Developer Q&A - 8/1

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:15PM

Hi Holotable Heroes,

When I sat down to read through all of today's questions, it quickly became apparent that the community is very focused on a handful of specific topics compared to previous Q&As. The top topic drivers were Grand Arena Championships and Malak and made up for over half of the total questions.

Because of this, we're going to try something a little different today. I've organized the questions into several groups for the team to answer instead of a thread for each person. I think this will be easier to browse for a specific answer than figuring out what each person is responsible for, but I'd love to hear your feedback on the format for next time.

We are just sitting down with the team to get started but feel free to start popping questions into this thread. Kick off in 10 minutes! Let's get started!
Closing this thread to stop gathering questions as we have plenty for today. We will be working through as many questions as we can and then I'll posted them here as they come in

Who is here today:

Nick Reinhart/Tophat - Live Producer
CG_Erik - Player Lifecycle Producer
CG_154M - Feature Producer
CG_Cyanides - Data Analyst/Lead Product Manager

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:15PM

TOPIC: Malak

Q: When is Malak returning?

A: Tophat - Soon. I can't say when yet, but soon. (This isn't the snarky soon tm either, this is just plainly stating soon.)

Q: You've set expectations around all the other kinds of events. Why won't you do the same for Malak?

A: Tophat - Malak represents a different style of event than we've done before in the past. There's a number of puzzle elements and the requirements, while similar to Legendary and Journey events, are also somewhat different. Given the amount of power in Darth Malak and the difference in the event style, we decided early on that it would be different in cadence than some of our other events. Once we establish/create a few more of them we'll commit ourselves to a cadence in the future. We're not ready to do that right now. As a general note, and because of the confusion of calling it a Mythic Battle which is a lot like a Mythic event, we're going to rebrand the Malak style of event as an "Epic Confrontation."

Q: Can we expect more events like Malak in the future?

A: Tophat - Yes. They take us awhile to build, but we're definitely interested in doing more of them. We are currently working on one. Be on the lookout.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Grand Arena Championships

Q: Matchmaking seems to be based on luck and has been fair for some and really unfair for others. What are your plans to make matchmaking more fair/balanced?

A: Tophat - This is a pretty broad question (which is totally fine and great!), but it's hard to give a precise answer. I can provide a philosophical one from us on the dev team. Matchmaking systems require regular and constant iteration. This exhibition round was our first attempt at it. We're currently investigating the changes we need to make for the next round of improvements to the system. We do not believe that this is the last set of changes we will make - we are definitely going to be making some. Hang on with us as we continue to make it better - we're trying to make it really good.

Q: Are you considering removing cross division matches?

A: Tophat - Yes. We're currently investigating and determining if we should do it and how we should do it. But yes, it's an active investigation for us.

Q: Some characters are so much more powerful than others. Will matchmaking take this into consideration somehow?

A: Tophat - Maybe in the future. We don't have any plans to introduce this into Matchmaking at this time. Making a matchmaking system that recognizes the state of the meta is (for us) tricky at this time. We've discussed it, but we want to see if we can make more general rule based changes first before we have to do this sort of "fixing".

Q: Are you planning to make more updates to things like leaderboards so that we can see the results each others matches? It seems like there's a lot potential for rivalries to develop.

A: 154M - We'd really like to beef up leaderboards further - it was a lot of fun to put them in. We need to gather some feedback around how people feel about the "incidental competition" element of the leaderboards, and then we'll figure out next steps for them.

Q: Would you consider more divisions in the GAC so that more people can reach higher ranks? For example, it feels like lumping everyone with 4.5m GP and up is too broad a division.

A: 154M - We definitely plan on adding divisions as GP spaces out further over time. Nothing immediate but this will happen.

Q: The new matchmaking really punishes someone who has focused their resources going deep into a few squads. Do you see this as a problem and plan to change it?

A: Tophat - No. We've structued GAC to reward roster depth and width. We believe the endgame is a test of someone's collection.

Q: Are there plans to add more weight to G13 in matchmaking?

A: Tophat - We've actually talked about making G12 carry more Galactic Power, so that it can better discriminate overall power in a collection better. We've been doing math at it for a bit, verdict is still out if this does the thing we want it to. We're investigating, but we're trying to take measured small steps - we don't want to throw a huge wrench into match making that we know a number of players are already sensitive to.

Q: Why didn't you use a traditional sports bracket where the strongest get matched against the weakest? Why are the strongest matched against the strongest?

