Developer Q&A - 11/01

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CG_SBCrumb
685 posts EA Community Manager
edited November 2019
Hi Holotable Heroes,

The team is getting ready for the Q&A at 12:30pm PT today. We've got a bunch of questions that we answering already from the survey so post your questions in the thread and we'll try to answer as many as we can live!

Today's Categories:
Who's Here Today:
  • CG_Tophat - Live Producer
  • CG_SvenGG - Sr. Game Designer
  • CG_Vyeking - Creative Director
  • CG_Cyanides - Data Analyst/Lead Product Manager
  • CG_Miller - Senior Game Designer
  • CG_SBCrumb - Sr. Community Manager

UPDATE 12:25pm PT: We will begin shortly folks! The team is starting to run through the thread and answering your questions
UPDATE 1:35pm PT: Hey folks, still working through a ton of questions and we are going to keep going for a bit longer
UPDATE 2:00pm PT: Going to let the team get back to work but I've got a ton of answers to post from the team still.
UPDATE 3:15pm PT: We've still got a few answers left to post but we are going to wrap up this month Q&A. Thanks for sending us great questions everyone!
Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on

Replies

  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: General Questions

    Q: Any love for First Order in the future?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - Yes, you will see more First Order content in the coming months

    Q: What does your community manager do all day because it certainly doesn’t seem like he is managing the community?
    • A: CG_SBCrumb - I wish I could spend all day talking to players as its what I enjoy most about this job and it's something we need to do more of but here's an idea of what I might be doing when I'm not posting and chatting to players:
      • Report critical issues to the team as they appear and in weekly reports. I read alot, even if I don't respond all the time. Every week I surface the top discussed/most frustrating issues from the players directly to the team.
      • Advocate for the community to the team and raise concerns around the impact of a change on players - mostly writing up how X change will impact different types of players
      • Writing and reviewing posts, update notes, newsletters, announcements with the designers and engineers
      • Organize our regularly scheduled events, Dev Q&A, Road Ahead/State of the Galaxy, getting updates of the status of tickets for the Dev Tracker
      • Respond to direct messages on a variety of platforms: forums,reddit,slack,discord - The volume of messages I receive daily is high and endless. I don't get to as many of these as I would like but I try to respond when I can. I wish I had another 4 hours in day to get to more of these
      • Occasionally I also deal with particularly difficult tickets that need a strong knowledge of whats going on in the community for the CS team"

    Q: Hi there, is the game dying? As in are you losing interest and running out of ideas for the game as a lot of people are thinking the game is dead in the water and going nowhere. I really hope it isn’t cause I love this game any thoughts?
    • A: CG_Tophat - We recently appeared on the Galactic War Report and discussed this specifically. As I said there, the game is not dying and by measures is healthy and vibrant. As we alluded to in the podcast, we recognize there's some skepticism in the playerbase about our incentives to answer this directly, but seriously - the game is fine. Regarding the question about losing interest or running out ideas, I don't think that's the case here. We're regularly talking about upcoming character content, discussing the raid, and thinking about new modes. This game is really big and complicated and making updates to it takes time.

    Q: CG Tophat, I really enjoyed your recent appearance on the Galactic War Report podcast. You seemed to be very open to both news and questions. How far ahead did you plan your appearance and can we anticipate more community outreach soon?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Thanks! (I suppose this should be followed up by a "Nice try, CG!"). Personally, the longer I've worked on the game, I feel like the more open I've become in my answers and things I'm willing to address. All of us here loving talking about the game and working on the game with the players. The GWR guys, in my opinion, do a good job of taking a relatively journalistic approach to the interview. That appearance happened pretty quickly (going and looking at emails). We reached out to GWR on 10/22 about doing the interview the evening of 10/24. We're looking into what it means to have a more regular appearance of the developers of all flavors be heard from more regularly. We were supposed to get on with them this Wednesday but some shenanigans on our side prevented us from talking with them. TL;DR - Thanks and we'd like to do a lot more of it.

    Q: Do you watch YouTube videos by from the Community? Are you aware of the growing sentiments they're expressing on behalf of the community? Do those types of community input factor into any of your design decisions??
    • A: CG_Tophat - We've watched them, sure. Their sentiments largely mirror those in the community and don't fundamentally add much to the conversation beyond what we see in Reddit and the Forums. We look for the concerns of the community, not any specific personalities.

