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

Replies

  • Lester822
    6 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Do you plan on expanding smaller tags like tusken. There are only three tusken characters, so you can't even have a full tusken team. Additionally, will they power up weaker factions (i.e Jawas, tusken) so that they stand a fighting chance against nightsister, resistance ect.
  • Dargth
    11 posts Member
    I would like to know what you all plan on doing to help newer and smaller guilds with recruiting, this game has such a severe handicap when it comes to finding new players without farming the website all day. Which I do not have time to do. We have a good guild with a few string members but trying to recruit new members is like getting a migraine...
  • Carrie:

    Would it be possible to add a feature to territory wars to allow you to click on the opposing teams icon and be brought to their guild info? Sometimes it is hard to search for your opposing guild and I think this would be an excellent add on that would allow you to plan and strategize more effectively. It's hard to look for foreign guilds and even those with normal names both in game and on swgoh.gg.


    Thanks for all the good work, just something to consider!
  • @CG_Carrie, thank you for the Q&A. While we players may not always like the answers we get, I for one, appreciate the effort to be candid and direct. If this is a new theme and not a one-time outreach, it is a good sign for the game’s future.
  • Thank you for your time .. my question is will there ever be a feature to view all of the gear that you have in one location? I find it hard to click back and forth and very time consuming trying to figure out how much of each item I have. Thank you for you time and may the force be with you !
  • Just read through the answers provided. Nothing but an exercise in corporate speak and non committal answers.
  • Arathrawn wrote: »
    Just read through the answers provided. Nothing but an exercise in corporate speak and non committal answers.


    Agreed, very weak Q and A.
  • They could’ve answered many more questions if they didn’t have to frequently refer to their Handbook of Corporate Lawyer Speak.
  • Rebmes
    376 posts Member
    Very nice Q&A, but I must point out, as a dedicated daily player who keeps up on announcements mostly here, most of the issues apparently at hand aren't something that affect me or my playing this game.

    There has always been adequate communications, as far as I can tell. My biggest disappointment here is how hard the forum community has been, about the "uneven" layout of newly released character shards (Talzin for example). The way Mother Talzin came into, and continued to exist in the game, seemed fine to me; things get so lame when they are too predictable.

    Anyway, keep doing what you're doing, and don't let this drama stuff faze you too much.
  • NicWester
    8928 posts Member
    Rebmes wrote: »
    There has always been adequate communications, as far as I can tell. My biggest disappointment here is how hard the forum community has been, about the "uneven" layout of newly released character shards (Talzin for example). The way Mother Talzin came into, and continued to exist in the game, seemed fine to me; things get so lame when they are too predictable.

    Agreed. You’ll find no more wretched a hive of scum and villiany than this forum.
    Ceterum censeo Patientia esse meliat.
  • Vohbo
    332 posts Member
    I'm sorry but this Q&A does not provide the players with anything more than some paltry excuses. I'll address just a few:

    1) Mod management: you can most definitely add a simple button "remove all mods" in a Qualify of Life update, and that would alleviate half the burden.

    2) The issue of high health and tenacity in the Sith Raid is downplayed by a few comments like "We have internally tested teams that magically increase damage by a lot if you maximize your strategy". This is entirely unhelpful for several reasons:
    a) The Sith Raid is unfun because of these two reasons (note: I'm not saying it shouldn't be HARD, especially on heroic). You invalidate most teams saying: yeah but there are other teams. Actually you're just saying: farm death trooper and Jedi Rey and CLS and Nightsisters or just don't bother. That's fine for Heroic maybe, but not for lower tiers. We feel pigeonholed into specific teams, and we don't like it. It might be your design, but that just means your design is bad. It might be your intention, but that just means that your intentions are in conflict with the desire of your playerbase.
    b) For maniacs like me, who are willing to spend an hour a day on this raid, yes, we can do more damage on it. It's not particularly enjoyable, but we will do it. The problem is that in almost all guilds except the top guilds, people just play to have fun. This means that most guilds are filled with 40-45 people who will just do some damage on the raid when they feel like it, and put it on auto if they don't, or just don't participate if it's not fun.
    c) Let's just admit it: the mechanics of a raid can be complex and that can be interesting, but for most people this is an unpleasant burden. I know because I was the guild leader of a guild that had a server first on Mimiron hard mode (Firefighter), one of no less than 130 server first in WoW, after 400 pulls. But I also know that this is not for most people. The burden you put on them is mechanical. We asked repeatedly to alleviate the burden of time consumption for GW and TB, and now we are given something that requires even more time. Can't imagine how that meeting went...
  • My question is about the number of defensive teams required in TW.

