Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Replies

  • Sonoren
    32 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Qeltar wrote: »
    We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.
    This is a very confusing statement.
    Last night Aaron said this was done because some people were retreating and some were force-closing, and since you couldn't stop the force-closing (which is not even really accurate) you wanted everyone to be on equal footing, so you changed retreat into force-close. This makes more sense than the idea that you intended the game to mimic behavior that 48 hours ago required force-closing the app.
    Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.
    So why didn't you ask us about it before making the change? It's nice of you to ask our views now, but the damage is done. It's not like anyone actually thinks you are going to back it off now.
    The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
    And let's be clear that this could also be used against the player. Figuring out the right time to retreat was part of the strategy.
    But if you didn't want it to be used to clear buffs/debuffs, why didn't you change the code to prevent this from happening? Yes, I know "we're working on it but it takes time". Fine, so take time. GW has been the way it was for months. Only a tiny handful of people complained about it. There was no reason to change it.
    There's a list of bugs a mile long in the Bugs area. Virtually none of them were addressed in this patch. But a major change to GW was? Why?

    (Goals)
    Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard!
    It's easier now than it was before for experienced players. Since you have now legitimized the formerly-exploitive "reload save game" method, there is no longer any risk of losing a character, and no risk means no challenge.
    It's not hard. It's just tedious.
    Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
    And you've gone in a backwards direction here too. Because there is now no practical way to heal back up a character that has been removed from a fight with low health, the optimal strategy is now to ensure that you never end a fight with low health. This points to a team with healers, stunners and ability blockers.
    There is no longer any use for my bench. I have now completed 24 straight GW fights using only the same 5 characters. Before I would use my tanks and secondaries as part of a strategy to manage healer cooldowns. They are no longer of any use to me, because if I put them in I have to leave them in until they are dead, and there's simply no point to it.
    Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
    Because of the ability to replay over and over with different random numbers, this doesn't happen either.
    And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.
    There is no challenge to GW now. It's boring.
    This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
    You don't need different party compositions. Seriously, why would anyone run anything other than a healer-heavy build with this change?
    Say I ran my Arena team led by Phasma. That team often wins in Arena, but at the end of a round, it is in tatters. If I use that for GW, they will be wrecked after one round. What am I supposed to do in the second round? My guys will get knocked out by the fresh enemies because they have their cooldowns blown and their health gone. So I'd have to start over with 5 other guys. How many players do you think have 60 fully geared and starred characters?
    The old GW allowed people to use diverse teams because you could rotate guys in and out. Now there is no strategy.
    What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
    My bench is irrelevant. I have 12 characters level 60 or higher with purple gear. 7 of them now gather dust. Someday I might need them but right now using them is less efficient than not using them.
    When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge?
    I used to do that. Now I don't. It's a step backwards.
    If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
    This is a desperation move that only works for 1 or maybe 2 battles. It may be of use to newer players or whales who have 30 guys maxed out. It is of no use to anyone else.
    How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
    Okay, finally something I do have to worry about: healer cooldowns. But that's it. Everything else is irrelevant. And if a fight isn't going well, I can just "reload save game".
    That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
    This is what some people have been doing from the start. Those of us who were using the actual provided in-game feature were doing so to avoid this. But you have now made force-closing a viable and legal strategy, so of course everyone is using it. Some guy even figured out how to change the RNG seed without changing the players on your team.
    I'm actually glad to hear you are considering changing this. If you really want to make GW hard, then really make it hard and get rid of the retreat feature entirely. Or only make it available if a character dies. Because GW right now is a farce.
    However, I doubt anyone will disagree with me on the following: please make fixing matchmaking the number one priority in GW tuning. Maybe level 45 players shouldn't be able to finish GW, but they also shouldn't have to face level 55s with higher-star characters. This is frustrating, unfair and is costing you customers and money.

    John, I appreciate you wading into this lion's den, but I'm sorry, I cannot see this change as anything but a step backwards, and worse, one that simply wasn't necessary. There was no crisis here. You could have taken a couple of weeks or months and implemented a real solution rather than giving us.. this.

    I loved GW. It was the only game mode where I actually had to think and plan and keep track of cooldowns. I wrote a 5,000-word guide to it. And now the whole thing is a bore. There's nothing challenging or interesting in the game now at all.

