F2P should be in good shape and history exemplifies that. I'm on a day 1 shard, and a F2P that couldn't unlock CLS first time around was able to use a Boba lead / mixed meta squad to climb to 1 each day and beat other CLS squads. CLS was about as gamebreaking a toon as has been introduced in GoH, yet he persisted. Did he drop further on D? Sure! But he was still competitive and could win on offense. Traya also presented this situation, and some F2P did have issues winning for a while, but eventually they unlocked Traya as well and were able to pretty quickly catch back up. From what I've observed over 3 years nearly, F2P can have some bumpier road at times, and they can maybe fall back a bit temporarily, but as a meta begins to season they end up on the same footing as whales. Unless the meta shift is really hard, F2P won't skip a beat. Like during 2017, when the meta mildly morphed from various iterations of Chaze / GK / Rex / CLS / Han / R2 / Wiggs where you'd maybe replace one toon or so at a time, but the team mostly remained unchanged, there was no dropoff at all. Just stick the course.
Speed is overrated a bit. It's important, but RPS matchups and smart play is MORE important.
I spent money on this game for the first time in about two years last week. I bought the Bossk + Hounds Tooth bundle.
So, yeah, free play is alive and well. You just need patience, and have to understand that you're going to eventually hit a wall and dig your way through it slowly, but once you're through that wall you just keep chugging along again just fine.
I spent money on this game for the first time in about two years last week. I bought the Bossk + Hounds Tooth bundle.
So, yeah, free play is alive and well. You just need patience, and have to understand that you're going to eventually hit a wall and dig your way through it slowly, but once you're through that wall you just keep chugging along again just fine.
Good choice. Not many toons stand out upon release. Others are serviceable at 3*
Hounds tooth looks like it is worth the investment
Top 25 guild, and have lost 20% of our members in the last two weeks to quitting the game. Thanks to the g12+ reward setup, and now mod update which will continue to further divide the player base power and abilities. Hoped CG would see this coming before it happened as to make corrections and avoid it, but sadly it’s already happening.
Patience is the biggest part of being a f2p. As long as you do your dailies and log on everyday and don't waste the crystal you earn. You can have a couple thousand to ten thousand crystal in no time (3 to 4 months) to use towards purchasing toon shards out of the shipments store.
Thinking about it a little more. If you consider the daily refresh cost as a sort of baseline for the minimum standard of participation (what CG actually measures against is anyone's guess) the bar has been slowly raising now over the last several updates to make F2P less and less tenable to obtain end game levels of progression.
That's becoming unreasonable if not impossible to maintain as F2P, yet it is also likely that CG is gearing progression in ALL aspects of the game to at least that level of spending. So, F2P lags behind in gear progression, lags behind in arenas, and then loses MORE in game income because they can't hold higher ranks. What kind of motivation does a F2P, or even a low spender, have to stick it out?
Seems like a "buy something or get out" kind of model if I ever saw one.
You don't have to spend that many crystals if you don't want to. I only have 6 characters not 7* for cantina farming (a few of which are chewbacca, Kit, Paploo), so I am definitely not spending 300 crystals each day for cantina refreshes.
Here’s my experience: I started playing in December 2017. Between then and now (September 2018), Capital Games has received $20 from me. That’s all they’re going to get. I often work during my arena payouts. My guild won’t be heroic sith ready until several months from now. And yet...
I’ve been top 20 in fleet arena since a week after I unlocked it, and regularly hit top 10. I’ve only ranked out of top 50 in squad arena twice in the last 4-5 months, and get to top 20 more often than not. I have Palpatine, Thrawn, raid Han, General Kenobi, Grandmaster Yoda, Commander Luke, and all the characters ready to get Jedi Training Rey when she comes next. And my guild has a 22-5 record in territory wars, so we must be doing something right! (message me if you want to join)
I know that there is a lot more waiting involved for free players and low spenders, but that’s always been the trade off for these type of games. Are there things about the game that frustrate me? Certainly! But it’s still one of the best games from the perspective of a free player. The biggest thing I like about Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is the time while you’re waiting to improve characters or unlock the next one is still fun. In so many games, if you don’t have a certain thing, the game just isn’t fun without it. But this game manages to be fun most of the time, which, alongside the appeal of interacting with my excellent guild mates, is why I continue to play.