    Q: Question for CG_Cyanides:If a recent college graduate (semi-unrelated major) came up to you and asked what the most important skill to practice to eventually do what you do, what would you say to them? How would you recommend they begin learning how to develop those skills?Thanks! ?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - What an interesting question! A brief history of how I got here: went to college for Computer Science, became an Associate Data Analyst at EA Mobile, switched to Product Management, then Producer, and then back to Product Management which is what I do now (this was an 8 year process). Experience plays a large factor into my position, but there are a few key areas I would focus in that aren't just college/higher education based:
      1. Developing soft skills in how to communicate data - Some people have a knack for interpreting data/information and some people don't. Being able to empathize with people that don't and figuring out how to communicate specific information to that audience is very important.
      2. Market research - Knowing what market trends/what other games are doing is very valuable as it helps give context into decision making and how those decisions are communicated
      3. Strong understanding of the game and player base (whatever game/player base you are looking to work with) - I am a die hard player and love this game. I played it for a while well before coming onto the team, and I try my best to play like someone who doesn't actually have ""insider information."" Any money I have spent has been my own personal money (even though I can be granted anything) because I want to understand what spending money in this game really feels like. Also, having a deep understanding of the game mechanics and economy allows me to better understand the data we look at as well as the decisions we make from it. I am extremely passionate about people that work on a game also being players of the game, and I believe this has really helped me on my path to SWGOH.

    Q: Do you generally listen to the community of your game in Reddit?Players are indignant over bugs with Malak and freezing in the middle of a fight.You can listen to them more, for example, in Epic Confrontation, get the character immediately by 7 * so that there are no more problems like with Malak?
    • A: CG_Tophat - We absolutely listen. In the same Galactic War Report I referenced that we are keenly aware of sentiment in the community and their feedback. To deconstruct this a little bit - regarding the disappearing buttons bug - we recently posted about it that we think we have a good lead on it. That update can't come fast enough. Regarding Malak, the problems we had around the rollback were disappointing and we've looked into how if we have to do it in the future, we can do it better. Regarding some of the player specific notes about Malak and how he and Skywalker should be 7*, we've heard these notes but it's not aligned with what we think those characters are: for this state of the game, the ultimate collection achievements. That said, we're reviewing what everyone has said and taken into consideration for future releases as well. Fundamentally, we don't always pop into Reddit or the Forums and address everyone's issues individually, but we definitely review it holistically. We have daily discussions about sentiment and topics of interest. We even have weekly report outs on it. We do our best to manage the health of the game and sentiment on a regular basis.

    Q: Why are you devoting resources to a new game when you don't even have enough for swgoh?! Why is the new Sr. Producer missing in action!? You guys are really out of sync with the swgoh gaming community. Start a Discord server and start interacting with your community in real-time! Way better than forums or Q&A
    • A: CG_Tophat - How do you know I'm not Mark? (JK). Joking aside, different Senior Producers have different styles. Carrie was community facing and Mark is not as much. Both Senior Producers work(ed) very closely with us, the group that answers these Q&As and help drive the day to day goings on of the team and the game. Personally, Mark is incredibly involved with this team on a day to day basis and has said he trusts us to deliver the messaging that needs to go out. There's currently a discussion in the studio about what it would mean for us to be in an open discord and how we would manage that interaction. It's tricky, but we're giving it a honest review - hopefully we can. (Also I'm not ignoring the first question, I just can't talk about the new project at this time)

    Q: I'm really concerned about the game future, what can you tell us to help calm all the noise about the game reaching and end? Former Game changers talk about reduced developers or team working in the game, I want to continue investing time and other resources into the game, but without the confidence the game will continue, I'm not sure if I should. I asked this question the last Q&A and didn't got an answer?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Similar to what we've outlined above, we have long term plans, the game is healthy, and we aren't reducing staff (I'm not really sure where this rumor is coming from, but it's kind of silly. Maybe this is related to the departure of Carrie, but ultimately our size is still the same as it has been.). We've talked about a raid, we've talked about plans for future content delivery systems, and we're about to release the next iteration of the Territory Battle. We continue to invest a ton of time and resources into this game and plan on keeping it around for the long haul. We'll have a Road Ahead soon (won't be exactly at the beginning of November but hopefully the middle) and we hope that points to some of the new things we're working on and thinking about. If you're looking for specifics, that will come in the Road Ahead and continued communications from us. We will not be laying out the beat by beat 12 to 18 month long plan out in a forum post primarily so we don't over commit or create expectations that may have to change.

