What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
--T3 mostly, T4 a few times, T5 once (abandoned) when it came out. We now only do T3.
--68 million
--I only use Jedi Rey, Scavenger Rey, BB8, Trooper, and Pilot. I used to use other teams, but now I just don't care and only do 1 or 2 attacks. EDIT: To be clear, 1 or 2 attacks the entire raid, not per day.
--How freaking long it is... I can do 5m per attack with that Rey team, but it still takes us 4-5 days just to finish. And when we finally finish, I get maybe 7 Mk2 bacta gel.
--Conceptually it's a great raid. I like fighting all three bosses at the end. But it's just TOO LONG for not nearly enough rewards... I get that the intended main rewards is supposed to be guild store tokens, and that you're supposed to use those to buy the actual gear and characters you want. But GOOD GOD is the raid long... I know it'll be faster if I participate more, but the amount of damage my non-Rey teams do is so low that why even bother? This attitude propagates down the line and overall very few of us actually do more than one attack a day.
Tier 5 mostly, attempting Tier 6s (though they take longer due to health pool)
Currently 114M GP
P1 - CLS/Wiggs/R2/Solo (until RJT comes back)
P2 - GAT w/ Imps [no DT], Phoenix w/ Sabine
P3 - Chexmix
P4 - OG NS
Motivation - gearing up my Nightsisters to the point where I can pull in great scores in an undesirable phase.
Demotivation - knowing only RJT is the all-round best squad is needed for the raid to succeed, and that she is rare
I enjoy the challenge, it brings our guild a new aim to reach for. It gives me reason to farm the squads I am farming right now, that can also help me in other areas of the game i.e. Imps, NS, FO
I don't enjoy the impact it's had upon recruitment. EVERYONE wants Heroic, even if their rosters are not remotely set up for it. Members get impatient if you're not doing Heroic yet. If you find players that don't mind too much about getting Heroic within *insert short time period here* then hold onto them. Most people are so impatient it's infuriating. I don't blame them though... Traya is a beast.
Overall, the raid is a great addition to the game. I don't think it needs to be nerfed/buffed at all in the near future. Just bring back RJT soon for me, yeah?
Our Guild was, and i emphasize WAS, 105 MM GP. Now it is down to 79 MM GP. I am 2.3 MM GP.
We started and tried a Tier 6 when we were 105 MM GP and it took a long long long time. Admittedly it was when it first stared so strategy was not yet formed, but after that we tried tier 5 and it still took a long time to the point we started get bored. So we dropped to Tier 4, but around that time we started losing our heavy hitters who dropped out to join other guilds who were attempting Heroic or doing runs faster. So it became a snowball effect. As more people left it got slower and longer so more people left. Now I think/hope we've plateaued. Thanks for that by the way guys. Because also as a result out TB and TW has now suffered. So really thanks. I can't say that enough. You've done a great job with this raid n not only destroying the fun of the raid, but also other aspects of the game and you taking longer to fix it only exasperates it. So please continue to sit back and gather more data and by all means don't try a temporary fix to make people happy.
OK sarcasm off.
Now at 79 MM GP we do Tier 3 because it takes a long time and to be honest the lower level players want to feel like they can contribute some too and I can empathize with that.
It still takes us about 2-3 days to finish. Squads used are all mentioned above. NS, Troopers, DOT squads. I actually add Bistan to my Zadar run. Sometimes you can get them stacking early if you forfeit and come back even though he dies off pretty quick so it can be worth it. I guess I could invest in better gar for him, but I won't. If he adds 3 stacks before tenacity sky rockets I'm happy.
Not many in our guild have JTR to include me. Got so tired of the cantina grind for nil shards. Many many days in a row of zero shard drops for Chewie or Han so I said forget it and focused on other Cantina toons. Maybe I'll get her one day or I'll wait until the next meta, but my RNG luck is a topic for another thread.
What do I like about it. I mean I was excited for something new. While other don't like DN it's the unpredictable nature that is the worst part and how unforgiving it is. I mean we can all see when his killer move is charged or close so we can all defend, but when he doesn't use it and the AI waits a turn or two that's garbage. It means the mechanic or intent isn't working so it's no fun. You can't build a strategy around unpredictability. Now that the newness is gone I have a bad taste in my mouth (again see how our guild was torn up) so not much I like to be honest.
What do I dislike? The grind and time sink for trash rewards. I don't expect to breeze through a raid when it's first dropped on Heroic day 1. I can solo a HPit in minutes on auto and I get petty good rewards that help my team build. I'm OK on HAAT. It takes our guild a few hours, though now losing the big hitters it can take a day, but the rewards all grow my team for the most part.
So now take a raid that takes 3 days and that's 3 days of grinding RNG each and every day and only getting to do Tier 3, never mind when we tried to grind Tier 4, 5 or 6 and after all that time spent and resources spent trying to build the teams up I get absolutely nothing that will help me get to the next tier. Trash rewards. I can now get my crummy Paploo who is a 5 star gear level 5 to gear level 6. Yay!!!!!! That should be enough to put me over the top and try Tier 4 huh? Nope.
And the worst part is that the longer you delay this fix the more frustrated people will get and they'll leave guilds and the game and as they leave their guilds others will be less able to compete too in team focused challenges so they'll drop off and you're left with pretty uniform player base as opposed to newer lower level players who will seed the future of the game.
Throw in a crummy patch and let every know it's a temp fix as a reward for our patience and shower us with rewards while you sort things out. Maybe put a timer of 30 days on it and make it rain like Pacman Jones. It will make people happy and want to at least continue running the raid in the meantime as opposed to people wanting to avoid it like the plague so when you finally roll out your fix they don't have a bad taste in their mouth.
Traya Destroyer of Guilds
133milgp guild running Heroic
This has been a very polarizing game element. Many guilds have lost long time members. This is mainly because the teams that actually work for the raid are so specific. Players who had several strong teams and deep rosters can't compete, because they are missing the 4 teams that actually work. While they may be able to do thier part. The specific requirements lend to a "why try." Sense of defeat. RNG
This is the next issue I have a jtr squad capable of over 5mil+ damage in P1. It can take 3 hours of restarts to get above 2mil. 15 restarts just trying for my 70%+ potency jtr to land speed down on Nihilus. Then get lucky and pull off an expose on nihilus with burn. All of this so timing lines up correctly, and ID can go off before Nihilus takes a turn. Then you need to restart because UW landed on one of the droids. When all of that lines up expose doesn't land for 2 full turns and nihilus ends up 1 turn from drain force. He takes someones buffs then nearly kills half the team with an overpowered force drain.
His tenacity stacks why does he need to be impossible to land a debuff on before he is hit?
He is already dangerous enough with the random I might annihilate I might not. Why does he need to steal buffs? Lowering initial tenacity, and removing the ability to steal buffs would not increase my total final score, but it would make it so I could get that score without hours of frustration. Restarts would still be required timing nihilus's annihilates would still add the element of difficulty. Currently it feels more like P1 was made for a self loathing masochist. Another "why try" point. Rewards
After all of this you can unlock Traya in 10 weeks to 7* in 23 this is with 7shards per raid average. Doan't count on a better average because P4 you will go from 1st to 14th when several people get millions from the damage bug. Give everyone max Traya shards until you fix this bug.
I do enjoy playing with P2 team comps. Looking for ways to squeak out another 100k dmg. For example the idea that freeing Thrawn up from X team lowers my dmg by 100k, but can increase another teams damage by 200k. Again the dmg bug is a bit of a shot to the gut here. "Why Try?"
Jtr (shock)
Phoenix and Sith
Chexmix
Nightsisters, kru fo and then the kitchen sink
Demotivated me? All of it. Had a moment of joy at completing our 1st heroic a few days ago which didn't last long largely because as soon as we started the next one I remembered the time and frustration required to do it. This has been said before but a team comp and strategy should either work or not. Yes rng will mean a variance in your runs and that's fine but not to this degree. 30/40 restarts taking an hour or 2 for a decent score when you've already spent 30 mins remodding so the speeds/turn order are perfect is NOT fun. The tenacity thing, I've got nothing new to add, devs reading this surely you can see the theme here? Probably the **** mechanic in any aspect of this game. How many awesome characters have you given us that use debuff? So you make a raid you can't debuff.... genius... So many teams utterly obsolete. G12 zetad chars just gathering dust... deal with the tenacity and sort out the rng on at least DN in terms of annihilate and treyas sabers starting buffs (start them all with only advantage, no foresight or counter) everybody just restarts until you get that anyway so do us a favour and just make it that way.
