This is directed at those who say "the new GW is awesome, way better and easier than it was before" please explain to me how the **** I am supposed to beat this;
With this;
As you keep pointing out, players like me are scrubs and only you mighty few elite know how to beat GW in its current format, so I bow down to your amazing prowess.
The new GW is bollocks, I will now miss out on rewards for battles 9-12 costing me shards, money, training droids and ability materials. It's a shame, I was going to start spending a couple of hundred pounds each month to keep up with the top players on my server, but now CG can go suck an egg as they won't be getting a penny off me for this broken excuse for a game.
So are the defenders of the new GW style also people who were against the force close ability?
I ask this because the new retreat style works basically the same way. Lost a character? Just retreat and restart.
Picked a poor team for the one you're facing? Retreat, change it up and restart.
How anyone can actually say this new style is better is beyond me but then again, I don't know how people spend hundreds/thousands of dollars on this app so clearly I have no understanding of the user base.
I defend this system, force closing felt clunky tho I used it for my first few GWs, after I got my main team done I abused the retreat to its limits and the old retreat made sure that you should've been winning the GW every single time, you could get rid of all the buffs/debuffs/taunts and whatnot, I'd retreat as many as 5-6 times per battle to cycle CDs and HPs.
With this I can just retreat and wrap my mind around what I can field to win the GW and I already won it twice after the update and I only dropped 10$ to the game so I'm hardly a p2w.
Do I think this is 'unfair' to the new players? Yes I do, but it is always the case when something 'new' is implemented, if the Arena shipments were changed so that say, Sid was changed to something else would it also not be unfair? It'd be, it is the same case just like Greedo vs Dooku pack. The old players will always have the advantage and it is normal not unfair.
Ok I have completed 1 full and half of another since the change to GW. Here is my issue with these changes.
1. It is not harder. It is duller. It is cheesier. Oh I don't like how that played out Retreat(forceclose) There we go all healthy lets try again and again until it goes my way. Changing a position around changes the flow and the turns let's do this until it favors me. HARDER, no. More TEDIOUS, Yes. More CREATIVITY need, No
2. One thing that I truly loved about GW is testing out new builds, new squads. Yes I can still do that and cheese out if it goes bad. I HATED FC option to reset any battle that went bad. I only used it to try new squads against unique builds I encountered AFTER I had the match about to be won, BY ME.
3. Or call it 2b. I LOVED seeing unique builds and going against them. This was so much fun for me. To see what others minds came up with synergy and just plain build wise. In the 18 GW battles I have fought I have faced basically cookie cutter team after cookie cutter team. I face the same team with maybe a tweak of a toon here or there over and over. Now I love GW, but this gets boring, and eventually people will grow tired of it and it will die.
An example, not perfect but a decent one. I'm a die hard hockey fan. The NHL in listening to it's fans who were tired of the same teams playing theirs over and over. The same division winners year in and year out made a massive change going from 2-3 division conferences to 2-2 division conferences, thus changing the playoff seeding format and the scheduling. Made the divisions more competitive, opened up for new division rivalry. This breethed life into the sport creating new matches.
What EA/CG did here is the opposite. They made it now so that the "less versatile" players can no longer experimente and learn but have to create cookie cutter squads in hopes of surviving as long as they can. They are less inclined to run a build all the way through if it costs them a toon. Why bother, just rest and go again since retreat is no option they are too afraid to move on without every toon still here. So you face the "survival, or 5 minute arena" teams. Yes yes Whales that will try to detract here saying oh you should be able to beat them in under 5. I CAN. This post is a general post. I can knock those survival teams off in well under 5 minutes, not the point. The point is that instead of a 12 battle where in it I get to see a couple very cool builds, I now see the same team battle in, battle out.
I Don't find the GW fun any more since retreat became FC, but so far my main team don't have a problem,
Barriss 4*7
Lumi 7*7
JC 6*8
Sid 7*7
& switch between Dooku 4*7, Talia 6*7 & CT 4*7
This is what GW is now. Get a healer heavy team and roll the dice. Good strategy. Anyone dare to say this team won't clear GW using the force close exploit, sorry, the force close feature?
Dunno how it'll work against the soon to come 7 star toons with match making being the way it is, but for now? Win GW every day as long as you force close enough times.