    My guild is around 130M Total GP and we have had to place 35 teams per territory on defense for the last 2 TW battles.

    According to the Quality of Life update, the increased number of defensive squads is only supposed to apply to the highest active GP tier. Even at 6 teams per player, that would still max out at 30 teams per territory, not 35.

    @CG_RyDiggs posted that the increased defensive teams are based on some other secret matchmaking algorithm related to how strong a guild is and is not resticted to the top reward tier. Which is correct?

    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/158998/version-update-2-28-2018-quality-of-life

    Increasing Defensive Squads for Top Guilds: As top Guilds have so many squads, the average of 4 defensive squads per player isn’t allowing them to fully demonstrate the strength of their rosters. To remedy, the average defensive squads will scale up to ~6 per player if both participants are in the highest active GP tier.
  • My question is about the number of defensive teams required in TW.

    My guild is around 130M Total GP and we have had to place 35 teams per territory on defense for the last 2 TW battles.

    According to the Quality of Life update, the increased number of defensive squads is only supposed to apply to the highest active GP tier. Even at 6 teams per player, that would still max out at 30 teams per territory, not 35.

    @CG_RyDiggs posted that the increased defensive teams are based on some other secret matchmaking algorithm related to how strong a guild is and is not resticted to the top reward tier. Which is correct?

    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/158998/version-update-2-28-2018-quality-of-life

    Increasing Defensive Squads for Top Guilds: As top Guilds have so many squads, the average of 4 defensive squads per player isn’t allowing them to fully demonstrate the strength of their rosters. To remedy, the average defensive squads will scale up to ~6 per player if both participants are in the highest active GP tier.
  • Can you remove the cost to remove/swap a mod? This should be an easy fix until Mod Management becomes a thing.

    Just wanted the Devs to see some Quality of Life ideas:

    Individual Toon Screen - Upgrade button (if you have all the gear)
    TW - Sort enemies to attack by ascending / descending
    All Character Screen - Gear Up/ Level Up button on All Characters screen, so you don't have to drill down to upgrade
    Stores - Gray out/darken toons that are already maxed (can still purchase, but they are darker in color
    Cantina Battle Screen - Put toon's face above the node
    Raids - Guild leader/officer can set a zero phase, where no one can "accidentally" hit boss, that has an auto timer/schedule to open for attack
  • Was_Whut
    46 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Some Guild management tools would be extremely welcome!
    What we have, or rather do not have, currently is appalling.
    Same with the Chat function, it's like it's from the early 90's and is still running on 56Kbp/s.
    Filled with lag & delay, not just in messages appearing, but also while actually trying to type!
    Why do you think so many Guilds have had to establish 3rd party communication channels, discord etc?
    Because this aspect of your product is so poor.
    Better administration/management tools, etc. are sorely needed.
  • CG_Carrie wrote: »
    [QUESTION: modbot] Is TW on the verge of going away?
    If it is staying for the long haul, are you open to player input about the match making and rewards structure?

    [CVG] Territory Wars are not on the verge of going away, Territory Battles and Territory Wars were two modes that were intended to satisfy different player types. Battles is where people with collections can show off and Wars is where people who are particularly good at PVP can show off. That's a real simplification of all the intention, but they are meant to be hand in hand in that way.

    The ties solution had the objective to be granular enough to really address ties. Some suggestions we pulled from our beta team had different solutions but weren't granular enough to knock them out completely. Ties, btw, are basically gone at this point - but we expect them to come back as players get better and better.

    That being said, we are open to player feedback for sure, and part of our communication strategy is going to be about how we can better create two-way dialogue on topics like these.

    [QUESTION: zakore] Are 7 dot mods and level cap increase coming? We have several people dedicating a lot of resources and time into upgrading the already existing content, I believe it is a warranted question to ask to know if this is going to cripple us in the long run.

    [CVG] Both the mod system and level system are designed to accommodate future increases in levels. We are not planning to change either in the very near term, but eventually they will be.

    [QUESTION: zakore] Will we start getting a new beta testing process in place? We know only specific players are given access to the beta gameplay however those same folks are utilizing that time to “test the game” to prepare their own rosters to exploit bugs while they last, not report the bugs the correct ways to your teams, and then reap the benefits until your team fixes it. This is not only an unfair practice to everyday players but also creates an even wider gap between your core player base and the elites that are given this special access. I hope you can understand why this is important to your core player base.