Here’s my experience: I started playing in December 2017. Between then and now (September 2018), Capital Games has received $20 from me. That’s all they’re going to get. I often work during my arena payouts. My guild won’t be heroic sith ready until several months from now. And yet...
I’ve been top 20 in fleet arena since a week after I unlocked it, and regularly hit top 10. I’ve only ranked out of top 50 in squad arena twice in the last 4-5 months, and get to top 20 more often than not. I have Palpatine, Thrawn, raid Han, General Kenobi, Grandmaster Yoda, Commander Luke, and all the characters ready to get Jedi Training Rey when she comes next. And my guild has a 22-5 record in territory wars, so we must be doing something right! (message me if you want to join)
I know that there is a lot more waiting involved for free players and low spenders, but that’s always been the trade off for these type of games. Are there things about the game that frustrate me? Certainly! But it’s still one of the best games from the perspective of a free player. The biggest thing I like about Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is the time while you’re waiting to improve characters or unlock the next one is still fun. In so many games, if you don’t have a certain thing, the game just isn’t fun without it. But this game manages to be fun most of the time, which, alongside the appeal of interacting with my excellent guild mates, is why I continue to play.
How dare you be sensible, reasonable and positive!
People like you give internet discussion forums a bad name!
Am I the only F2P/Dolphin who feels like after a dozen or so Marque events that the game is slowly being built towards whales, thus leaving us long-dedicated F2Ps out in the cold watching the game pick up light speed as we watch it blast away?
I must say I vehemently disagree with you sir. You are dead, dead, dead wrong.
Thinking about it a little more. If you consider the daily refresh cost as a sort of baseline for the minimum standard of participation (what CG actually measures against is anyone's guess) the bar has been slowly raising now over the last several updates to make F2P less and less tenable to obtain end game levels of progression.
That's becoming unreasonable if not impossible to maintain as F2P, yet it is also likely that CG is gearing progression in ALL aspects of the game to at least that level of spending. So, F2P lags behind in gear progression, lags behind in arenas, and then loses MORE in game income because they can't hold higher ranks. What kind of motivation does a F2P, or even a low spender, have to stick it out?
Seems like a "buy something or get out" kind of model if I ever saw one.
You don't have to spend that many crystals if you don't want to. I only have 6 characters not 7* for cantina farming (a few of which are chewbacca, Kit, Paploo), so I am definitely not spending 300 crystals each day for cantina refreshes.
No, of course not, but that wasn't the point. The point is the bar got shifted up so the minimum amount of time and/or money spent is going UP to maintain the SAME rate of game progression. Longer grind = lower rate of reward = more player attrition.
Good for you that you've ALREADY put in the time before the goalpost shifted.
The long answer: depends how dedicated you are to the game. If you are willing to accept the grind and extend your patience to the best of your ability, then you’ll do just fine
Yes and no. Every time a new thing is added to the game, you need to look at how it is monetized and how its offered for free. You can make a very good argument that the Sith raid was a huge blow to most f2p players, not so much so that the content was hard but more so that the devs have ignored and basically continue to ignore people who are doing tiers 1-6. They put all their time and energy in improving hSTR and nerfing characters/strategies as apposed to fixing 1-6 rewards, health pool, and RNG. The fact there proposed "fixes" haven't come yet is yet another put down to the f2p population. Now when it comes to slicing mods, there was alot of good for f2p players. Mod energy with 50 crystal recharge is huge, and slicing materials are actually pretty easy to farm and getting all your arena mods up to yellow shouldn't be too difficult. However they essentially put the gold slicing material needed to take a mod from 5 to 6 dots behind a paywall and if you want it free to play you have to farm them out of the Guild Store at the expense of farming characters/gear. Its 3150 tokens to slice 1 mod and this is coming at a time where the vaste majority of the playing population is still trying to gear all their hSTR teams. What you are going to see is people struggling to get their current arena mods up to 6 dots and that isn't taking into account when someone gets a new arena mod that they then need to focus on slicing up.