A: Tophat - We think it's a more interesting play experience. Both players show up expecting to be able to do something in the battle. In the strongest vs weakest scenario one player steam rolls the other (which while fun in its own way, isn't really that challenging) and the other player likely does nothing they had "fun" doing (getting kicked while they're down). We think the best moments in GoH, like most competitive games, is that moment when you clinch a tight victory. We want to make as many of those moments as we can (knowing that we can't do it constantly).

Q: Will matchmaking take performance in previous GACs into consideration? Would you ever start in a higher league as a result of doing well in the last GAC?

A: Tophat - Maybe - we've talked about it. Our general thinking is that Leagues act as the "memory" of previous performance, and the mechanisms for matchmaking should keep the player focused on getting promoted as the main thing to chase. It's not perfect, but it's the way we think we can preserve incentives across a GAC, and we have a few more fruitful steps we're taking before we make a decision on this.

Q: Why don't you use something like ELO or MMR for matchmaking?

A: Tophat - We've done simulations around using ELO using match up data. What we found is that the nature of the game (persistent collection that increments in power over time) has a lot of weird knock on effects. When you look at something like chess, where i'ts someone's straight skill versus a board that resets each time - ELO is great. In a system where when you joined, what decisions you made to invest, the rng of the battle system, and the introduction of new characters/abilities all have a pretty dramatic effect. What you end up with is an ELO system that really just reinforces those with the most stuff win more and moves slowly to capture the "real state" of the game. That's why we don't use ELO. We've investigated some more "exotic" scoring systems, but nothing that we felt super great about. Totally open to further conversation.

Q: Have you fixed all the issues with scoring?

A: Tophat - We think so. Scoring is incredibly important to us as it is clearly the center of gravity for the integrity of the game. That's why we ran an exhibition first to make sure we caught anything that messed up scoring early. Could there still be some lurking gremlins - potentially. I feel confident we've caught the most egregious ones (time to meme...10...9...8...) - Actually we are looking at the tie-breaker right now. It's not technically bugged, but it looks bugged to the players - we're going to talk about it with the community soon.

Q: GAC was supposed to be the mode to determine the best of the best. How much is cheating a threat to the intergrity of this mode? What are you doing about it?

A: 154M - We've made several investments in detecting and acting against cheating, and we've been able to scale up the rate of investigations since GAC launched. Our major operating principle through Exhibition has been to stay focused on granting players the resources or Championship Score they missed out on as a result of being impacted by a cheater, so that players can keep it moving and not be impacted by cheaters in terms of their progress, as much as possible. We're working on some more tools to prevent cheating and are currently laser-focused on seeing if the most competitive GAC matches (the ones in this final GA) experience an uptick in cheating.

Q: For a month long event, the GAC rewards don't feel worth it. I know we're currently in the Exhibition Season, but are there plans to adjust the rewards when the normal Championships start?

A: Cyanides - We knew we would never be able to give enough rewards at the end of a championship to really satisfy what players would feel as "a month of gameplay." We actually discussed a lot about removing the end of championship rewards and just moving all the rewards into the day to day rewards that players receive through feats, GA battle/round/event rewards, etc. Ultimately, we are still discussing the end of championship rewards and what to do about them, but we have nothing new to share at this time.

Q: Are you planning to add anything else to the GAC store?

A: Cyanides - Maybe someday in the future. The store is pretty robust as of now, and it's only been out for a couple of months, so we don't have any immediate plans to add more to the Championship Store. I could see us adding more slots so that certain pieces show up more often, but that's it.

Q: Will characters be added to the GAC store or as GAC rewards?

A: Cyanides - We don't have plans to add characters to the Championship Store. One thing we have noticed is that whenever we have gear and a character in the same Store, a majority of players will go for the character. This means that gear farming drastically slows down. We do this in the Guild Events Store (which was a strong internal debate), so I wouldn't want to also do this in the Championship Store.

Q: The rewards for getting promoted into a higher league don't feel worth the effort. Are you planning to increase these to make it more desirable to chase getting promoted?

A: Cyanides - We will probably go through and update rewards as time goes on since GAC is meant to evolve over time. We have nothing to announce about it right now though. Ultimately, we had a lot of debate about weather or not league promotions even needed rewards. We wanted league to be a bit more of a bragging right, but we ended up adding some rewards to the promotion just for players who may not care about the status.

Q: It's really frustrating when my opponent doesn't set defenses and I can't complete feats (are there scoring implications too?). Can you force them to set a defense or do something to encourage people to set defenses?

A: Tophat - We're looking into it - absolutely. I don't think we're going to be able to do anything in the short term unfortunately. We are considering easing some of the pain of this situation though with additional scoring or penalties. We're working on it.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Events

Q: Why the recent decrease in the number of events? Is it possible to ensure some events are running each day?