Rewards at t7 are good but below are a joke. Buff the lower tiers please even though this doesn't affect me now they really are poor. I think people are disappointed because there is a good raid in there it's just buried under some truly horrific mistakes and poor time/reward ratio.
Raid is simplified to:
-HP too high
-p1 and p4 just rng based and unfun (speed buff makes all planing unpredictable)
-extreme need for unresistable attacks (tenacity buff)
-low raid attendence (many people simply do not like this raid)
-bad rewards on t1 - t6 (t6 has triple? hp of t7 which is insane - combined like 620m?)
-raid difficulty for t1 - t5 not fitting the level, equipment level or rewards
+good gfx
+nice characters
+nice rewards on t7
Update with the 35mil gp guild i lead. After reading this forum I went back and had an open discussion with my guild. We have unanimously voted to bump down to tier 1 and just use the raid as a guild token farm, which people can do or do not (there is no try) at their preference. Everyone agrees the rewards versus time and effort required are inequitable. A lot of positive chat about this particular forum thread though, and hopes you will fix it. Thanks!
Doing heroic. Rewards are fine and worth the time sink. Having seen the lower tier rewards before, you guys definitely need to boost the lower tier rewards or lower the difficulty. It's a joke how guilds that can clear HAAT easily have to plow through T4 over 3 day just for poorer-than-hpit rewards. Only heroic rewards seem to match the difficulty involved.
Doing heroic. Rewards are fine and worth the time sink. Having seen the lower tier rewards before, you guys definitely need to boost the lower tier rewards or lower the difficulty. It's a joke how guilds that can clear HAAT easily have to plow through T4 over 3 day just for poorer-than-hpit rewards. Only heroic rewards seem to match the difficulty involved.
What tier or tiers did you play? VI once, heroic ever since. What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? We're 165mil+ now 139 mil (this is not due to the raid, this is due to TW burnout/annoyance). What teams you did you attempt the raid with? JTRey, Nightsisters, Chex Mix, Phoenix, Imperial Troopers, kitchen sink for P4. What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? I'm motivated by the gear and Traya shards. It was disheartening when the rewards were changed (demotivation). When they were changed back, we all were motivated again. What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? I enjoy the difficulty and the mechanics. The only thing I don't really "like" is the fact that the stacking tenacity effectively neuters Sith teams. As a DS player, it's somewhat annoying, but not a huge deal.
2) What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
140 million.
3) What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
For heroic JTR, thrawn with troopers, machine gun leia, chex mix, nightsisters, kitchen sink.
4) What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
The only thing that motivates me is the rewards. What is demotivating is the actual raid mechanics seem to be mostly based on getting good rng and the rewards for tiers below heroic are not good for the time required.
5) What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I like the idea that the raid was supposed to be a challenge but it really isn't and is just more about retrying till you get the right rng. I actually sort of like phase 1 if you have JTR if you don't it sucks. Even with JTR Nihilus is a little too unpredictable with his one shot mechanic which is pretty annoying. This raid actually killed my original guild because people did not want to participate and quit due to the raid taking so long to complete for bad rewards below heroic. Perhaps people are missing something but phase 3 is the worst in heroic to me because it just relies on a really heavy rng team to complete. Many of my friends have been thinking about quitting because you just don't have a real shot at heroic without JTR unless someone is going to carry you no matter how strong your other characters are. I dislike that the bosses basically attempt to shut down the mechanics of most the teams in the game making it so you can only win with very specific teams.
We can clear it without much trouble, but literally no one enjoys doing it.
This is a really important sentence for the Devs to think about.
Even the people that can do it, are not enjoying it.
That's not good.
I doubt anyone in game would complain if it was shut down. No one would miss it.
To the Devs, you tried and built a wonderful looking area, but..the mechanics are completely flawed. There is no shame in admitting it didn't meet expectations, and close it for now, or simply scrap it and move on. With all the glaring issues in game, far too much time has been invested (on both sides), far too many have walked away. Far to many guilds have been crushed, to justify the continued existence of the Sith raid as it is. As is, based on feedback here and those that will not post on forums but have echoed the sentiments others have here, why put any more time into it? Send it back to alpha, revamp the rewards for existing raids, monitor them and you will see the path to your next and future endeavors based on reports etc of success/failures. This is not meant to be a derogatory complaint. Sometimes you just need to cut your loses and walk away.
With 10 days to GDPR launching, you have your schedules jammed with things to address. It speaks highly of your desire to listen and learn by reaching out to us. I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. I hope all goes well and your jobs become fun again (with all the negativity around this raid and your existing workload, I don't envy you).
Good post and I agree.
I guess what saddens me is the Raid obviously took a lot of work. It looks beautiful. And it's a great, dark idea. I love what they tried to do.
It's just not any fun. Which is a problem as this is a game.
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Seems unfortunate that this is one of your first assignments to get to know the community.
What tier or tiers did you play?
We've done T5 & 6 with 2 checks on Heroic progress (we can't clear hP1).
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
128M.
I'm 2.2M of that, which is around 40th place out of 50 in terms of total GP.
What teams did you attempt the raid with?
My teams that do reasonable damage are Zader, CLS+Chaze, and bounty hunters.
And then I've also tested many things that did trash damage.
(As an aside: I cannot believe that the BH rework did not address what I feel is one of the most flawed mechanics in the game: that tenacity determines whether thermal detonators stick or not. Thermal detonators ought to behave like delayed attacks: they should be dodgeable, not resistable, and they shouldn't be able to be cleansed. It just makes no sense the way they're implemented now.)
What part of the raid motivated you to keep trying?
I'm helping my guildmates.
That's literally the only reason I do anything in this raid, I help decrease the amount of time spent overall.
What part of the raid demotivated you to keep trying?
Yeah, all of it. Except P2, I like P2 because I have teams that can do well in it. (Problem is, everyone else in the guild likes P2 too, so I usually don't get more than one go at it)
It's been stated many times already, but I'll say it again: Nihilus makes many teams completely irrelevant. I understand that balance is hard, but from where we're standing it looks like no amount of gear or leveling makes an irrelevant team become relevant; no, your choices are to build the teams that do well or resign yourself to pathetic damage. So that's what I'm doing, I'm working on acquiring the teams that do well.
It would be nice if the gear that we get from the lower tiers helped ease those team grinds a bit. But no, that's not the case. We just completed a T6, I think it took a week, and I placed 17th -- which is really telling about how bad the participation is, most days were me throwing 5 teams in on auto and calling it fine -- and what I got for rewards were all gear pieces that I've no less than several hundred of already, and then some of the Mk IX Datapad which I have 3000 of thanks to it being useless challenge gear. Also 2 pieces each of G12 gear, which is nice, none of my toons needed those particular pieces but they're good to stockpile. Let's about that G12 gear, though: for the same week's worth of time devoted, I would get enough GES currency from TB to buy 5-10 piece shipments of G12 gear, which I can choose the flavor of, 10x. I don't blame anyone in the guild for not wanting to participate, even though it'd probably at least halve the amount of time spent on it: it's just not motivating at all when we get this caliber of reward.
There's also a significant amount of complexity creep. I'll be honest, I was pretty discouraged even before we started our first raid when I encountered a virtual wall of text that I had to read and commit to memory if I wanted to try to build teams that could do really well (a mostly fruitless effort anyways since I lack certain key toons named JTR).
So I decided not to do that, I'll just wait for the meta teams to get announced and copy/paste from them. If that's how I have to solve the puzzle, then so be it; I just don't have that much leisure time to theorycraft for this game.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I pretty much already stated in my demotivation section what I dislike, which is everything except P2.
Traya's Bonds of Weakness is pretty thematic so kudos on getting a good feel during P3, but then you kinda throw it out the window in P4 when she has all these allies helping her but Bonds of Weakness while still active doesn't affect them at all for some reason. So there's all that theme just kinda ruined in my book.