I personally being the devs should not be trying to monetize mods period. One of the best moves they ever made was making mods in the mod store purchasable with credits as apposed to gems. Mods just play too big of a role in the pvp for them to make them so hard to farm for f2p players and a better store to put those gold slicing materials in would have been the arena store.
As a Minnow or possibly even a dolphin? player, I’ve lost a lot of motivation because of Traya and the exclusive g12+ pieces available only to whales. Arena has become ridiculously annoying with Traya now taking up the top 20. The STR is also a massive burden in this game and I find myself auto’ing it due to the horrible rewards and even more horrible gameplay.
Honestly, there isn’t much to look forward to at the moment. No new legendary or heroes makes the game stale. Too many marquee toons frozen behind paywalls....and the list just goes on. I’m losing interest....fast.
Am I the only F2P/Dolphin who feels like after a dozen or so Marque events that the game is slowly being built towards whales, thus leaving us long-dedicated F2Ps out in the cold watching the game pick up light speed as we watch it blast away?
I felt this way since they released Traya & G12+ gear in the same tier of the Sith Raid, and now the monetized 6dot Mods. F2P players can only absorb so much of these " extra advantages" for p2p players before they can longer maintain competitiveness with p2p players, through hard work, strategy, time and commitment.
May just be committed f2p players that want to stay with a semi causal guild instead of jumping to a heroic sith guild, and not all f2p players.
I think playing competitive as a complete F2P from the beginning is nearly impossible. But tbh that's okay. You can't expect to get anything for free in life.
The question is more, how much you have to spend, to play competitive. So for me, starting in February 18, it was around 300 Euros to get where I am. I never thought I'd ever spend that much on a mobile game, but tbh the 90 Bucks for Des****2 were a harder waste of money. While Level phase, I had to spend to catch up with the people at high arena ranks. When this was over, there was no need to spend any more, since crystals from arena (mostly 1 or 2) and ship arena (Top 5) fuel anything of relevance. Obviously I can not get every shiny marquee toon to 7* right away. That's fine. Most of them are useless anyway. I earn enough crystals to buy those mod salvage thingies from weekly shipments, so no real advantage for whales over me.
If you people now cry over not having energy to buy all the energy refreshs, I can only say "Get your priorities straight". Get your arena teams viable (Gear and Mods) first, then with any crystals you have spare, invest in future/fun projects. There is absolutely no need to chase every Meta and espacially Nest, who lots of people strive for, is not a necessary toon in any aspect of the game. If you want her... Okay fine. But if you priorise her over the obvious right choice (Arena Teams), don't cry if this won't pay out.
So no, complete F2P isn't dying a slow death. It wasn't ever alive this year.
Spending a bit on the other side is perfectly alive and can compete with full whales, while they obviously get to highest end content (HSTR) faster and that's okay.
id say this is the most FTP friendly the game has ever been.
Let me paint a picture for newer players. Marquee toons didnt exist a while ago u were paying for those 3*s or u didnt have them. u didnt have toons like Nest Bastilla Sion DN that were usable in arena at 3*. There was a time period where Rex was the best leader in the game and was the only reliable way to solo the rancor(back when it first came out and was the only raid) and clones ran arena. Rex was pay only for at least a year lol but he was probably the best investment there ever was in this game cuz he has been usable the whole time. At least now we have and idea and are told when toons will be farmable. As a FTP player u dreamed of the day Rex was farmable lol clones were the key to the entire game at the time. I was FTP at the time but now i am a 4.3M GP mess so ive seen both sides
Ill also argue that atm paying is not what it used to be. Because the game has this system now that it didnt have when rex was pay only. If u bought Rex u basically paid for a year of advantage. I bought Bastilla and she was farmable a month later. The toons may get released to fast(for both sides honestly) but as whales we actually feel it on both sides. Nobody wants to 7* 5 pay toons at the same time and at the same time if we do our $ quickly loses value
I actually am still top 20-50 every day with bastilla (almost 7*) and started farming traya. And with the news on upcoming legendary and traya farming . It is all great for me. I still play it every day even on my wedding day lol
If you don't pay youll need to be willing to play for years without being competitive
Not true. If you don't pay, you'll need to play smarter than those who do pay to remain competitive. You might not take #1 in arena in your first week (though there are ways to ensure you have a really really good head start as F2P), but you can certainly be competitive by being smart.