A: TopHat - Ultimately, this is the plan for us. We want to have something running everyday. We've had some transcription errors that have resulted in holes in the schedule, but we're building out our process to make sure we have something everyday. Bear in mind that we also think of our Territory Battle, Territory War, and Grand Arena suite of events as padding the overall daily schedule.

Q: Are there plans to add new difficulty tiers to older events as new characters are added and get stronger in general? Would it be possible to add some kind of "story mode" that allows us to relive iconic moments in the Star Wars saga? Is it possible to make events replayable or always available once completed? Especially the Legendary and Journey events.

A: TopHat - Our Mythic events are the attempt to do this. Unfortunately, they aren't free/cheap for us to make. We have to balance between creating new content, our current projects going on behind the scenes (Like Light Side Geonosis), and the maintenance of the game. We have tickets made to make Mythic Chewie and Threepio, but we haven't been able to get around to doing them yet. We want to do them soon, but we'll have to see when they actually make it to the table.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: PvE Content

Q: This obviously comes up in every Q&A, but has the team seriously considered adding some kind of Sandbox mode that would allow us to use our full roster?

A: TopHat - We've talked about it before a number of times and given answers to it. Our disposition is still the same - in our experience running this game we have yet to see anything that would indicate to us that a mode that does not yield rewards would be played with by more than a handful of players. In general, players do things that net progress in the game - thing that don't yield progress in they don't engage with. We've talked about creating an experiment to test this further, but it takes away from building bigger things.

Q: If not a Sandbox per se, could you allow somekind of mode where guildmates could practice and strategizes with each other? Even a single territory that guildmates could set a defence for and allow everyone to attack would add so much value to some of the lesser characters to our rosters and would make the day to day grind so much more worth it.

A: TopHat - We've talked about. Ultimately, our concern is the same about a general sandbox mode.

Q: How about making changes to the Galactic War mode to make it more endless (survival mode) and open it up to more meta squads?

A: TopHat - Now this is something we've talked way more seriously about. We have some designs around it and we're fleshing it out. That does not mean it will see the light of day, but we think there's fertile ground here. Ultimately, we want to figure out what does this mode roll up into (part of the champsionship structure, some sort of new pve challenge mode, etc) before we build it out.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Communication

Q: The Road Ahead is usually a long post about the next quarter of SWGoH but this recent one was much shorter. Why did it change and is there more to announce in the next 3 months? Would you consider smaller, more frequent updates instead of a big Road Ahead every few months?

A: Erik -The Road Ahead is usually a long post about the next quarter of SWGoH but this recent one was much shorter. Why did it change and is there more to announce in the next 3 months? Would you consider smaller, more frequent updates instead of a big Road Ahead every few months? "The Road Ahead has evolved a bit over time in terms on it's purpose and the timing. We've been working to refine the purpose of the Road Ahead and how it fits into the bigger picture of communications and content roll out from the team for a while.

We typically look at a quarter's worth of content at time with the major update coming sometime toward the end of the 2nd month, beginning of the 3rd month. Characters, ships, and events fill up the majority of the rest of the quarter.

Here's what the cadence will generally look like moving forward:
Month 1: Road Ahead
Month 2: State of the Galaxy
Month 3: State of the Galaxy

Road Ahead: Moving forward, the Road Ahead will set up a outline of the journey we'll go on over the course of the next three months. We're trying to set up the narrative, recall iconic moments from Star Wars history that you'll be able to relive in the future, and as many of you have noticed, drop hints about what's upcoming. We know it's not as much ""red meat"" upfront, however, as rather than a few monolithic posts, we're trying to break down these topics over time and foster more conversation. Moving these details out of the Road Ahead and into the day-to-day communication should open up more opportunities for us to have conversation with you.

State of the Galaxy: This is a monthly check-in for the non-Road Ahead months. We acknowledge that often times our communication is largely announcements, and not as conversational, and we've seen frustration lately that it doesn't feel like we're actively listening. The State of the Galaxy will be at least one time per month that we'll pause, talk about the major issues that we're hearing from the community, and talk about what we're planning to do. This is a new format, so it might change a bit over time, but that's what we're thinking right now.

Following each of these posts, we'll release a survey and ask for your questions, and will hold a Dev Q&A a few days later. We're also talking about evolving what these Q&As look like, maybe it's fewer people, more focused on specific topics. Perhaps we try out a Reddit AMA, live stream, etc in the future.
A: Crumb - We need to have more regularly schedule updates for the community. While the Road Ahead will remain a quarterly look forward, we also are planning to do a smaller monthly version that covers our top goals, concerns, and plans for the next 4 weeks. I'm hoping this can be a good area to discuss what issues we are working on and which community concerns we will address in the near term. We also need to dedicate more resources to regular non-campaign related communication. A ton of my day is taken up hunting down our plans and communicating that but we also need to have more time for frank discussions around the issues.