    [NR] We're constantly looking for more ways to engage with players about upcoming/unrevealed content. There's a balancing act here that's tricky for us, insofar that we have to get enough players engaged so that the results are relevant and we can make useful changes, but also do our best to protect against leaks and other information getting into the general wild before we are ready to deploy. We have recently deployed an unrestricted beta that anyone could sign up for with Territory Wars and deployed a modified "obscured" beta for the Sith Triumvirate. This is an indicator of our desire to find a way that the beta can fit everyone (including us).

    [QUESTION: zakore] Can we please get a constant flow of professional communication? There are various times when we can’t get an answer to important community questions and issues for months. Even if we could just know it’s getting worked on or receive an update once a week on things being addressed/worked on we would all be extremely grateful

    [CVG] Improving the cadence and quality of our communication is a strong desire of the team. What you're seeing tonight is an effort in that direction. In the coming weeks, I will publish an updated plan for how we plan to keep the communication flowing.

    [QUESTION: Whazn] what is the point of boosting "galactic hero" potency by 30% when the raid boss stacks 50% each turn? Doesn't this make the bonus a total waste? Why not just make all the bosses immune to tmr like sion. That would open up raid strategies for many more squads as well.

    [NR] As we recently detailed in one of my posts, Raids are time capsules. As the game changes, teams and squads that were once relevant in the beginning may drop out in favor of squads that have recently become relevant. The Galactic Hero tag may not seem relevant now, but may become relevant later. Regarding why not make all the Raid Bosses immune to TMR, the simple answer is that we intended some to be immune to TMR and others not. Again as the game changes, some strategies that couldn't be executed may become available later.

    [QUESTION: Iy4oy4s] Here is what I would like to know about:
    Any plan for gear that we have THOUSANDS of piled up? Sell back? Trade up? Something?


    [CVG] The game used to have a way to sell gear and other items. We removed it early on for two reasons: 1) Based on the economy, each item sold yielded very little in terms of Credits; 2) Players would sometimes sell valuable items accidentally which wasn't a great experience. With the addition of Territory Battles and somewhat to a lesser extent Territory Wars, there are more reasons to gear up and otherwise progress all of your characters. Given that, were we to allow players to "burn off" some of the lower-tier items and then bring out a feature that incentivized or even required the progression of other characters, that would also lead to a bad experience. Bottom line, we currently have no plans to convert these overages, and the above explains why we currently don't allow conversion. Hope that makes sense.

    [[QUESTion: ly4oy4s] Any MOD management plans in the future?

    [CVG] We know that Mod Management is one of the hottest topics in the community (along with raid tickets which we fixed, and multi-bronzium purchase, which we have not). It's a much bigger solve than something we can do in a Quality of Life update, but know that it is top of mind. We are talking about what we need to do to improve the clarity of the system, make it easier to use, and make it more balanced across all the different mod types.

    [QUESTION: Ghostrider1982]
    Cadence of Legendary Events?....everyone was tracking a later date on BB/JTR based on previous ones and got a 2 day warning and were totally unprepared, why does this have to be so random and so last minute


    [NR]: We absolutely want to clarify the cadence. After we post our communication strategy, we will systematically answer a number of questions that the community has. One of those topics will be the cadence of Legendary events.

    [QUESTION: Ghostrider1982] Character Release cadence?...it was established at one point and then broken multiple times and now it's just non-existant, especially with a previous road ahead post standing farming for Talzin, Wicket, Nightsister Spirit etc....and still nothing

    [NR]: Similar to the above, we actually have forthcoming communication coming about the Character Release Cadence. We're not ready to unveil it yet, but I can tell you that we are looking to reaffirm it very soon and better articulate the timings, placements, and why we changed some in the past. This is an important topic to us and we're going to bringing this to the players soon. Regarding Talzin and company, we tried something new with the Heroic Event series and it didn't work the way we intended. We'll have a disposition on them soon.

    [QUESTION: Ghostrider1982] Sith Raid? Even with the nerf JTR does over 2x more dmg than any other team on any phase basically so without your entire guild having JTR it's just pointless....what is the point of this, our guild won't be able to progress to next tier until next JTR release now since this one was much faster than others, 3-4-5-6 months who knows?

    [NR] We recently posted about our intentionality around RJT, Expose and the Sith Raid's difficulty. I would say that's the clearest answer to our reasoning around RJT and would refer you to that.

    [QUESTION: Ghostrider1982] With the changes that have occured with online loot boxes/crates on Apple and others is there going to ever be more transparency on odds of rewards when purchasing a box with a certain amount in it. How about the challenges, it says it's possible to get 7 of an item but I don't think it is possible as noone ever has, isn't this false advertising?