OK, I get it. You don't want others to win GW if they don't have a heavy healer squad. But will you please stop saying the force close exploit you were all whining about earlier is the best thing to happen to GW now that it's labeled retreat? You did not like retreat but, hey, it was a feature and an integral part of GW game play. Force close was the exploit. How does making an exploit which many said was cheating into a feature and removing a feature nobody said was cheating, a good thing, no, the greatest thing to happen to GW? According to the earlier statements of the most enthusiastic supporters of the change, force close users warranted a ban!
Some of us are just saying, you should have improved the retreat function instead of a knee **** reaction like removing it totally and making one of the most hotly debated exploits it's replacement.
And, please, please don't anyone quote me and go on about better difficulty and more strategy. The team quoted above is among the best strategies and not difficult at all. Tiresome, but not difficult, at least at present levels of matched squads. Tomorrow is another day.
To the devs, as someone not having the tank healer and not into healer heavy squads, please try to come up with a variation of the older retreat function.
I think GW is more fun and fine for people who are level 60's, but then I look at GW at a lower level's perspective and I feel their pain. No retreat against teams 10 levels higher?
I did fine in GW today but like you I empathize with those starting after us. Brutal. Most of them never used Force Close anyway and retreat was a better and legitimate option.
@Azraelrulez At no point in time has it been a real viable option for any (who hasn't spent $2K) to finish GW without healers. It just can't be done. The standard GW team has ALWAYS used Luminara plus backup healer.
I take it you don't like this new change. All I'm suggesting is, give it a try. And don't forget that you can still lure the enemy to put their abilities on cooldown by sending in goon squads ahead of your main team. So the only big difference is that you can't switch in members for healing as readily as before. That's my perspective at least.
I would replay battles until my heroes end the match at 90% health and cool downs refreshed. I replayed somematches 12 times today. This requires much more time and planning, but you absolutely cannot go into round 12 with characters in that condition and hope to win.
So the one good thing about this bad change in GW is that to me it has confirmed that the 'enemy' squads that you face are drawn from their GW teams. I've thought this for a while but there has not been anything I thought was solid evidence.
Yesterday, the first day of the patch, I faced two all purple geared, 6/7* teams with a solitary blue Daka as well as a significant increase in the teams running Dooku. Today I have just completed the first 5 battles and I am already facing my first 60+ purple team and it too has a blue equipped Daka.
It's pretty clear that with this change to 'restart' all battles that both Daka and Dooku are significantly more important to GW while their utility in Arena has not changed. People are using Daka even though prior to now they clearly did not use her to the degree that they are now doing so.
Today and the second half of yesterday is obviously a small sample size however my previous 40+ GWs are not. I expect as the change continues to roll out the number of dual Daka/Dooku Phasma led teams will increase significantly.
Some captures below the spoiler:
It would be nice if EA would bother explaining the matchmaking mechanics. I am still of the belief that it selects someone based on the power they finish the node you are one but select the team they either used first or used last in their daily GW. This is why some people with a power disparity in their A team from their B/C teams will draw level 60 squads when they're ~level 50. They are nearly equal in power to a cleanup team brought in by higher leveled players but clearly not equal to the starting or finishing team of an experienced player.
Also because this happened so quickly it supports the notion that the teams are drawn from people who have completed GW in a recent time frame vs. a day or two earlier.
There's actually two GWs now: one for newer players and one for older players.
For newer players, they will run into teams that they cannot beat with all of their players, no matter how many times they retreat. They will be completely stuck. There is no strategy they can use to deal with tougher teams as there was before, really, because the only way to use more than 5 chars is if some of them die, and then they likely will lose everything 1 or 2 rounds later. For them, GW is tedious and frustrating. (Half the older players who like this change seem to like it solely because it makes it hard for others.)
For older players, all risk of ever losing a character is now gone. Any time things go the wrong way, simply restart and do things differently. As many times as you want. Run with a bunch of healers and stunners and ability blockers and eventually you will win every match. No risk of death means no challenge. So for newer players, it is tedious and boring. You get your 15 shards and other goodies, but there's no intellectual challenge at all.
This is what CG has done with this completely unnecessary change: made GW either tedious and frustrating, or tedious and boring. The only constant: tedious.
I'm still shocked that they did this. I really like the people who run this game personally and am shocked at the judgment that led to this decision.
I cleared my GW without too much trouble: 1 toon dead. It was however much less fin, as I had less decisions to make (I liked the snipe-retreat gmeplay). I'm not going to cry as I'll ver my 1200/Shares daily, but Inunderstand some people won't, and I also feel the GW is less fun now
Why complain? Your team is not even maxed out... Things are gettinger easier when you hit level and gear cap. It took me ages to make it through GW for the first time when I was your level. Maybe you should change your formation for your A-Team or invest in other characters like Lumi.