I like that there is an attempt to build new abilities and mechanics because it makes the raid different from normal game modes. The problem is achieving balance and that mark has clearly been missed overall, as evidenced by the overwhelming sentiment in this thread of "not fun unless heroic", the narrow band of teams that can do well, and the demonstration of resentful willingness to grind through it (which is where the feelings of inadequate compensation stem from).
This raid completely dissolved my last guild, which was strong and a tight group. My new guild, though not as strong, but close, can barely manage a tier 4 in 4 days. We don't have many, if any Jedi Training Rey teams and due to territory war, our rosters have become far too thin to cope well. I know this is the raid to end all raids and it gives all players, strong whales and weak minnows a "challenge". But I think that the term challenge and grind have been considered the same. My personal peeve would be nihilus and his protection. Nothing like sending in an arena team and being destroyed with nothing to show for it. I don't think the sith raid needs to be scrapped, but outside of Traya shards, the rewards are crap. I am curious to know how many people just auto the raid because they're fulfilling guild required activity. Personally I auto the thing, because I don't have time to sit down and actually play it, but I always come out in the top 3. The rewards need a serious overhaul, the useful teams need to be rethought, or the raid needs to be nerfed.
The difficulty of the raid is fine. It should be hard, and I don’t think the mechanics are too demanding. They can be learned. I do have two major issues with the raid as it stands, one of which I think must be addressed because of the harm it is causing to the game community.
Start with the easy one: the health for lower levels seems overturned. The guilds running these lower tiers often seem to struggle with participation because it is such a slog. Part of this is because of my second issue, but simply dialing back the health a bit would help.
The big one is the JTR requirement for Phase 1. Since there is really only one viable squad for this phase, and since JTR is also so good in other phases, guilds that want to run heroic have to essentially require members to have JTR. This is easy enough for large alliances, but if you are in an independent guild, and you have a mix of P2P and F2P who have played together a long time, you are left with two options: 1. Wait for JTR to come around for those who still need it and for them to accumulate the gear and ability mats for the squad, or 2. Boot those who don’t have her. I’m in a 120 million GP guild that fits the above description. We attempted an unsuccessful merge to deal with this dilemma. We wanted to keep playing with our friends but also wanted to take on heroic with those of us who have the squads. The failed merge cost us many longtime members and bad blood with leadership from the other guild. Speaking in shard chats, this seems to be a very common problem. This hard and fast JTR requirement is fracturing many guilds that are in the cusp of heroic.
Now, I don’t expect any old team to be viable in every phase, but there are no other phases in the raid where there is only one viable squad. The fact that it is locked behind a non-farmable character that only comes along every three or four months really makes it impossible on guilds that want to walk a line between loyalty to longtime members and attempting the toughest content. There are other tough farms out there like Death Trooper that are very good for the raid but at least obtainable.
The other problem with only having one viable squad for Phase 1 is that it destroys participation in lower level guilds. Phase 1 becomes such a slog without JTR in Tier 5 and 6 that those without JTR just can’t have any fun with it. So they are sitting out the phase, and you have more guild tensions because there are always those who want to clear it.
I think it is totally reasonable to have at least one other team composition that can be somewhat effective in Phase 1. Maybe you still need a good number of JTRs as a guild, but you at least give breathing space so guilds aren’t forced to make a choice between taking on heroic and booting otherwise active members that we would like to keep playing with.
So my thoughts on the Sith raid:
I enjoy having challenging content and find the Sith raid to be very challenging. The issue I take with the raid is the reward is not worth the effort. The guild I’m in runs a T5 raid simply because the amount of health in T6 is too much and we find the reward difference between T5 and T6 is inmaterial. We are working towards attempting the heroic version hopefully within the next week or so. Ultimately, I really enjoy when content is created as is difficult but the rewards for completing the difficult, time consuming tasks need to be worth it.
-What tier or tiers did you play?
T5 currently(we clear easily but are using as practice for heroic as the T6 version has too much health to not lose out on tix)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
130m GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Phase 1 team: zzzRJT with 2 droids(all zetas) Scav Rey and Trooper
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
It isn’t parts of the raid the demotivate me, it’s the reward system. The rewards don’t satisfy the time and effort needed to complete the raid
What about the raid did you enjoy?
I enjoy the challenge of the raid.
What did you dislike about the raid?
Rewards are pretty bad. The stacking tenacity is a bit annoying as it eliminates the viability of most characters currently in game. Alternatives to the stacking tenacity would be to make all raid bosses immune to turn meter reduction or make raid bosses fast enough to make turn meter reduction less of factor while allowing all debuffs a chance to play a factor in raid mechanics(I realize this is easier said than done but just a thought for future raids).
I appreciate the time taken to read this post and all the effort put into the game.
-DaGhost141
Seems like I'm not the only one who loathes the stacking Tenacity feature. I brought it up when it started, but @CG_RyDiggs laughed it off. Sorry you had to inherit this @CG_SBCrumb
But let's start with your questions:
100 mio gp guild
T4 and inbetween t5
Squads? Well the usual once - jtr, troopers (either with thrawn or just them), chex-mex, sisters - well the usual known stuff. Sometimes experiencing with other teams or toons.
Now back to the motivation.
Raids are awesome, they are a key part for me and a lot of our guild members for such a game. **** it toon us ages to prepare for haat to get Kenobi shards and it was a awesome feeling. Same back in the days for heroic rancor.
Do we have the same feeling for this raid?
A clear no! Why?
You're limited to very specific teams, all need a jtr, tenacity is too high and the raid limits you a lot in creativity. Same time the rng can really trap you in awefull days.
To make it clear- I don't expect at all to have for it away all teams for competing in this raid in an outstanding way, we never had the feeling we should be right away abkenti beat the heroic tier, but this raid is just demoralizing And it's a chore to motivate the players even to play it.
Last but least- the rewards suck. Near by where you can say it's worth the time and effort.
Cheers and thanks for all the other good updates and implements you made so far.
Tier 4 (takes 2 days to beat) or 5 (takes 6-7 days to beat)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
95 Million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR Resistance teams, cluke teams with Death Trooper, Imperial Trooper teams, Nighsister teams, First Order teams, Bounty Hunter teams, one person uses ewoks for phase 2.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Phase 1 of the raid is the worst part. It takes forever to get through and is the most demoralizing part of the raid. the tenacity is to high on nihilus to land any debuffs on him in tier 5 sith raids. in tier 4 its possible for debuffs to land, so thats why tier 4 is generally more liked and we have good participation for it. Tier 5 raids are hard to get people motivated to try because its really hard for people without JTR or Death Trooper to do much damage since the debuffs don't stick. Bounty Hunters are making some big strides and helping out, but not many have geared them up yet. The random annihilates from Nihilus are not fun to go against and the complete bypassing of protection from nihilus's attacks also are not fun to go against. If Phase 1 is fixed to be more fair for people without JTR or Death Trooper, then this would help out a lot. the Tenacity/anihiliate/protection bypassing is just to much for it to be enjoyable for most and participation is very low guild wide for this. Usually the players with JTR and Death Trooper are the ones that are doing all the work and its really frustrating.
Phase 2 and 3 are just fine. these are the most enjoyable parts and it doesn't take long for the guild to clear them because they are fun to go against.
Phase 4 is ok once Nihilus is gone. nihilus is just not fun to play against. same issues as in phase 1 but at least he doesn't take as long to defeat.
Phase 1 of the raid is the worst part. It takes forever to get through and is the most demoralizing part of the raid. the tenacity is to high on nihilus to land any debuffs on him in tier 5 sith raids. in tier 4 its possible for debuffs to land, so thats why tier 4 is generally more liked and we have good participation for it. Tier 5 raids are hard to get people motivated to try because its really hard for people without JTR or Death Trooper to do much damage since the debuffs don't stick. Bounty Hunters are making some big strides and helping out, but not many have geared them up yet. The random annihilates from Nihilus are not fun to go against and the complete bypassing of protection from nihilus's attacks also are not fun to go against. If Phase 1 is fixed to be more fair for people without JTR or Death Trooper, then this would help out a lot. the Tenacity/anihiliate/protection bypassing is just to much for it to be enjoyable for most and participation is very low guild wide for this. Usually the players with JTR and Death Trooper are the ones that are doing all the work and its really frustrating.