    Q: Why do you ask players to not take advantage of a defect. I.E. Extra Malak shards then reward the player that did get the extra shards with extra GET more than the players that listed and did not try to get the extra shards?Seems to be poor operating procedure and next time I don't see the player base following your request.
    • A: CG_Tophat - We asked people not to engage in it because we were trying to stop the flow of the additional shards because we didn't know what the response would end up being. At the time we were just trying to get a handle on what had happened and how to fix it as fast as possible. We wanted to contain the exposure of it, because the methods to roll back for a much larger group had more risk. In retrospect, we probably should have the "do not engage in the defect" messaging closer to the pull down we do. However, it wouldn't really change the playerbase's feelings about it. Imagine that we had never said don't engage but still did the compensation. People would be upset still that they didn't get "rewarded" for the exploit. We talked about our theory of fixing this issue on the Galactic War Report and I detail as well down below.

    Q: What is your timeline for making it easier for new players to catch up e.g. releasing legendary events as "always open" rather then calendered as has been alluded to in recent Q&A's? ?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - Our next title update is going to have two new features that mark a significant step towards this future - especially in conjunction with some content lifecycle changes we'll be rolling out at the same time.
    • A: CG_Cyanides - This is something we have been thinking about for a while and have a plan to address. There are a lot of questions in this Q&A about new players/guilds recruiting new players/etc. and what I can say is that we totally agree with the feedback. We have some plans that you will be hearing about on how we address new players and getting their collections to a state that makes them eligible for more elder content and guild involvement.

    Q: Why is the game designed around hoarding resources?
    • A: CG_Miller - This is kind of a backwards way to think of this, but I can understand the perspective. We try to make the game engaging for all players for the time they are playing the game. This will sometimes mean that goals involve a high number of resources that we would expect a player to spend time farming. The unfortunate side effect to this is that players who were not spending those resources previously will see themselves as having a leg up compared to the other players. So in short, our goal is not to design around hoarding resources, but for those resources to be acquired and consumed over time.

    Q: Will the next GAC finally use fleet again? All players who have invested in ships and pilots feel screwed because of how GP is calculated and used in matchmaking?
    • A: CG_Miller - As was announced on Wednesday, the next Grand Arena Championships will include a Fleet node in every round.

    Q: Is the LS Geonosis Territory battle the first battle of Geonosis, like the dark side (I assume, because of the Reek and Nexu) or the second battle (which, IMO, makes more sense with the characters we have- which are mainly from TCW and Episode 3).Also, what is the name of it?
    • A: CG_Miller - The dark and light side Territory Battles are an amalgam of both the first and second Battles of Geonosis. As you are simply playing a simulation on the holotables, we're able to bring you the best beats of both canonical battlegrounds while remaining solidly within the prequels era.

    Q: Why do you bother with these surveys since you obviously only answer questions you prepare ahead of time?
    • A: CG_SB_Crumb - We do answers some of them in advance but then we answer as many as we can on the fly. In some cases it makes more sense for us to find an answer in advance. EX: mechanical questions are difficult to find answers quickly so you'll get a much better and more accurate answer if we can talk to the person who worked on it directly.
    • A: CG_Miller - I am sure you can look back at the questions this team has answered today and see that the majority of them are about very specific topics that are basically impossible for us to predict ahead of time. While many questions are obvious, many more delve into areas we had no idea the players wanted to know more about.

    Q: Our guild (and many others) are struggling to get new recruits. What do you have planned to help us maximize our guild growth?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - This is a multifaceted challenge, so I can't speak to all of it. That said, we're scheduling work beginning with the next title update which should begin to chip away at the fundamental problem of how long it takes a new player to become a viable recruit for existing guilds. We need to respect all existing player investments while opening the funnel, starting with our earliest content and systems. Ultimately there is a blend of marketing, feature, content, and economy to solve this, and those won't happen overnight. We're keenly aware of guild health and are working on it!

    Q: Will we ever get a game mode that allows us to use all of our toons in meaningful ways — not just defense ? For example, an individual TB like mode where we set all our defenses with GP restrictions from low to high, and then we face an opponent— they face our squads as we strategically use our one time use squads?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - We're working on a mix of features and systems which we could operate efficiently to give players a consistently fresh and challenging experience that leverages the entire unit roster. It's no small undertaking and we are in the early stages, but we believe this is important to the future of the game!

    Q: Culegatorul Here is a real question, are you considering changing the epic confruntation unlock from 5 star to 7 stars?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - We are not considering that change. Epic Confrontation events reward 5-Star character unlocks.
    • A: CG_Tophat - We don't have any other Epic Confrontations scheduled at the moment, but we will likely come back to the format in the future. We pretty consistent in what generally defines our formats (Legendaries and Journeys being key examples). If we decide to change any of the particulars of the event type, we'll message it to the playerbase.

