How do you keep your play time in check?

When I signed up for this (mobile) game, I wanted something that I can play when I have a break, a few times 5 min per day, or not at all if I'm not in the mood.

As you might guess, I now am in the position where I can live my life a few times 5 min per day, during the cooldowns between battles, or not at all on the dreaded 36 GW battles day or if my Arena squad had a bad night. I think it's been published before that the average play time is about 2.5h per day, and as far as I'm concerned, it sounds about right.

I now want to scale down, but not entirely give up because I still enjoy playing it, just not the **** of "mandatory" activities we have each and every day. I'm looking for ways to do the daily routine in the shortest possible time, then perhaps drop activities that have little benefit for a long time spent.

Time consuming activities that I can think of are:
- Arena 30 min (5 battles against Barriss for the whole 5min, and another 5 min repeat refreshing opponents to get to see n.8 when you're on 13)
- Fleet Arena another 30 min
- GW probably 30 min, at least it's flexible as per when I do them
- Rancor 5-10 min in order to start the battle, check progress a few times and collect the loot
- AAT 1h+
- TB 20-30 min of battles (thankfully I'm no longer in charge of planning it!)
- Challenges, farm, check stores, check daily 600 look like another 20 min scattered throughout the day
- Events 2min to hours depending on which event, and whether I have to start tinkering with mods.

Which part of it were you able to cut down (or possibly totally eliminate)?
☮ Consular ☮ - https://swgoh.gg/u/tiggus/

Replies

  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    The only things that are inconvinient for me are the pay-out times and the hAAT.
    I usually just ignore fleet pay-out and only use 2 or 3 teams in hAAT. All the other stuff doesn't take me that much time and i can play them whenever i want, toilet breaks are awesome ;)
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • SchniDogg
    12 posts Member
    edited November 2017
    I try to do things concurrently. I only do arena the hour before payout. So I’ll do a battle, sim a challenge (reg and ship), then do a GW node or two, sim battles for gear, then go back to arena. Repeat. I also rarely do raids anymore, register my zero, and be satisfied with that gear. I might set an alarm for raid time, but I make one run on auto and stick my phone back in my pocket. I only do one ship battle, and that’s on auto, but I still manage to stay in top 100. Sim everything else and buy a couple refreshes a day so I don’t need to verify 600. I do take TB serious, I’m in a competitive guild, so I don’t wanna let them down, that takes around 40 min if you include checking for directions during the day in discord. Still a lot of time, probably 90 minutes or a little more, but I’ve tried to limit to just that.
  • I spend 20-30 mins in the morning completing all daily activities, then i check in at bonus times and I do the arena one hour before rewards.
    GW honestly doesnt take me more than 20 minutes and I fit it in the morning durinf the 2 arena battles cooldown soi its not that time consuming, althought I'd like it somehow shortened too.
    Territory battle is too long for me. I would have prefered the 3 days as they had announced and maybe delete some waves (4 instead of 6 would be fine).
    Aat and rancor is short and only twice/thrice a week so not that time consuming either.
    I just connect more throughout the day to farm stuff.

    Overall yeah its just territory battle that bothers me.
    I manage my time well so I dont need anything else.
  • Its tough. I get home from work at night and do all my dailies and my 600 tix right away. Most days its not so bad. But then there are double raid tuesdays (GW challenge), plus TB. And I work during the raids. I do TB when i wake up, spend my energy, check the stores, and maybe do some arena. I can now just barely auto rancor but i have to keep an eye on Phase 4. Then Haat is right after. It goes pretty quickly, so i can only get in on phase 3 which is fine cause i have chirpathrawn. But i usually dont do well compared to others that hit every phase. Then of course random events. Then i have to pretend to listen to my gf while im actually checking discord for TB instructions LOL.
  • If you want to cut down on time, you should probably consider to stop trying to do your absolute best in raids/arenas. That is 50% of your time right there. Your gear/crystals may come a little slower, but you are saving the time you want.

    Sorry there is no 'Easy Button' to the amount of time required ti play the game to it's fullest extent. Fortunately for you, there is an easy (auto) button that will give you average results in many scenarios.
  • "Off topic"??? Dude!...

    Speaking of which, there was another one:
    - Participate in the forum community

    But this one seems to have been taken care of. How much time does it take to write "The latest event was great"?, or read a few variations of it?

    Yes, auto helps. Is there a combination of squads that can make a full auto GW?
    ☮ Consular ☮ - https://swgoh.gg/u/tiggus/
  • Honestly I’ve started autoing both TB and GW battles a lot of the time. Of course I don’t have the same success dinner have if I was played each battle, but it helps take away almost an hour daily of staring at the screen.

    My arena rank hovers around 100, so I can realistically push Bella that for the extra 25 crystals with 3-4 battles, but I don’t need to get it every day. Ship arena is my largest daily crystal intake so I normally try finishing all 5 battles there, it’s my biggest time sink (I’m top 20 but I can usually push to top 5 depending on the day).

    I’m not gonna lie though, I do not complete GW when I auto, even with a good resistance team. It’s nice though not having to spend that half hour (minimum) going in and out of the harder battles to get the right RNG. I can still get 800 tokens per day with this method, usually getting up to and beating node 11. Node 12 requires me to prime 3 different teams and to get the right RNG on nodes 5, 8, 10 and 11 for the best chances to complete it’s subsequent node. The rewards aren’t amazing enough imo to warrant spending that amount of time for completing GW daily, especially when I have to work 12 hour days and I can only log in for an hour or so per day.