I agree with your assessment of phase 1, but would also like to add that the purple protection on nihilus with annihilate makes it more so demoralizing. It would be ok to have one or the other, both seems like a phase 4 thing.
-50M Guild
-Primarily T3. We use to do T4 when the rewards were better, but too much of a grind for horrible rewards.
-Empire and Rebel teams have been my highest success.
-The mechanics of Phase 1 is terrible and need to get lucky. I may restart once or twice, but any more I just keep going. The lack of rewards for the grind is demotivating.
-Enjoy Phase2 as my squads can do damage. Enjoy when the raid is finished and receive my currency. Dislike the terrible gear rewards and Raid in general is not fun.
It's like you're doing Heroic, dealing but it's only 2 days then donw time, and getting Traya shards plus g12 pieces, ...
Or your not. If you're not, you're just slogging with almost no purpose - and with no fun - just to get some currency - and once you beat it after X days you start it up immediatly and pound your hea don the wall again. This needed to be fixed months ago... I guess all the waiting was just to really make sure the drudgery was worked in nice and deep.
It's like you're doing Heroic, dealing but it's only 2 days then donw time, and getting Traya shards plus g12 pieces, ...
Or your not. If you're not, you're just slogging with almost no purpose - and with no fun - just to get some currency - and once you beat it after X days you start it up immediatly and pound your hea don the wall again. This needed to be fixed months ago... I guess all the waiting was just to really make sure the drudgery was worked in nice and deep.
And I thought I was being critical, not saying your point isn't accurate. I was hoping that they would modify the raid like they did for the HAAT when it came out.
We can clear it without much trouble, but literally no one enjoys doing it.
This is a really important sentence for the Devs to think about.
Even the people that can do it, are not enjoying it.
That's not good.
I doubt anyone in game would complain if it was shut down. No one would miss it.
To the Devs, you tried and built a wonderful looking area, but..the mechanics are completely flawed. There is no shame in admitting it didn't meet expectations, and close it for now, or simply scrap it and move on. With all the glaring issues in game, far too much time has been invested (on both sides), far too many have walked away. Far to many guilds have been crushed, to justify the continued existence of the Sith raid as it is. As is, based on feedback here and those that will not post on forums but have echoed the sentiments others have here, why put any more time into it? Send it back to alpha, revamp the rewards for existing raids, monitor them and you will see the path to your next and future endeavors based on reports etc of success/failures. This is not meant to be a derogatory complaint. Sometimes you just need to cut your loses and walk away.
With 10 days to GDPR launching, you have your schedules jammed with things to address. It speaks highly of your desire to listen and learn by reaching out to us. I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. I hope all goes well and your jobs become fun again (with all the negativity around this raid and your existing workload, I don't envy you).
Good post and I agree.
I guess what saddens me is the Raid obviously took a lot of work. It looks beautiful. And it's a great, dark idea. I love what they tried to do.
It's just not any fun. Which is a problem as this is a game.
Yes, this exactly. Please, please listen to the community. The only thing this raid has done is destroy guilds. The difficulty is so high nobody is working toward heroic because all of those players have merged into a small number of elite guilds. Destroying the smaller guilds.
Yes, this exactly. Please, please listen to the community. The only thing this raid has done is destroy guilds. The difficulty is so high nobody is working toward heroic because all of those players have merged into a small number of elite guilds. Destroying the smaller guilds. [/quote]
Yeah, its stick with friends or go join a stronger guild. A guild can make progress on the raid, just takes forever, and who knows how long the game has left before the servers are shut off.
My experience echos with many of the comments above. P1 is not fun and too RNG dependent, P4 is frankly a mess. P2 & P3 are generally ok (more importantly are enjoyable) and maybe need minor tweeks only
What tier or tiers did you play?
Mainly 4 although we have tried from 2 to 6. T3 and below are easy but give poor payouts, T5 and above takes far too long (in excess of a week). With 2/3 guild participation T4 can be done in 3-4 days
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
60 million GP guild
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR Resistance, Zader sith, rebel attackers, Jawas, FO
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivated - the possibility of rewards
Demotivated - the actual rewards, especially for time input required. The fact that P1 and P4 are not fun and far to RNG dependant. This can be seen by the number of guild members who don't bother beyond doing a single run to score for rewards
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Like - P2 and P3 are fine and enjoyable (and noticably get more buy in from other guild members), although would suggest that either armour or health needs to be toned down a little in P2 and the ability to either remove isolate OR to sooth would be a nice touch in P3 (with global cooldown when either is triggered)
Dislike - Time commitment required, takes far too long to complete for the rewards given. Mainly though P1 and P4 are just not fun. Nihilus is far too RNG dependant and if you are one of the earlier players in P4 especially the damage from bonds of weakness in P4 can be excessive (so there are 2 negative play experience mechanics against you there). Also dislike that the squad synergies and debuff abilities largely count for nothing in this.
I'm in a guild with 109 million GP. I myself have just over 2.7 million GP and an almost fully maxed out RJT and Imperial Trooper teams.
We just finished a tier 5 Sith raid that took 5 days to complete. That is with good participation and several people running good to great phase specific teams.
During this time we capped out on Sith raid tickets and lost one days worth due to the raid taking so long to complete.
Phase 1 took almost two days. Phase 2 and 3 only took about one day. Phase 4 took two days.
Although I took first place with 46 million damage, my rewards were the following:
- 430 guild event tokens
- 1650 guild store currency
- 835k credits
- 12 Mk5 stun gun salvage
- 35 Mk7 scanner salvage (of which I already have 528)
- 8 Mk9 electrobinos
- 8 MkIV holo projector salvage
- 15 MkIV comlink salvage (of which I have 2 fully crafed already and another 25 salvage)
Compare the guild event tokens to Territory Battles where I can get 1000 guild event tokens/day typically and the grind through the Sith raid, and it is a grind, doesn't feel worth the effort.
2nd through 10th place all had double digit millions in damage ranging from 35-10 million.
Which leads to my first request, cut the current health pools in half for all phases below heroic. We should not need to have multiple guild members posting tens of millions in damage to complete this raid. This causes the raid to take far too long to complete for very little reward and people loose interest quickly or just plain forget about it because it's always there running in the background.
My second request is to tone down the raid mechanics at least on the lower tiers, if not all tiers. The stacking tenacity and other buffs are overdone. It limits the teams to a select few that work well and debuff characters are worthless. A good or bad run is based solely on RNG. Who does Traya isolate? Does DN get a double turn and annihilate someone before you have a chance to use unbreakable will? I understand that you want to make a raid that is difficult, if not impossible, to solo. But in the process you have created something that is the no fun at all. It is a tedious chore at best. Most people don't even bother figuring out the mechanics of the raid because they just put in 5 teams and hit auto because they will probably get just slightly less damage than a run they controlled due to the mechanics and unpredictable nature of the battles. Sure, RNG played a part in Rancor and AAT due to things like expose or speed down not sticking, etc. However, there was a more predictable nature to what was going to happen next. You knew when you were done or were going to have a great run.
Please take these suggestions under consideration.
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
- Tier 6 for a month, now farming Tier 7 with 24 hour rule
- 131 million GP
- P1 RJT, P2 GK/Leia, P3 Chex Mix, P4 Sisters
- First of all, T6 is a nightmare. I'm happy to have a guild full of people that focused on the goal of getting Heroic done and working towards that goal. I have to say though, we slogged through T6 for about 5 weeks and I truly feel for those that are still having to complete the lower tiers for worthless rewards. I dare say that T6 requires even more effort than T7 at this point. The amount of health the bosses have is just ridiculous and the time investment is not compensated properly with the rewards. I'm so much happier to be farming heroic. We were taking 2 days of non stop participation to down T6 and we can do T7 in about 3 hours with 30-35 members doing 90% of the damage.