I think playing competitive as a complete F2P from the beginning is nearly impossible. But tbh that's okay. You can't expect to get anything for free in life.
The question is more, how much you have to spend, to play competitive. So for me, starting in February 18, it was around 300 Euros to get where I am. I never thought I'd ever spend that much on a mobile game, but tbh the 90 Bucks for Des****2 were a harder waste of money. While Level phase, I had to spend to catch up with the people at high arena ranks. When this was over, there was no need to spend any more, since crystals from arena (mostly 1 or 2) and ship arena (Top 5) fuel anything of relevance. Obviously I can not get every shiny marquee toon to 7* right away. That's fine. Most of them are useless anyway. I earn enough crystals to buy those mod salvage thingies from weekly shipments, so no real advantage for whales over me.
If you people now cry over not having energy to buy all the energy refreshs, I can only say "Get your priorities straight". Get your arena teams viable (Gear and Mods) first, then with any crystals you have spare, invest in future/fun projects. There is absolutely no need to chase every Meta and espacially Nest, who lots of people strive for, is not a necessary toon in any aspect of the game. If you want her... Okay fine. But if you priorise her over the obvious right choice (Arena Teams), don't cry if this won't pay out.
So no, complete F2P isn't dying a slow death. It wasn't ever alive this year.
Spending a bit on the other side is perfectly alive and can compete with full whales, while they obviously get to highest end content (HSTR) faster and that's okay.
People forget when they want to throw how they are F2P and in top 10 in arena and fleet that it all depends on your shard as well. Take my shard for instance it is full of whales. It's nothing for me to run into a NS, Empire or CLS team with 3 + zetas and complete G12 gear in the 900 range of my arena shard. The top of my shard is even more ungodly. It is the same with in my fleet arena. Just at the 200 range I'm looking at 190k ship power with 7 star ships across the board. The top 50 are insane.
Some people get lucky and either get put on a half dead shard or maybe it's made up of more F2P but as far as my shard goes no F2P stands a chance really. So you can't sit there and say it's doable just because you have managed it in your shard. I would gladly let you visit my shard and you fight against the top 400 whales with 4mil+ GP.
CG should have really instated a graduated server style system. That way newbies get placed with newbies. Medium level with medium and so on. It would keep new players from quitting and also allow a general curve progression. That way the krakens and whales with ridiculous GP, God mods, and everything else can square off against each other in a fair fight while giving players progressing through the ranks a chance to see what it's like to fight for top spots.
As it stands now you have some on dead servers where they have no competition and just breeze through everything. They have enough servers open now with alot of the early ones full of dead accounts. They need to pull those accounts start filling those servers up again. If the player comes back then he could be placed in the approximate server based off his overall roster and whatever stats would be needed to decide the level of server he needs to be at.
Right now they just fill up a shard with the first 20k people. Under this system if you end up with a shard full of just say 5k whales you are guaranteeing that new players will never see anywhere close to the top 500 and probably barely break into anywhere close to 1k.
Quite a few games have already adopted similar systems because by all rights whales should fight whales or anybody with a highly developed roster that can hang at that type of level. It's incredibly depressing in my server seeing G12 and 3 zeta plus squads in my shard as low as 1k to 700 which is the highest I have ever been able to get. Realistically very few new people would stick around if they had a shard like mine and I'm sure mine isn't the only one that has an over abundance of whales and krakens.
