The Gear Grind: A Problem of Supply vs. Demand

Replies

  • +9999
  • Whereas I agree with OP the Dev team actually make a lot of money off of people that use a few refreshes to quickly get that gear it would make no sense from a business perspective to give away more gear as then they wouldn't have the impulse buyers.

    By this I mean the people that are "mostly" ftp that need a few more gear items that then go "oh screw it I need 5 more I'll get a couple of refreshes.

    Unfortunately ftp will never be the main force the devs will care about in this game it will always be primarily suited for spenders, not that it's a bad thing as it keeps them grinding out new gear and the other side is that as ftp the game does actually give us quite a bit more than a regular app will do (eg new fleet shipments being all chromium toons)

    Aaaaand that's my thoughts on the matter lol
  • +1
  • No one in my guild has ever had a fully crafted stun cuffs drop, 20 of us are lvl 85
  • +1

    this thread is brilliant. very well written and all points need addressing. the MK III droid callers are the worst for me. so many characters need them, usually 10 or 20 each and to not have them available in Tier5 of the AGI gear challenge is very very VERY annoying!!!
  • I've just geared up Chirrut and Baze, and their gear requirements were absolutely ridiculous. Carbantis and stun cuffs galore, one after the other, FTP players don't have a hope of gearing up these characters in any reasonable period of time.

    In a game like this, as they do with MMORPGs, the lower-end gear should be made more freely obtainable to ease the passage for new players. Instead, all of the previous gear walls are still in place, progression to gear 11 for new players is a pipe dream.

    For existing players, it's beyond tedious - I hope gear requirements and availability are re-evaluated soon.

    Just broke my new resolution not to complain on the forums again... :neutral:
  • +1
  • NO just NO.
    Even if you are right.
    If they change it now. They will anger alot of players for having wasted their timing spending aquiring said gear.
    So NO. dont change now. it's too late anyway for this imo.
  • Reconhell wrote: »
    NO just NO.
    Even if you are right.
    If they change it now. They will anger alot of players for having wasted their timing spending aquiring said gear.
    So NO. dont change now. it's too late anyway for this imo.

    Yeah... when new toon arrive these players will be angry again because missing blue callers and then people who meanwhile stop playing will be happy. Good point - reasonable and objective. :smile:
  • +999
  • +1
  • +1

    I'm stuck needing around 400 of them **** hair dryers and the challeneges don't really help either TBH.
    And don't get me started on those mkIII droid callers which suddenly I've noticed EVRYONE needs:/
  • +1
  • Agree with everything.
    Also can we have some cuffs and stun guns in challenge or as daily reward for xmas period. Come on every char needs it in multiples.
  • Tigzie wrote: »
    Whereas I agree with OP the Dev team actually make a lot of money off of people that use a few refreshes to quickly get that gear it would make no sense from a business perspective to give away more gear as then they wouldn't have the impulse buyers.

    By this I mean the people that are "mostly" ftp that need a few more gear items that then go "oh screw it I need 5 more I'll get a couple of refreshes.

    Unfortunately ftp will never be the main force the devs will care about in this game it will always be primarily suited for spenders, not that it's a bad thing as it keeps them grinding out new gear and the other side is that as ftp the game does actually give us quite a bit more than a regular app will do (eg new fleet shipments being all chromium toons)

    Aaaaand that's my thoughts on the matter lol[/

    I hear what you are saying about f2p, but I see this gear issue as even out of balance for whales. Please look into this Devs. Great post @benacrow .


    Chondrosarcoma- Chondro3150#0907
  • I like the fact that the request was to ease the lower gear wall that was in place and not ask for any help with the higher gear wall. If players get more toons up to g8/9/10 needed cuffs, guns and hair dryers would they not make more money? They all cost a lot more crystals to buy then lower gear and if you have a bunch of toons needing it you would be more likely to spend to start getting some. Right now with the lower gear wall it takes so long to get the lower geared toons up to that point that you have already farmed the higher gear and as such less likely to spend on the bigger gear. Personally I would just be happy with the blue callers plastered over the higher tiers. I don't expect or would ask them to give us more high lvl gear. Like all other games out there though, it would be nice if they made lower lvl requirements easier to obtain.
  • I mentioned that there is a thread somewhere on the SWGOH subreddit where a developer makes a series of posts admitting that he does not realize how disproportionate the gear distribution is. It is must reading and Benacrow should edit into his original post. I can't find that thread anymore, but maybe someone else can, the internet community is great at that.