    Q: 2E2s In the past legendary and epic events we were given rewards other than shards of the character for completing each tier of the event. This past General Skywalker event there were no other rewards for completing a tier outside of shards. Is this the plan moving for with all future legendary, marque, and epic events? Or will we get those rewards for completing the General Skywalker event at a later date?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - We will revisit Legendary, Marquee, Ancient Journey, and Epic events with new releases planned for the future, and the reward format for those events is not expected to change.

    Q: Question for CG_Vyeking, I'm a designer and enjoy the creative process very much.Can you talk about an instance, kit, moment where you were really excited about being in the creative mode?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - Hello, nice to meet you! Glad to meet a fellow designer. I have the absolute privilege of working with a large team of really talented designers. It is my job to help the design team see the future of the game and to clear the path ahead so that they have the creative space to build the most compelling characters, events, and features possible. In my role, I get to witness our amazing talent at work and I am proud and thrilled with each release. The creative space and making games is a dream come true and I relish every moment of it. But you asked for a specific example, and, one that stands out for me was Padme. That kit and the characters we revised and created to support that had a touch of design elegance that was particularly satisfying.

    Q: How many work on the game day to day? What is the focus right now?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - Off the top of my head, there are about 90 of us working on this game day to day, not including EA staff external to the studio. Broadly, we are divided into a Live team, a Feature team, a Communication team, a Technology team, an Art team, and more. Our current efforts are on creating new characters, new events, finishing the LSTB, finalizing our December client release, finalizing preproduction on our March release, and preparing the design candidates for our June release.

    Q: How many man hours does it take to create a new character, start to finish?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - It takes us entirely too long to make new characters and is something we want to address. I can't tell you the number of person hours, but will say that we start working on most characters several updates before they are released, with the bulk of that time being spent on balance.

    Q: The QC of the last couple of updates have been less then stellar, what steps are being taken to improve the quality of future updates and make sure there aren’t several big issues with them?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - You're right. We are, all of us, disappointed when we let bugs slip into release and are working on process improvements to address this.

    Q: How healthy is the game? And not from a profits stand point, but from a player stand point? Do the devs ever try to put themselves in our shoes?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Most of this is answered above, but I wanted to take the opportunity that we definitely put ourselves in player's shoes. I've personally restarted the game 5 times and have played through a number of different play profiles (other people in the studio do similar restarts). In general, when we do design the questions always center around - how does an old player feel about this? how does a new player feel about this? how does a spending player feel about this? how does a non-spending player feel about this? We have to balance these variety of perspective with also making sure the game has a healthy long term trajectory.

    Q: If I report someone for cheating in ga does someone ever check it?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Yep. I sit next to Lucifer's Daddy and can tell you he reviews cheater reports all day long.

    Q: Last year you went HEAVY on marquis characters and only a couple Legendaries. This year you have done one marquis(droid ship) and tons of Legendaries. Why hasn't there been a balance? You seem to swing heavy in one direction or the other,
    • A: CG_Tophat - First, we have more marquees coming (I think we mentioned that last Q&A) - the year isn't done yet! Regarding balance, we balance to what is going on in the game, not what is symmetrical on paper. Some part of that is driven from the maturity of collections, where players are in their goals, and what we are trying to push to next. There's a tremendous number of sub groups in the game that we have to balance around and it sometimes results in what appears to be these heavy swings. TL;DR we balance our release cadence and content around what the game is doing
    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: Economy

    Q: TheBusiness44 Currently, farming relic materials interfere with farming cantina characters. Are there any plans to create a new type of energy for relic materials or merging relic materials with mod energy?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - We won't be creating a new energy for this, but we are looking at ways to help the inflow of Relic Materials. We've been having some talks about adding a daily challenge for them, but nothing is final yet.

    Q: All salvages are equal, but some salvages are more equal than others. Are there any plans to rebalance the salvage drops of gear?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - I am assuming you are asking why gear like Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage have similar drop rates to other pieces of gear that have a lower demand? We have no plans on altering drop rates, but we are looking at adding ways to earn more gear. Some ideas we are working on is adding a new tier to daily challenges, increasing GAC Currency rewarded, adding Kyrotechs to TW/TB, etc.?

    Q: 2 part raid question:1. Are you going to buff Heroic Sith Triumvirate Raid rewards for people outside of top 10? 2. Is simming the Heroic AAT Raid coming soon??
    • A: CG_Cyanides - 1. We have no plans on doing this. 2. Soon (TM) for sure.
    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: Content

    Q: What is the commitment by the devs and CG to sustaining this game? Are you still hiring more devs? Are you putting less resources into the game? Besides for LSTB are we really not getting any new content until next year? End game players like myself just scroll thru their rosters all day, with nothing to do! Please give us something?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - Our commitment is total and constant. We often say things like, 'we're a group of passionate gamers', and it's true. We're passionate about games, we're passionate about Star Wars, and we're passionate about SWGoH. This game is in the DNA of everyone here at Capital Games - it's our life blood. We love this game, and we love our players, and we hear you when you say you want more to do in the game. Our live and feature teams are working right now on new content for you to play and new ways to play the game. Not progression features, but content features. While you won't see it released in the short term, it is coming. With regard to hiring, yes we are, so if you are a game designer and player of our game and want to join the team, please apply.