Q: Back in April CG_SBCrumb released a kit for Carbonite Han, when will we see his release in game?

A: Crumb - Currently slated for 4/1/2020

Q: "At Capital Games we share one computer. Today is Caley's turn and he couldn't be happier." has been a running gag within the community, but what does this actually mean? What does Caley actually do at Capital Games?

A: Crumb - The joke comes from a line on our official website. Someone sent Caley a screenshot with that caption when the site first went up. It got passed around the office and then mysteriously appeared on the website... Hilariously, that shot is just Caley running his daily stand ups and not staged despite looking incredibly like it was setup. As for Caley, he's an awesome Development Director on SWGoH who enjoys Minecraft, Star Wars, his dogs, long walks on the beach and Minecraft. He also despises how much of a celebrity he's become so I take every opportunity to mention him publicly when I can.
Proof he has his own laptop:

Q: When are the next puzzles coming? They really seem to bring the community together, and gives us something fun to look forward to!

A: Crumb - I can't tell you when a puzzle is coming, that would be against the spirit of the whole thing :P Keep your eyes peeled

Q: How much does it bug you that the community sentiment tends to stay so negative no matter what you do? Release new content, it's either too hard or too easy, give us more ways to progress and it's just a money grab, etc. Fors that bug you as a dev team, or do you somehow (I have no idea how) take it as passionate/constructive? Thanks for all you do! I've never played a game as long as I have this one.

A: Erik - I think it's easy to forget (in both directions, at times) that there are real-life human beings on either end of internet. The studio is full of really hard-working, largely Star Wars nerds who are trying to build a game we want to play. It definitely hurts when we don't hit the mark, and players don't dig what we make, but it's also critically important feedback that we take seriously.

Further complicating things is that the community isn't a monolithic whole. It's made up of lots of different kinds of players who want different (sometimes opposing) things - and it's not always obvious who fits into which group - so we're trying to understand that whole of the conversation, how is sentiment tracking across time, etc.

I've got so much to say about this, but practically speaking, it's important to 1) be empathetic and try to get to the heart of what's being communicated 2) have a thick skin, don't take it personally and let any personal attacks roll off your back.
A: Crumb Sure, it can be draining if you don't have the right attitude. By that, I mean you have realize the reason people are here and yelling is because they are passionate and care. It would be a way worse situation if there was just silence. Sometimes it's just a long rant, but often there's a real complaint or pain point at the core that is important to capture and escalate to the team. Of course, I'd prefer concise and well thought out responses to make it easier for me to figure out what a player is talking about

I also have to check my gut/communities feelings against data. Often the silent majority feels one way and the vocal folks feel another so we have to figure out what different groups of players are thinking and feeling.
A: 154M - Great question. Short answer - we are all capable of compartmentalizing and parsing negative feedback, but it can be psychologically draining when the feedback is overwhelmingly negative, since we all play this game and spend so much of our time focused on the game and on your experience with it. That said, critical, even negative feedback, is really really important to us and we read it all, and over time, we've come to understand that 99.9% of it comes from the best of intentions. And thanks for playing so long - this game really can be a blast sometimes, eh?
A: Cyanides - It can be quite frustrating sometimes. Personally, I sometimes feel like it's a no win situation. However, I believe that there is a large, quiet part of the community that really appreciates a lot of the stuff we do.

I read the subreddit/forums everyday, and it can be very hard to deal with some days. That being said, after reading through all the negativity/toxicity, there are some really good suggestions/posts that are worth the journey."

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Iconic Items

Q: Will there be a system implemented to use up our overly stockpiled low level gear to hopefully use as an exchange rate to gain higher level gear? This would give us use for the thousands of gears just stock piling away.

A: 154M - You'll be exchanging both lower-level and higher-level gear for new materials. There's currently no plans to have an "exchanger" of low to high level gear. We think that's already covered by the Shard Shop.

Q: Could you imagine something like a Jawa junk trader where different lever tier gear can be traded for other gear of higher tiers?

A: 154M - Utinni!!!
A: TopHat - We could absolutely imagine it.
A: CG_Sven - That's actually pretty close, spiritually, to where we started with this idea.

Q: Is the idea that we're trading in lower level gear pieces for higher level gear pieces of the same kind, i.e., trade in 10 mk4 stun guns for 1 mk5 stun gun? Or for something entirely new?

A: 154M - The latter.

Q: Will these iconic pieces just make meta character even more powerful or will this be an opportunity to rebalance the whole roster of characters?

