Update to Raid Reward Changes - 4/11/18

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Kyno
32087 posts Moderator
CG_Carrie wrote:
Hello everybody,
With today’s raid reward changes, many people noticed that the chance of receiving a full piece of gear in the Heroic Tier had been lowered. This was an overcorrection and we are partially rolling it back. Now anybody who completes the Heroic Tier will get one guaranteed full piece.
Below is our explanation, forgive the wordiness but in order to explain the reasoning for this, we need to get into some heady topics.
---TL;DR Version---
We had changed the droprate from a tiered percentage chance to a flat 40% to accommodate an additional two slots of Gear XII coming in May exclusively to the Heroic Tier. In the spirit of communication, we did say why because we don't want to promise something too early and then not end up delivering it on time. However after reviewing internally we feel confident that we can hit the May date, and we are rolling back the chance of a full gear piece from the Heroic Tier to 100% across all ranks, until the new rewards are live, at which point we will reevaluate. All of the other changes remain the same (including the flattening of rewards across ranks, the expansion of the full piece pool beyond strictly GXII, the removal of many pieces of low-demand salvage, and the changes to Guild Currency and Guild Event Tokens), and we will continue to monitor the impact of these other changes as players continue to launch & complete raids.
We will make this change sometime in the next two weeks and ensure that a makegood, equivalent to roughly 2-4 pieces of full gear pieces, is provided to anybody who has completed the Heroic raid during this time period.
Thanks for your feedback during this rollout.
---Longer Version---
First, we'd like to apologize for one piece of improper expectations-setting in our announcement of the raid rewards changes. Specifically, for the Heroic Tier, the Guild Currency & Guild Event Token "steepening" was never intended to fully offset the reduction in value of all of the gear changes for top-ranking players. It was intended to preserve some incentive for finishing in the top ranks, since we reduced that incentive by flattening gear rewards (for the overall well-being of guilds and of the game).
We made an oversight in wording in the initial announcement of the changes, and while the top-ranked Guild Currency and Guild Event Token rewards are significantly better than before, it doesn’t fully make up for the full piece odds drops, especially for ranks #1-3.
Second, in our initial tuning, we overshot the mark in the odds of full GXII piece drops. Players who have the Sith Heroic Raid on farm, completing it twice a week without fail, consistently getting 1 or more full GXII pieces (emphasis on GXII because of the immense value of those gear pieces in combat), will pull away from the rest of the population in a way that is truly detrimental to the long-term health of the game.
Without diving too much into the underlying value of the various pieces of the gear economy, we have been looking at internal data from the first few weeks of Heroic results, and we had settled on a 40% flat chance of a full complete piece, in the Heroic Tier, across all ranks, as a reasonable long-term goal for the value of the effort of completing the Heroic Tier when you include the expansion pieces of Gear XII.
Third, we have changed the full piece pool from Gear XII, to a broader array of desired pieces. Despite its combat utility and theoretical demand, Gear XII is not as all-encompassing a concern for some players as concerns about Mk3 Carbantis, Mk5 Stun Guns, some formerly AAT-exclusive pieces, Gear XI finishers, etc. All of which are now in the complete piece pool.
However, it's clear that the aggregate amount of effort (gear & ability investment, time, offline theorycrafting, and coordination) required to complete the Sith Heroic Tier is still too high to lower the complete piece odds at this time. Our target for the long run remains a 40% chance of a full gear piece (GXII, GXI finishers, highly pinched Raid Gear, or a handful of other high-demand pieces), plus the rewards from the expansion of GXII but until:
We have had a chance to reevaluate Heroic reward results once the new gear is out.
We see sustained evidence that players have their teams ready to go and are deploying them to consistently beat Heroic in larger numbers, we'll keep the complete piece chance at 100%.
Players will receive advance notice from us in the future when we are ready to make this change.
To our Heroic raiders: please take some time over the next couple of weeks and take a look at the aggregate GP lift among your guildmates, your aggregate result in Territory Battles and Territory Wars, and the rate of growth in ALL players' ability to complete the raid, over the coming weeks, as a result of these changes (including the rollback to 100% which we will deploy inside of the next two weeks). Know that your efforts will result in early access to the next release of gear. Know that we are always looking for more ways to reward you, and will be rolling out changes that reward the level of cooperation and cohesion that you have already established and that the vast majority of players are still working towards. We know that the adjustment may be painful for top-performing guildmates at first, but we are confident that this will be a net positive for players and for the game in the long run.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback and we'll see you on the holotables,
-Carrie

<<DEV Post>>

Replies

  • sying
    982 posts Member
    I know a lot of people are discussing raid rewards, atm. Almost every chat I’m in exploded today when people saw the new reward system. Don’t worry, cg is already on it.