    Q: How do you juggle the 2 points of "we want to make a fun and enjoyable game" and "we need to make sure we make enough money this month to cover our overheads".Has their ever been a time where you wanted to take the game in a certain direction but couldn't because it would cost too much to do or it wouldn't make enough money so we can't do it. The player base has been asking for a sandbox mode for almost as long as I remember but monetising that kind of gameplay is nearly impossible, which is why I think it's never been done, it's not because you don't want to it's just because you can't afford to.
    • A: CG_Vyeking - We've done a good job in the past of balancing features that provided new ways to play the game with new characters to play in those features, and tempering that balanced approach with theme to build a unique and authentic Star Wars game. This has always been our goal and will remain our goal in the future. We've missed the mark recently, however, on maintaining the balance between features and content and correcting that is our top priority. The question of revenue is a reality for any business, but any feature or content decision is had with gameplay and player experience as the first and most-important pillars.

    Q: Will you ever introduce some more plug and play characters in the game? Like Thrawn, Nest, Hyoda, Wampa. They are the best kind of characters and they make the game much more enjoyable. I hate sticking to predefined pattern.?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - Yes, we like plug and play characters too and you can expect to see more of them in the game over the coming year.

    Q: Is there any plan to have the legendary events be available at all times as opposed to scheduled?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - I really hate short answers like this, so please forgive me, but, yes there are plans. You can expect to hear more about this in the coming month.

    Q: I am a huge KOTOR fan. Are there any plans to do more stuff from the KOTOR era? Like KOTOR 2 with Atris or Meetra and maybe SWTOR stuff aswell like Darth Malgus or the Eternal Empire?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Meetra would be a really interesting design challenge and Malgus is awesome. At the moment, we don't have any plans to revisit KOTOR at the moment. We always could in the future, but in the next 6 months, we have nothing KOTOR scheduled. Let me go ahead and cut off the first post - KOTOR content not confirmed in seven months. :)

    Q: Do you have any plans to support the new Mandalorian show? I would love to see a few more bounty hunter kits added to the game
    • A: CG_Tophat - Not at the moment. Potentially next year (no promises).

    Q: I remember when Gar Saxon was released, one of the developers said that there was a really good team using Gar, and that he was excited for the community to discover it. Now that it’s been over a year, can you tell us what that team looked like?
    • A: CG_Tophat - Hi. That was me. And admittedly it was a bit over-exuberant. To this day, in the office, I'm still made fun of for that answer. One of the designers showed me a cool battle where Gar Saxon and ISC blew up a rebel team with counter attacks and I think I carried that excitement into the interview. This instance specifically has helped me modulate my responses to character releases. To be clear, in retrospect it was cool for me, maybe not for everyone else.

    Q: Do you have any plans to support the new Mandalorian show? I would love to see a few more bounty hunter kits added to the game.
    • A: CG_Vyeking - I am so excited about this show. I want so much to share with you all of the ideas and potential I see here, but I can't. All I can say is that I want to really dig into this content! Don't let CG Tophat fool you, it's going to rock. That said, I have to say there are no promises because, of course, plans always change.

    Q: Why Luke SW is not considered as a Jedi? Are you guys planning to release another character?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - There are two versions of Luke Skywalker in the game: Farmboy Luke and Commander Luke Skywalker. These are snapshots of Luke in Episodes IV and V - before he completed his Jedi training. Luke's grand entrance in Jabba's palace is the first cinematic appearance of Jedi Luke, and he is not currently depicted in the game at that point in his life.

    Q: We get the Malevolence, many thanks for that, but will Dooku or Grievous command it? As we saw the Soulless One in the General Skywalker event. Do we also get that ship or is that never gonna happen?
    • A: CG_Miller - We currently have no plans to add the Soulless One as a playable ship. General Grievous' personal starfighter made narrative sense in the General Skywalker event, which is why it was included there. We try to stick to established canon when it comes to capital ship commanders as well as people who were (or definitely were not) involved in certain battles we replicate in events.

    Q: Animal Mother Any chance we will ever see characters from Canon Comics? Such as Aphra, 000, BT-1, Trios, Kirak Infil'a, etc.?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - We want these characters too! The question of chance depends a lot on timing, but I can see us reviving the discussion around these characters in the coming year.

