SWGOH: Q&A w/Producers - 3/17/18

Replies

  • YanM123
    40 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to engage with the community!

    Here are some of my concerns with the current state of the game:

    1. TB platoons:
    The current state of TB platoons for phases 3-6 is very discouraging for evolving guilds. It is nearly impossible to complete these platoons as new characters that are not readily farmable without money/crystal purchases are repeatedly added to the platoons. As a guild, we keep working towards filling up what's missing, but with new characters being added constantly to platoons, it'll never be possible for us to complete them. We do have heavy spenders, but they can not afford spending for every new release. Is there any chance that the release of characters to platoons can eventually follow the release cadence and therefore only be added once the characters are obtainable by anyone or that platoons could follow an update cadence that only occurs at a quarterly annual rate?

    2. Squad Arena:
    My last concern focuses on the state of the arena. Currently, focused groups of individuals govern their respective arena shards in order to maximize their daily rewards. But with that, some focused groups focus on preventing other individuals from competing for better rewards. Individuals who have their payouts at busier times of day also end up with less rewards simply do to their timezones. Is a rework of arena something that could eventually be implemented? Wether it is a way to add variation to shards (by scrambling active players in different shards) or by removing specific payout times by rewarding players based on their peak daily rank?

    Thanks agains for answering questions!
    Cheers
  • Has there been any consideration to allowing Bronziums to be simmed? For veteran players it's just tedious tapping and tapping over and over to try and get some help for the shard store.
  • Mattam
    18 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Hi Producers, thanks for this Q&A!

    As a F2P player with a 1.5 Million GP roster, there hasn't been many options for team compositions specifically for the new Sith Raid to be very effective. Without JTR or Deathtrooper, there doesn't seem to be anything substantial I am able to contribute. Are there any development being worked on in order to increase the power level/effectiveness of other team compositions/factions outside of JTR Resistance teams and Empire Trooper teams?
  • The more content you introduce the more there is that's required of us to keep up. Shards, materials, gear, credits. Over the last several months we've been given territory battles and battles and wars and this Sith raid....it only requires everything.

    Are you ever going to address the crunch?Adequately. Effectively. Or do you just expect everyone to grind out a 5 year plan of action?
  • Bjpac04
    119 posts Member
    Hello thanks for your time.

    One question, is there anyway challenge gear can be removed from raids. It is EXTREMELY disheartening to raid haat for an hour or even recently sith raid for many hours to receive something that we have thousands of.
  • Pahnub
    32 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Are you all ever going to open the forums back up so they dont seem like a desolate wasteland where the only comments and feedback allowed is how everything in the game is sunshine and roses? Continuing this censorship is what drives the community other venues like discord, line and reddit where they can speak freely.

    Edit: Also, please address the back channel communication. It's part of what caused this mess in the first place. Those you are currently communicating with via the back channels don't represent the playerbase at large and look down on all they see as not worth their time. The same attitude was reflected in the recent forum responses, that this QA is in obvious response to. When people like myself coordiante with nearly 1000 guilds to provide constructive feedback to devs and get shut down because of all the back channel communication going on, it makes us feel disrespected and ignored. Please do a better job and stop ignoring the community.
    Post edited by Pahnub on
  • wampawampum
    1 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Hi guys - thanks very much for doing this. I really have only one question I'd like to know the answer to:

    When is EA going to publish droprates on gear and character shards in the United States per Apple's loot box policy changes?

    Thanks,
    ww

    EDIT - Link: https://www.polygon.com/2017/12/21/16805392/loot-box-odds-rules-apple-app-store
  • pac0naut
    3236 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Hello CG team,

    First off, thank you for taking time out of your Saturday evenings. One thing that really stood out to me is @CG_Carrie said " If this style works, we will do this more often, and will be able to provide more advance notice. In the meantime, it is my sincere hope to repair some of the trust that has been lost."