    In the meantime we have a second piece of media that is a must for everyone that +1's this thread to see.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrT92tngmuI

    Please listen/watch to the first 10 minutes of that video. Its an interview with John Salera, the executive producer of this game and another developer. What you hear will blow your mind. You will learn that there is no plan to fix the gear problems because they don't even acknowledge one exists. He actually says they introduced Galactic Gear Packs and that should solve everyones stun cuff problems. If this isn't your first day reading the forums, how many thousands of times have you heard someone say "please put all lower tier rewards into the higher tier challenges". When that question is asked, the answer is" "We haven't thought about that or discussed it". SERIOUSLY?!? This interview is only 2 weeks old mind you.

    The gear progression has some major fundamental design flaws. The developers in the video claim that some gear is "rare". I totally agree that a game like this requires "rare" drop items. Stun cuffs and stun cuffs are the rarest drops in the entire game. However, 50 Stun cuffs are required 185 times, meaning 10,000 cuffs are needed (so far) in the game. Basic common sense and game design dictates that you don't make your rarest gear also your most commonly required one. Compare that to Omega mats. This is a "rare" item, with a "rare" drop rate but has been gated properly. First of all, napkin math (feel free to do the computation with actual numbers, I'm too agitated to look them up). We have about 100 toons in this game (so far) and they have an average of about 4 abilities. Each omega ability requires 5 mats (several only need three). So, the game needs about 2,000 omega mats. Thats 1/5 of the stun cuffs needed if you are keeping score. How do we obtain these omega mats? 1 free per day. Omega battles relatively frequently. Rewards from tournaments and other events. Gifts. Achievements. We can pull 12 a week from challenges (your lucky if its 3 but thats still awesome). Can farm them on cantina nodes (theoretically)... I'm forgetting more, but the point is, every single week I feel like I am making progress with my omega abilities. When I need a new one, it can be done in 5 days maximum, without spending a single resource. Stun cuffs, I feel like Im going backwards with. I simmed the same node hundreds if not a thousand times this week. 50 crystal refresh, 12 pulls, 1 cuff, repeat... Im not able to do anything else with my energy and its boring. I used to enjoy the decision making, resource management and planning that was part of the game. Now I have no choice but to be a zombie pushing sim on 7D over an over again, day in and out. Now we have this tank raid that the developers have admitted "may not be tuned properly". But we know Jawas are very good in this raid. Have you looked at the stun cuff requirements for a Jawa team?? Good God Almighty I think it takes over 1,000 stun cuffs just to gear up those little look-a-likes. If this is really "WAI" then that is one sick, nefarious conspiracy to extort the player base. But I dont believe that is the intention. It honestly believe its ignorance and poor game design on part of the developers. I dont want to even get into the fact that characters are requiring high level gear that they have no ability to use. It is nonsensical.... There are many many solutions to this problem and most of them can be coded faster than it took me to write this manifesto. This has to be fixed in the very next update, it can't wait until August.
  • +1 lets keep this post going. I have created about 5 similar posts in the past 5 months. lets get the devs in action on this ASAP
  • Mvnson wrote: »
    I mentioned that there is a thread somewhere on the SWGOH subreddit where a developer makes a series of posts admitting that he does not realize how disproportionate the gear distribution is. It is must reading and Benacrow should edit into his original post. I can't find that thread anymore, but maybe someone else can, the internet community is great at that.

    In the meantime we have a second piece of media that is a must for everyone that +1's this thread to see.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrT92tngmuI

    Please listen/watch to the first 10 minutes of that video. Its an interview with John Salera, the executive producer of this game and another developer. What you hear will blow your mind. You will learn that there is no plan to fix the gear problems because they don't even acknowledge one exists. He actually says they introduced Galactic Gear Packs and that should solve everyones stun cuff problems. If this isn't your first day reading the forums, how many thousands of times have you heard someone say "please put all lower tier rewards into the higher tier challenges". When that question is asked, the answer is" "We haven't thought about that or discussed it". SERIOUSLY?!? This interview is only 2 weeks old mind you.