    I simply fail to understand how any of this had to happen at all. As a programmer myself, I find the idea that force-closing couldn't be dealt with a myth. You already deal with it just fine in PvP: if you start a PvP match and force-close, you lose. GW could have been made so the first time you start a match and don't finish it, the fight is reset, and you get a warning, for the sake of people who might be on a bad connection, so they can save GW for later. Thereafter, every restart, each character that started the fight but didn't finish it loses a cumulative 10% of their health every time it happens: 10% the first time, 20% the second time, etc. If you get to 100%, you automatically fail GW for the day. Problem solved. You already have the technology in the game.
    If you didn't want retreating and you couldn't fix the buff/debuff thing, you could have dealt with that also. Say, for example, by limiting the number of retreats allowed to 1 per fight, or even 6 or 8 per entire run. This sort of change would have INCREASED strategy, by still allowing rotation of characters, but forcing players to carefully consider when to use this limited resource.
    Instead, you put in a "quick fix" that doesn't fix anything, and makes the game either impossible (for newer players) or a cheesy bore (for older ones). Such a waste. :(


    +1,000,000^9
    Qeltar -- Thank you for beating me to this post because you just saved me my evening!!
  • Qeltar wrote: »
    We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.
    This is a very confusing statement.
    Last night Aaron said this was done because some people were retreating and some were force-closing, and since you couldn't stop the force-closing (which is not even really accurate) you wanted everyone to be on equal footing, so you changed retreat into force-close. This makes more sense than the idea that you intended the game to mimic behavior that 48 hours ago required force-closing the app.
    Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.
    So why didn't you ask us about it before making the change? It's nice of you to ask our views now, but the damage is done. It's not like anyone actually thinks you are going to back it off now.
    The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
    And let's be clear that this could also be used against the player. Figuring out the right time to retreat was part of the strategy.
    But if you didn't want it to be used to clear buffs/debuffs, why didn't you change the code to prevent this from happening? Yes, I know "we're working on it but it takes time". Fine, so take time. GW has been the way it was for months. Only a tiny handful of people complained about it. There was no reason to change it.
    There's a list of bugs a mile long in the Bugs area. Virtually none of them were addressed in this patch. But a major change to GW was? Why?

    (Goals)
    Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard!
    It's easier now than it was before for experienced players. Since you have now legitimized the formerly-exploitive "reload save game" method, there is no longer any risk of losing a character, and no risk means no challenge.
    It's not hard. It's just tedious.
    Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
    And you've gone in a backwards direction here too. Because there is now no practical way to heal back up a character that has been removed from a fight with low health, the optimal strategy is now to ensure that you never end a fight with low health. This points to a team with healers, stunners and ability blockers.
    There is no longer any use for my bench. I have now completed 24 straight GW fights using only the same 5 characters. Before I would use my tanks and secondaries as part of a strategy to manage healer cooldowns. They are no longer of any use to me, because if I put them in I have to leave them in until they are dead, and there's simply no point to it.
    Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
    Because of the ability to replay over and over with different random numbers, this doesn't happen either.
    And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.
    There is no challenge to GW now. It's boring.
    This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
    You don't need different party compositions. Seriously, why would anyone run anything other than a healer-heavy build with this change?
    Say I ran my Arena team led by Phasma. That team often wins in Arena, but at the end of a round, it is in tatters. If I use that for GW, they will be wrecked after one round. What am I supposed to do in the second round? My guys will get knocked out by the fresh enemies because they have their cooldowns blown and their health gone. So I'd have to start over with 5 other guys. How many players do you think have 60 fully geared and starred characters?
    The old GW allowed people to use diverse teams because you could rotate guys in and out. Now there is no strategy.
    What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
    My bench is irrelevant. I have 12 characters level 60 or higher with purple gear. 7 of them now gather dust. Someday I might need them but right now using them is less efficient than not using them.
    When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge?
    I used to do that. Now I don't. It's a step backwards.
    If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
    This is a desperation move that only works for 1 or maybe 2 battles. It may be of use to newer players or whales who have 30 guys maxed out. It is of no use to anyone else.
    How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
    Okay, finally something I do have to worry about: healer cooldowns. But that's it. Everything else is irrelevant. And if a fight isn't going well, I can just "reload save game".
    That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
    This is what some people have been doing from the start. Those of us who were using the actual provided in-game feature were doing so to avoid this. But you have now made force-closing a viable and legal strategy, so of course everyone is using it. Some guy even figured out how to change the RNG seed without changing the players on your team.
    I'm actually glad to hear you are considering changing this. If you really want to make GW hard, then really make it hard and get rid of the retreat feature entirely. Or only make it available if a character dies. Because GW right now is a farce.
    However, I doubt anyone will disagree with me on the following: please make fixing matchmaking the number one priority in GW tuning. Maybe level 45 players shouldn't be able to finish GW, but they also shouldn't have to face level 55s with higher-star characters. This is frustrating, unfair and is costing you customers and money.