- That being said, in regards to Heroic/T7, there is one small change that you could make that would make for a much more enjoyable experience. PLEASE remove the RNG chance for bosses to take a 3rd action. This accomplishes nothing as far as difficulty of the raid. This chance at a 3rd action is NOT a limiting factor for completing the raid. It only serves to cause more frustration and retreats. I think that it's been said in this thread a lot, it's not the difficulty of the raid that people find to be a drag, it's the randomness factor and time investment. This 3rd action is the biggest contributor to the randomness factor in the T7 version of the raid. Retreating over and over to try and get a decent run is the single biggest reason that people hate your raid. I actually rather enjoy the T7 version of the raid except for this one detail.
Thank you for taking the time to consider the community feedback on this.
What tier or tiers did you play?
My guild cycles between Tier 2 (26-28 hour completion time) and Tier 3 (4-5 day completion time)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
36 million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Most of us use our arena teams as primary damage dealers (Wiggs Rebels are mine). A few in my guild are trying more focused teams like Thrawn Snowtrooper and Magmatrooper (P1).
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivating: phases where I feel I accomplish something. At these tiers, P3 is my favorite to play because it requires some attention and strategy, but there's some leniency. If I make a mistake, I can recover from it; I don't need to retreat and start over. P2 is so easy for my 3 main squads that I can throw them in there and hit auto; the risk/reward element isn't there at this level because Sion can't do enough damage to kill them. While it's less fun to play, it's nice to post some big numbers quickly. Also, the brief-lived GE tokens for Tier 3 were motivating to move up from Tier 2.
Demotivating: everything about Nihilus. You can't make a mistake. Very frequently you're forced into situations you can't get yourself out of, whether it's hitting him with a basic or not being able to get a shield up before Annihilate. P1 and P4 are the reason we don't complete Tier 3 faster; our guild could probably do it in 3 days (and we could probably complete Tier 4 in a week or so), but our members won't fight Nihilus. Also, Traya at the end of P4 with stacking speed is all kinds of horrible. Only my arena team can do any kind of damage on her.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
P3 is somewhat enjoyable. P2 is tolerable, if dull at this level. Everything else I dislike. This is a mobile game. I'm not sitting down in front of a console for hours trying to beat a boss; I'm pulling this out on my lunch break or when I'm winding down in the evening after work. On top of that, once the boss is beaten, we have to beat him again and again and again, and it never gets easier because of RNG. It's exhausting.
I dislike having to plead with my guild members to hit all phases instead of just waiting for Sion to come up. Those who slog through Nihilus get lower scores and worse rewards, whereas those who just auto Sion are closer to the top. We're starting to rotate launch times to try to give everyone a fair chance at scoring, and to hopefully take some of the burden off our guild leader who tends to do most of that first phase.
I dislike how miserable the rewards are for the effort put in. Tier 3 Sith is far, far harder than Tier 4 Rancor, but the gear is the same.
I appreciate the opportunity to give feedback. Thanks for listening.
Replies
--T3 mostly, T4 a few times, T5 once (abandoned) when it came out. We now only do T3.
--68 million
--I only use Jedi Rey, Scavenger Rey, BB8, Trooper, and Pilot. I used to use other teams, but now I just don't care and only do 1 or 2 attacks. EDIT: To be clear, 1 or 2 attacks the entire raid, not per day.
--How freaking long it is... I can do 5m per attack with that Rey team, but it still takes us 4-5 days just to finish. And when we finally finish, I get maybe 7 Mk2 bacta gel.
--Conceptually it's a great raid. I like fighting all three bosses at the end. But it's just TOO LONG for not nearly enough rewards... I get that the intended main rewards is supposed to be guild store tokens, and that you're supposed to use those to buy the actual gear and characters you want. But GOOD GOD is the raid long... I know it'll be faster if I participate more, but the amount of damage my non-Rey teams do is so low that why even bother? This attitude propagates down the line and overall very few of us actually do more than one attack a day.
Currently 114M GP
P1 - CLS/Wiggs/R2/Solo (until RJT comes back)
P2 - GAT w/ Imps [no DT], Phoenix w/ Sabine
P3 - Chexmix
P4 - OG NS
Motivation - gearing up my Nightsisters to the point where I can pull in great scores in an undesirable phase.
Demotivation - knowing only RJT is the all-round best squad is needed for the raid to succeed, and that she is rare
I enjoy the challenge, it brings our guild a new aim to reach for. It gives me reason to farm the squads I am farming right now, that can also help me in other areas of the game i.e. Imps, NS, FO
I don't enjoy the impact it's had upon recruitment. EVERYONE wants Heroic, even if their rosters are not remotely set up for it. Members get impatient if you're not doing Heroic yet. If you find players that don't mind too much about getting Heroic within *insert short time period here* then hold onto them. Most people are so impatient it's infuriating. I don't blame them though... Traya is a beast.
Overall, the raid is a great addition to the game. I don't think it needs to be nerfed/buffed at all in the near future. Just bring back RJT soon for me, yeah?
Our Guild was, and i emphasize WAS, 105 MM GP. Now it is down to 79 MM GP. I am 2.3 MM GP.
We started and tried a Tier 6 when we were 105 MM GP and it took a long long long time. Admittedly it was when it first stared so strategy was not yet formed, but after that we tried tier 5 and it still took a long time to the point we started get bored. So we dropped to Tier 4, but around that time we started losing our heavy hitters who dropped out to join other guilds who were attempting Heroic or doing runs faster. So it became a snowball effect. As more people left it got slower and longer so more people left. Now I think/hope we've plateaued. Thanks for that by the way guys. Because also as a result out TB and TW has now suffered. So really thanks. I can't say that enough. You've done a great job with this raid n not only destroying the fun of the raid, but also other aspects of the game and you taking longer to fix it only exasperates it. So please continue to sit back and gather more data and by all means don't try a temporary fix to make people happy.
OK sarcasm off.
Now at 79 MM GP we do Tier 3 because it takes a long time and to be honest the lower level players want to feel like they can contribute some too and I can empathize with that.
It still takes us about 2-3 days to finish. Squads used are all mentioned above. NS, Troopers, DOT squads. I actually add Bistan to my Zadar run. Sometimes you can get them stacking early if you forfeit and come back even though he dies off pretty quick so it can be worth it. I guess I could invest in better gar for him, but I won't. If he adds 3 stacks before tenacity sky rockets I'm happy.
Not many in our guild have JTR to include me. Got so tired of the cantina grind for nil shards. Many many days in a row of zero shard drops for Chewie or Han so I said forget it and focused on other Cantina toons. Maybe I'll get her one day or I'll wait until the next meta, but my RNG luck is a topic for another thread.
What do I like about it. I mean I was excited for something new. While other don't like DN it's the unpredictable nature that is the worst part and how unforgiving it is. I mean we can all see when his killer move is charged or close so we can all defend, but when he doesn't use it and the AI waits a turn or two that's garbage. It means the mechanic or intent isn't working so it's no fun. You can't build a strategy around unpredictability. Now that the newness is gone I have a bad taste in my mouth (again see how our guild was torn up) so not much I like to be honest.
What do I dislike? The grind and time sink for trash rewards. I don't expect to breeze through a raid when it's first dropped on Heroic day 1. I can solo a HPit in minutes on auto and I get petty good rewards that help my team build. I'm OK on HAAT. It takes our guild a few hours, though now losing the big hitters it can take a day, but the rewards all grow my team for the most part.
So now take a raid that takes 3 days and that's 3 days of grinding RNG each and every day and only getting to do Tier 3, never mind when we tried to grind Tier 4, 5 or 6 and after all that time spent and resources spent trying to build the teams up I get absolutely nothing that will help me get to the next tier. Trash rewards. I can now get my crummy Paploo who is a 5 star gear level 5 to gear level 6. Yay!!!!!! That should be enough to put me over the top and try Tier 4 huh? Nope.
And the worst part is that the longer you delay this fix the more frustrated people will get and they'll leave guilds and the game and as they leave their guilds others will be less able to compete too in team focused challenges so they'll drop off and you're left with pretty uniform player base as opposed to newer lower level players who will seed the future of the game.
Throw in a crummy patch and let every know it's a temp fix as a reward for our patience and shower us with rewards while you sort things out. Maybe put a timer of 30 days on it and make it rain like Pacman Jones. It will make people happy and want to at least continue running the raid in the meantime as opposed to people wanting to avoid it like the plague so when you finally roll out your fix they don't have a bad taste in their mouth.
