a good number of mods before the nerf and other players didn't thats their problem. They would catch up to me in a week after all. With this nerf, the gap is a lot bigger.
Energy/Mod Ratio.
I don't like this. We all know how simple the RNG system is for Gear, you either get a piece or you don't. Simple. But when you get a gear piece, it is the piece that you need and it performs the way you expect it to perform.
Mods are completely different. You need to farm random slot mod for a set, that has a random primary stat, and up to 4 different substats, and leveling that mod randomly give you random upgrades to those substats (lol right?). That alone put mods energy spending above everything else in the game.
You should either lower the cantina refresh cost to what normal energy currently is, keeping your lower drop chance and random rarity drop, or you should revert back to a guaranteed drop of MK4 and MK5 only.
Trust me, I know where you took mods from, and I've been there for 2 years. Your implementation does not work with their system.
Potency/Resistance "Nerf".
Please, don't even start. You character did't get nerfed. It got fixed. Does it really make sense to you that Qui Gon had 240% Potency? Or that characters had potency without having any skills in need of potency? It now works under the 0%-100% range. A lot easier to understand. Bear in mind all characters have a built-in 15% chance to resist at all times, they never go lower than that.
So a charcter that lands a debuff with 100% potency has an 85% chance of doing so. And the new mods make it so that you can choose who to give that potency/resistance.
I feel like those complaning/threatning about the update (with exception for the pre-craft 2.0 mess), either:
1- Don't understand mods yet but will be more keen on the idea in a week.
2- Didn't prepare and got steam rolled by those that did.
3- Were big spenders and had a confortable place on top of the leaderboards. Now refuse to have to think/strategize/adapt in face of the new content. (Lazy)
If you don't fit one of those 3 categories please do share your opinions, I'm up for any civilized discussion.
Ending my post, the game needs to progress and evolve. Do you really want them to re-tune Rancor or do you want a new raid?
Thank you for your time.
Zurin Fet. Team "I speak for myself".
Post edited by ZurinFet on
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Replies
Ppl resist change, fine. We will adjust. But lowering drop rates and raising costs when forum gives feed back seems reactive and not thought through. More content is good, they are trying but this is a planning issue, not testing.
Thank you for your input!
Yes I understand why it had to be so high, but it was like putting a bandage on a bullet wound. I do agree that the change came too swift, maybe they should have given a heads-up first.
On the "their efforts ahve been devalued" argument, I understand that, but everything will be devalued eventually. If someone chose to spend 15$ on a piece of gear to get quick advantage, its up to them right?
I spent crystals in gear. I'm still glad I did at that specific point. I would still do so.
So about this.
There definitely was some type of nerf, not just normalization. My QGJ has 111% potency post update. Even with resistances, on both player characters and raid bosses, I should be hitting TM reduction at least 75% of the time. This just isnt happening. I would say I am barely 50% successful. This is over two entire t6 raids and 15 arena battles.
It is possible that the Law of Large Numbers would even this out, the sample size is not in the thousands, but over the course of probably 100+ attacks the numbers should be reasonably accurate.
I'm not the only one who believes that potency was nerfed into the ground.
[edit] each individual character compared to that same character, not all characters at a gear level
That's how it was, before Mods were implemented.
A character with the same gear, level and rank would have the same stats.
With mods, the stats are more variable, and no Leia, Luke or Darth is exatly the same as it were before.
Unless we have information on the PVE resistance values, its impossible to tell.
Got it, I'll edit out some of my previous snark
Sorry for not making it clear
You can auto sim everything in the game now - so Arena and GW are really the only core "gameplay" available (Raids only come every other day and last for 5 minutes so everyone gets a turn). If you make it so people cannot have a chance at either of those, then what is the point of the game? You are just going to frustrate yourself
I completely agree with the GW current issues.. but since it was a GW problem I didn't get into it. GW was broken long before mods in my opinion. The mods just escalate the problem.
Some I would add:
Bounty challenges should reward more credits now, especially since there was a GW increase and there is a greater need for credits with the introduction of mods.