    John, I appreciate you wading into this lion's den, but I'm sorry, I cannot see this change as anything but a step backwards, and worse, one that simply wasn't necessary. There was no crisis here. You could have taken a couple of weeks or months and implemented a real solution rather than giving us.. this.

    I loved GW. It was the only game mode where I actually had to think and plan and keep track of cooldowns. I wrote a 5,000-word guide to it. And now the whole thing is a bore. There's nothing challenging or interesting in the game now at all.

    I simply fail to understand how any of this had to happen at all. As a programmer myself, I find the idea that force-closing couldn't be dealt a myth. You already deal with it just fine in PvP: if you start a PvP match and force-close, you lose. GW could have been made so the first time you start a match and don't finish it, the fight is reset, and you get a warning, for the sake of people who might be on a bad connection, so they can save GW for later. Thereafter, every restart, each character that started the fight but didn't finish it loses a cumulative 10% of their health every time it happens: 10% the first time, 20% the second time, etc. If you get to 100%, you automatically fail GW for the day. Problem solved. You already have the technology in the game.
    If you didn't want retreating and you couldn't fix the buff/debuff thing, you could have dealt with that also. Say, for example, by limiting the number of retreats allowed to 1 per fight, or even 6 or 8 per entire run. This sort of change would have INCREASED strategy, by still allowing rotation of characters, but forcing players to carefully consider when to use this limited resource.
    Instead, you put in a "quick fix" that doesn't fix anything, and makes the game either impossible (for newer players) or a cheesy bore (for older ones). Such a waste. :(

    You lost me man, completely. I am so so saddened to see ine additional post with lies and attributing to CGs games all sorts of things they never said. Actually, they said you used and miss functionality that wasn't what they indended, was not how they wanted it used, and that never made them happy. Maybe the deluded one is you my friend.

    But keep trying to call everyone else cheaters and CG liars. Good luck.

  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Personally, I did not use the retreat button too often but it was nice to use at times when a battle winds down to try new units mid battle and see how they work (without it costing energy on a level or a figh in the arena) or to relieve some troops to heal. My question/suggestion is what if they left the retreat function how it functioned before, but limited the retreat to 3 uses per day?

    If not that, instead of constantly having increasingly difficult levels throughout GW, how about every 3-4 battles throw in a slightly less challenging level to allow some room to heal for those people who do not have as deep of a bench of toons to use.

    I do know that before this update I only received enough purple ability mats to upgrade 1-2 abilities per week. I needed those for my A team. I did not receive enough purple mats to deepen my bench of toons. And now with the update, I need those purple mats to progress my A team yet again just so I can keep my competitive ability in the arena as well as GW.
  • Qeltar
    4326 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    But keep trying to call everyone else cheaters and CG liars. Good luck.
    I never used either of those words. I may be opinionated, but I try to be respectful. And I have said a lot of good things about CG in my time here.
    Misrepresenting other people's posts is not a constructive addition to a discussion.
    Quit 7/14/16. Best of luck to all of you.
  • Thanks for changing the GW. Less stress for me because I can always retreat and re strategies. Old way was too demanding in a stupid way. I'd rather put in a team of 5 to beat the other team of 5 rather than force quitting in certain situations and retreating when they debuff. To me the new release is spot on
  • Cythis
    273 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    1) Better rewards

    2) X amount of free resurrections (Bacta tanks) then add a cost to resurrect. Win / Win - I'll leave the details to your team.

    3) Better rewards
  • @Qeltar
    I have trouble thinking of a better team for GW than FOTP surrounded by four healers. Or maybe two DPS and three healers.
    If you don't finish with one or two healers with fresh cool downs: reset.
    Repeat for 12 matches.
  • Qeltar
    4326 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    There are a number of configurations that can work. What they all have in common is overlapping heals and the ability to quickly knock out or disable opponents.
    My team is Barriss (+health, passive heal, heal bypass, secondary main heal), Dooku (stuns, counters, anti-Jedi), Daka (stuns, tertiary heal and revive), Sideous (damage, heal block, rarely AoE, self-heals) and Luminara (primary heal, ability block, heal over time). If I see taunters I might sub out someone for Asajj, but rarely.
    I actually would welcome a true "iron man" mode of GW where you could only retreat if someone was dead. Now that really would require thinking and strategizing! But only a small percentage of people could complete it. And they have to deal with matchmaking and force-closing first.
    Quit 7/14/16. Best of luck to all of you.
  • Hi everyone –

    We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.

    Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.

    So, let’s talk about it.