    My question to you is, HOW? How are you going to repair the trust? Trust is earned, not given.

    Let me please start with some of the obvious: Over the past few months we have had Sith Marauder, Rose, Holdo, Sion and Visas come out as Marquee events with $10.00 packs plus the usual 1,299 crystal packs. The average cost of EACH of these are somewhere between $200-$300.00 depending on if RNGesus shines his radiant light upon thee. That is $1,000-$1,500.00 in the span of what, two months?

    Sith Marauder - Broken upon release, fixed right away.
    Holdo - Broken upon release, fixed right away.
    Rose - ? - I honestly don't remember.
    Sion - Broken upon release, fixed, rebroken after Sith Raid tweak.
    Visas - REALLY broken, fixed.

    What really upsets me is the last one. We were given a chance to play a maxed Visas before the Sith Raid started which, by the way, was broken for a while after it came out, in our own team comps and we thought she was awesome with all the assists. Then we find out she's broken and then gets "fixed".

    I won't even touch the Sith Raid "fix" on Expose / On Damage characters.

    I have only ever whaled out day 1 for a character, and that was Fulcrum. We got shown canned footage by the GameChangers that CG had sent, not realizing they were modded to the hilt against weaker leveled / modded characters. When I purchased her, she was definitely NOT as advertised.

    Most of us who play and spend are adults with families or those who have disposable income. HOW are we supposed to trust you with our hard earned money? Do you think I ever purchased another character again after that? The answer is no.

    EDIT - Let's start with the above question: HOW are we supposed to trust you with our money when 90% of what you release as far as characters and content is broken?

    The next question is ALSO important, but we'll start with the above.


    Moving right along, how are we supposed to trust you in these forums? These forums have turned into a ghost town with so many subforums, sub sections of the sub forums and to be REALLY real, some overzealous modding and unwarranted bans being handed out. When I first started playing, this forum was a thriving community. Since then, it has gone the way of a ghost town. A lot of the OG's are gone, either by their own accord or getting banned for no good reason and stretched reasoning. For crying out loud, there were posts from DECEMBER still on here in FEBRUARY with no new posts. That, to me, is embarrassing for a community to have.

    You want to build a community with the players? Please tell us how you're going to do that. The player-base has been wanting this for a very long time and it's truly a shame that the events of these past few days have had to bring this to a head.

    We have been asking as a community for things such as:

    Better Mod Management / Locking Mod sets
    Taking the Challenge gear out of the Raid Reward tables
    Multiple Bronzium openings
    And my favorite.......not having to hit the refresh multiple times so we can battle who we want to in arenas. I'd love to show you how long it takes me to see #15 from #21. Pounding the refresh button over and over, backing out, force closing, etc is NOT a fun gameplay and it forces you to use crystals to take first because you cannot jump max spots.
    Platoons as a non-rewarding game experience in TB's. We told the team repeatedly in here that there were not enough DS characters to be platooned. It is not fun having to platoon half of your guilds Deathtroopers, Shoretroopers and Palpatines and then try to play a game mode that basically negates everything you throw at it.

    I won't even get into the amount of time you have to spend IN GAME now to get everything completed in TW / Raids. It's almost a full time job. Catch a midnight to 6am store refresh, 6 am to noon, noon energy, arena at dinner prep time, ships during dinner time, 9pm refresh and heaven forbid you have a Sith raid open or TW.