    Here’s the thing, though. It seems to me in the past that cg puts out an update that players don’t like and they know that players won’t like it. CG then puts out a fix to appease the player base, as they should. Here’s the rub. The fix is what cg wanted anyway and they knew that if they put out something worse first that the players would think that the “fix” is a good thing.

    Moreover, and this is probably a bigger stretch (but then again, probably not), the necessity of updating raid rewards to begin with is pretty much on cg. It’s pretty apparent that we’re simply getting less and not just less challenge gear or whatever else their claim for this update was for. We’re getting less because so many people are completing this harder than ever new raid that cg put out and so many are completing it because they brought back jtr right after the sith raid dropped.

    I submit we are getting played. By tonight or maybe tomorrow morning (which is pretty fast if you consider how long it took from the time this update was announced to the time of the actual update) a fix will come in and the players will quiet down.

    That’s the real status quo.
  • The old bait and switch.... Sying speaks truth! Couldn't agree more with this assertion.
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    I can remember a 10+ page thank you thread after changing HRSoldier back to a 5* minimum requirement. it was hilarious. Somewhat comparable to thanking a bully for not punching you.
    Anyway, the question remains whether that is a bad thing or not. If the players end up being content with the changes, does it really matter that they're being played?
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • Well, a few extra Traya shards aren’t worth the hours I was spending on this raid up until now. Multiple guildmates got better rewards from our pit today.

    I’m not remodding, restarting mumtiple times, losing sleep and breaks at work, for 36! Salvage pieces that will probably get as repetitive as MK5 furnaces from the pit.

    I’ll probably get booted from my guild for my upcoming low Sith raid participation.
  • TVF
    36526 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    Sounds like you need a new guild lol. This is still a game, right? No one should be losing sleep over it, figuratively or literally.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • That entails staying up later than I should waiting for Zerg, and ducking out at work more than I ought to when a new phase opens up.

    My post was not a guild bash or a “woe is me” post....it was me saying I won’t work the same amount or more for less pay. Not for a game, not in real life. And that’s exactly what this was....a pay cut.
  • TVF
    36526 posts Member
    If you're staying up too late or ducking out of work, I'd say you're taking this game way too seriously. But maybe that's just me.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • Sounds like all the ones who haven’t completed heroic already are getting the short end of the stick. The ones who have been able to complete it have been receiving multiple g12 items. Now when we do complete it we will get 1 g12 item but if done may or later looks like we will only have a 40% chance of it then.
  • Krwind
    54 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    @CG_Carrie whatever you are having, i would like to smoke it too. why not just be candid and say that the value of the previous rewards were costing you guys crystals thus the need to nerf the reward structure completely.

    hiding behind all these smokescreen reasons is just disgusting
  • jedibaer71
    575 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    with the little rewards i got today for a three day tier 5 sith raid rank 2, we can try the heroic raid in 2020.

    that‘s why the question of heroic sith raid rewards is academic for my guild... (nearly 120m gp and tired of doing raids for these rewards...)

    btw: in the last 5 haat raids (always top3) i got ONE full gear piece. and today one player of my arena shard posted his rewards for rank 21 in the pit: 2 full gear pieces!

    very motivating!

    update: 5 minutes ago: rank2/haat: no full gear piece, but 36 challenge gear...
    Post edited by jedibaer71 on
  • QJinX
    219 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    I was wrong in the other topic.

    They are completely and utterly out of touch with the player base.

    My money says this leads to a mass exodus of upper tier players. Really, enough is enough.

    Miniscule rewards for a raid that ISNT FUN. This fact keeps being ignored. Being able to finish it, and wanting to finish it is very, very different. The Sith Raid experiment didnt work. You tried. Time to bring the difficulty in line with the mid range guilds and move on. You folks over there at CG are now officially beating the dead horse also known as the Sith Raid.
  • Banth
    158 posts Member
    in our initial tuning, we overshot the mark in the odds of full GXII piece drops. Players who have the Sith Heroic Raid on farm, completing it twice a week without fail, consistently getting 1 or more full GXII pieces (emphasis on GXII because of the immense value of those gear pieces in combat), will pull away from the rest of the population in a way that is truly detrimental to the long-term health of the game

    So then how do you explain still selling the g12 pieces in the shop for crystals if that’s truly a concern. Those are much, much easier to obtain.

    This doesn’t even come close to making up for the nerf. Because it’s still a huge nerf. A random useless full piece plus the 36 salvage don’t come anywhere close to what we were getting so please just stop insulting our intelligence and call it what it is. A shameless money grab.