    [CVG] Regarding the Apple policy regarding drop rates, we are aware of this policy and are working with Apple on what that means for our game. We don't have specifics at this time.

    [QUESTION: Maegor] Carrie, Eric and Nick,
    Thank you for this unprecedented opportunity to ask questions concerning the game. My name is Maegor, and I am an admin on a discord server for guild leaders, named Make SWGoH Great Again, that guild leaders and officers of just shy of 1,000 guilds, ranging from the very top guilds to new guilds.
    We have formally written and forwarded three letters to your design team in the past. I guess my first question is have those letters been seen by you and other “higher ups” within CG? And if so, we would appreciate any honest feedback about the content of the letters. Are they helpful to your team and would you like us to continue to send them when there is a consensus of a problem among guild leaders?


    [CVG] Hi Maegor, I'm sorry but I don't know precisely which letters you're referring to. We receive a lot of input and communication from people on our team who work in the forums, with beta testers, influencers, Customer Support, QA, etc. So sometimes we don't know where feedback came from always, but I would need more info to say for sure. The best way to get feedback to our design team is through one of those channels (beta testers, influencers, forums, Customer Support).

    [QUESTION: Maegor] Moving on to the sith raid, I feel that currently there is an issue with the amount of health in the T6 and below tiers of the new raid. Please know that my guild is currently running heroic, so this issue does not directly affect me. But many guild leaders are discussing player ennui with the new raid because there is constantly one active. The issue is that as soon as you can defeat a T6 in the amount of time that you can actually deplete your raid tickets, you are ready for heroic. Right now, the rule of thumb is that if you can do t6 in under two resets, you are ready for heroic. I think if t6 and below had a 25-35% cut in health across the board, you would see less frustration with the new raid from guilds that cannot complete heroic.

    [NR] RE: Sith Raid Health: I appreciate the feedback on the health of the raid. We tried some new things with the Sith Triumvirate regarding mechanics. We want players to engage with these mechanics deeply. In our testing, maximizing the mechanics tends to result in higher performance. This is intentional on our part.
    However, we are constantly evaluating the player's experience with the raids through a combination of data we collect on our side and player sentiment through the forums to see if there is drift from our expectations. At present, we're happy with the health of the raid and how players are making their way through it. If we begin to see something that causes major concern, we'll address as soon as reasonably possible.

    [QUESTION: SGMiller87] On this post:
    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/155669/content-update-1-25-2018#latest
    you mentioned that Wicket and the NS would be coming to the table as farmable toons in the future. Would it be possible to get an update on when this will be happening?


    [CVG] Above Nick answered a question about the character cadence and that we plan to release more info about that in the coming weeks. We will make sure this specifically is answered then.

    [QUESTION: Amish_Ace] Hello,
    First I would like to say thank you for taking the time out of your weekend to answer player questions and concerns.
    My question pertains to mods, more specifically, why saved mod sets have not been implemented.


    [CVG] Thanks Amish. Mod sets has an answer above, but thank you for taking the time to suggest some ideas, I've logged it for our discussions. We will definitely be asking the community for more input when it is getting closer to the implementation date.

    [QUESTION: PsychoPoet] Between the two CG members who engage with the community most often, there is a severe lack of proffesionalism, and this worries me more than anything else in the game right now...

    [CVG] First off, thanks for taking the time to participate in this Q&A. You raise a good topic, and it's something we've worked on really since the launch of the game. There is a lot of passion on both sides of the conversation (from the players and from the team) and this can sometimes lead to elevated levels of emotion. At times, this can be positive, of course. But I also know it can turn toxic. That is something we would really like to fix -- and it's going to take effort from both sides. We're hoping that this Q&A tonight is a good next step in getting to a better level of communication. As tonight progresses and as we keep things moving over the coming days and week, we're hoping that we will be able to achieve a more regular cadence of clear messaging from our side, along with a reduction of angst / anger / toxicity across the board.

    [QUESTION: Caiz] Greetings,
    I have a couple of DS TB issues that I have posted over at answers and never have gotten a response on.
    Issue 1: Dark Side Territory Phase 5 has improper distribution of TB Points required.
    Issue 2: Dark Side Squads and Platoons have incorrect point bonuses when compared to light side configurations.