    First, here’s how Retreat used to work:
    1. Previously, you could start a GW Battle and then Retreat as soon as the AI team had taken at least one action. When doing this, a few things were retained and a few things weren’t.
    2. Things that were retained:
      • Character death
      • Health loss
      • Special Ability cool downs
    3. Things that were not retained:
      • Turn meters
      • Buffs, debuffs, and status effects (like stun)
    4. The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
    That was never the design intent of this feature.

    The goals of the Galactic War feature were to:
    1. Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard! 
    2. Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
    3. Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
    4. And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.

    In pursuit of bringing the feature back in line with the original intent, here’s what we changed:
    1. Now, as long as you press Retreat before the battle ends, you exit the battle and everything is reset as if you hadn’t started the battle. It’s an instant rewind.
    2. This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
    A common concern expressed is that this removes strategy. What is or isn’t strategic is a surprisingly subjective thing, so I don’t want to belabor this point. However, the strategic elements are now focused where they were meant to be:
    1. What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
    2. When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
    3. How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
    4. When facing a certain kind of party (stun lock, crit damage, Jedi party, healers, revive, etc., etc., etc.) what elements of your own collection can you best bring to defeat that challenge?

    And there’s more, but those are the main ones.

    A few more things to mention:
    1. Random number seed – A random number seed is a common programming practice where one number is generated randomly, and then used for a bunch of subsequent calculations. We know there have been active discussions around the random number seed being saved at the start of a battle for a given squad that you bring in. The result of this approach is if you repeat the exact same actions you will get the exact same results. Some folks have interpreted that as meaning there is no randomness in the battle. It’s an important distinction to make between the randomness set at the start of a battle vs. a bunch of randomness re-rolled within the battle. That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
    2. Galactic War tuning – We are constantly tuning how the game (including this feature) works. For GW this includes opponent selection, how much health is granted after a Victory, etc. We are not making any changes right now, but will revisit this next week after we have enough data to see how the current approach is working.
    3. Lack of mention in the first version of the Release Notes – When we put out the notes on this update, we failed to include this change. This was honestly an result of human error and Aaron has explained how it happened. Sorry about that.
    4. Change and iteration – We have said this before, but it bears repeating. We will constantly be changing and iterating on the game throughout its lifespan. We will be doing this based on your feedback, on our own internal designs and feedback, and based on a host of other inputs. Please expect things to keep evolving as the game progresses.

    Long post, I know.

    Lots to discuss here and we’re looking forward to talking things through with you guys to see how we can keep making this and other parts of the game more enjoyable. That being said we are not planning on reverting this change because the feature simply wasn’t working as originally envisioned.

    Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further.

    Thanks!



    I think people are only suffering because they were able to exploit an unintended feature that clearly gave them a huge advantage at no price.

    Because this was reverted to be a game mode that is actually intuitive and challenging, people are complaining because the sneezy tactics don't get them as far and they are unable to complete Galactic War like they used too.

    People believe that they should be able to beat GW every day, if they were able before and don't think empowering a big roster should be the way to do it.

    GW is an end-game high tier challenge, that maybe you beat some days and some days you won't. But as you have a high leveled roster it becomes more viable.

    Lastly, this game modes makes players invest in less used, and less popular characters to use their roster as a whole instead of just your 5 main characters being able to take on any content in the game.

    It makes you think hard and force substitute or risky sacrifices in order to buy more time for your more powerful characters so it compliments a diverse, and spread of power roster rather than one with a diamond headed spear whose handle is made of wood.



    I was able to beat GW EAASY before the change. Now I struggle. yesterday I could only make it to 9, today i made it past 12. It's real luck and skill and am glad they made the change.


    Don't listen to these people complaining, they were spoiled with an unintended feature with rewards that were not difficult to achieve. People will ALWAYS complain if something gets harder/they get less, even if it was a bug or unintended design.



  • I have 14 lvl 60 purple toons. I won't be making it through GW today. I have faced lvl 60 teams from round 3 on, and most of them have been Phasma led stun teams, with two mid range whale teams (7* fotp, etc). Not only that, one team I faced, which while it could hurt me should not have beaten me

    While I can understand and sympathize w/ your pain ... In Round 7 I ran into a freak team of Level 60's, all at Gear Level 7 comprised of Dooku 3*, JC 4*, Phasma 6*, Sid 7*, and Lumi 7* as Leader. I had lost a player before I fired my first shot in the first 10 or so attempts I made.

    It took me an hour of retreating and reformulating the lineup and the willing sacrifice of Chewy (4*,Ability 5, Level 60) to succeed, but once I figured out the needed game plan, I sailed right thru the final stages.