  • RJ__Brando
    1500 posts Moderator
    edited April 2018
    Sigh, with the foresight knowing additional pieces were *hopefully* coming in May, the rewards should have been adjusted prior to rollout of this raid. Unfortunately, this was not the case and there's no way around it, and this will now feel as a nerf.

    Guilds who had the luxury of completing heroic early reaped the inflated rewards while 85% were building up in hopes of a successful heroic attempt. Now, these 85% have been stripped the opportunity to enjoy the multiple fully crafted pieces and are left feeling as though they missed the boat (which is why I made the OG precraft comparison earlier).

  • iAmRyC
    144 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    Wow, thank you @CG_Carrie . Great communication here even if I personally don't like how the changes effect me. I appreciate the time taken to quickly explain the reasoning behind the changes and talking to us like adults that have a mind and business sense.
  • I am not a 100% of what I can think about this. Better late than nothing, but that the current rewards were WAI is shocking. Also some the g12 part of this should have obviously appeared in the announcement last week - that is crucial or not? But it feels like this important change was supposed to be hidden - maybe not intended, but that is how it feels now. Another thing that doesn't help to earn trust.

  • So the rollback that was taken away in a blink will take weeks to reinstate? And once May comes anyone that wasn't doing heoric Sith will get nerfed anyway once they get there? What an update and response to the issue. Wow. Wasn't expecting to still be told that I would be screwed but thanks anyway.
  • Jedi_of_Oz
    547 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    CG_Carrie wrote:
    Second, in our initial tuning, we overshot the mark in the odds of full GXII piece drops. Players who have the Sith Heroic Raid on farm, completing it twice a week without fail, consistently getting 1 or more full GXII pieces (emphasis on GXII because of the immense value of those gear pieces in combat), will pull away from the rest of the population in a way that is truly detrimental to the long-term health of the game.

    What? You mean this is unlike players who chose to invest many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to buy game-related resources?

    Those players also 'will pull away from the rest of the population in a way that is truly detrimental to the long-term health of the game'.

    But I guess they're paying CG/EA to do that so that's okay, right?
  • Notnukin
    83 posts Member
    edited April 2018
    You went on a goodwill tour @cg_carrie and asked us to trust you and said raid rewards would be better and in reading your statement you just got caught not telling us the truth after asking for trust....

    Can you do us a favor and change your avi @cg_carrie?
    Man oh man.
  • Specifically, for the Heroic Tier, the Guild Currency & Guild Event Token "steepening" was never intended to fully offset the reduction in value of all of the gear changes for top-ranking players.

    I cant even... So I won't. Suffice it to say that after my raiding in the afternoon to hit p1, staying up late to hit p3 and setting my alarm for p4 this feels like a real kick in the nuts. You specifically said rewards would be better after this update. I spent many many $ preparing for this raid and after all the gear I got it was a decent investment. So what if the heroic guilds pull away? The others can catch up. This is why I and many others work very hard to be in a competitive guild so we can be more competitive in tw and especially arena.
  • All this about heroic but was there any talk of lower tiers. Taking 2-3 days to do a t6 raid for what were already garbage rewards is going to be even worse if those rewards got the same treatment
  • JJWZP5
    440 posts Member
    So raid rewards were nerfed across the board? I thought you guys were supposed to be increasing rewards, alleviating gear crunch, incentivizing, etc.
  • Ultra
    11452 posts Moderator
    JJWZP5 wrote: »
    So raid rewards were nerfed across the board? I thought you guys were supposed to be increasing rewards, alleviating gear crunch, incentivizing, etc.
    They say what we want to hear but they keep on doing the opposite
  • OK, sounds good. Thanks for letting us know!
  • medetec
    1571 posts Member
    Thanks for going into detail Carrie. The non-RNG based full craft for completing the highest tier of the raid is appreciated. Doing the same for the Rancor and AAT would loosen up some of the lower tier gear stranglehold as well.

    While the heroic g12 loot explosion was fun while it lasted, I understand that it was pushing out more gear earlier in the raid lifecycle than expected. This seems like a fair compromise, and I hope to see the flattened rewards (and hopefully some sort of autojoin feature) in the older raids as well.
  • They are apparently deaf to feedback or just don't care. I'm not sure which is true anymore. But one thing is certain, this game is moving in a bad direction at a a time when there is now a direct competitor.
  • BrtStlnd
    1094 posts Member
    My one comment overal re: the STR rewards... you guys talked about making this really difficult puzzle that had to be figured out by guilds. The rewards for beating the puzzle are not commensurate with the effort.

    Guilds have been ripped apart for these rewards, they need to be really good.
  • So the flattened rewards will still come in such pitiful amounts across all tiers?
  • How about rollback the update and work towards a better one in 2 weeks and make good to the few you screwed over that seems easier...
This discussion has been closed.