It's not healthy for the life of the game to have dead shards and shards way out of balance. It's time they readjusted the shards to a graduated system IMO.
I am running four accounts at the moment. Two are from very early game (soft launch and Jan 16 shard) and two newer accounts (Jan 2018). It was much easier to keep up with the meta and maintain high arena ranks (top 5, top 10) as FTP on the earlier accounts than on the newer accounts. The best I can manage with the newer accounts is top 20 on a good day and that was with a 3 month energy horded phoenix to ep empire to ep sith focused meta chasing account.
As a almost F2P player one thing that i can say. Ships 2.0, Mods 2.0 - ok i can manage those changes, but letting 20+ marquess in the first part of the year out, most of them are presumed to lead to a Legendary there is no "smart" choice" Kyno talked about. I cant farm them all, F2P needs to farm always teams P2P alreday has, we cant just dive into each project CG throws at us. Thats why i dont have a viable BH team, my prepared team sucks as i have decided to farm KOTOR characters. This may be a good decision or may be a bad one. I dont know. I wish its the right thing to do. With 2 new energy types F2P cant use them all, you have to decide which ones to focus on. With Mods 2.0 you have another thing to buy with crystals. It just spreads our focus to thin. If you combine this (new energy) with many new "needed" characters that land on the hard nodes, constant need to gear characters it becomes a chore. I can see people dislike it.
There absolutely are smart choices. If you feel that any of the new toons are not worth making a priority, then dont.
If you farmed some of them and they are not up to par, do you want to chnage that? Focus on gear.
Maybe you just want to focus on the raid, and making teams for that.
That's the issue, you think they are "needed". Maybe they are maybe they are not, as a f2p you need to make smart choices. Focus on the most effective farms and hope it's enough.
I didnt say you need to make the right choices, there is no crystal ball saying what direction to take. Smart choices check the most boxes on the path you choose.
You don't need to make smart choices because that is impossible. You need to make very lucky guesses
People forget when they want to throw how they are F2P and in top 10 in arena and fleet that it all depends on your shard as well. Take my shard for instance it is full of whales. It's nothing for me to run into a NS, Empire or CLS team with 3 + zetas and complete G12 gear in the 900 range of my arena shard. The top of my shard is even more ungodly. It is the same with in my fleet arena. Just at the 200 range I'm looking at 190k ship power with 7 star ships across the board. The top 50 are insane.
Some people get lucky and either get put on a half dead shard or maybe it's made up of more F2P but as far as my shard goes no F2P stands a chance really. So you can't sit there and say it's doable just because you have managed it in your shard. I would gladly let you visit my shard and you fight against the top 400 whales with 4mil+ GP.
Three Things coming to my mind:
First I assume you did a break of the game, wich inevitable leads to such situations. You stand still, while others progress. Espacially in early to mid game, even small breaks of a month or two completely break your neck. It's truly a problem of this game, that there is no catch up mechanic.
Second you state about any teams of G12 and multiple Zetas. Right now arena works like rock paper scissors. For every team, there's a counter. Palps kills NS, NS kill Jedi, Jedi kill Palps. But most important: Arena is a game of mods. You can have tons of G12 Toons and still suck if you didn't really understand mods.
Third... 190k Ship Power? That's really a beginners fleet. If you have an account of more than 3 months into ships and you have problems beating any 190k fleet, you clearly took the wrong choices. Sry Bro. No fault from CG here.
Since Traya took over the arena, no more strategy, same toons everywhere, same matches over and over. They had a good stuff for what 2-3 weeks and then Traya. She killed the game, no more diversity allowed period. Even there so-called Super Jedi teams are just obliterated in auto by Traya and co
No fun. And wait for the legendaries that will require ALL the marquee toons we just had. Tons of fun youhou
Replies
Speed is overrated a bit. It's important, but RPS matchups and smart play is MORE important.
Wow, someone is in complete agreement on the forums and it didnt break the internet. Weird
So, yeah, free play is alive and well. You just need patience, and have to understand that you're going to eventually hit a wall and dig your way through it slowly, but once you're through that wall you just keep chugging along again just fine.