    Ultimately, my team comprised of Chewy, Daka (4*, Ability 4, Lev 60), Phasma (5*, Ability 5, Level 60), Sid (4*, Ability 4, Level 60), and Lumi (4*, Ability 5, Level 60) as Leader. All but Daka were at least at Gear Level 7 (purple), Daka is at 6.

    After the opposition's Sid applied its D-Blow, I was able to inflict Immunity Block on Lumi and then pounced on her until dead. They retaliated, Chewy taunted, allowing Daka and Lumi to re-energize the squad (sans Chewy who got hit with healing block). Chewy dies but in the next return blow I took out the opposing Sid, with a nearly full charged remaining 4 I then focused on taking out Dooku, which I did, refreshed one more time and the remaining two were a piece of cake from there.

    I had some tough opponents in final rounds (including more Lev 60 squads with 2 or 5-7 Star toons, but w/ a 4* Lev 60 Opress stepping in for Chewy, I pretty much sailed to a completion.

    I did like the ability to Retreat and replace, energize up, etc... but this update makes me grateful that I placed a priority on unlocking and leveling up Daka over the previous 10 days. I literally had just gotten her to 60 just after midnight.

    I recently read a player saying how he was done leveling up JC at 5* and Level 60. That he didnt see any value in going any further. That seemed crazy to me. And now even more so.

    It seems to me that the update will place a greater value on powerful fully leveled up Healers. Even before the update I had placed my focus over the past few weeks on upgrading JC and Talia. I got Lumi unlocked around New Year's day and quickly leveled her up and I got Daka unlocked this past Monday and have been working her all week and working on getting both to 5* ASAP. Now putting renewed focus on Leveling up Ewok Elder to 4*.

    Overall, in the exactly 6 weeks since I began playing I have 22 players, 18 of which are Level 56 or higher, 12 are Level 60's.
  • Qeltar wrote: »
    But keep trying to call everyone else cheaters and CG liars. Good luck.
    I never used either of those words. I may be opinionated, but I try to be respectful. And I have said a lot of good things about CG in my time here.
    Misrepresenting other people's posts is not a constructive addition to a discussion.

    Show me where Aaron says this...
    .
    Last night Aaron said this was done because some people were retreating and some were force-closing, and since you couldn't stop the force-closing (which is not even really accurate) you wanted everyone to be on equal footing, so you changed retreat into force-close. This makes more sense than the idea that you intended the game to mimic behavior that 48 hours ago required force-closing the app.
    .

    And I'll correct my post.

    And then when you mention variants of "legitimizing formerly-explotative force close" , here, and in your history in200 other threads, each time arguing the ONLY reason for the change is cheaters. I do not like old Retreat, and have never considered Reset a cheat. And here in this thread they state it's how they envisioned it. Sorry @Qeltar I guess nobody is perfect.

    May they bring back retreat as it was? Doesn't matter, I'll be ok if they do. And if they have wrote once anything abiut closing the app in a negative way, I'd have just used the always debuffing magic of the previous retreat, which for me felt like...not how things should work. I'd still accept it.
  • Qeltar
    4326 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Show me where Aaron says this...
    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/comment/51753/#Comment_51753
    The functionality of Retreat has been changed so that it behaves the same as force-quitting the app. While we understand that many players relied on Retreating as part of their strategy, ultimately there were two different ways to leave a battle that didn’t behave the same way (Retreating, and force-quitting the app). We decided that in order to keep the experience fair and consistent, we would change the behavior of Retreat to work the same as force-quitting.

    -Aaron


    Now please stop harrassing me with misrepresentations and false accusations.
    Quit 7/14/16. Best of luck to all of you.
  • @Preemo_Magin it was very clear between the lines. But you wouldn't see it because no monkey can see his own tail.
  • Qeltar wrote: »
    Show me where Aaron says this...
    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/comment/51753/#Comment_51753
    The functionality of Retreat has been changed so that it behaves the same as force-quitting the app. While we understand that many players relied on Retreating as part of their strategy, ultimately there were two different ways to leave a battle that didn’t behave the same way (Retreating, and force-quitting the app). We decided that in order to keep the experience fair and consistent, we would change the behavior of Retreat to work the same as force-quitting.

    -Aaron


    Now please stop harrassing me with misrepresentations and false accusations.

    There is not reference into being forced to adopting the new retreat as reset because they could not stop it. It also contradicts what is being said in this official announcement.
  • obiwan1011
    396 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Surprised to see that a lot of posts here are raving about the change when the forum probably has a lot more unhappy voices. Below are my views on some of the contested points.