    Q: Will we have a 3vs3 GAC?
    • A: CG_Miller - GAC is set up to handle multiple variations of deployment 3v3, 5v5, and whether we include Fleets in those as well.

    Q: Easiest sandbox: create a button "practice" instead of "battle" in both arenas. Dont tie it to the server. Combat already client side, just code it so results never reported to server, and it doesnt affect anyones cooldowns. EZ. Most asked update ever. Plz consider
    • A: CG_Vyeking - We're working on it!

    Q: When are we getting more ship content?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - More ships are on the way with a couple of capital ships coming as well. We're adding ships to GAC and we want our next raid to include ships.




    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: Technical Issues
    Q: Why are 7* malak owners rewarded for exploiting a bug? Shouldn't everyone get the GET currency? How about those of us that spent a ton of crystals to meet the requirements just to unlock the 5* version?Not to mention the time spent playing an event that was bugged. Twice. Don't even get me started on re-modding...
    • A: CG_Tophat - First off, sorry that you had a crappy experience with the event being bugged twice. That stinks. Second, our analysis of doing the make good for the Malak event centered on a precept of "doing the least amount of harm". Rolling back those shards was never going to make everyone happy. For the people that obtained Darth Malak legitimately, we couldn't let people keep those shards because it would undermine the effort those initial adopters put into him. Second, we couldn't give away the GET because it was counter to our intent of Malak that he be an achievement character. So that put us into a position where we need to take back the shards. For 7* Darth Malak owners, we could not unwind the Shard Shop Currency that had obtained and where they spent it. Rather than try to pull those pieces off individually, we decided instead to do a mass grant to all 7* owners that "could have exploited". For less than 7* Darth Malak owners we had reason to believe that many of those players were not active on the Forums or Reddit and would not have known that there was a bug (this was true of some of the 7* owners as well). For us, we looked at that group as some people that had somehow just made a ton of progress and then had it all taken away without a ton of context. So, we opted to try to provide them some things to offset the rollback. We had originally discussed Darth Malak shards, but CG_Miller noted that the general GET 1 currency was probably more useful to players. So we landed on the GET 1 and the Zeta materials. Like we said, there was never going to be a perfect solution, but we did our best and that was our solution. Hopefully that explains it a bit better.

    Q: Is Unending Loyalty working as intended?The number of turns it lasts sometimes feels inconsistent?
    • A: CG_Miller - There was a bug with Unending Loyalty where it would make Anakin's starfighter unkillable, that was fixed with the latest update. We are paying attention to how this fix plays out and if there is more to address with the ability we will do so.

    Q: What can we expect from Traya's Placeholder? Could this be future touch-up or rework to make the Trio something more than a Bug Repellent in GAC?
    • A: CG_Miller - Galaxy of Heroes is a massive game with massive amounts of data and new features getting added all the time. On occasion a feature gets added that interacts with the game in a weird and unexpected way, such as exposing an ability that is there to just ensure that the character behaves in the way intended. This icon was not a new ability for Traya

    Q: Why do we have to wait 5 seconds when we are simming fleet challenges or challenges? Is there a reason for this?
    • A: CG_Miller - We need to have your phone send that it started the sim process, and then ensure that your phone receives the results of the sim process. Because of the variance of cell networks and connections, the minimum "safe" amount of round trip time is 5 seconds.
    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: Quality of Life

    Q: Hello, Do you think possible to allow guild officer to give order for TB before it starts? Thanks
    • A: CG_Tophat - It's been discussed. It's actually a tricky piece of work, but it's been up for consideration before. Let me look into it.

    Q: For a QoL update, can we please get a tag or locking mechanism that allows us to earmark gear for future use on a particular toon?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - This is an interesting solution that we hadn't thought of, I'll add it to the quality of life list to compare and prioritize with other gear and favorite type tasks. Thanks!

    Q: Can you add the ability to remove squads during the setup phase of GAC (and TW)? That way if you accidentally select the wrong toon or realize a different strategy, you can fix your mistake?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - I do this to myself all the time and feel terrible about it in TW. So it's high up in the list of quality of life improvements we want to make soon!
    • A: CG_Vyeking - This is on our list of updates to GAC we are investigating for our next client release. The current implementation is punishing and needs to be fixed.