    The gear progression has some major fundamental design flaws. The developers in the video claim that some gear is "rare". I totally agree that a game like this requires "rare" drop items. Stun cuffs and stun cuffs are the rarest drops in the entire game. However, 50 Stun cuffs are required 185 times, meaning 10,000 cuffs are needed (so far) in the game. Basic common sense and game design dictates that you don't make your rarest gear also your most commonly required one. Compare that to Omega mats. This is a "rare" item, with a "rare" drop rate but has been gated properly. First of all, napkin math (feel free to do the computation with actual numbers, I'm too agitated to look them up). We have about 100 toons in this game (so far) and they have an average of about 4 abilities. Each omega ability requires 5 mats (several only need three). So, the game needs about 2,000 omega mats. Thats 1/5 of the stun cuffs needed if you are keeping score. How do we obtain these omega mats? 1 free per day. Omega battles relatively frequently. Rewards from tournaments and other events. Gifts. Achievements. We can pull 12 a week from challenges (your lucky if its 3 but thats still awesome). Can farm them on cantina nodes (theoretically)... I'm forgetting more, but the point is, every single week I feel like I am making progress with my omega abilities. When I need a new one, it can be done in 5 days maximum, without spending a single resource. Stun cuffs, I feel like Im going backwards with. I simmed the same node hundreds if not a thousand times this week. 50 crystal refresh, 12 pulls, 1 cuff, repeat... Im not able to do anything else with my energy and its boring. I used to enjoy the decision making, resource management and planning that was part of the game. Now I have no choice but to be a zombie pushing sim on 7D over an over again, day in and out. Now we have this tank raid that the developers have admitted "may not be tuned properly". But we know Jawas are very good in this raid. Have you looked at the stun cuff requirements for a Jawa team?? Good God Almighty I think it takes over 1,000 stun cuffs just to gear up those little look-a-likes. If this is really "WAI" then that is one sick, nefarious conspiracy to extort the player base. But I dont believe that is the intention. It honestly believe its ignorance and poor game design on part of the developers. I dont want to even get into the fact that characters are requiring high level gear that they have no ability to use. It is nonsensical.... There are many many solutions to this problem and most of them can be coded faster than it took me to write this manifesto. This has to be fixed in the very next update, it can't wait until August.

    I agree completely with everything in this thread and I appreciate that you posted this interview. It explains a lot even tho I did not like what they had to say. Telling f2p players that they came out with a crystal pack to solve the gear problem is a slap in the face. I'm also thinking it's partly from ignorance because when the interviewer asked about adding more gear to the guild shop one of them thought it was already in there. I also think it's partly a cash grab, they are a business after all and want to make money.

    I really wish they would fix this and make the lower gear easier to obtain. In the video we are told it's about resource management blah blah. You can resource manage all you want but when you need 3k mk 3 stun cuffs no amount of managing can help that. The gear isn't just needed at lower levels either, it's needed higher and higher. Like the mk3 droid callers, it's a blue gear so they might assume it's not something we would need a lot of at a higher level. To make a design tech which is raid gear, you need 40 mk3 droid callers. Tell me how this makes any sense?
  • Seriously. Cad Bane alone needs 150 cuffs for Gear X. It's ridiculous.
    #CloneHelmets4Life...VICTORY!!!! :smiley: "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." The more you tighten your grip, CG/EA, the more whales will slip through your fingers (and go F2P or quit).
  • @benacrow and others commenting on here - I agree totally with what you are saying.

    However, there is something even more absurd that you don't mention (so maybe you are not aware of it):
    Put the MkIII Holo Projector and MkIV Keypad in Guild Shipments
    This one just makes me laugh. Every. Single. Other. Purple piece that costs 20 salvage to create is available in the guild shop for purchase with 1219 guild currency. But the 2 most needed 20-piece purples? Nope. This would be such an easy fix. Please put these items in here as well, and so many people's problems would be solved. This alone would be enough for me, and many other players, to stop complaining about needing 1000s of these. Please. Please. Please.


    The Mk3 Holo Projector IS already in the guild shipments BUT only at lower levels - once you go above about level 60 or 70 it is removed.

    My guild found this out a few weeks ago and are astonished there hasn't been more uproar about this on the forums.

    Either this is deliberate - which makes me despair about how the devs want to gate the lower gear in the game. Or they are unaware of this being an issue - which would leave me even more in despair!
  • Thinking about leaving myself. Getting bored trying farm the same old item over and over. And being able to nothing else. Just stuck in one place. Is irritating. Spent like over 400 energy this morning. And only 3 peices of mk 3 solo salvage droped. I aint no whale. But i have spent about £500 on this game since febuary. Thats alot i think for a mobile game. Losing intrest now.
  • +1000.

    Something really needs to be done
  • Sarryen wrote: »

    OMG! ****! FML! There aren't enough three letter acronyms to express my rage right now. Thanks(?) for bringing this to my attention Sarryen....
  • The lower tier gear being moved to higher tiers of challenges is the easiest 'meet you halfway but not really halfway' solution, it seems a realistic fix if you like.

    The cuffs/guns thing is really in need of some fixing, make them a bit easier to obtain and all the 'nerf AAT' problem threads will go away, it's not like this gear is even top tier anymore, that's before even beginning on the yellow gear!

    Basically a long winded +1
  • This guys is a mind reader!!!
    +1000
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