I think GW is more fun and fine for people who are level 60's, but then I look at GW at a lower level's perspective and I feel their pain. No retreat against teams 10 levels higher?
I did fine in GW today but like you I empathize with those starting after us. Brutal. Most of them never used Force Close anyway and retreat was a better and legitimate option.
I think more than anything it penalizes people who never had the opportunity to purchase the Dooku bundle for $5. Dooku's now a vital cog to a GW team because he is the only one who can counter Dooku and Daka on the other team. And now almost every person with Dooku will have him on his team so people can be assured that they will see him more frequently in GW. They've at least made him easier to farm but will require higher levels to do so which means from level 40-60 you're basically up the creek.
While I have been pushing new players to go for Poe when they start cantina I now think that they need to go for Daka immediately if they want to have any reasonable hope of having a team for GW that will not be filled with endless frustration as they restart battle after battle.
Why complain? Your team is not even maxed out... Things are gettinger easier when you hit level and gear cap. It took me ages to make it through GW for the first time when I was your level. Maybe you should change your formation for your A-Team or invest in other characters like Lumi.
Why complain??!?!?! RIGHTTTTTTTTTTT. The only way to play the game is being maxed out with stars and gears???? HUH???
The reality is you needed to do better on previous battles or use the 'load most recent save' option aka retreat then. Even so you'll probably never get through these battles. I assume you have some dead characters below what you show but even with the previous GW retreat function you need to be able to field more than just 3-4 guys matching your level.
Why complain??!?!?! RIGHTTTTTTTTTTT. The only way to play the game is being maxed out with stars and gears???? HUH???
Yep.
I am F2P, and my only strenght is patience. So eventually I managed to max out the easy-to-farm-shards, and this way I can manage to beat GW to get more easy-to-farm-shards. Why bother? In the end it's just another nutty game.
Looking at your bench, I will have to be really blunt to say, "You are not suppose to come close to beating GW with a small bench like that". Of course those people saying the 'new' GW is easier are just the ones able to clear it and rubbing it in your faces. From what I see, even including your Assaj as fully upgraded characters, you only have 6 functional characters to compete in GW.
Prior before the discovery of 'retreat' and 'force close' functions, GW is only beatable at a 60-80% chance with at least, 3 fully upgraded squads, that's 15 capped out characters. That was the difficulty CG wanted GW to have.
Basically what I experienced, I had to have my PVP team, an additional droid team, and lastly an Empire team with Vader, before I found GW manageable. I'm a soft launchie, so the retreat and fc methods was not available to me, played GW without those tricks back then.
The discovery and open usage of 'retreat' and 'force close' quickly overcame this difficulty requirement and allowed anyone with 5-8 capped out characters to easily clear the entire GW. Which we all gladly benefited from.
So right now, everyone has felt the blunt end of the 'GW fix bat', where CG achieved part of their plan to make GW require a 'deep bench' to be cleared. Of course it feels sour to enjoy the max rewards that GW could give before this 'fix' came and prevented you from getting the same achievements in it. But this also affects all players, basically anyone without at least the said 'deep bench' would be encountering the same difficulties as you are now.
End note: This GW 'fix' benefits the payers the most, as they are the only ones, regardless of when they started the game, to have a huge bench of characters to use and the resource to cap them out. So giving them another area where they 'Advance in game content much faster than f2p because they paid big bucks'.
I've come to grudgingly accept the change, as while it requires a different strategy I'm finding it easier to win. It's like Qeltar said, as long as you have the right team you just keep trying till RNG gives you the outcome you're looking for.
So it's not like the mode is ruined, but I'll admit it's less fun and I'm still hoping they'll revert to the old way.
The thing that really surprised me though was the stealth change. After all the recent communication from the Devs about the level cap change and bug fixes there was never any mention of this even being on the radar. So we're now to believe the old retreat system was a glitch all along? Well then why weren't we told?
My ally code: 296-673-769. Wish we could have more than 35.
So we're now to believe the old retreat system was a glitch all along? Well then why weren't we told?
I don't think it was ever a "glitch". The entire point was supposed to be viewing this as a "war" where you use tactics to overcome much larger numbers of enemies.
It was really force-closing they didn't like, but weirdly, rather than just accept that some people were doing it, they've now made it so everyone has to do it.