    Q: Could the dev team add statistics to the GA board so I can see how teams did on defense? And along the same lines add notifications for when your opponent has attacked or is attacking?
    • A: CG_SvenGG - Championships and Grand Arena are square in our sights for quality of life improvements. We're committed to supporting healthy competition and giving players the information they want. We've got a lot of great feedback from the community in addition to ideas from the team on what to add to these, so we're working on priorities and what can come together as a holistic improvement to the experience.
    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • CG_SBCrumb
    685 posts EA Community Manager
    edited November 2019
    TOPIC: Mechanics Questions

    Q: Why when you have a completely deterministic game do you not use a known random seed given to the client before they do a match, this would let you check a result of a match on the sever and prevent all cheating, if you send the client moves at the end of the match back to the server?
    • A: CG_Tophat - The short answer is that it's not how it works and it's complicated. The cheating we see in our game is common to most games with a similar architecture. We haven't been able to give an update on it in a bit, but we're still working with SWGOH.GG to surface the match results through their website. I just pinged them while writing this and the update is that they are currently working on the data and creating some mockups. We're making progress and hope we can go live soon-ish.

    Q: Is Darth Sidious ever going to get the Separatist tag, like Jango?
    • A: CG_Miller - Darth Sidious was the true mastermind behind both the Separatists and the Galactic Republic (under his guise as Palpatine). Jango was working directly for the Seperatists the entire time he was on-screen in Attack of the Clones, which is why he received the tag (and tweak to his Payout as well). Since Sidious' time on screen is split between his various machinations, it's a bit more difficult to justify adding the tag (and update to hit kit that would come with it).

    Q: Could you explain the priorities of which character goes first in case of bonus turns (or big TM bonuses). For example if Anakin and Padmé get a bonus turn, why can Malak go in between them if Anakin hits him?
    • A: CG_Vyeking - I think CG_Fugitive is better equipped to answer this one
    • A: CG_Fugitive - Bonus turns have priority over standard Turn Meter gain (both from natural Speed and from effects that grant Turn Meter).
      - When multiple units are at 100% Turn Meter due to natural Speed or standard Turn Meter gain, the game randomly selects one of them to go next.
      - When multiple units are at 100% Turn Meter due to being granted a bonus turn, the game randomly selects one of them to go next.
      - When only a single unit is at 100% Turn Meter due to being granted a bonus turn and other units are at 100% Turn Meter from other methods, the unit with the bonus turn will always act next.

      Darth Malak can act before Padmé Amidala because both Malak and Padmé are being granted bonus turns, so the game randomly selects one of them to go next

    Q: I’ve noticed that some, but not all, of Geonosian Brood Alpha’s stats are shared with the summoned Geonosian Brute.For example, health and offense seem to be shared, but critical damage and tenacity do not.Can you clarify please how Geonosian Brute’s stats are determined?Which of GBA’s stats are actually shared?How does changing the gear level of GBA affect the summoned Brute?
    • A: CG_Fugitive - Geonosian Brute's gear level and rarity are determined by Geonosian Brood Alpha (e.g. Brood Alpha is 6 star with gear level 11, the Brute will be 6 star with gear level 11). These grant it stats based on gear and stat tables we've set up for summoned units. On top of the stats it gains from these gear and stat tables, Geonosian Brute's Speed, Health, Physical Damage, Armor, and Resistance are increased by a percentage of Geonosian Brood Alpha's relative stats. Increasing the gear level and rarity of Geonosian Brood Alpha will increase the stats that Geonosian Brute has on its own, as well as increase the amount of additional Speed, Health, Physical Damage, Armor, and Resistance that Brute receives from Brood Alpha.

    Q: With being about Iconic Characters, why a generic named character like ARC Trooper when we have one named in canon called “Havoc” who was in the Clone Wars? And was the only reason you added the 501st tag was to synergize with GAS? He shouldn’t have the tag since “Havoc” was not 501st... Fives, Echo, (and later) Jesse were the only 501st ARC Troopers to exist in canon. ?
    • A: CG_Miller - You answered your own question. Havoc was not 501st, and that tag is needed to synergize with General Skywalker. To this end we chose to go with a generic ARC Trooper instead of Jesse to ease up a little on the art department (who have been doing an amazing job of late).

    Q: How is vulture droid able scale and keep up with the power that relic 7 is giving other pilots?
    • A: CG_Miller - For Vulture, Hyena, and Y-wing (all our crewless ships so far) we made sure that their stats scaled in such a way that they can and do remain competitive and vital parts of their fleets at the current maximum Relic level. We had to be very careful that a maxed out crewless ship wasn't dominant in terms of how much was invested into it (i.e. melted face against non-Relic enemies). It was a very fine line but our internal testing is showing the results we were aiming for with these ships.
    Post edited by CG_SBCrumb on
  • RESERVED
  • Ultra
    11452 posts Moderator
    Where the art team people at?
  • Ultra wrote: »
    Where the art team people at?
    I bet Garret would join us. I'll have to see if he is free for this one but I'll definitely get an art guy for next time
  • Ultra
    11452 posts Moderator
    Come through Garret
  • What plans do you have to ease the GET and GET2 crunch other than adding GET2 to TW rewards?