A: 154M - Every single character will get an item. Specifically, what we're trying to do with the power granted from this new system is create better defined "classes" out of our existing archetypes (attacker / taunt / support / healer / etc.). So while the "angularity" of abilities still means that characters with incredible abilities will still be incredible no matter what, we're hoping that this serves as a rebalancing factor over time similar to G13.
A: TopHat - This does not mean that we will stop reworking characters or introducing new systems to improve upon combat. We hope that it actually can open us up to rework more characters - we'll have to see.

Q: Does the new addition of iconic items to characters mean there is a chance that you will give an ysalimiri to Thrawn? Would give you an excuse to make him much more viable against Jedi.

A: TopHat - Most of the character items are their weapons - a few special characters have non-combat items.

Q: Will Vader's iconic item be a Tophat?

A: 154M - Not if we want to keep our jobs.
A: TopHat - I think it should definitely be a tophat.
A: 154M - That's nice.
A: TopHat - Right?

Q: Curious, what a bonus Hermit Yoda’s cane will give. Will he call in of a flock of seagulls that peck at the enemy to death?

A: TopHat - The power is activatable only if the enemy has been hit by a boulder and their knees are exposed.
A: Erik - Come on, man. Quit that banging.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Quality of Life

Erik: Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to get to the QOL of life bucket of questions. One interesting thing I noticed reading through the full list of questions was the number of times elder players commented expressing concern about new players being left behind and unable to catch up. This is something that we that we're talking about quite a bit as a team, so I wanted to highlight this question and hear your feedback:

Any chance you could implement some type of feature that would encourage Guilds to accept/value newer players? The features you currently have in place encourage high-level players to leave mid-tier guilds for better ones. Could you introduce an incentive for Guilds to shepherd new players? Maybe even a Guild Event bonus?

Here are the rest of the major QOL questions we identified (in no particular order):

Can you put a notification for when a raid is about to start or when P1 start then p2 start...etc
Can we have a QOL that lets us adjust what makes the red notification light up on a character, ship, or button leading to them? For instance: Let me set it so I only get a notification when a Favorited toon has an available upgrade. Or so only gear pieces of a certain level or higher will turn the notification on. Same for abilities: Let us set it so we only get the red notification-icon when an Omega can be placed. Or a zeta. As it stands, many of us perpetually have "3+" icons lit up for a bunch of things we don't care about. If I'm saving up for a Mk5 Stun Gun, I don't want constant reminders of all the Mk3 Carbanti Sensor Arrays I could place.
Will we be getting a reverse on the "quality of life" update that now requires us to move the slider backwards anytime we sim battles (since most, if not all, do not want to sim all battles at once)? At least a configurable setting for which end we would like the slider to default?
Can we get an "update all loadout mods" button? Putting mods back takes forever. Is there any discussion around eliminating the cost to remove mods?
Is it possible to add a review time for TB similar to TW?
Territory Battles are an extremely time intensive (and time sensitive) mode for guild officers. Can early access to set direction be provided? And a review phase afterwards to collect performance information?
Could you please allow officers to completely block access to certain platoons or territories altogether? This would make our lives so much easier if we didn't have to repeat ourselves and put text in the territory labels that get ignored.
Are there plans to reduce the amount of time needed daily?
Do you have any plans to increase the maximum mod inventory cap?
Can we please have a 60 FPS toggle in settings?
Our guild's leadership has had some issues with keeping track of our players during TB's. Are there any plans to separate ship and squad combat missions and deploys in the stat screens to make it easier to monitor our progress?
Are there any additional tools for guild leaders and officers to manage TB, such as locking individual platoons or having a deploy all ability in the last hour of a phase, that the developers are working on adding.
The features you currently have in place encourage high-level players to leave mid-tier guilds for better ones. Could you introduce an incentive for Guilds to shepherd new players? Maybe even a Guild Event bonus?
Can we have an in-game guild rule board? For TB/TW/Raid rules to be “stickied” somewhere other than our welcome message.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: General Questions

Q: How do you decide to give out special titles or portraits for "world firsts"?

A: Erik - This has been a pretty ad hoc, but fun, thing for the team in the past. It typically comes from one of the analysts raising an interesting point or someone on the team asking an interesting question. We might get more formal about it in the future, but it's usually spontaneous right now.

Q: First, thank you for reducing the cost of the G12 and G12 plus gear as well as making that gear a little more accessible. Is there a plan to reduce the cost of stun cuffs and stun guns in the stores similar to what you did with the G12 and G12 plus gear?