Mind-boggling.
There's actually two GWs now: one for newer players and one for older players.
For newer players, they will run into teams that they cannot beat with all of their players, no matter how many times they retreat. They will be completely stuck. There is no strategy they can use to deal with tougher teams as there was before, really, because the only way to use more than 5 chars is if some of them die, and then they likely will lose everything 1 or 2 rounds later. For them, GW is tedious and frustrating. (Half the older players who like this change seem to like it solely because it makes it hard for others.)
For older players, all risk of ever losing a character is now gone. Any time things go the wrong way, simply restart and do things differently. As many times as you want. Run with a bunch of healers and stunners and ability blockers and eventually you will win every match. No risk of death means no challenge. So for newer players, it is tedious and boring. You get your 15 shards and other goodies, but there's no intellectual challenge at all.
This is what CG has done with this completely unnecessary change: made GW either tedious and frustrating, or tedious and boring. The only constant: tedious.
I'm still shocked that they did this. I really like the people who run this game personally and am shocked at the judgment that led to this decision.
@Qeltar Got to agree here man. It is just a bad call. So many other things need fixing. Like drop rates, toon bugs, RNG. I mean come on I spent 300 crystals to try and get enough purple mats to upgrade something in 2 full cantinas plus what they give for leveling up I got 1 purple mat. The ROI and fun factor on this game is dropping so rapidly I'm unsure if I will remain P2P and I have spent a decent amount per week. Now it is more **** and face palm, and are you kidding me, or oh come on moments than yeah this is fun moments. Farming is an utter joke. I can do 6 refills and not even fill 1 gear slot. Heck yesterday 4 refills did not even fill me up 1 slot in 1 of the gear slots,lol.
To give example I would by a vault anytime I dropped into the 2.5-3k range in crystals, so 2-3 per week. I'd buy the vault, use the excess over the vault on Chron. The example here is I'm at 1.5. I have not been this low on crystals since like my 3rd day playing, but I'm finding it hard to want to spend money on this game anymore. I really want to because I liked the idea of it, but with the blatant attempt to just grab money with this GW change, with the utterly pathetic drop rates, with the fact that you always get 75% or less the reward on the challenges I just find it very hard to want to put anymore money into this game.
If GW had started out like this there would not be one complaint. GW was actually ment to be like this, that's why they changed it
It clearly was not. The retreat function was modified specifically for GW which is the only real part of the game where the retreat function was actually used.
EA/CG is on record that they did not like that the force exploit and retreat functions were available so they modified the only one they could easily modify to match the behavior of the other.
They did it for expediency not to meet any intended game business requirements. Had they 'intended' GW to be played this way it would have called it 'restart' or 'load from last save' some other more obvious verbiage. The very definition of retreat is that you fall back. Not that you restart.
I never really used the retreat or force close methods so this part of the change didn't affect me directly. I know the retreat button was an established strategy and Qeltar and others wrote manuals that are now garbage illustrating these ideas, so for people using it for weeks/months, I feel for you.
What I didn't like was that they....
Replaced a legal established method for a cheat. You would have thought they'd do the opposite
They didn't fix any of the other glaring bugs they have
The failed to mention the biggest change in the release notes, which was the retreat change
I just feel like EA doesn't get it at all when it comes to their customer. It's clear they cater to the 1% of whales and I figure the financials show this is the right move, but at what cost??
Glad there is some positive vibe in here to the contrary of a lot of other threads/posts. That was the intention of this thread to let CG know that this change is indeed appreciated by part of the playerbase.
Two more things:
According to CGs comments they already were considering adjusting the rewards in GW. Now it would probably be more justifiable to push out "better/more" rewards after this change. That random Ewok shard at the end always felt kinda meh.
Now that i think about it the"old retreat" felt actually a lot like HoDA PvP. In that there was a way how the game SHOULD HAVE BEEN played - by nexting, choosing oppoents your squad could beat, etc - but there was also the EASY/CHEESY/EFFICIENT way - just hit a "Nugger" = Someone who had purposely used a weak PvP squad for new players to be able to reap rewards - over and over again with your low level toons till you got the exact rewards you wanted to. While the idea was "noble" and rewarding at first ( = cause you got good stuff for no effort) it quickly became stale and boring and in the killed every little "meaning" you had, to build any of your Characters. --> Game became pointless. For me at least.