    [NR]1. RE: TB Point Distribution: As we work with our feature systems, we regularly try new things with new content. What you're pointing to is something we intentionally changed for the DSTB (similar to the number of waves, faction requirements, etc.) and how we reward collection size.
    2. RE: Incorrect Point Bonuses: I'd need to see some specifics, but I'm not aware of any bugs with the DSTB Squads and Platoons. We do have QA file bugs that are posted on Answers HQ, so please start there and we will look into it.
    We regularly review our larger pieces of content. At some point, LSTB and DSTB will come up and we'll determine if there's any changes we need to make. There are things we like about each and we also like that they're different - later content is intentionally more challenging to match increased power levels, but we don't want it to be prohibitively difficult.

    [QUESTION: KP67s] There are a few bugs and AI issues that have been present, both in the past and currently, which I believe should be addressed.
    [Bugs]
    So Q:
    What exactly is the timeline in how an AI issue is evaluated and approached? From the time a bug or AI issue is posted on Answers HQ or here, what would be the expected turnaround time for the issue to be fixed?


    [NR] 1. RE: Bugs/AI: I just personally wrote these down and will make sure they're logged in our JIRA (bug tracking database). I don't have an answer for you right now, but I'll look into it.
    2. RE: AI Evaluation Generally: It varies, honestly. Length of time depends on if we have a big piece of content we're working on in the background (like the Sith Triumvirate) and whether it is an issue from a design intent perspective and a system capability perspective. So the answer is ultimately it depends, but we largely treat them alot like other bugs. How many people are affected? Is it outside our design? Etc. I can tell you that the design team and I regularly talk about AI priorities and issues on a weekly basis, so it's not something we ignore.

    [QUESTION: Minowara] Hello!! Can you provide any clarity on why a more complex TW pairing method is superior to simply matching closely on GP of participating members? Shouldn't GP capture additional factors like # of G12, rosters, etc...?

    [CVG] GP while intended to reflect the overall power of characters doesn't always capture the nuance of good synergies and so while it can be a benchmark for overall power - it is actually not sufficient for something as intricate as matchmaking. Nightsisters are good example of where the GP doesn't reflect the power of the squad.

    [QUESTION: medetec] If we can only get one question, I’d like to talk through raids. Questions in order of priority for me if you can grab more.
    1) What is the plan to address raids going forwards, and the time commitment required? As we continue to stack more raids onto our plates, all of which as still have much needed rewards, they become harder to schedule and more time consuming to deal with. An eventual 4th raid and onwards would be even more difficult.


    [CVG] Hi medetec - One way in which time should be reduced for Raids is that Guilds should "level up" as they progress in the overall game and thus the Rancor Raid Heroic can go on farm mode while the Guild is still challenged by the AAT Raid. And, then once the AAT Heroic goes on farm mode, the Guild can tackle the Sith Triumvirate Raid. This is something I've taken from many years in MMO games.
    Beyond that, we are talking about other ways to make Raids easier to manage for the guild leaders and the guild members. We've just posed a question to our beta testers about an idea we have for raid management auto-join and auto-start. This doesn't mean that work is imminent, but usually when we feel good about something we want to do, the next step is to ask for feedback from our beta group and influencers, and then we go about figuring out when it's going to be in the game.
    Also we are reviewing Raid rewards, but are not ready to share any changes there.

    QUESTION: AaronBurrSir] Is there a technical reason in why we can't do Bronzium multipulls?

    [CVG] The technical answer is that handling a massive number of drops is not currently supported in the game. That said, it would be possible (with work) to enable that. We have been talking about what to do with the Bronzium packs and system overall, and haven't yet landed on where we think this aspect of the game should go yet. All that currency was introduced with the tournament system and was intended to be used for that. We weren't prepared for it to be used only for bronzium packs, so it will be more challenging than simply enabling that functionality.

    [QUESTION: gohwolfpack]
    Hey CG,
    What precautions will you put in place to protect players, especially minors, from the gambling aspects of the game...particularly anything where the odds aren't clear and money is involved...crystal drops for characters, etc?


    [CVG] This is obviously a very touchy subject. Aspects of chance and random outcomes have existed in games and collection activities throughout the ages. Consider baseball card packs, or collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, or even rolling dice in D&D or other table top games. A fundamental theme to these types of games -- both in the collection of characters and items as well as in the combat or gameplay -- is randomness and chance. Our game is a hybrid RPG / CCG (Role Playing Game / Collectible Card Game). And, like its predecessors, we likewise have random outcomes woven throughout the experience.

    QUESTION: Rak_Frondar] Can you guys talk about your plans for ships?