    Difficulty
    I do not mind increasing the difficulty, but the change does not necessarily achieve this. Players can circumvent the (perceived) increase in difficulty with the classic save-reload method made available through the new retreat.

    Failed to stun an opponent with Dooku? No problem. Just quit and reload. Lumi got killed? Not an issue. Just quit, reload and try a different sequence of actions to avoid that outcome. Repeat this to derive the most optimal outcome.

    I actually found myself using less heroes than before the change, but doing more reloads. In the end, this is not more difficult. This is just more tedious.

    Team Diversity
    It is my considered opinion that the lack of diversity in team composition has little to do with the previous retreat.

    The reason why the game suffers from having so many cookie cutter teams is because a) the current meta is all about speedy dps team, and b) heroes such as Sid and Lumi are the only truly farmable heroes within a reasonable time frame. Other heroes that are available in LS/DS battles such as Rey are "technically" farmable, but take too much time and extra resources to farm, making them virtually unobtainable.

    I recall you once suggested to try out various heroes to learn different combos in one of your posts, but it is a luxury that most players cannot afford. Players have to be conservative and go for the safest route if their resources are limited.

    Strategy
    I am aware that you are not inclined to discuss about this as it can be highly subjective, but I must insist since the previous retreat was what made GW fun and unique. It offered an element that was not available in any other modes.

    The strategic element in setting up the right team to counter the next opponent makes a lot of sense on paper, but not so much in real practice due to the aforementioned issue; without a deep bench, there can be little, if any alteration to the player's line-up regardless of what the opponent team is.

    While the previous retreat certainly did not resolve that issue, it allowed players to manage ability cool downs and depleted heroes, adding an additional layer of management and planning that I must admit I enjoyed a lot.

    By taking this away with the new retreat, GW has become no different than an Arena match - i.e. it has lost its edge and the point of differentiation. I guess the only two differences between GW and Arena are a) you need to do twelve in a row, and b) you can save-reload without any consequences.

    Conclusion
    Some players may quit, but most players will adapt. However, I would have much preferred if GW had retained the previous retreat and add the buff/debuff status to be carried over. It would have eliminated the unintended behaviours and increased the challenge while preserving that additional management and planning element.

    If difficulty is what you are truly after, then introduce an irreversible "Iron man" mode. Before the start of a GW, players have the option to choose normal or "Iron man" mode. Once selected, you cannot change until the next day. If the "Iron man" mode were selected, the player cannot retreat, but in exchange, the player receives more rewards in the last match; essentially a high risk, high reward system that removes any of the exploits whether it is force close or the previous retreat.


    P.S. Cannon Fodder: Not sure why you believe this is not discussed in the forum as plenty of people have mentioned about this.
    Post edited by obiwan1011 on
  • Some people were struggling to fight GW since before the update due to outmatched opponents that they couldn't beat even in Arena let alone after attrition, one after another. I like the change but no doubt it need fine tuning.
  • I wouldn't mind this update if i did not feel that it was a cop out used to not fix the issues with GW in the first place. Yes we know that GW was meant to be challenging and being able to retreat all the time to reset buffs/debuffs and turn meters, defeated the purpose of it, but instead of fixing it, in which after retreating buffs/debuffs/taunts stayed the same, you kind of took the easy way out.

    I also kind of found it funny when you mentioned that we didnt know that we could bring in lower level characters to absorb specials, then bring in our A team to mop; some of us have been doing this for sometime to help with tougher teams but with this update you pretty much cannot do it any more unless the entire team dies.

    I used to actually like GW because it was the only part of the game where you had to think and not just spam attacks, but now unless you want spend hours changing character positions in order to get RNG in your favor, theres little to no strategy involved. Ironically we all got wat we wanted which was more game time but this is not game time this is just tedious. Im not asking to complete it everyday, i just dont have to be force to wish for RNGesus to have to bless me in order to succeed.

    THIS UPDATE WAS JUST A COP OUT.
  • Doj
    27 posts Member
    @CG_JohnSalera So, if this is the original game, then I'm sorry I spent this much time. There is no strategy in the current mode! It's all random and depends on stats and misses, which you still haven't answered the basic mechanic issues associated with the game.

    A character stunned was intended to dodge over this. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Too bad few people actually have foresight on the development team.
  • CptCaveman
    713 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    dkredsox wrote: »
    Hi, if you view the very top of the forum you might find what you're looking for.


    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/6490/recent-change-to-galactic-war-open-conversation/p1

    Thanks, but I don't think that answers my first question. Unless that is this?:

    "When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up."

    I wouldn't think that's it though because you have to have a full lineup of 5 characters no matter what for every GW battle. So you couldn't "send in one or more lower power characters" as the John says. You'd have to send in 5 lower power characters.