Droids seem to need a nerf. Jawa engineer, B2, IG88, IG86, and HK Lead is nearly impossible to beat unless you get good RNG and their AI is stupid. I'm fighting IG88's who get 34k crits on basic attacks (non max level, gear 9) using health set mods. You are forced to go for Jawa engineer first because of the revive, which procs B2's relentless barage so he spams buff immunity and dodge reduction on the team. On top of this, IG88 procs ability block, and HK spams his debuffs all the while your dps has just been one shot by 2 droids that you cant even touch. It doesn't matter what tanks you use, B2 will give them buff immunity so they can't taunt. Oh, and Leia can't stealth. The team just seems incredibly overpowered and something needs to be done about it. At the very least, nerf B2's relentless barage and make buff immunity not include taunts.
Remove the team requirements to do mod challenges, or make it so only 2-3 of that race are required. You basically need a very well geared/modded team of [scoundrels, for example] to beat t3 of the mod challenge. To ask us to farm a whole set of people for one group of mods is absolutely ridiculous. I suggest that there should be a requirement, but say of only 2 or 3 of that race, and the rest can be whatever you want. It takes a lot of time to farm these characters and to do it solely for a mod challenge that you will just end up simming to get mods is crazy.
Take Finn, for example. He is barely ever used and the easiest way to farm him is in cantina. We are forced to spend a month farming 1 character, and the whole time getting barely any cantina energy into mods, just so we can complete 1 set of mod challenges, and you have to do this for EVERY race. There are many other ways to make us get together synergy teams (like the events). This whole thing goes along with making cantina refreshes the same as the energy refreshes. Either do this, or create a whole new mod energy system, because cantina energy is way too important for 100 crystal then immediate double in price refresh.
Reduce the cost of mods in mod shipments. Really? Mk1 and Mk2 mods for 300 crystals? **** is that? Those mods are completely useless and can be farmed from one cantina battle. They should be worth as much as a goddamn sim ticket. Look at your statistics Capital Games, and see how many people actually bought mods from the mod shipments. The answer is there.
Just so you know, CG, my whole guild of practically all lvl 80s who have spent plenty of time on this game (and money), are all thinking about quitting because of some of the things that were not taken into account. I am the one who is getting on them, telling them to give it hope and see if in a week or so, things change. Don't disappoint.
Now with all these complaints, I will say I do like many of the other changes to the UI ect that you guys have done. And the fact that the mods open opportunities for characters that haven't been thought of.. just.. cut us some slack on the farm... please.
As for your disrespectful leaderboard comment,lol pal I run TC groups this potency nerf did not impact my status there, no matter which new builds I run, and I do not need that Fuzzball to solo P1 as I showed via testing last night.
You post was decent until you got disrespectful.
I agree Mods are not OP. They are very fun to use and really enhance your characters.
I also agree gear is not obsolete. I tested this by using some raid gear I was holding to up a few to 10 and I noticed a very nice increase in productivity.
Characters had an excess of potency, for you it makes no difference, cause it suits you. The range of potency and tenacity was just broken.
Teebo didn't get nerfed if that is what you think. He was already broken before. Potency/Tenacity was broken.
They fixed it by normalizing the range between 0-100%. Anything above that is just waste. Take for example a Teebo now with 100% potency. He would have 100% chance of reducing turn meter before resistances (and every character has a built-in 15% minimum chance to resist effects), which makes it so he has 85% chance of reducing turn meter. Now, you don't know how much Tenacity the captain has. Unless they provide that information.
Teebo has low potency now, because he had poor gear implementation. And a week built-in potency to begin with. They might need to provide a small boost to fix those lackying it, if it becomes a problem. Or they probably want to force you into Modding potency on that specific character.
Go check how many characters you have that equip + potency gear and have ZERO utility for potency.
If you think 240% potency on QuiGon was correct, I rest my case.
Would you kindly show me where did I lack respect on my post?
If you are not one of those "lazy" (for lack of a better word) players, doesn't mean they don't exist. They do, and are in every game where you can spend money to get an advantage.
It just makes me sad when I read topics starting with "I spent money to be on top and now I'm not on top" arguments. This probably doesn't apply to you but it does to a fair amount of players.