    [CVG] The short answer is not at this time. The reason we don't answer direct questions about things we are planning on working on sometime in the future is because after we start implementation, we can cause missed expectations if we need to change plans. However, we are presently evaluating/re-evaluating the whole feature and should have something to share in the coming months.

    When will be getting padme?

  • I have a suggestion, add universal shards as rewards for lower tier raids. Shards that can be traded for any Non-legendary, non-raid reward, non event based character shards. We could save them up to use when needed to finish some toon for an event and make really hard to farm characters slightly easier to get. Maybe make them optional heroic rewards, i.e. when claiming a heroic reward "do you want Han Solo or Universal shards?" This could offset a lot of "drop rate" issues and complaints that we all have.
    You could add them to the shard store, 300/1 or 20 shards for 1 universal.
    And of course you could sell them, limits should apply.
  • CG_Carrie wrote: »
    [CVG] The game used to have a way to sell gear and other items. We removed it early on for two reasons: 1) Based on the economy, each item sold yielded very little in terms of Credits; 2) Players would sometimes sell valuable items accidentally which wasn't a great experience. With the addition of Territory Battles and somewhat to a lesser extent Territory Wars, there are more reasons to gear up and otherwise progress all of your characters. Given that, were we to allow players to "burn off" some of the lower-tier items and then bring out a feature that incentivized or even required the progression of other characters, that would also lead to a bad experience. Bottom line, we currently have no plans to convert these overages, and the above explains why we currently don't allow conversion. Hope that makes sense.

    First, I thank the developers for taking time to do this Q&A and hope they do it regularly.

    This quote in particular. Can I just say that pulling a stack of items from a raid that I have 2700 of is unequivocally a "bad experience".

    I do get that maybe trading out or burning off your stash of these items could cause problems -- but I worry that you're missing the very heart of why getting overstocked salvage out of raids is such a grimace-inducing thing for us. We are begging for a resolution to one of the game's worst experiences, and I know it's been implied something might be done, but please stop overlooking how aggravating it is to pull yet more yellow eyeball salvage.

  • Vohbo
    332 posts Member
    I have a suggestion, add universal shards as rewards for lower tier raids. Shards that can be traded for any Non-legendary, non-raid reward, non event based character shards. We could save them up to use when needed to finish some toon for an event and make really hard to farm characters slightly easier to get. Maybe make them optional heroic rewards, i.e. when claiming a heroic reward "do you want Han Solo or Universal shards?" This could offset a lot of "drop rate" issues and complaints that we all have.
    You could add them to the shard store, 300/1 or 20 shards for 1 universal.
    And of course you could sell them, limits should apply.

    This is exactly what they wanted to avoid when characters were in the shard shop, so this probably will not happen (and would be a bid idea in my opinion).
  • Hello !! Will First Order get new characters like Snoke,Hax,Praetorians ?
  • When will be getting padme?
    Probably around the same time that you learn to use quotes, or simply the @ symbol, effectively.
  • Was_Whut
    46 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    Viserys wrote: »
    This quote in particular. Can I just say that pulling a stack of items from a raid that I have 2700 of is unequivocally a "bad experience".

    I do get that maybe trading out or burning off your stash of these items could cause problems -- but I worry that you're missing the very heart of why getting overstocked salvage out of raids is such a grimace-inducing thing for us. We are begging for a resolution to one of the game's worst experiences, and I know it's been implied something might be done, but please stop overlooking how aggravating it is to pull yet more yellow eyeball salvage.
    Even if they just made it required for more characters, especially looking at new ones, this would actually give them some value and change from a groan of disappointment to either ambivalence (at worst) or pleasure on receipt.

    When a groan of disappointment becomes a regular occurrence, this leads to frustration & anger, along with a lack of care for the product, as a whole.
  • kalidor
    2121 posts Member
    Viserys wrote: »
    CG_Carrie wrote: »
    [CVG] The game used to have a way to sell gear and other items. We removed it early on for two reasons: 1) Based on the economy, each item sold yielded very little in terms of Credits; 2) Players would sometimes sell valuable items accidentally which wasn't a great experience. With the addition of Territory Battles and somewhat to a lesser extent Territory Wars, there are more reasons to gear up and otherwise progress all of your characters. Given that, were we to allow players to "burn off" some of the lower-tier items and then bring out a feature that incentivized or even required the progression of other characters, that would also lead to a bad experience. Bottom line, we currently have no plans to convert these overages, and the above explains why we currently don't allow conversion. Hope that makes sense.

    First, I thank the developers for taking time to do this Q&A and hope they do it regularly.

    This quote in particular. Can I just say that pulling a stack of items from a raid that I have 2700 of is unequivocally a "bad experience".