Good choice. Not many toons stand out upon release. Others are serviceable at 3*
Hounds tooth looks like it is worth the investment
You don't have to spend that many crystals if you don't want to. I only have 6 characters not 7* for cantina farming (a few of which are chewbacca, Kit, Paploo), so I am definitely not spending 300 crystals each day for cantina refreshes.
I’ve been top 20 in fleet arena since a week after I unlocked it, and regularly hit top 10. I’ve only ranked out of top 50 in squad arena twice in the last 4-5 months, and get to top 20 more often than not. I have Palpatine, Thrawn, raid Han, General Kenobi, Grandmaster Yoda, Commander Luke, and all the characters ready to get Jedi Training Rey when she comes next. And my guild has a 22-5 record in territory wars, so we must be doing something right! (message me if you want to join)
I know that there is a lot more waiting involved for free players and low spenders, but that’s always been the trade off for these type of games. Are there things about the game that frustrate me? Certainly! But it’s still one of the best games from the perspective of a free player. The biggest thing I like about Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is the time while you’re waiting to improve characters or unlock the next one is still fun. In so many games, if you don’t have a certain thing, the game just isn’t fun without it. But this game manages to be fun most of the time, which, alongside the appeal of interacting with my excellent guild mates, is why I continue to play.
How dare you be sensible, reasonable and positive!
People like you give internet discussion forums a bad name!
I see what you did there.
...and I like it.
No, of course not, but that wasn't the point. The point is the bar got shifted up so the minimum amount of time and/or money spent is going UP to maintain the SAME rate of game progression. Longer grind = lower rate of reward = more player attrition.
Good for you that you've ALREADY put in the time before the goalpost shifted.
The long answer: depends how dedicated you are to the game. If you are willing to accept the grind and extend your patience to the best of your ability, then you’ll do just fine
I personally being the devs should not be trying to monetize mods period. One of the best moves they ever made was making mods in the mod store purchasable with credits as apposed to gems. Mods just play too big of a role in the pvp for them to make them so hard to farm for f2p players and a better store to put those gold slicing materials in would have been the arena store.
Honestly, there isn’t much to look forward to at the moment. No new legendary or heroes makes the game stale. Too many marquee toons frozen behind paywalls....and the list just goes on. I’m losing interest....fast.
I felt this way since they released Traya & G12+ gear in the same tier of the Sith Raid, and now the monetized 6dot Mods. F2P players can only absorb so much of these " extra advantages" for p2p players before they can longer maintain competitiveness with p2p players, through hard work, strategy, time and commitment.
May just be committed f2p players that want to stay with a semi causal guild instead of jumping to a heroic sith guild, and not all f2p players.
BTW @alaskanseminole did CG give you a solution to the blank screen bug, as I have this issue too since Mods 2.0 client uodate.
c.f.
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/179583/8-22-2018-update-issues-update-apparently-its-a-known-bug#latest
The question is more, how much you have to spend, to play competitive. So for me, starting in February 18, it was around 300 Euros to get where I am. I never thought I'd ever spend that much on a mobile game, but tbh the 90 Bucks for Des****2 were a harder waste of money. While Level phase, I had to spend to catch up with the people at high arena ranks. When this was over, there was no need to spend any more, since crystals from arena (mostly 1 or 2) and ship arena (Top 5) fuel anything of relevance. Obviously I can not get every shiny marquee toon to 7* right away. That's fine. Most of them are useless anyway. I earn enough crystals to buy those mod salvage thingies from weekly shipments, so no real advantage for whales over me.
If you people now cry over not having energy to buy all the energy refreshs, I can only say "Get your priorities straight". Get your arena teams viable (Gear and Mods) first, then with any crystals you have spare, invest in future/fun projects. There is absolutely no need to chase every Meta and espacially Nest, who lots of people strive for, is not a necessary toon in any aspect of the game. If you want her... Okay fine. But if you priorise her over the obvious right choice (Arena Teams), don't cry if this won't pay out.