Yes there were these kind of people of course who just ignored the "easy" way and played the game how it was meant to be played. And yes i imagine they had a lot more FUN than me( and a lot of others) but my brain just couldn't justify "wasting time/resources" on something when there was clearly a legitimate/accepted easier way to do something more efficient. Especially when i was at the beginning of the game and didn't have a wide roster of stuff.
I always kept telling myself: "It's okay, Np. As soon as you have a decent maxed squad going you ARE going to do REAL FIGHTS against REAL SQUADS, those that the older players used and you will be able to beat them and enjoy the game." Well .. it never happened. Cause the cycle of - Obtaining new stuff --> building it --> "USING THOSE CHARACTERS" = never happened --> Obtaining new stuff --> building it --> etc. kept on going. With no purpose for those built toons.
The old retreat was exactly the same:
Taunted ? --> You KNOW the right way would be to just play it out and go on but why bother wasting time/resources = Hp/ CDs when you can just retreat and do it the EASY way ? Obviously it's legit right ? The devs wouldn't have made this option if it wasn't legit, right ?
Heavily Debuffed/Blocked? --> You KNOW the right way would be to play it out but .. why bother ?
Etc.. You get the idea.
Well .. Keep in mind that the people who made this game happen are just human beings, just like the rest of you guys. And probably not that much smarter ( considering how they handled Barriss ). They DO make mistakes, like everyone else. And they do NOT ALWAYS know what's the " Good/Right/Rational" thing to do.
So: Thanks CG for taking away the EASY/CHEESY/EFFICIENT option = Old Retreat so my Brain doesn't have to argue with my Integrity anymore.
Do I even need to explain?
Seems to me her leader ability is now much more useful in GW than it was prior to the 1/14/15 game update that changed the way retreat functions in GW.
Agree or disagree?
EDIT/ADDITION:
I want to add that I do NOT support the GW change....
I read in another thread a player saying basically:
What EA/CG did is remove actual game design in favor of a bug/exploit because it was easier than actually fixing the exploit (force close)...
I agree with that player, however, I was just wanting to see if anyone else seems to think Barriss' leader ability is now essentially buffed indirectly...? Or am I wrong??
Qeltar once again speaks the truth. I like the bold on "completely unnecessary" too. Why did this come out of nowhere? It's not like the Devs haven't been talking to us, so why was this never even mentioned?
My ally code: 296-673-769. Wish we could have more than 35.
Short of hacking, there is absolutely nothing in gaming that is more cheesy than "this didn't go my way so I'm reloading the save game and starting over as if it never happened so the RNG goes my way".
Nothing.
And that's what GW is now: developer-sanctioned cheese.
With a good team you can now never lose a character. I simply don't know how anyone can possibly view this as being harder than the old system, where you really had to think twice before leaving in someone who was down to red on their health bar.
Replies
With this;
As you keep pointing out, players like me are scrubs and only you mighty few elite know how to beat GW in its current format, so I bow down to your amazing prowess.
The new GW is bollocks, I will now miss out on rewards for battles 9-12 costing me shards, money, training droids and ability materials. It's a shame, I was going to start spending a couple of hundred pounds each month to keep up with the top players on my server, but now CG can go suck an egg as they won't be getting a penny off me for this broken excuse for a game.
I defend this system, force closing felt clunky tho I used it for my first few GWs, after I got my main team done I abused the retreat to its limits and the old retreat made sure that you should've been winning the GW every single time, you could get rid of all the buffs/debuffs/taunts and whatnot, I'd retreat as many as 5-6 times per battle to cycle CDs and HPs.
With this I can just retreat and wrap my mind around what I can field to win the GW and I already won it twice after the update and I only dropped 10$ to the game so I'm hardly a p2w.
Do I think this is 'unfair' to the new players? Yes I do, but it is always the case when something 'new' is implemented, if the Arena shipments were changed so that say, Sid was changed to something else would it also not be unfair? It'd be, it is the same case just like Greedo vs Dooku pack. The old players will always have the advantage and it is normal not unfair.
1. It is not harder. It is duller. It is cheesier. Oh I don't like how that played out Retreat(forceclose) There we go all healthy lets try again and again until it goes my way. Changing a position around changes the flow and the turns let's do this until it favors me. HARDER, no. More TEDIOUS, Yes. More CREATIVITY need, No
2. One thing that I truly loved about GW is testing out new builds, new squads. Yes I can still do that and cheese out if it goes bad. I HATED FC option to reset any battle that went bad. I only used it to try new squads against unique builds I encountered AFTER I had the match about to be won, BY ME.