    Let's start there. I have other things I could mention, but my overall question to you is HOW are you going to fix this situation between the players and CG?
    Post edited by pac0naut on
    Meanwhile, down on the farm....
  • 1. Release cadence issues: The release cadence of characters (and their placement in various nodes/shops) is a continuing issue. For example, when will we get new characters to the GW shop, the arena shop, or the cantina battle shop? Many of the “meta” characters / factions just haven’t followed the stated release cadence. Perhaps just as importantly, will any of those characters be useful (such as zombie, Talzin, or FO Executioner) or will they be useless (such as Tuskens)?
    2.
    2. Is a “rework” for General Greivous in the works? If so, when? For some of the whales in the game, we have had GG for a loooong time. But he is completely worthless as a character when, in Star Wars lore, he should be a formidable adversary. As someone who has had him for such a long time, I would love to see him get a much needed rework BUT I would also like him to maintain his level of exclusivity as being farmable only in the shard shop. I remember less-than-fondly when many of us were able to get vader to 7* through achievements only to have him get a rework and then get mass released to everyone. There really should be some reward for people who put in the time (and yes, money) to play the game the way they want to play it.

    3. On quality of life issues, why do we need to wait between daily challenges sims? For top-tier players, the time commitment to the game is already high. Just let us sim them all at once (like GW now).

    4. On rewards issues: first off, really nice rewards on the heroic sith raid! Well ******* done! But the other raids need some work. Aside from carbanti salvage, which we need about 300K of, there is absolutely no justification I can see for having anything farmable through daily challenges be an option for a reward in raids. It is extremely frustrating to get those items. The rancor raid has been around for ~2 years now…has there been any thought on creating a mythic tier with better rewards? Same question with the tank.

    5. Any chance we will get a villan’s descent (i.e. the opposite of hero’s journey) type event? While we all appreciate the light side, I’d venture to say there are quite a few of us who prefer the lore of the dark side and would love to unlock a Fallen Anakin or something like that. Anything you can tell us on that?

    6. Why doesn’t EA announce things like World’s First on raids or at least settle some of the forum posts down? Allowing posts calling guilds like TI cheaters or exploiters would seem to violate TOS but it gets tolerated all the time.

    7. Can we just get a slide for arena battles for our slot? The refreshing thing is ridiculous…

    8. Any chance there will be viewable lifetime stats for TW? Some guilds have perfect scores and it would be nice to see that rewarded on a guild level?

    9. Any chance there will be skins released for characters based on achievements?
  • DrakeVader
    7 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Carrie, Nick, or Erik,

    HELP!!!!!!

    Let me preface this request by saying that this game has become my favorite of all time. I appreciate the time and work you guys put in. I have recruited numerous coworkers and friends to SWGOH.

    My guild alliance leader (Evergoo), of 5 guilds, had his account written over by using the "link a device" feature. He is an integral part of our guild, in raids, TB, TW, etc. It has been over a week since he first contacted EA help. This man has been instrumental in retaining and growing a large player base and community centered around SWGOH. (250 players.) You will have our eternal gratitude if you can help return our leader to his post by helping to recover his account.

    Thanks in advance!

    -DrakeVader

    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/160237/please-provide-clarification-on-link-a-device/p2
  • Hey guys,

    Thanks a bunch for hosting this! I typically hang out on reddit and the forums, and I'm not sure how indicative of the player base at large they are. It seems like having this event would make a big difference for the silent majority.

    Anyway. My first question is: Is it possible for players to see the effect that their input has on the game's future? In a perfect world, we would have a general idea of what was coming down the road (at least months). I know there's a lot of stuff that would have to go into it, but I've found knowing my voice was heard helps get me more invested in games over the long term.

    My second question is: What are the top priorities of the devs right now, and how often do those change?

    Again, massive thank you!
  • V3NTR3SS
    43 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Thank you for your time in conducting this Live Q+A. It’s greatly appreciated. I echo all of the questions and sentiments expressed here, and would ask for a follow up to a thread I posted to the devs that went unanswered a while ago.

    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/107732/guildmaster-raid-controls-a-proposal-april-30#latest

    Re: Raids (not so much with needing these for the STR, but the idea is still sound) have tried many, many different types of rules, DMG gates, in-game messaging to members, pinned chat notifications - all with varying degrees of success. I maintain a Discord chat room, with guild masters and members of several different guilds, as well as a fulsome standalone website powered with a phpBB forum, well moderated, currently with over 100 members. My guild has at least 25 members who can Solo the Rancor, and several that can post 8 digits in the HAAT with ease.