So no, complete F2P isn't dying a slow death. It wasn't ever alive this year.
Spending a bit on the other side is perfectly alive and can compete with full whales, while they obviously get to highest end content (HSTR) faster and that's okay.
Let me paint a picture for newer players. Marquee toons didnt exist a while ago u were paying for those 3*s or u didnt have them. u didnt have toons like Nest Bastilla Sion DN that were usable in arena at 3*. There was a time period where Rex was the best leader in the game and was the only reliable way to solo the rancor(back when it first came out and was the only raid) and clones ran arena. Rex was pay only for at least a year lol but he was probably the best investment there ever was in this game cuz he has been usable the whole time. At least now we have and idea and are told when toons will be farmable. As a FTP player u dreamed of the day Rex was farmable lol clones were the key to the entire game at the time. I was FTP at the time but now i am a 4.3M GP mess so ive seen both sides
Ill also argue that atm paying is not what it used to be. Because the game has this system now that it didnt have when rex was pay only. If u bought Rex u basically paid for a year of advantage. I bought Bastilla and she was farmable a month later. The toons may get released to fast(for both sides honestly) but as whales we actually feel it on both sides. Nobody wants to 7* 5 pay toons at the same time and at the same time if we do our $ quickly loses value
Not true. If you don't pay, you'll need to play smarter than those who do pay to remain competitive. You might not take #1 in arena in your first week (though there are ways to ensure you have a really really good head start as F2P), but you can certainly be competitive by being smart.
Some people get lucky and either get put on a half dead shard or maybe it's made up of more F2P but as far as my shard goes no F2P stands a chance really. So you can't sit there and say it's doable just because you have managed it in your shard. I would gladly let you visit my shard and you fight against the top 400 whales with 4mil+ GP.
CG should have really instated a graduated server style system. That way newbies get placed with newbies. Medium level with medium and so on. It would keep new players from quitting and also allow a general curve progression. That way the krakens and whales with ridiculous GP, God mods, and everything else can square off against each other in a fair fight while giving players progressing through the ranks a chance to see what it's like to fight for top spots.
As it stands now you have some on dead servers where they have no competition and just breeze through everything. They have enough servers open now with alot of the early ones full of dead accounts. They need to pull those accounts start filling those servers up again. If the player comes back then he could be placed in the approximate server based off his overall roster and whatever stats would be needed to decide the level of server he needs to be at.
Right now they just fill up a shard with the first 20k people. Under this system if you end up with a shard full of just say 5k whales you are guaranteeing that new players will never see anywhere close to the top 500 and probably barely break into anywhere close to 1k.
Quite a few games have already adopted similar systems because by all rights whales should fight whales or anybody with a highly developed roster that can hang at that type of level. It's incredibly depressing in my server seeing G12 and 3 zeta plus squads in my shard as low as 1k to 700 which is the highest I have ever been able to get. Realistically very few new people would stick around if they had a shard like mine and I'm sure mine isn't the only one that has an over abundance of whales and krakens.
It's not healthy for the life of the game to have dead shards and shards way out of balance. It's time they readjusted the shards to a graduated system IMO.
You don't need to make smart choices because that is impossible. You need to make very lucky guesses
First I assume you did a break of the game, wich inevitable leads to such situations. You stand still, while others progress. Espacially in early to mid game, even small breaks of a month or two completely break your neck. It's truly a problem of this game, that there is no catch up mechanic.
Second you state about any teams of G12 and multiple Zetas. Right now arena works like rock paper scissors. For every team, there's a counter. Palps kills NS, NS kill Jedi, Jedi kill Palps. But most important: Arena is a game of mods. You can have tons of G12 Toons and still suck if you didn't really understand mods.
Third... 190k Ship Power? That's really a beginners fleet. If you have an account of more than 3 months into ships and you have problems beating any 190k fleet, you clearly took the wrong choices. Sry Bro. No fault from CG here.
No fun. And wait for the legendaries that will require ALL the marquee toons we just had. Tons of fun youhou