A: Cyanides - We have no plans to change the crystal cost of older gear. When we changed the crystal cost for G12/G12+, these were tied to other economy changes in the game (ship energy, shard shop). Since we made it easier to acquire G12/G12+, we needed to reduce the crystal cost in order to maintain a closer value between purchasing the gear with crystals directly compared to farming the pieces of gear from ship nodes/shard shop.

Q: I am sure you will get this question a lot, but when will you finally do something about the Mace's challenge gear? It is so useless compared to the other two where one is semi-useful and STR challenge could be every day and I wouldn't get enough of carbantis and golden eye balls. Also, why did you take out golden eye balls from HAAT rewards? These rewards are more useless than useful, so people generally don't expect amazing drops of gear from HAAT. You could say that HAAT is currently the Mace's challenge among the raids

A: Cyanides - As mentioned in the Road Ahead, we plan on doing something with the existing gear that players have a lot of and no where to use it. Rather than change the challenge itself, we want create a way for the gear recieved from the challenge to be valuable.

Q: If there is indeed an ambitious, multi-year plan for SWGOH, can you confirm that it's more than just reskinned prior content and new ways to grind? Will we seen new gameplay modes and ways to use our collection?

A: 154M - The multi-year plan for GoH is really ambitious and we're really excited about it. We've also extended it by a few updates since we first alluded to it. It definitely includes new content and new game modes. But the more ambitious releases always take more time and we know how frustrating it can be to feel like a live game is not moving fast enough (or in some cases, is moving too fast). We'll continue to publish our intentions and share information as soon as we can, as much as we can.

Q: There have been a lot of players asking for new content such as new raids, a sandbox mode, other kinds of gameplay and that doesn't seem to be reflected in the last Road Ahead. Does the team take community feedback and desires into consideration when deciding what to build? How do you prioritize community requests against business needs?

A: 154M - See above for our plans on new game modes. We consistently work to prioritize community feedback against our other needs - in fact, it usually isn't that hard. My favorite quote that best expresses our approach here is, "Quality of Life features are things that you can't measure but bad things happen to you if you don't do them." Almost always, the difficulty keeping us from always bringing you the content and features you want relates to opportunity cost and dev time.

Q: Did the whole dev team unlock Malak the first time on their personal accounts? OR, if that question isn't appropriate, here's a second option: Do you think the experience you guys have with the game is fundamentally different than our own primarily because you know what is coming when? How do you ensure your personal experience doesn't color game development/design decisions (e.g. Caley has the laptop and says "I'm still about two weeks from being done with the Malak farm, so let's just push his event date back.....")

A: 154M - The whole dev team definitely did not unlock Malak the first time on their personal accounts. (A few of us did though.) We do have to consistently check ourselves in terms of understanding the play experience from players who are not at the end game, as most of us are. The community helps with this. We are pretty well-balanced across the team in terms of frequency of play, spend, and PvE/PvP preferences. We obviously do not make decisions about the game based on how it would benefit our accounts personally as that would be EXTREMELY unethical and uncool.

Q: What’s after the Clone Wars?

A: Tophat - Well... if only something was happening in the Star Wars universe at the end of this year...

Q: With Metas constantly changing, how are you able to keep out in front of which characters need a "rework" and which ones are still okay?

A: Tophat - The short answer is that we talk alot about the meta and we have a lot of data on how players use and acquire characters. It is a CONSTANT conversation in the building. And it's a conversation tempered by what we need to add that's new and what we are ok with as it is.

Q: Is there anything in the pipeline to attract new players, or is the game past that stage?

A: Tophat - We're definitely on this and are currently in preproduction on a handful of ideas to tackle it aggressively. The big question is, "what is required to get new players to the part of the game where everyone else is having a blast?" And then we're going to build some features around making that happen. I know that we are biased here, but we do not consider this game to be "dying" or "past its prime" or anything like that. We'd like to figure out how to get more players into the heart of the game and are looking forward to talking about how we plan to do that.

Q: Drop rates - it has been noted by many that when a user gets closer to fully maxing a character, gear or shards, that the drop rates decline. Are we expected to believe it’s all based on RNG? All we really want is the truth behind what’s going on.

A: Cyanides - I've mentioned this in the last Q&A and mentioned it in a few of my forum posts. We do not change drop rates based on anything. If shards from Cantina Nodes have a 33% drop rate, then that's that for every player regardless of whatever else is happening.
A: Crumb - There was a great post on reddit the other day confirming this but I'm not sure what else we can say to prove that this isn't changing. All I can say is do your investigation with a large enough sample size.

Q: Can we get dislikes added back to the forums?