    However, the scores are very disparate, and discouraging for those developing rosters, especially when rules are not abided by. In my opinion, especially since members in my guild have been together across multiple games, and are a casual, mostly F2P guild - booting someone is really only a last-resort option.

    What I propose is as straightforward idea as possible, distilled down to its very essence. And, most importantly, something that the guild master can turn on and off, as well as amend in-flight vis-a-vis raid damage.

    I’m hoping for a negligible amount of flaming; and some constructive feedback in the hopes this becomes something worth considering by the developers.

    TL:DR - A configurable damage gate. Most of the UI already exists in other elements found in the game. I can provide mockups if asked or encouraged to.

    Is it possible?

    Basically, the guild master controls would include three simple parameters:
    1. Raid Damage Gate: ON / OFF
    2. Maximum Damage: Slider (0 to 20 Million) (For example)
    3. Raid Damage Gate Active Flag: On The Entrance Window To The Raid (For example, a red dot, or gold flag)

    Caveats / Rules of the system are threefold:
    1. Guild Master Can Turn Damage Gate On/Off
    2. Guild Master Can Increase or Decrease The Maximum Damage Slider Whilst A Raid Is In Progress
    3. You can continue playing your round/team after you hit the max damage setting, but incur no additional damage

    As a guild master, there is no real need to provision for an area that details what the settings are configured to; as since you are already logged in, a quick update to the guild chat message is all that is required should you change the max allocated damage.

    Blue Sky Additions:
    1. Would allow players to continue to raid and/or test out ADDITIONAL teams after hitting the max damage allowed, without penalty, and without incurring damage, or burning up your roster further.
    2. Direct Messaging / PM to any player by Guildmaster (could be in their inbox)
    3. Scrolling (a la News Feed) Pinned Message allowing for a longer message.

    IMHO, this is fairly straightforward, and would be a most welcome addition to the game, solving a bunch of ongoing issues in one swoop. No one likes drama. No one likes rules. Moreover, enforcing them can be challenging, at the best of times.

    Look forward to your feedback.

    Thank you for your time on a weekend.

    V3NTR3SS
    Post edited by V3NTR3SS on
    Former Star Wars Uprising General Multiple SB Winner + Cartel Master Of The Nightsisters // Guild Master Of "Exiles Of Dathomir"
  • There have been hundreds if not thousands of posts on this forum of people complaining about challenge gear in raids. I understand that removing it from existing raids may have been more difficult than it would have been worth, but why did you include it in the rewards for the sith raid?
  • kaitco
    14 posts Member
    Would you be able to provide some clarification on why the rewards provided through raids are not exclusive to raids, Guild Store, or Shard Shop?

    For example, the gear piece Mk 5 Athakam Medpac Salvage is found on two regular energy nodes:
    Light Side Battles: 9-G (Normal)
    Light Side Battles: 9-D (Hard)

    The same piece is also available in Tier V of the TAC Gear Challenge.

    The piece gets used by 50 different characters to create the full Mk 5 Athakam Medpac and requires 60 salvage per character.

    With the TAC Gear Challenge repeating three times a week, a player who has been at Level 85 for more than 60 days will acquire a fair amount of this specific piece by simply completing Tier V of TAC Gear Challenge.

    The problem, however, is that this same piece of gear is also a possible reward given in the new Sith Triumvirate Raid. What can happen is that a player may be "rewarded" with the same piece of gear from completing the single most difficult aspect of the game at the present that the same player could receive from doing the TAC Gear Challenge multiple times throughout the week or through freely obtained energy through Light Side battles.

    Is there some reason that this is the case?