    You can send in just one character, or as many as u want. You will get a pop up saying you are trying to enter battle without a full squad, press ok and press battle again and it will let you.

    Lower powered toons or single toons may cause the AI to not use abilities though, putting you back where you started with one less toon. I try to send in a full squad with low power toons mixed with a higher power that I don't mind losing.
    It's a hard life pickin stones and pullin teats, but sure as gods got sandals, it beats fighting dudes with treasure trails....
  • Chico
    120 posts Member
    They removed the mechanic that was originally built into the game because it removed buffs and debuffs. The thing is, it worked both ways, both opponent and you got your buffs cleared. I accepted this as part of the game.

    It was fun to swap in characters in and out. Now it's just a long grind. It's just another arena mechanic when I liked that GW was a different approach.

    I find it tedious to keep resetting matches to ensure that it went as perfectly as possible so my team is capable to compete in the next round. It's boring.

    Bring back the original mechanic. I'd love if they fix the debuff/buff error if the devs feel it will make it fair.
  • CptCaveman wrote: »
    dkredsox wrote: »
    Hi, if you view the very top of the forum you might find what you're looking for.


    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/6490/recent-change-to-galactic-war-open-conversation/p1

    Thanks, but I don't think that answers my first question. Unless that is this?:

    "When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up."

    I wouldn't think that's it though because you have to have a full lineup of 5 characters no matter what for every GW battle. So you couldn't "send in one or more lower power characters" as the John says. You'd have to send in 5 lower power characters.


    You can send in just one character, or as many as u want. You will get a pop up saying you are trying to enter battle without a full squad, press ok and press battle again and it will let you.

    Huh, I stand corrected. I swore I thought I tried that before and it didn't let me. Just tested it now though and lets me. Must be going crazy.
  • Chico wrote: »
    They removed the mechanic that was originally built into the game because it removed buffs and debuffs. The thing is, it worked both ways, both opponent and you got your buffs cleared. I accepted this as part of the game.

    It was fun to swap in characters in and out. Now it's just a long grind. It's just another arena mechanic when I liked that GW was a different approach.

    I find it tedious to keep resetting matches to ensure that it went as perfectly as possible so my team is capable to compete in the next round. It's boring.

    Bring back the original mechanic. I'd love if they fix the debuff/buff error if the devs feel it will make it fair.

    Don't buy that line. They took it out because it cost less to do than to fix the force close exploit.

    I work in this industry, I know exactly how the meeting on that one went. There were two ways to do it, the right way and the cheap way. It's all about the ROI.
  • Way too hard now was hard enough before only actually finished it once got stuck on 9 or 10 most times but there was hope going out on round 5 crushes my hopes and dreams. Will be uninstalling now please let me know when I can have my hope of ever beating it back....
  • Qeltar wrote: »
    There are a number of configurations that can work. What they all have in common is overlapping heals and the ability to quickly knock out or disable opponents.
    My team is Barriss (+health, passive heal, heal bypass, secondary main heal), Dooku (stuns, counters, anti-Jedi), Daka (stuns, tertiary heal and revive), Sideous (damage, heal block, rarely AoE, self-heals) and Luminara (primary heal, ability block, heal over time). If I see taunters I might sub out someone for Asajj, but rarely..

    this is what i do more or less. Bariss as leader is HUGE for her passive heal and heal through immunity since everyone runs sideous. i use JC and LUmi (no daka for me), and dooku and sid for damage. sideous at 61 fully tuned to gear 8 is a beast against the level 60s.
  • d3gauss wrote: »
    Chico wrote: »
    They removed the mechanic that was originally built into the game because it removed buffs and debuffs. The thing is, it worked both ways, both opponent and you got your buffs cleared. I accepted this as part of the game.

    It was fun to swap in characters in and out. Now it's just a long grind. It's just another arena mechanic when I liked that GW was a different approach.

    I find it tedious to keep resetting matches to ensure that it went as perfectly as possible so my team is capable to compete in the next round. It's boring.

    Bring back the original mechanic. I'd love if they fix the debuff/buff error if the devs feel it will make it fair.

    Don't buy that line. They took it out because it cost less to do than to fix the force close exploit.

    I work in this industry, I know exactly how the meeting on that one went. There were two ways to do it, the right way and the cheap way. It's all about the ROI.

    It's not just this industry. No industry is immune to the "do it right" vs. "do it cheap"...
  • @CG_JohnSalera, from some of the things you write, like "dancing in and out of battle," you seem to be unaware that a player could only retreat from a given battle one time. After that, the only way out was closing the app (which reset everything like retreat does now), victory or death. False statements undermine confidence that you guys understand the game you are developing. They can even cause a bit of a panic.