A: Crumb - I think about returning it from time to time but I always come back to the same issue: People use dislikes and downvotes for posts they disagree with, not for misinformation and posts that aren't relevant to the conversation. This sinks many productive conversations and players should be able to voice their opinions even if the majority of forum users disagrees.

Q: When are getting more portraits and titles for characters like Grievous or even Jawas?!?

A: Crumb - The art team is working on portraits whenever they have spare time between projects so I'm sure we will see more in the future... maybe even a certain crate

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

TOPIC: Characters

Q: Have you felt particularly inspired, proud, or happy when working on a rework or a yet to be released rework?

A: CG_Prophet - There are two standout pieces of content that I am particularly proud of, but they’re more about the events around characters rather than the characters themselves.

The first is the Flight of the Falcon Legendary event. It was the first time I worked on a piece of Legendary-tier content for the game and I got to have a lot of fun exploring what we could do to create a memorable experience for the players. Looking back, I might’ve made the event a bit more challenging, but I know the community was just as excited to see the A-wing, B-wing, and Y-wing as I was, not to mention getting to call the shots with Darth Vader as your fleet’s commander, all with some fun references and memorable dialogue thrown in! Having the chance to work on the event that showcases the most iconic ship in the Star Wars universe? Yeah, I’m incredibly proud of that!

And of course, Star Forge Showdown, a months-long endeavor of collaboration across disciplines to turn our interpretation of the climactic boss battle from Knights of the Old Republic into a reality. Working closely with Darth Malak’s character designer and our art team, I was tasked with taking what was little more than an outline of the event and crafting a challenging, memorable experience for our most hardcore players. Even better was that it released during Star Wars Celebration 2019! Getting to see our players react to the event in real-time at our booth (including the frustration!) was an unforgettable experience. And to the guy who cracked his phone’s screen while trying to beat the event, I still consider that a badge of honor and love to tell that story!
A: CG_Fugitive - Working on Padme was challenging but very rewarding. I looked to Attack of the Clones and the first season of The Clone Wars for inspiration on her kit. Not only did I find a lot of material that formed her kit, I also learned a lot about her character. She has a lot more depth and complexity than I remembered, especially in the Clone Wars series. I'm very happy with how she turned out and the role she's been playing in the meta.
A: CG_Zeus - Indeed! In particular, I really enjoyed studying the narrative backgrounds of, and working on, Jango Fett, C-3PO, and the Finn rework.

Q: Why only a select few of the Clone Troopers and not all of them?

A: Tophat - Couple reasons. We have plans for these clones in the future and we have the age old problem of limited time and resources. We couldn't do all of them so we picked the ones that would be the most impactful in the short and long term.

Q: How strong are you aiming to get the clone reworks when they come?

A: Tophat - That's a really difficult question to answer because their power will change with time. You'll just have to wait and see.

Q: With the Clone rework coming up, is there any chance we could see Delta Squad added to the game? They already have pretty well-defined personalities and skills, so it (probably) wouldn't be too hard to come up with kits that fit their characters well.

A: Tophat - Not any time soon. They've been on the table before in the past, but they get edged out by other characters. They are never too far from our minds. Fundamentally there are a lot of clones that are already better known/beloved or already in game. Comes back to the time and resources problem.

Q: In the road ahead post by CG_TopHat," I slapped my head in disbelief"... lol. This was a hint at Jar Jar right? .

A: Tophat - It is not a hint about Jar Jar. There are no plans to make Jar Jar at this time
A: Crumb - That's just what someone who's working on Jar Jar would say

Q: How long, from conception to implementation, does it take on average when introducing a new toon?

A: Tophat - Varies. Depends on the power level, interaction between factions, the problems they need to solve in the meta, etc. We have a conception of "the size" of different characters. On average somewhere between 4 to 6 weeks. It's not something we just turn around in an instant - it requires a lot of back and forth internally and externally as well.

CG_SBCrumb · August 1, 2019 7:16PM

RESERVED

Slewfoot · August 1, 2019 7:27PM

Ill wait to see your answers first, but I'm curious as to how you plan to fix GAC. You've turned it from the best to the worst game mode. The matchmaking is bad (disincentives boosting your roster as it pits you against stronger players), the scoring is bad (score is highly dependent on defense set by opponent), the rewards are bad (5 week event that rewards less than a single raid).

HK22 · August 1, 2019 7:28PM

I like the organization. Now lets see how this goes.

MagicMatthews99 · August 1, 2019 7:28PM

I hope they answer my question about a Jawa portrait this time. They didn't last Q&A.
Edit: And I hope they say they'll be adding one.

Alohomora · August 1, 2019 7:29PM

After seeing Malak topic on top, I think I expect a good question and an answer. Everyone knows what the question is but I don't want to ask it again.