    The reason that the Mk 5 Athakam Medpac Salvage is not available until Tier V of the TAC Gear Challenge is that players will not necessarily need this piece until they reach a high enough level that will allow them to gear characters to Gear 11 or Gear 12 and will require these pieces. With that in mind, players who are able to complete the higher tiers of the Sith Triumvirate Raid, where this specific piece can also be rewarded, are also those who have the ability to complete Tier V of the TAC Gear Challenge and have also been able to complete that challenge enough times to craft well over 50 full Mk 5 Athakam Medpacs. Receipt of the Mk 5 Athakam Medpac Salvage as a reward in the Sith Triumvirate Raid becomes unnecessary to anyone who could compete in the raid because the piece is so readily available earlier in the game and, with randomized rewards, the receipt of this piece provides an unpleasant player experience given the difficulty of the raid.

    Any clarification on this decision would be welcome.


  • I don't know how others feel outside of the several servers I am on in Discord, my 2 shard chats, alliance chat and guild chat, but the general consensus is that platoons aren't fun. I will say that I am glad that at least in LS TB, the character weighting has seemed to even out so thank you for that. But farming a Ugnaught, Mob Enforcer, CUP and many others to 7* just so I could plop them in a platoon to get a meh bonus wasn't fun. I don't like as an officer trying to count how many we have of X character to see what we can and can't complete. They aren't fun to administer and they aren't fun to participate in. I would rather get something like platoon tokens from completing missions that we could use to unlock those same buffs. I realize that they are simply a money making mechanism for the higher end guilds to pay for just released content, but it provides a constantly moving target that will never be filled. If you are in a guild that doesn't have whales and with the release cadence, Phases 5&6 will always be 2/6 most likely, no chance in getting there. TLDR, Taking a character that I have geared, farmed or leveled and placing him in a platoon is not what I, and many others, would consider "using our full roster" as we were told TB was going to do.
  • Thank you miss for taking the time to have a Q & A on a Saturday. My question is will we get more of a variety of prequel toons any time soon instead of sticking for the most part in the OT era?
  • Hey guys another quick question. It’s to do with the daily challenges. Why are the prizes always the same? I’ve been playing this game since almost day one and I collect the prizes all the time EVERYTIME and I seem to accumulate so much gear that I’ll never use it. Would it be possible to at least update the daily challenges with gear that we actually need. So many carbantis and stun guns needed to apply to characters that haven’t got a snowflakes chance in hell of ever getting upgraded due to the ever increasing release of new characters.
  • When are ship hardware abilities and ship omegas coming to the game? Ship omegas have been unobtainable by F2P players and needed for ships for a while and "Hardware abilities coming soon!" has been there for about a year.
  • Yesac
    362 posts Member
    Will there be a sandbox... ever? A way to test our teams against others (not arena or GW). Similar to the way TW works, a guild-mate can assign a defense and we can enter a battle against it and see how our offense does (and vice versa).

    I really appreciated having several days to testing Sion and Visas. That was awesome! Please continue to do this in the future!
  • Tavomunk
    24 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    *This is my only question*
    For future hero/legendary events will we be given a reasonable announcement? There have been some events where we’re told 1 week in advance and in this case with Rey Jedi training there was no announcement and it left has left some players in a tough spot.
    Post edited by Tavomunk on
  • StarSon
    7411 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    If you are going to answer one of my questions, it’s the other one: what’s with making us choose between dinner time with the family and arena crystals?
    Post edited by StarSon on
  • It's not really a question, but more of a beef. I hate the way drop rates change on needed characters for events. Pretty greedy, guys.
  • Please can you make top-end arena jumps easier please? The ones that seem to have a broken probability are: 34>26, 25>18, 20>14, 19>13. It’s not uncommon to be pushing the refresh constantly for roughly 5-10 minutes trying to get one of these jumps to show up; that’s approximately 300-500 refreshes. It’s just not fun, and is probably the most frustrating part of the game for high-end arena players.