3. Or call it 2b. I LOVED seeing unique builds and going against them. This was so much fun for me. To see what others minds came up with synergy and just plain build wise. In the 18 GW battles I have fought I have faced basically cookie cutter team after cookie cutter team. I face the same team with maybe a tweak of a toon here or there over and over. Now I love GW, but this gets boring, and eventually people will grow tired of it and it will die.
An example, not perfect but a decent one. I'm a die hard hockey fan. The NHL in listening to it's fans who were tired of the same teams playing theirs over and over. The same division winners year in and year out made a massive change going from 2-3 division conferences to 2-2 division conferences, thus changing the playoff seeding format and the scheduling. Made the divisions more competitive, opened up for new division rivalry. This breethed life into the sport creating new matches.
What EA/CG did here is the opposite. They made it now so that the "less versatile" players can no longer experimente and learn but have to create cookie cutter squads in hopes of surviving as long as they can. They are less inclined to run a build all the way through if it costs them a toon. Why bother, just rest and go again since retreat is no option they are too afraid to move on without every toon still here. So you face the "survival, or 5 minute arena" teams. Yes yes Whales that will try to detract here saying oh you should be able to beat them in under 5. I CAN. This post is a general post. I can knock those survival teams off in well under 5 minutes, not the point. The point is that instead of a 12 battle where in it I get to see a couple very cool builds, I now see the same team battle in, battle out.
May the force be with you all.
This is what GW is now. Get a healer heavy team and roll the dice. Good strategy. Anyone dare to say this team won't clear GW using the force close exploit, sorry, the force close feature?
Dunno how it'll work against the soon to come 7 star toons with match making being the way it is, but for now? Win GW every day as long as you force close enough times.
OK, I get it. You don't want others to win GW if they don't have a heavy healer squad. But will you please stop saying the force close exploit you were all whining about earlier is the best thing to happen to GW now that it's labeled retreat? You did not like retreat but, hey, it was a feature and an integral part of GW game play. Force close was the exploit. How does making an exploit which many said was cheating into a feature and removing a feature nobody said was cheating, a good thing, no, the greatest thing to happen to GW? According to the earlier statements of the most enthusiastic supporters of the change, force close users warranted a ban!
Some of us are just saying, you should have improved the retreat function instead of a knee **** reaction like removing it totally and making one of the most hotly debated exploits it's replacement.
And, please, please don't anyone quote me and go on about better difficulty and more strategy. The team quoted above is among the best strategies and not difficult at all. Tiresome, but not difficult, at least at present levels of matched squads. Tomorrow is another day.
To the devs, as someone not having the tank healer and not into healer heavy squads, please try to come up with a variation of the older retreat function.
Bariss (L) 4*
Sid 7*
Fives 6*
Jc 5*
Lumi 7*
Not bad just need to make a gw clear team. Same strat I've been running from get go.
I did fine in GW today but like you I empathize with those starting after us. Brutal. Most of them never used Force Close anyway and retreat was a better and legitimate option.
I take it you don't like this new change. All I'm suggesting is, give it a try. And don't forget that you can still lure the enemy to put their abilities on cooldown by sending in goon squads ahead of your main team. So the only big difference is that you can't switch in members for healing as readily as before. That's my perspective at least.
Yesterday, the first day of the patch, I faced two all purple geared, 6/7* teams with a solitary blue Daka as well as a significant increase in the teams running Dooku. Today I have just completed the first 5 battles and I am already facing my first 60+ purple team and it too has a blue equipped Daka.
It's pretty clear that with this change to 'restart' all battles that both Daka and Dooku are significantly more important to GW while their utility in Arena has not changed. People are using Daka even though prior to now they clearly did not use her to the degree that they are now doing so.
Today and the second half of yesterday is obviously a small sample size however my previous 40+ GWs are not. I expect as the change continues to roll out the number of dual Daka/Dooku Phasma led teams will increase significantly.
Some captures below the spoiler:
It would be nice if EA would bother explaining the matchmaking mechanics. I am still of the belief that it selects someone based on the power they finish the node you are one but select the team they either used first or used last in their daily GW. This is why some people with a power disparity in their A team from their B/C teams will draw level 60 squads when they're ~level 50. They are nearly equal in power to a cleanup team brought in by higher leveled players but clearly not equal to the starting or finishing team of an experienced player.