    I do get that maybe trading out or burning off your stash of these items could cause problems -- but I worry that you're missing the very heart of why getting overstocked salvage out of raids is such a grimace-inducing thing for us. We are begging for a resolution to one of the game's worst experiences, and I know it's been implied something might be done, but please stop overlooking how aggravating it is to pull yet more yellow eyeball salvage.

    The devs are concerned about an issue which simply doesn't exist anymore. The ability to sell gear was removed 2 years ago, when players didn't have a lot of gear to begin with. The QoL update then added the green dot to gear which is needed, and in 2 years players have stockpiled enough of certain gear that a hero could be released that only requires that particular gear in every slot - and it'd still barely make a dent.
    I believe they should do the same thing that they've done with shards, but for gear - the ability to trade them in for a currency that can be used to buy useful stuff. Maybe you get 1 currency for 15 whites, 5 blues or 2 purples. Could even reuse the shard shop currency for that. At least then it wouldn't feel like a total loss - kind of like how when I get Vader's X2 in the Empire event, I'm okay with that since it nets me 76 shard currency, despite the fact that I really want reaper shards.
    xSWCr - Nov '15 shard - swgoh.gg kalidor-m
  • Was_Whut
    46 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    I have to say that I'm a little disappointed by this rushed Q & A.
    It simply serves to further exemplify the knee-**** reactionary nature of the company & its employees.

    If you have such a major issue that you feel the need to do something immediately, conducting it when a large portion of your audience are asleep & those that are not are given 1hr notice, is rather ridiculous.

    Had you scheduled & announced this for, say 21:00 GMT on Monday, then everyone who wanted to would have been able to participate & you would have gained far more perspective.

    Instead, what we get is another knee-**** reaction to justified criticism & 1hr notice of something occurring outside of a lot of people's scope.
    Plan things and respond appropriately/professionally. It's really not difficult.

    This is precisely the reason so many players got annoyed with the nerfs - they were knee-**** reactions, rather than properly planned and communicated incidents.
    Yes, they were communicated, but without comprehensive details of what is happening, communication that "something" is going to happen, has zero value.

    Mistakes of CG's making that negatively impact the player base, should never have a resolution which negatively impacts the player base.
    You would think this was merely common sense.
  • Dretzle
    716 posts Member
    CG_Carrie wrote: »
    [QUESTION: Kifaru12] Can we please have a practice mode for PVP?

    [NR] At the moment we have no plans to build a practice mode for PvP. There are two reasons for this:
    1. There are other features that, we feel, are higher impact/priority to the playerbase. We know this is a common request, but we think there are some more "fun" things that we can produce instead. If we ultimately find that we have room and nothing competing in priority, we'd consider picking it up.
    2. A practice mode (at least what we see commonly requested for) would be unbounded in its time commitment (meaning you could play it all the time and unlimitedly). We are aware of the current time the game requests of player, we are hesitant to add more to it at this time.
    3. Having added Simming to Galactic War, we are looking at how much people play through it voluntarily, as it is a leading indicator of how much people want to play something like a Practice Mode.

    I'm sorry, but you are being very narrow-minded in your evaluation of the situation, for the following reasons:

    1) The practice mode you could provide would not add any time commitment to players. No rewards would be mean no feeling of commitment to play it. It would simply be an area where players could (a) play as much or as little as they want and (b) be able to test out teams like they can't in arena or territory wars.

    2) Galactic War is not a fair way to evaluate how much people want to play something like Practice Mode. The problems with that idea are (a) the teams in GW are random, (b) the teams in GW are typically weak. Even if it was raised back to its old difficulty level, the teams in GW are random therefore we cannot try specific strategies against specific teams. Even if that wasn't true, because health and turn meter are carried over from one node to the next, you can't really practice the way you need. TLDR; GW is not a practice area and would not be a good indicator of how people would want to use a practice area.

    3) According to one player run survey I've seen, the Sith raid is very unfun, so please don't tell us the reason we don't want what we want is because you can give us fun stuff instead. DS TB, too, is overwhelmingly seen as unfun because of the huge reliance on pay-to-play characters required to apply any sort of valid strategy in phases 4 - 6.

    4) I feel that you are missing the point of a practice area completely; maybe this is because the devs are able to practice at will and don't realize what they are getting from that.

    The arena is not a practice area; if you try to use it as such, you will just end up spending lots of crystals, which CG may think is a great money maker, but it actually leads to player frustration and either not using the arena or worse. You also can't play against any specific team if that team composition is not in your current reach in arena.