MagicMatthews99 · August 1, 2019 7:30PM

Didn't you say last Q&A that you would try and think of a new format of doing them, so we don't need to sit here for an hour constantly refreshing the page?

Slewfoot · August 1, 2019 7:31PM

Alohomora wrote: »

After seeing Malak topic on top, I think I expect a good question and an answer. Everyone knows what the question is but I don't want to ask it again.

Malak will return when the SE team has some sort of viable counter. Probably for $$.

Daishi · August 1, 2019 7:32PM

When will we get relief on the stun gun restriction? Gear crunch just seems to get larger and larger as new gear is added and no relief from old pinch points.

You improved ship energy regen but removed the most needed gear from ship normal mode.

Please address why you removed the gear from one of the few available places since normal energy is also needed for kyrotech and finishers.

yohann269 · August 1, 2019 7:32PM

in regards to the malak question

DarthAndy · August 1, 2019 7:33PM

GAC: Plans to alter feats so they generate currency instead of points? Current system basically forces the use of certain teams at certain times and limits players vs allowing them to battle as they see fit

LendersQuiz · August 1, 2019 7:34PM

WITHOUT leaving the guild they are in, how are players suppose to complete achievements & prestigious quests that are tied to both the light side and dark side Hoth Territory Battles when their guild is ONLY willing to do the Geonosis TB?

Why are we limited to only doing a maximum of three prestigious quests at the same time. Why can't we do them all at the same time?

Are there any plans for Galactic Bounty I/II events to happen more often then once every ~45 days (on average)?

Some older toons are not available in any store. Baze for example. Since he and most of these older toons are not meta, is there a possibility that the energy requirements to farm them could be lowered (again, the ones NOT found in any store)?

Many legendary events still do not have a Mythic version. Events such as, Luke Skywalker Hero's Journey, Rey's Hero's Journey, Legend of the Old Republic....are you actively working on releasing any of these or others as Mythics? Again, I am NOT asking WHEN, just asking IF it is coming out.

Now that we have five capital ships and rumor has it, a sixth capital ship coming soon, will be able to assign ships to "squads" similarly to the way we assign characters?

Have you ever entertained the idea of letting the fans of the game vote on which toon they would like to see next in the game?

and finally.......

At the moment, there are three prestigious quests that are tied to the ranking in the HAAT (Tank) Raid.
Jedi Knight 4/4 - Earn rank 10 or higher 5 times in the HAAT Raid
Jedi Master 1/4 - Earn rank 3 or Better 3 times in the HAAT Raid
Jedi Master 4/4 - Earn Rank 1 in the HAAT Raid
In the eventuality that the Tank Raid becomes simmable, will there be any special consideration for the players trying to do these quests or will each player have to ask their guild's leadership NOT to sim the tank raid up to 13 times? Perhaps simply designating everyone as 1st place?

yohann269 · August 1, 2019 7:34PM

Slewfoot wrote: »

Alohomora wrote: »

After seeing Malak topic on top, I think I expect a good question and an answer. Everyone knows what the question is but I don't want to ask it again.

Malak will return when the SE team has some sort of viable counter. Probably for $$.

It's all about the FUPU!!!

Iy4oy4s · August 1, 2019 7:36PM

Ships. We need a road ahead for ships. We need a new cap ship that’s not locked up for 3-4 months behind a TB!

DojiBrian · August 1, 2019 7:36PM

Are we going to see more Capital ships from different factions, with more fighter ships to form faction specific squads?

AtreiNero · August 1, 2019 7:37PM

Is there going to be a way for us to get more MK 3 Carbantis and Mk5 stun guns? They are really hard to get.

Athen_Greeco · August 1, 2019 7:38PM

Was the jar Jar reddit comment just some CG trolling ? Or is it another “we can’t comment on future characters at this time”

DarthTekuu · August 1, 2019 7:39PM

Hi! PvP with friends in a GA mode would be great what do you think

Juangiun · August 1, 2019 7:39PM

Sandbox: it is so unfair that some handfull of people have test accaunts and can try different team compositions, but the huge majority of us, simple mortals, can´t even use our own characters and try them out!

Is simple justice to give everyone a test account, or a sandbox mode.

Ultra · August 1, 2019 7:39PM

Can we get the dislike button back on the official forums?

Ipacolypz · August 1, 2019 7:40PM

How much does it bug you that the community sentiment tends to stay so negative no matter what you do? Release new content, it's either too hard or too easy, give us more ways to progress and it's just a money grab, etc. Fors that bug you as a dev team, or do you somehow (I have no idea how) take it as passionate/constructive? Thanks for all you do! I've never played a game as long as I have this one.

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