Also because this happened so quickly it supports the notion that the teams are drawn from people who have completed GW in a recent time frame vs. a day or two earlier.
For newer players, they will run into teams that they cannot beat with all of their players, no matter how many times they retreat. They will be completely stuck. There is no strategy they can use to deal with tougher teams as there was before, really, because the only way to use more than 5 chars is if some of them die, and then they likely will lose everything 1 or 2 rounds later. For them, GW is tedious and frustrating. (Half the older players who like this change seem to like it solely because it makes it hard for others.)
For older players, all risk of ever losing a character is now gone. Any time things go the wrong way, simply restart and do things differently. As many times as you want. Run with a bunch of healers and stunners and ability blockers and eventually you will win every match. No risk of death means no challenge. So for newer players, it is tedious and boring. You get your 15 shards and other goodies, but there's no intellectual challenge at all.
This is what CG has done with this completely unnecessary change: made GW either tedious and frustrating, or tedious and boring. The only constant: tedious.
I'm still shocked that they did this. I really like the people who run this game personally and am shocked at the judgment that led to this decision.
I think more than anything it penalizes people who never had the opportunity to purchase the Dooku bundle for $5. Dooku's now a vital cog to a GW team because he is the only one who can counter Dooku and Daka on the other team. And now almost every person with Dooku will have him on his team so people can be assured that they will see him more frequently in GW. They've at least made him easier to farm but will require higher levels to do so which means from level 40-60 you're basically up the creek.
While I have been pushing new players to go for Poe when they start cantina I now think that they need to go for Daka immediately if they want to have any reasonable hope of having a team for GW that will not be filled with endless frustration as they restart battle after battle.
Why complain??!?!?! RIGHTTTTTTTTTTT. The only way to play the game is being maxed out with stars and gears???? HUH???
Yep.
I am F2P, and my only strenght is patience. So eventually I managed to max out the easy-to-farm-shards, and this way I can manage to beat GW to get more easy-to-farm-shards. Why bother? In the end it's just another nutty game.
Prior before the discovery of 'retreat' and 'force close' functions, GW is only beatable at a 60-80% chance with at least, 3 fully upgraded squads, that's 15 capped out characters. That was the difficulty CG wanted GW to have.
The discovery and open usage of 'retreat' and 'force close' quickly overcame this difficulty requirement and allowed anyone with 5-8 capped out characters to easily clear the entire GW. Which we all gladly benefited from.
So right now, everyone has felt the blunt end of the 'GW fix bat', where CG achieved part of their plan to make GW require a 'deep bench' to be cleared. Of course it feels sour to enjoy the max rewards that GW could give before this 'fix' came and prevented you from getting the same achievements in it. But this also affects all players, basically anyone without at least the said 'deep bench' would be encountering the same difficulties as you are now.
End note: This GW 'fix' benefits the payers the most, as they are the only ones, regardless of when they started the game, to have a huge bench of characters to use and the resource to cap them out. So giving them another area where they 'Advance in game content much faster than f2p because they paid big bucks'.
YAY!!!!!! I can beat GW ( just did actually ). I have 18 characters max lvl. With 10 in gear 7. GW is so easy.
What? You can't beat it? HAHAHA sucks to be you.
Honestly stop the complaining. Learn how to play with the changes are leave. These forums have been horrible since the update.
If GW had started out like this there would not be one complaint. GW was actually ment to be like this, that's why they changed it
So it's not like the mode is ruined, but I'll admit it's less fun and I'm still hoping they'll revert to the old way.
The thing that really surprised me though was the stealth change. After all the recent communication from the Devs about the level cap change and bug fixes there was never any mention of this even being on the radar. So we're now to believe the old retreat system was a glitch all along? Well then why weren't we told?
I don't think it was ever a "glitch". The entire point was supposed to be viewing this as a "war" where you use tactics to overcome much larger numbers of enemies.
It was really force-closing they didn't like, but weirdly, rather than just accept that some people were doing it, they've now made it so everyone has to do it.
Mind-boggling.
@Qeltar Got to agree here man. It is just a bad call. So many other things need fixing. Like drop rates, toon bugs, RNG. I mean come on I spent 300 crystals to try and get enough purple mats to upgrade something in 2 full cantinas plus what they give for leveling up I got 1 purple mat. The ROI and fun factor on this game is dropping so rapidly I'm unsure if I will remain P2P and I have spent a decent amount per week. Now it is more **** and face palm, and are you kidding me, or oh come on moments than yeah this is fun moments. Farming is an utter joke. I can do 6 refills and not even fill 1 gear slot. Heck yesterday 4 refills did not even fill me up 1 slot in 1 of the gear slots,lol.