    You've created an environment with Territory Wars and increasingly complicated mechanics needed in the squad arena that necessitates a practice area. You did well with allowing us to see how many battles our team defends in Territory Wars, but without a practice area I can't see why that team may be doing well, or not, on defense, so I can't improve it. Also, theory crafting only goes so far. Without a practice area, you can't see if your imagined team composition would do any good in arena. See above why that would actually discourage me from playing in the arena, not the other way around.

    A practice area would lead to increased player engagement. People would love to be trying out new stuff and diversifying the arena or territory wars. As it is, we have to rely on the game changers, which leads to stale gaming.
  • Hello,

    I wanted to ask something regarding the future of the game rather than go over things that have already been addressed. One of my favorite characters is Starkiller from The Force Unleashed. I was very sad when it was deemed no longer cannon. I was hoping that at some point we may be able to get a version of him in this game as well as some other non-cannon characters such as Mira Skywalker or Jaecen and Jaina Solo. So my question is this; Is it possible that we may see some non-cannon characters in the future (distant or not so distant)?
  • Was_Whut
    46 posts Member
    edited March 2018
    TrowaJedi wrote: »
    Hello,

    I wanted to ask something regarding the future of the game rather than go over things that have already been addressed. One of my favorite characters is Starkiller from The Force Unleashed. I was very sad when it was deemed no longer cannon. I was hoping that at some point we may be able to get a version of him in this game as well as some other non-cannon characters such as Mira Skywalker or Jaecen and Jaina Solo. So my question is this; Is it possible that we may see some non-cannon characters in the future (distant or not so distant)?
    As this is entirely a canon game, allowed by the licence proprietor, I would very much doubt it.
    There is nothing in the game, or has ever been in the game to my knowledge, that is not canon.
    None of the EU/Legends stuff is here.
  • botabu
    246 posts Member
    So many responses yet so little said. Just answer the questions.... my god. Still ignoring the gear issues. Seriously, what does a level 85 players need ANY of the gear that we have thousands of from the challenges for? Just be honest with the community and say that players buying gear is a BIG area of profit for you guys.
  • @Dretzle All of your points are more than valid. Practice would increase arena efficiency (and potentially PvE efficiency depending on its implementation). While I initially thought this would be bad for profitability, as different players would master their opponents earlier, I'm starting to think the opposite. It might actually increase arena churn, causing larger drops and a higher reliance on paid refreshes or mod investment to secure rank....yeah, let's stay away from this.
  • Viserys
    461 posts Member
    Was_Whut wrote: »
    Viserys wrote: »
    This quote in particular. Can I just say that pulling a stack of items from a raid that I have 2700 of is unequivocally a "bad experience".

    I do get that maybe trading out or burning off your stash of these items could cause problems -- but I worry that you're missing the very heart of why getting overstocked salvage out of raids is such a grimace-inducing thing for us. We are begging for a resolution to one of the game's worst experiences, and I know it's been implied something might be done, but please stop overlooking how aggravating it is to pull yet more yellow eyeball salvage.
    Even if they just made it required for more characters, especially looking at new ones, this would actually give them some value and change from a groan of disappointment to either ambivalence (at worst) or pleasure on receipt.

    When a groan of disappointment becomes a regular occurrence, this leads to frustration & anger, along with a lack of care for the product, as a whole.

    Well the truth is that the overstock on a lot of these gear pieces aren't a function of how many characters need the gear, but a function of the uptake rates on two different required components.

    Even if every character needed six Mk8 BioTech Implants (eyeballs), I couldn't burn off my stash of the salvage because the bottleneck is the Mk8 BioTech Implant Component, and not the salvage. Unless my uptake rate of the component increases my stash of salvage will just keep growing forever. It kind of begs the question of why the salvage piece exists at all - because if it didn't, I'd still be completing Mk8 BioTech Implants at exactly the same rate. It's a cursory reward piece that will invariably stack on every account in the same way it does on mine. The only way a player would be lacking these is if they didn't do the content that drops it at all. From a mechanical/economic design standpoint the Mk8 BioTech Implant Salvage has no reason to exist and no actual value. It's a reward cloaked in a disguise of value that's not actually a reward at all -- veteran players understand this and that's why receiving these is so offensive.

    On some other salvage pieces the salvage makes more sense, because it is used on other pieces (I'm looking at you Carbanti salvage) which is why we are running out of it all the time. The Mk3 Carbanti is used not only to craft a stand alone piece, but several other commonly required pieces as well.
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