133milgp guild running Heroic
This has been a very polarizing game element. Many guilds have lost long time members. This is mainly because the teams that actually work for the raid are so specific. Players who had several strong teams and deep rosters can't compete, because they are missing the 4 teams that actually work. While they may be able to do thier part. The specific requirements lend to a "why try." Sense of defeat.
RNG
This is the next issue I have a jtr squad capable of over 5mil+ damage in P1. It can take 3 hours of restarts to get above 2mil. 15 restarts just trying for my 70%+ potency jtr to land speed down on Nihilus. Then get lucky and pull off an expose on nihilus with burn. All of this so timing lines up correctly, and ID can go off before Nihilus takes a turn. Then you need to restart because UW landed on one of the droids. When all of that lines up expose doesn't land for 2 full turns and nihilus ends up 1 turn from drain force. He takes someones buffs then nearly kills half the team with an overpowered force drain.
His tenacity stacks why does he need to be impossible to land a debuff on before he is hit?
He is already dangerous enough with the random I might annihilate I might not. Why does he need to steal buffs? Lowering initial tenacity, and removing the ability to steal buffs would not increase my total final score, but it would make it so I could get that score without hours of frustration. Restarts would still be required timing nihilus's annihilates would still add the element of difficulty. Currently it feels more like P1 was made for a self loathing masochist. Another "why try" point.
Rewards
After all of this you can unlock Traya in 10 weeks to 7* in 23 this is with 7shards per raid average. Doan't count on a better average because P4 you will go from 1st to 14th when several people get millions from the damage bug. Give everyone max Traya shards until you fix this bug.
I do enjoy playing with P2 team comps. Looking for ways to squeak out another 100k dmg. For example the idea that freeing Thrawn up from X team lowers my dmg by 100k, but can increase another teams damage by 200k. Again the dmg bug is a bit of a shot to the gut here. "Why Try?"
138m gp
Jtr (shock)
Phoenix and Sith
Chexmix
Nightsisters, kru fo and then the kitchen sink
Demotivated me? All of it. Had a moment of joy at completing our 1st heroic a few days ago which didn't last long largely because as soon as we started the next one I remembered the time and frustration required to do it. This has been said before but a team comp and strategy should either work or not. Yes rng will mean a variance in your runs and that's fine but not to this degree. 30/40 restarts taking an hour or 2 for a decent score when you've already spent 30 mins remodding so the speeds/turn order are perfect is NOT fun. The tenacity thing, I've got nothing new to add, devs reading this surely you can see the theme here? Probably the **** mechanic in any aspect of this game. How many awesome characters have you given us that use debuff? So you make a raid you can't debuff.... genius... So many teams utterly obsolete. G12 zetad chars just gathering dust... deal with the tenacity and sort out the rng on at least DN in terms of annihilate and treyas sabers starting buffs (start them all with only advantage, no foresight or counter) everybody just restarts until you get that anyway so do us a favour and just make it that way.
Rewards at t7 are good but below are a joke. Buff the lower tiers please even though this doesn't affect me now they really are poor. I think people are disappointed because there is a good raid in there it's just buried under some truly horrific mistakes and poor time/reward ratio.
Guild 110m and 50m GP
Raid is simplified to:
-HP too high
-p1 and p4 just rng based and unfun (speed buff makes all planing unpredictable)
-extreme need for unresistable attacks (tenacity buff)
-low raid attendence (many people simply do not like this raid)
-bad rewards on t1 - t6 (t6 has triple? hp of t7 which is insane - combined like 620m?)
-raid difficulty for t1 - t5 not fitting the level, equipment level or rewards
+good gfx
+nice characters
+nice rewards on t7
^^^^^This...all of this. Lol.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? We're 165mil+ now 139 mil (this is not due to the raid, this is due to TW burnout/annoyance).
What teams you did you attempt the raid with? JTRey, Nightsisters, Chex Mix, Phoenix, Imperial Troopers, kitchen sink for P4.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? I'm motivated by the gear and Traya shards. It was disheartening when the rewards were changed (demotivation). When they were changed back, we all were motivated again.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? I enjoy the difficulty and the mechanics. The only thing I don't really "like" is the fact that the stacking tenacity effectively neuters Sith teams. As a DS player, it's somewhat annoying, but not a huge deal.
Currently doing heroic but have done t4 5 and 6.
2) What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
140 million.
3) What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
For heroic JTR, thrawn with troopers, machine gun leia, chex mix, nightsisters, kitchen sink.
4) What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
The only thing that motivates me is the rewards. What is demotivating is the actual raid mechanics seem to be mostly based on getting good rng and the rewards for tiers below heroic are not good for the time required.
5) What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I like the idea that the raid was supposed to be a challenge but it really isn't and is just more about retrying till you get the right rng. I actually sort of like phase 1 if you have JTR if you don't it sucks. Even with JTR Nihilus is a little too unpredictable with his one shot mechanic which is pretty annoying. This raid actually killed my original guild because people did not want to participate and quit due to the raid taking so long to complete for bad rewards below heroic. Perhaps people are missing something but phase 3 is the worst in heroic to me because it just relies on a really heavy rng team to complete. Many of my friends have been thinking about quitting because you just don't have a real shot at heroic without JTR unless someone is going to carry you no matter how strong your other characters are. I dislike that the bosses basically attempt to shut down the mechanics of most the teams in the game making it so you can only win with very specific teams.
Good post and I agree.
I guess what saddens me is the Raid obviously took a lot of work. It looks beautiful. And it's a great, dark idea. I love what they tried to do.
It's just not any fun. Which is a problem as this is a game.
Seems unfortunate that this is one of your first assignments to get to know the community.
What tier or tiers did you play?
We've done T5 & 6 with 2 checks on Heroic progress (we can't clear hP1).
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
128M.
I'm 2.2M of that, which is around 40th place out of 50 in terms of total GP.
What teams did you attempt the raid with?
My teams that do reasonable damage are Zader, CLS+Chaze, and bounty hunters.
And then I've also tested many things that did trash damage.
(As an aside: I cannot believe that the BH rework did not address what I feel is one of the most flawed mechanics in the game: that tenacity determines whether thermal detonators stick or not. Thermal detonators ought to behave like delayed attacks: they should be dodgeable, not resistable, and they shouldn't be able to be cleansed. It just makes no sense the way they're implemented now.)
What part of the raid motivated you to keep trying?
I'm helping my guildmates.
That's literally the only reason I do anything in this raid, I help decrease the amount of time spent overall.
What part of the raid demotivated you to keep trying?
Yeah, all of it. Except P2, I like P2 because I have teams that can do well in it. (Problem is, everyone else in the guild likes P2 too, so I usually don't get more than one go at it)
It's been stated many times already, but I'll say it again: Nihilus makes many teams completely irrelevant. I understand that balance is hard, but from where we're standing it looks like no amount of gear or leveling makes an irrelevant team become relevant; no, your choices are to build the teams that do well or resign yourself to pathetic damage. So that's what I'm doing, I'm working on acquiring the teams that do well.
It would be nice if the gear that we get from the lower tiers helped ease those team grinds a bit. But no, that's not the case. We just completed a T6, I think it took a week, and I placed 17th -- which is really telling about how bad the participation is, most days were me throwing 5 teams in on auto and calling it fine -- and what I got for rewards were all gear pieces that I've no less than several hundred of already, and then some of the Mk IX Datapad which I have 3000 of thanks to it being useless challenge gear. Also 2 pieces each of G12 gear, which is nice, none of my toons needed those particular pieces but they're good to stockpile. Let's about that G12 gear, though: for the same week's worth of time devoted, I would get enough GES currency from TB to buy 5-10 piece shipments of G12 gear, which I can choose the flavor of, 10x. I don't blame anyone in the guild for not wanting to participate, even though it'd probably at least halve the amount of time spent on it: it's just not motivating at all when we get this caliber of reward.
There's also a significant amount of complexity creep. I'll be honest, I was pretty discouraged even before we started our first raid when I encountered a virtual wall of text that I had to read and commit to memory if I wanted to try to build teams that could do really well (a mostly fruitless effort anyways since I lack certain key toons named JTR).