    I just say prioritize; play your favorite parts of the game and the parts that give you the best loot for your time (crystals are always #1). Like my best chance for extra crystals is pushing in ship arena right, so the majority of the time when I can’t play for very long is spent battling there.

    I really think we need a QOL update to reduce the time needed to consistantly complete every activity in this game daily. I can get everything done in an hour and a half, but imo, that’s too much time for a mobile game. I know they want people on a lot so their average play time stats look good, but I can’t imagine I’m the only player that forgoes certain aspects of the game because I just don’t have enough time sometimes.

    I don’t have a fix to this dilemma, I wish I did. GW really needs some streamlining though, 30min-1hour to complete is too much, especially when the rewards are one character shard and like 100k gold. Really the 10 gems is the best part about completing node 12. The difficulty in GW to me though is fine, I would just make it so you can keep fighting teams without having to leave every single battle. It could even be like TB where if a character dies, he’s done for the rest of the GW battles. Its a small help, but that could Ben the start. Saving 30 seconds between loading each battle will reduce GW by roughly 5 min. More will need to be done, but it’s gotta start somewhere.

    With raids, you honestly might need to join a better guild. A lot of the time, I’m hitting 0’s because of raid times, so im not spending too much time there. We only participate in heroics and HAAT can be completed by 15 of our members, making it not a necessity for me to have to spend so much time battling HAAT. I’m saving time, but I can still attack for better rewards if I get on at our raid time. One good attack can push me into the 20-30 range for rewards, usually less.

    TLDR, You really don’t have to complete everything everyday, just play the things you like if you don’t have a lot of time. Ships and arena are the only mandatory daily activities I recommend doing because of the crystal rewards; Anything else can be autoed or just skipped if you’re very pressed for time. Daily activities can be completed in under 20 min if you know what you’re doing. It’s a game, it’s about having fun; missing a few rewards won’t really affect you much in the end. If you have extra time, play every GW battle, play all TB battles, but if you don’t, auto will become your best friend.
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    Tiggus wrote: »
    "Off topic"??? Dude!...

    Speaking of which, there was another one:
    - Participate in the forum community

    But this one seems to have been taken care of. How much time does it take to write "The latest event was great"?, or read a few variations of it?
    well, forum participation is far from mandatory these days for me. The usefull is shared on line/discord. There were times one could get ahead by monitoring the forum and quickly adjust farming based on info shared by other forum members. Currently just reading my guild's chat is far more usefull, faster and easier accessible.
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • Good topic.

    Luckily I get home about an hour before my wife does. So I try to get everything done then. I can race through everything before she's home - hopefully. Otherwise I do get some comments, lol, particuarly as this is the only game I've ever played.

    It's not too bad - wish there was a way to auto through GW tho. Would help a lot.
  • The crashes. That's how. :p
  • Boo
    4134 posts Member
    I try to get everything done in the morning.

    With TBs in the afternoon - I try to engage this at lunch time.

    If I cannot get to anything (in order to not upset the wife) I will wake up in the middle of the night and do what I can while she is asleep. If she wakes up and catches me, oh man am I in trouble, lol
  • Boo wrote: »
    I try to get everything done in the morning.

    With TBs in the afternoon - I try to engage this at lunch time.

    If I cannot get to anything (in order to not upset the wife) I will wake up in the middle of the night and do what I can while she is asleep. If she wakes up and catches me, oh man am I in trouble, lol

    Our plans are basically the same lol.
  • Thanks for the input... Yes I'm doing a bit of the same: start a few Arena battles in the morning, autoing everything I can, but the days where there's a TB and GW and Raid is just too much.

    I think the AAT is just not worth the time anymore. I anyway usually get a selection of totally useless gear as reward. So I'm looking for teams that can do good damage in a minimum amount of time. The best I've seen is the Kenobi-Maul combo in P1 (about 1m damage in 2 minutes auto). Other good candidates are CLS-Han P1 solo (about 10 min, partial auto, 4m), P2 Rebels (10 min, not auto, 4m damage). Unfortunately, Resistance (P4 solo, 12m damage, 30-45min manual) is a huge time sink, and I think so are all the P3 teams.

    My Kenobi-Barriss team can auto half of GW (every node without Nihilus, but I also have to be careful to manage cooldowns on nodes 5 and 8). I can't completely forego GW because it's still a major source of credits. Again, Resistance does the job of finishing GW, but takes a lot of time of manual playing whack-a-mole to do so.

    Speaking of GW, what is the best starting squad to ensure a broken node 11/12 ? I'm happy to stick a couple of gear 12 to break node 11.

    ☮ Consular ☮ - https://swgoh.gg/u/tiggus/
  • I go outside and talk to people.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • KyJoe_Cool
    1873 posts Member
    edited November 2017
    @Tiggus For your question..."How do you keep your play time in check?"... Well, I don't. Lol. I'm on at all times of the day and every chance I can get. :sunglasses:
    Massive SWGOH Community On Discord - https://discord.gg/QWvTUBZ
  • stop trying to be mega competitive its ok to not do gw once in a while just say you know what? i cant be f today.
    scrap fleet battles just finish top 200 with 1 battle
    i do arena to no1
    1 battle in haat p1 then stop , rancor auto cls
    tb cant let team down so it is what it is
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