    It must surely be an easy fix to increase the probability of these jumps appearing. Or if it’s WAI, can you at least explain your rationale for the probability being approx 0.5%?
  • Are there any plans to address overzealous and inconsistent forum moderation?
  • Will drop rates ever be released to players for gear, shard packs, etc ?
    Can we rotate out the Moderators?
  • Are you going to address all the back channel communication and special treatment the big time players get? It gives them a ridiculous advantage over the other players in the game. Not to mention when others try to provide constructive feedback, since we're not part of these back channel talks, we get brushed off and taught life lessons. We're told our feedback isn't valued and suggesting any ideas to fix things is a "legal issue". Or that bugs are in the pipeline, but no timeframe because "reasons". Your customer service is abysmal and starts with the preferantial treatment you give to guilds like team instinct and the alliance. Wake up! They don't provide you valuable feedback as they are out of touch with the community at large.
  • Hey guys - this CG_Erik (name change coming soon). Thank you all for participating!! We're answering questions as quickly as possible. Due to the volume of questions, we're only able to answer your top question. Feel free to add others and we'll get to them over the next coming weeks!
  • This was something I posted earlier and am reposting. At the end I will put it in question form. Thank you for taking the time to do this, it is greatly appreciated and actually hits one of the points I make below.

    I just want to start off by saying that I really enjoy the game! There are a lot of great aspects to it and for the most part it’s a lot of fun. However as I read through a lot of the posts in the forums, I see an overwhelming amount of negative thoughts and attitudes towards the game some of which I share. Unfortunately, I see more negative posts than positive and that makes me wonder, why? I know that not everyone can be pleased, and that some of the posts have completely off based concerns and expectations, but at the same time it seems there are a lot of people with well founded dissatisfaction with elements of the game. I know that not every post can be responded to by you, the devs, but I really would like to see more interaction from you and actually let folks know that they are heard and then ACT accordingly! A little communication goes a long way! Please don’t take this as a bash post because it’s not, but some of the concerns that I share with a lot of other folks are as follows;

    1. Raid Rewards (especially the sith raid)
    2. Sith Raid difficultly and character nerf. ( I agree with the nerf of ST Han, but the expose nerf was uncalled for)
    3. Nerfing expose in the raids in my opinion was like taking a product from a customer that they already paid for. Many people have invested time and money to accomplish this strategy. I can understand nerfing expose in the new raid but not in the previous. Imagine you just bought a new vacuum cleaner. After your purchase, a few months down the road, the manufacturer contacts you and asks you to send it in for service and when returned, it functions at only half the capacity it did before and told this repair is intended. The example is a bit of a stretch, but makes the point. It would not be acceptable to you the customer in that scenario and I don’t find it acceptable in this one.
    4. A seemingly lack of follow through on “upcoming features” ie toons moving to f2p.

    If I could get one response to the above concerns, can I get one to the raid expose issue?

    Thanks again!
  • For Territory Battles: there are a lot of guilds that would love to be able to move forward to the next phase as soon as the prior phase gets maxed. For example, my guild could finish p1 by simply having a few people deploy and then it would be 3*. Any chance we could get a guild-leader option to skip ahead? Obviously the end-time for TB would be the same but it would be a nice way to get a few days off once we completed it quicker than in 6 days.

    For Territory Wars: what is the rationale behind having different reward levels fighting one another while at the same time having the lower GP guild only having the lower reward level available? While it isn't likely that the lower GP guild will win, they should get the incentive of a better-tier reward if they do.

    Also for Territory Wars: is there any tournament-style / bracket-like war in the works. In the spirt of march madness, maybe a top 64 bracket with the winner getting some in-game achievement (like an avatar or something)?
  • Are there any plans to make unwanted gear more useful? It seems like every character requires several of the same item (mk3 Carbantis, mk3 stun cuffs, mk5 stun guns, mk8 biotechs) whereas other items like mk4 Carbantis are barely needed at all. Thanks
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