So I decided not to do that, I'll just wait for the meta teams to get announced and copy/paste from them. If that's how I have to solve the puzzle, then so be it; I just don't have that much leisure time to theorycraft for this game.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I pretty much already stated in my demotivation section what I dislike, which is everything except P2.
Traya's Bonds of Weakness is pretty thematic so kudos on getting a good feel during P3, but then you kinda throw it out the window in P4 when she has all these allies helping her but Bonds of Weakness while still active doesn't affect them at all for some reason. So there's all that theme just kinda ruined in my book.
I like that there is an attempt to build new abilities and mechanics because it makes the raid different from normal game modes. The problem is achieving balance and that mark has clearly been missed overall, as evidenced by the overwhelming sentiment in this thread of "not fun unless heroic", the narrow band of teams that can do well, and the demonstration of resentful willingness to grind through it (which is where the feelings of inadequate compensation stem from).
The difficulty of the raid is fine. It should be hard, and I don’t think the mechanics are too demanding. They can be learned. I do have two major issues with the raid as it stands, one of which I think must be addressed because of the harm it is causing to the game community.
Start with the easy one: the health for lower levels seems overturned. The guilds running these lower tiers often seem to struggle with participation because it is such a slog. Part of this is because of my second issue, but simply dialing back the health a bit would help.
The big one is the JTR requirement for Phase 1. Since there is really only one viable squad for this phase, and since JTR is also so good in other phases, guilds that want to run heroic have to essentially require members to have JTR. This is easy enough for large alliances, but if you are in an independent guild, and you have a mix of P2P and F2P who have played together a long time, you are left with two options: 1. Wait for JTR to come around for those who still need it and for them to accumulate the gear and ability mats for the squad, or 2. Boot those who don’t have her. I’m in a 120 million GP guild that fits the above description. We attempted an unsuccessful merge to deal with this dilemma. We wanted to keep playing with our friends but also wanted to take on heroic with those of us who have the squads. The failed merge cost us many longtime members and bad blood with leadership from the other guild. Speaking in shard chats, this seems to be a very common problem. This hard and fast JTR requirement is fracturing many guilds that are in the cusp of heroic.
Now, I don’t expect any old team to be viable in every phase, but there are no other phases in the raid where there is only one viable squad. The fact that it is locked behind a non-farmable character that only comes along every three or four months really makes it impossible on guilds that want to walk a line between loyalty to longtime members and attempting the toughest content. There are other tough farms out there like Death Trooper that are very good for the raid but at least obtainable.
The other problem with only having one viable squad for Phase 1 is that it destroys participation in lower level guilds. Phase 1 becomes such a slog without JTR in Tier 5 and 6 that those without JTR just can’t have any fun with it. So they are sitting out the phase, and you have more guild tensions because there are always those who want to clear it.
I think it is totally reasonable to have at least one other team composition that can be somewhat effective in Phase 1. Maybe you still need a good number of JTRs as a guild, but you at least give breathing space so guilds aren’t forced to make a choice between taking on heroic and booting otherwise active members that we would like to keep playing with.
I enjoy having challenging content and find the Sith raid to be very challenging. The issue I take with the raid is the reward is not worth the effort. The guild I’m in runs a T5 raid simply because the amount of health in T6 is too much and we find the reward difference between T5 and T6 is inmaterial. We are working towards attempting the heroic version hopefully within the next week or so. Ultimately, I really enjoy when content is created as is difficult but the rewards for completing the difficult, time consuming tasks need to be worth it.
-What tier or tiers did you play?
T5 currently(we clear easily but are using as practice for heroic as the T6 version has too much health to not lose out on tix)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
130m GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Phase 1 team: zzzRJT with 2 droids(all zetas) Scav Rey and Trooper
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
It isn’t parts of the raid the demotivate me, it’s the reward system. The rewards don’t satisfy the time and effort needed to complete the raid
What about the raid did you enjoy?
I enjoy the challenge of the raid.
What did you dislike about the raid?
Rewards are pretty bad. The stacking tenacity is a bit annoying as it eliminates the viability of most characters currently in game. Alternatives to the stacking tenacity would be to make all raid bosses immune to turn meter reduction or make raid bosses fast enough to make turn meter reduction less of factor while allowing all debuffs a chance to play a factor in raid mechanics(I realize this is easier said than done but just a thought for future raids).
I appreciate the time taken to read this post and all the effort put into the game.
-DaGhost141
The long awaited new raid. And than....
But let's start with your questions:
100 mio gp guild
T4 and inbetween t5
Squads? Well the usual once - jtr, troopers (either with thrawn or just them), chex-mex, sisters - well the usual known stuff. Sometimes experiencing with other teams or toons.
Now back to the motivation.
Raids are awesome, they are a key part for me and a lot of our guild members for such a game. **** it toon us ages to prepare for haat to get Kenobi shards and it was a awesome feeling. Same back in the days for heroic rancor.
Do we have the same feeling for this raid?
A clear no! Why?
You're limited to very specific teams, all need a jtr, tenacity is too high and the raid limits you a lot in creativity. Same time the rng can really trap you in awefull days.
To make it clear- I don't expect at all to have for it away all teams for competing in this raid in an outstanding way, we never had the feeling we should be right away abkenti beat the heroic tier, but this raid is just demoralizing And it's a chore to motivate the players even to play it.
Last but least- the rewards suck. Near by where you can say it's worth the time and effort.
Cheers and thanks for all the other good updates and implements you made so far.
JDK
Tier 4 (takes 2 days to beat) or 5 (takes 6-7 days to beat)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
95 Million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR Resistance teams, cluke teams with Death Trooper, Imperial Trooper teams, Nighsister teams, First Order teams, Bounty Hunter teams, one person uses ewoks for phase 2.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Phase 1 of the raid is the worst part. It takes forever to get through and is the most demoralizing part of the raid. the tenacity is to high on nihilus to land any debuffs on him in tier 5 sith raids. in tier 4 its possible for debuffs to land, so thats why tier 4 is generally more liked and we have good participation for it. Tier 5 raids are hard to get people motivated to try because its really hard for people without JTR or Death Trooper to do much damage since the debuffs don't stick. Bounty Hunters are making some big strides and helping out, but not many have geared them up yet. The random annihilates from Nihilus are not fun to go against and the complete bypassing of protection from nihilus's attacks also are not fun to go against. If Phase 1 is fixed to be more fair for people without JTR or Death Trooper, then this would help out a lot. the Tenacity/anihiliate/protection bypassing is just to much for it to be enjoyable for most and participation is very low guild wide for this. Usually the players with JTR and Death Trooper are the ones that are doing all the work and its really frustrating.
Phase 2 and 3 are just fine. these are the most enjoyable parts and it doesn't take long for the guild to clear them because they are fun to go against.
Phase 4 is ok once Nihilus is gone. nihilus is just not fun to play against. same issues as in phase 1 but at least he doesn't take as long to defeat.
Phase 1 of the raid is the worst part. It takes forever to get through and is the most demoralizing part of the raid. the tenacity is to high on nihilus to land any debuffs on him in tier 5 sith raids. in tier 4 its possible for debuffs to land, so thats why tier 4 is generally more liked and we have good participation for it. Tier 5 raids are hard to get people motivated to try because its really hard for people without JTR or Death Trooper to do much damage since the debuffs don't stick. Bounty Hunters are making some big strides and helping out, but not many have geared them up yet. The random annihilates from Nihilus are not fun to go against and the complete bypassing of protection from nihilus's attacks also are not fun to go against. If Phase 1 is fixed to be more fair for people without JTR or Death Trooper, then this would help out a lot. the Tenacity/anihiliate/protection bypassing is just to much for it to be enjoyable for most and participation is very low guild wide for this. Usually the players with JTR and Death Trooper are the ones that are doing all the work and its really frustrating.
I agree with your assessment of phase 1, but would also like to add that the purple protection on nihilus with annihilate makes it more so demoralizing. It would be ok to have one or the other, both seems like a phase 4 thing.
-Primarily T3. We use to do T4 when the rewards were better, but too much of a grind for horrible rewards.
-Empire and Rebel teams have been my highest success.
-The mechanics of Phase 1 is terrible and need to get lucky. I may restart once or twice, but any more I just keep going. The lack of rewards for the grind is demotivating.