    That said, I prefer the system we have now. I also appreciate that restarting now generates a new seed for RNG.

    I like that we can now get a do-over and try different things. I think it improves strategy.

    Retreating always felt like a cheat. I think we all knew that. People are just mad because they think they won't win as much, even if they can't admit it to themselves and come up with all these justifications.


  • obiwan1011 wrote: »
    d3gauss wrote: »
    Chico wrote: »
    They removed the mechanic that was originally built into the game because it removed buffs and debuffs. The thing is, it worked both ways, both opponent and you got your buffs cleared. I accepted this as part of the game.

    It was fun to swap in characters in and out. Now it's just a long grind. It's just another arena mechanic when I liked that GW was a different approach.

    I find it tedious to keep resetting matches to ensure that it went as perfectly as possible so my team is capable to compete in the next round. It's boring.

    Bring back the original mechanic. I'd love if they fix the debuff/buff error if the devs feel it will make it fair.

    Don't buy that line. They took it out because it cost less to do than to fix the force close exploit.

    I work in this industry, I know exactly how the meeting on that one went. There were two ways to do it, the right way and the cheap way. It's all about the ROI.

    It's not just this industry. No industry is immune to the "do it right" vs. "do it cheap"...

    You are right. But the number of hours needed to code something properly, then QA and debug make it far more tempting to just bandaid things and say we'll fix that proper in a future release.

    You have to remember they are looking at a bug list probably thousands long and much of it will never get fixed.
  • GW was the most fun and strategic part of the game! It was not an exploit that made it easy! In fact it used to be hard and require strategic planning to substitute guys in at the right times. Now it is boring!!!! If I lose a character I retreat and try again. Way too easy! I just had a round at the end of galactic war and I lost 5 times in a row and kept starting over. Finally I decided to forget it. No fun when I know I will win if I just keep starting over!

    GW was the most strategic part of the game before the update. Now it is just trial and error and you will eventually win. If that is how it is going to stay I won't play it anymore.
  • Embo
    39 posts Member
    I'm not a gamer, but I love playing this game. I initially invested $50 in the heroine bundle and another $5 for a 100 crystal a day for 21 days deal. So, total of $55. Since then, I've been doing the f2p grind like many people. I initially found GW challenging and only completed it 3 times. I didn't know about the retreat option, however. Once I made that discovery, I started completing GW, but not every time. It was usually the second to last battle where I came up against a monster team and occasionally got annihilated.

    The biggest problem I faced before the update was a lack of credits. I had to pick and choose who to train and/or promote. GW was a great way for a f2p player to get lots of credits. Once I got to the higher levels, the credits obtained from the challenge (when it was available) would afford me enough to level up 2 or 3 toons. Again, the credits obtained through GW was a supplement so I could level up more toons and keep up as best I could.

    When I first experienced the new GW, I have to admit I was concerned that I wouldn't have the ability to get far, thereby decreasing how many toons I could keep at the same level I was at. My goal, being a f2p player is to at least be able to "hang in there". I don't expect to be #1 in the arena. Heck, I'm overjoyed if I crack the high 200s! I just want to have fun and have a fighting chance at experiencing moderate success.

    When I played GW yesterday and today, I did get through it. I thought it was fun to retreat and try a different squad mix to see if that one would fare better against the team I was facing. I tried mixes I never thought of trying before. I had to get creative. I know more today than I did yesterday about what toons synergize well and which ones really don't. I got to see it in action and not what it looks like "on paper". I might not complete it every day but after what I saw yesterday and today, I think the change does not detriment f2p players at all. I think if you made good decisions about who to train, who to equip, who to promote, what shards to farm, etc. that you have just as good of a chance to get through the whole thing as you did prior to the update. Maybe even better. I'm enjoying the credits, ability mats, and all the other goodies I'm collecting as I'm making my way through it.

    Thank you for such a wonderful game. You can't make everyone happy and we're all human. I've had hours upon hours of enjoyment for my $55 investment, I can tell you that. Good value for the money. I have, however, dropped the f bomb during PvP many times, but I am enjoying myself. Honest!
  • MousseTampi
    88 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    The better fix to settle this problem would be resseting the cooldowns of skills on every next rounds and giving a slight hp heal like on normal battles, it is just so hard to finnish GW when your toons have no health and you have no skill to use and not all players have many toons to use specialy the begginers. And please make a way to make this game more enjoyable like decreasing its difficulty because it feels more like a work now than a game.
This discussion has been closed.