To give example I would by a vault anytime I dropped into the 2.5-3k range in crystals, so 2-3 per week. I'd buy the vault, use the excess over the vault on Chron. The example here is I'm at 1.5. I have not been this low on crystals since like my 3rd day playing, but I'm finding it hard to want to spend money on this game anymore. I really want to because I liked the idea of it, but with the blatant attempt to just grab money with this GW change, with the utterly pathetic drop rates, with the fact that you always get 75% or less the reward on the challenges I just find it very hard to want to put anymore money into this game.
It clearly was not. The retreat function was modified specifically for GW which is the only real part of the game where the retreat function was actually used.
EA/CG is on record that they did not like that the force exploit and retreat functions were available so they modified the only one they could easily modify to match the behavior of the other.
They did it for expediency not to meet any intended game business requirements. Had they 'intended' GW to be played this way it would have called it 'restart' or 'load from last save' some other more obvious verbiage. The very definition of retreat is that you fall back. Not that you restart.
What I didn't like was that they....
I just feel like EA doesn't get it at all when it comes to their customer. It's clear they cater to the 1% of whales and I figure the financials show this is the right move, but at what cost??
Two more things:
- According to CGs comments they already were considering adjusting the rewards in GW. Now it would probably be more justifiable to push out "better/more" rewards after this change. That random Ewok shard at the end always felt kinda meh.
- Now that i think about it the"old retreat" felt actually a lot like HoDA PvP. In that there was a way how the game SHOULD HAVE BEEN played - by nexting, choosing oppoents your squad could beat, etc - but there was also the EASY/CHEESY/EFFICIENT way - just hit a "Nugger" = Someone who had purposely used a weak PvP squad for new players to be able to reap rewards - over and over again with your low level toons till you got the exact rewards you wanted to. While the idea was "noble" and rewarding at first ( = cause you got good stuff for no effort) it quickly became stale and boring and in the killed every little "meaning" you had, to build any of your Characters. --> Game became pointless. For me at least.
Yes there were these kind of people of course who just ignored the "easy" way and played the game how it was meant to be played. And yes i imagine they had a lot more FUN than me( and a lot of others) but my brain just couldn't justify "wasting time/resources" on something when there was clearly a legitimate/accepted easier way to do something more efficient. Especially when i was at the beginning of the game and didn't have a wide roster of stuff.I always kept telling myself: "It's okay, Np. As soon as you have a decent maxed squad going you ARE going to do REAL FIGHTS against REAL SQUADS, those that the older players used and you will be able to beat them and enjoy the game." Well .. it never happened. Cause the cycle of - Obtaining new stuff --> building it --> "USING THOSE CHARACTERS" = never happened --> Obtaining new stuff --> building it --> etc. kept on going. With no purpose for those built toons.
The old retreat was exactly the same:
- Taunted ? --> You KNOW the right way would be to just play it out and go on but why bother wasting time/resources = Hp/ CDs when you can just retreat and do it the EASY way ? Obviously it's legit right ? The devs wouldn't have made this option if it wasn't legit, right ?
- Heavily Debuffed/Blocked? --> You KNOW the right way would be to play it out but .. why bother ?
- Etc.. You get the idea.
Well .. Keep in mind that the people who made this game happen are just human beings, just like the rest of you guys. And probably not that much smarter ( considering how they handled BarrissSo: Thanks CG for taking away the EASY/CHEESY/EFFICIENT option = Old Retreat so my Brain doesn't have to argue with my Integrity anymore.
Seems to me her leader ability is now much more useful in GW than it was prior to the 1/14/15 game update that changed the way retreat functions in GW.
Agree or disagree?
EDIT/ADDITION:
I want to add that I do NOT support the GW change....
I read in another thread a player saying basically:
What EA/CG did is remove actual game design in favor of a bug/exploit because it was easier than actually fixing the exploit (force close)...
I agree with that player, however, I was just wanting to see if anyone else seems to think Barriss' leader ability is now essentially buffed indirectly...? Or am I wrong??
Nothing.
And that's what GW is now: developer-sanctioned cheese.
With a good team you can now never lose a character. I simply don't know how anyone can possibly view this as being harder than the old system, where you really had to think twice before leaving in someone who was down to red on their health bar.