-Enjoy Phase2 as my squads can do damage. Enjoy when the raid is finished and receive my currency. Dislike the terrible gear rewards and Raid in general is not fun.
Or your not. If you're not, you're just slogging with almost no purpose - and with no fun - just to get some currency - and once you beat it after X days you start it up immediatly and pound your hea don the wall again. This needed to be fixed months ago... I guess all the waiting was just to really make sure the drudgery was worked in nice and deep.
And I thought I was being critical, not saying your point isn't accurate. I was hoping that they would modify the raid like they did for the HAAT when it came out.
Yes, this exactly. Please, please listen to the community. The only thing this raid has done is destroy guilds. The difficulty is so high nobody is working toward heroic because all of those players have merged into a small number of elite guilds. Destroying the smaller guilds.
Yes, this exactly. Please, please listen to the community. The only thing this raid has done is destroy guilds. The difficulty is so high nobody is working toward heroic because all of those players have merged into a small number of elite guilds. Destroying the smaller guilds. [/quote]
Yeah, its stick with friends or go join a stronger guild. A guild can make progress on the raid, just takes forever, and who knows how long the game has left before the servers are shut off.
What tier or tiers did you play?
Mainly 4 although we have tried from 2 to 6. T3 and below are easy but give poor payouts, T5 and above takes far too long (in excess of a week). With 2/3 guild participation T4 can be done in 3-4 days
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
60 million GP guild
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR Resistance, Zader sith, rebel attackers, Jawas, FO
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivated - the possibility of rewards
Demotivated - the actual rewards, especially for time input required. The fact that P1 and P4 are not fun and far to RNG dependant. This can be seen by the number of guild members who don't bother beyond doing a single run to score for rewards
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Like - P2 and P3 are fine and enjoyable (and noticably get more buy in from other guild members), although would suggest that either armour or health needs to be toned down a little in P2 and the ability to either remove isolate OR to sooth would be a nice touch in P3 (with global cooldown when either is triggered)
Dislike - Time commitment required, takes far too long to complete for the rewards given. Mainly though P1 and P4 are just not fun. Nihilus is far too RNG dependant and if you are one of the earlier players in P4 especially the damage from bonds of weakness in P4 can be excessive (so there are 2 negative play experience mechanics against you there). Also dislike that the squad synergies and debuff abilities largely count for nothing in this.
We just finished a tier 5 Sith raid that took 5 days to complete. That is with good participation and several people running good to great phase specific teams.
During this time we capped out on Sith raid tickets and lost one days worth due to the raid taking so long to complete.
Phase 1 took almost two days. Phase 2 and 3 only took about one day. Phase 4 took two days.
Although I took first place with 46 million damage, my rewards were the following:
- 430 guild event tokens
- 1650 guild store currency
- 835k credits
- 12 Mk5 stun gun salvage
- 35 Mk7 scanner salvage (of which I already have 528)
- 8 Mk9 electrobinos
- 8 MkIV holo projector salvage
- 15 MkIV comlink salvage (of which I have 2 fully crafed already and another 25 salvage)
That works out to daily totals of:
- 86 guild event tokens
- 330 guild store currency
- 167k credits
Compare the guild event tokens to Territory Battles where I can get 1000 guild event tokens/day typically and the grind through the Sith raid, and it is a grind, doesn't feel worth the effort.
2nd through 10th place all had double digit millions in damage ranging from 35-10 million.
Which leads to my first request, cut the current health pools in half for all phases below heroic. We should not need to have multiple guild members posting tens of millions in damage to complete this raid. This causes the raid to take far too long to complete for very little reward and people loose interest quickly or just plain forget about it because it's always there running in the background.
My second request is to tone down the raid mechanics at least on the lower tiers, if not all tiers. The stacking tenacity and other buffs are overdone. It limits the teams to a select few that work well and debuff characters are worthless. A good or bad run is based solely on RNG. Who does Traya isolate? Does DN get a double turn and annihilate someone before you have a chance to use unbreakable will? I understand that you want to make a raid that is difficult, if not impossible, to solo. But in the process you have created something that is the no fun at all. It is a tedious chore at best. Most people don't even bother figuring out the mechanics of the raid because they just put in 5 teams and hit auto because they will probably get just slightly less damage than a run they controlled due to the mechanics and unpredictable nature of the battles. Sure, RNG played a part in Rancor and AAT due to things like expose or speed down not sticking, etc. However, there was a more predictable nature to what was going to happen next. You knew when you were done or were going to have a great run.
Please take these suggestions under consideration.
Thank you.
- Tier 6 for a month, now farming Tier 7 with 24 hour rule
- 131 million GP
- P1 RJT, P2 GK/Leia, P3 Chex Mix, P4 Sisters
- First of all, T6 is a nightmare. I'm happy to have a guild full of people that focused on the goal of getting Heroic done and working towards that goal. I have to say though, we slogged through T6 for about 5 weeks and I truly feel for those that are still having to complete the lower tiers for worthless rewards. I dare say that T6 requires even more effort than T7 at this point. The amount of health the bosses have is just ridiculous and the time investment is not compensated properly with the rewards. I'm so much happier to be farming heroic. We were taking 2 days of non stop participation to down T6 and we can do T7 in about 3 hours with 30-35 members doing 90% of the damage.
- That being said, in regards to Heroic/T7, there is one small change that you could make that would make for a much more enjoyable experience. PLEASE remove the RNG chance for bosses to take a 3rd action. This accomplishes nothing as far as difficulty of the raid. This chance at a 3rd action is NOT a limiting factor for completing the raid. It only serves to cause more frustration and retreats. I think that it's been said in this thread a lot, it's not the difficulty of the raid that people find to be a drag, it's the randomness factor and time investment. This 3rd action is the biggest contributor to the randomness factor in the T7 version of the raid. Retreating over and over to try and get a decent run is the single biggest reason that people hate your raid. I actually rather enjoy the T7 version of the raid except for this one detail.
Thank you for taking the time to consider the community feedback on this.
My guild cycles between Tier 2 (26-28 hour completion time) and Tier 3 (4-5 day completion time)
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
36 million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Most of us use our arena teams as primary damage dealers (Wiggs Rebels are mine). A few in my guild are trying more focused teams like Thrawn Snowtrooper and Magmatrooper (P1).
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivating: phases where I feel I accomplish something. At these tiers, P3 is my favorite to play because it requires some attention and strategy, but there's some leniency. If I make a mistake, I can recover from it; I don't need to retreat and start over. P2 is so easy for my 3 main squads that I can throw them in there and hit auto; the risk/reward element isn't there at this level because Sion can't do enough damage to kill them. While it's less fun to play, it's nice to post some big numbers quickly. Also, the brief-lived GE tokens for Tier 3 were motivating to move up from Tier 2.
Demotivating: everything about Nihilus. You can't make a mistake. Very frequently you're forced into situations you can't get yourself out of, whether it's hitting him with a basic or not being able to get a shield up before Annihilate. P1 and P4 are the reason we don't complete Tier 3 faster; our guild could probably do it in 3 days (and we could probably complete Tier 4 in a week or so), but our members won't fight Nihilus. Also, Traya at the end of P4 with stacking speed is all kinds of horrible. Only my arena team can do any kind of damage on her.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
P3 is somewhat enjoyable. P2 is tolerable, if dull at this level. Everything else I dislike. This is a mobile game. I'm not sitting down in front of a console for hours trying to beat a boss; I'm pulling this out on my lunch break or when I'm winding down in the evening after work. On top of that, once the boss is beaten, we have to beat him again and again and again, and it never gets easier because of RNG. It's exhausting.
I dislike having to plead with my guild members to hit all phases instead of just waiting for Sion to come up. Those who slog through Nihilus get lower scores and worse rewards, whereas those who just auto Sion are closer to the top. We're starting to rotate launch times to try to give everyone a fair chance at scoring, and to hopefully take some of the burden off our guild leader who tends to do most of that first phase.
I dislike how miserable the rewards are for the effort put in. Tier 3 Sith is far, far harder than Tier 4 Rancor, but the gear is the same.
I appreciate the opportunity to give feedback. Thanks for listening.