    When can we expect to see a full separatist fleet in the game?

    Do you intend for the malevolence to be on par with the negotiator or do you want one to be more prominent?
  • With the time spent on game rising again when can we expect HAAT sim like you did with Rancor?
  • Will we be seeing any smaller events come to the game? Like mini solo raids, similar to the ground wars. With more opportunities for gear or zetas? More solo events (PVE) away from guild activities and PVP?

    Will we see anymore events to gain zetas more frequently? There's too many toons that I have in my roster that need Zetas. I'm getting g12 before they even gain 1 zeta.
  • Vuk
    32 posts Member
    Please explain just HOW did you make our gear grind easier with kyrotech ?
  • JerseyCityGamer
    7 posts Member
    edited November 2019
    Is there anything seriously planned to ease the gear crunch?

    Can the rewards for GAC be improved when promotion to next tier happens?
  • Jtn2t
    47 posts Member
    edited November 2019
    What are you planning inspired from The Rise of Skywalker?
  • Any plans to ease the gear crunch? Trying to get stun guns and stun cuffs is more painful than fun...
  • You mentioned that you would make it easier for new players, is there any plan coming soon?
  • Hi devs!

    I know things have been rough lately, but I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the game and work you put in. There is one thing that concerns me of late and it revolves around gear, so my questions are:

    When is the gear crunch relief going to be implemented? I know we have seen some small changes here and there, but will we see a bigger impact? Will gear 13 become more achievable in the near future?

    Thank you!
  • can we finally add the real fog of war to TW and hide your opponent until attack day and not for setup phase. To prevent member moves for stacking up
  • When are we going to see an update to TAC rewards? Simply changing the Mk 4 A/KT stun gun salvages to Mk 5 stun gun salvages would go a long way in helping with the gear grind
  • I'm curious how you deal with new content releases that are tied into new movies. How much advance notice is given that you are making a character tied in to a movie or show before it's released? Is anything spoiled in advance (obviously with an NDA) so you are able to make the character kits a true to the actual character's a possible? As an example, let's use Nest. How much notice was given prior to the release of Solo that you would be developing her, and how did you go about creating a kit accurate to her actual in-movie character?
  • Why dont you recognise that the malak fiasco is actually very bad and you're acting like its not a big deal? Can you provide a proper compensation for the situation? Can you give EVERYONE the same compensation and stop rewarding people that actually exploit the bug while other that follow your suggestion of not exploiting get nothing?
  • Can we get a Jawa portrait???
    How many more times do I have to ask this???
    THE SUPREME JAWA OVERLORD!
  • Just want to make sure you guys understood that your top priority in term of new content should be the new raid? Ppl are bored to farm and spend to gear toons for absolutely nothing. We want something to work on as a guild, that we can use all of our toons, find strategies, etc etc. Been said like a billion times… and who knows, that might justify the useless 600 daily tickets system? The raids are so boring I mean, instead of compelling us to do daily tickets, you should put the tickets at a constant 150k for every raid and every guild permanently til you release a new one… yup, bored to that point after 2 years of no raid in a guild game... :s

    So, will the raid be your top priority as new content?
  • Have you ever thought of adding some of the TB attacks to TW. Let the guild place Air attacks for a specific section. Or let a guild have 5 game provided IPDS that can be randomly placed on any team by officers, that have their Self Destruct off cooldown. Kind of like hitting a bomb in the game stratego.
  • our guild would really appriciate if you could ad TW statistics. If you are a successfull guild and won more than 50 times, you are not able to se the number of wins in Achievment anymore. Please ad individual statistict (number of win/lossess) on the Stats-tab in the member profile and if posible the total win-rate (%) for the guild.

    This would be really useful in compairing ourselfs with other guilds and increase the fun of the game.

    Best regards

    Kim
  • Seku
    575 posts Member
    Would love to see some characters from the Resistance series, could really juice up the First Order and Resistance faction! As well as some unique ships for the fleets.
    (Elrik Vonreg and his red Tie, Commander Pyre the gold stormtrooper for FO)
    (Kazuda Xiono, Torra Doza, Freya Fenris, Bo Keevil, Hype Fazon and Griff Halloran and their respective ships for Resistance)
    Any possibility of us seeing these characters in the future?
    Thanks! :)
  • Can we finally Make Tuskins relevant?
This discussion has been closed.