Developer Q&A - 12/04

Replies

  • Ultra
    11452 posts Moderator
    Surprised they answered my question on Arcade raids since it was datamined stuff and expected them to ignore it

    Very cool for answering, and hopeful about them
  • This Q&A is an embarrassment to both the community and to CG as a company.
    So instead of answering questions because you "ran out time" you answer completely unrelated questions about what your favorite soccer team is and whats your favorite non SW related project you've worked on? This is disgusting. The largest Q&A section was art. Art. I understand answering fans about questions but when you pick and choose what questions you answer that aren't relevant to the current state of the game when you've had months of issues and ignoring the community about said issues. Even I have tried to participate in the Q&A 3 times asking why the times of events are being reduced (such as todays mother talzin event) and I chose not to ask again for the very reason I stated above. You can try and be "proactive" and answer it in the moment but all it shows is that you're not really listening and trying to do some PR damage control. We're tired of the excuses and we're tired of the lack of communication. You can try and "communicate" with these states of the galaxy, Q&A's, and the creation of your trello as if you're not backed by EA and you're making an indie game via kickstarter. This is an inappropriate way to act when running a business,and when issues like the LSGTB happen you should remember that we're your customers not Beta testers.
  • Ultra wrote: »
    MADMAN3199 wrote: »
    Why are you releasing content we can’t enjoy due to difficulty or don’t care about(sequel trilogy toons) one way you can make more people happy is to do more kotor or clone wars ships and toons like a sith capital with malak or nihilus as crew or more clones for shaak ti instead of some first order toons(was there a ship?) that I and many other people will never use due to our hatred or disliking of those horrible movies so for us that’s not new content so where’s the new content for us?
    I like sequel trilogy and can’t wait for sequel stuff. It needs more love in this game tbh

    I’ve read the books that Disney decided to put legends on and is no longer official canon and they were all good but Disney goes and releases horrible movies and from the script leak for ep9 I saw it’ll be worse and most fans who grew up with any of the first 6 won’t like and already don’t that kind of content most of us won’t use
  • CG_SBCrumb wrote: »
    Q: At one of recent Q&A you mentioned a plan to ease up the gear crunch was that forgotten or being planned?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - No, I haven't forgot and we are planning more. We added Kyros to Daily Activities completion and TW rewards, reduced the crystal and shard shop cost of G12 and added G12+ to shard shop, reduced the energy cost of Ship Energy, increased the refresh rate of Ship energy, and added G12+ to Ship nodes. Actually, my question back is define "easing"? I hear easing a lot, but it is very subjective. Mathmatically, we have eased the gear grind, but that doesn't mean that players actually "feel" the easing. This isn't being snarky, I am just genuinly interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    Mathmatically you haven't eased the gear crunch at all because you're only looking at one side of the equation where the metrics say you've added more of this and that. Here's the thing though....

    Mathmatically adding 5% extra of something but also adding an extra 20% to the initial requirements = Yeah, not mathmatically easing at all.

    When players talk about easing, for me it's a time/distance thing, and this is the simplest way I can think to explain it in a single sentence...

    "The time/distance it takes to unlock a character and actually have them be useful".

    Ever since Chewie got released, the gear requirements for entire squads has been around that g12 mark. Previously G8, G9 could get you a legendary toon. Can you honestly say that the increase or influx of gear matches that sudden jump in gear requirements?

    Let's go further though, we then got G12.5+ and it requires Stun Cuffs and Stun Guns, and Carbanti's, all the things that were ALREADY causing a gear crunch at lower levels. You doubled down on those items to get to the next level of progression when they were already a problem. Again, has the influx of those particular gear pieces increased to match or ease that sudden jump in requirement?

    Now we get to relics and again, after R4 we have the rarest of gear being required to get toons to R5-R7. Has the influx of gear changed to ease that?

    Then there's other game decisions that are counter productive to people gearing their toons that negates any availability of gear such as

    - Forcing people to hoard both GET1 and GET2 means they can't spend it on gear and with LSTB being such a 1% can play mode the only people who are getting a decent amount of GET2 are the ones who generally don't need to worry about gear.

    - Removing Guns and Cuffs from fleet with the energy reduction. See how one good move completely gets negated by another? How in any way is removing guns and cuffs from fleet helping to ease the crunch?

    - Not even going to get into kyro's as more than enough people have mentioned it and I have zero doubt that their implementation and placement was 100% deliberate.

    Back to my point. There's no way anyone can honestly say that the time/distance it takes to get a character to a useable state is the same as it was 1 or two years ago. For every 5% easing of the gear crunch you claim to do you increase the requirements by more than that.

    Mathmatically you have not eased the crunch unless you only look at the equation from the one side that allows you to believe that statement is true, and that isn't the full equation.

    Some may agree/disagree, but this is my opinion on the gear crunch issue and to me "easing" means the time/distance it takes to actually be able to use a character in game modes (TB combats, TW, GA etc) and have them be useful.






  • This is hilarious. The game is full of bugs, has no engaging and meaningful playable content for end game players, yet 1/2 this Q & A is about artwork. So. Tone. Deaf.
  • CG_SBCrumb wrote: »
    TOPIC: Economy

    Q: At one of recent Q&A you mentioned a plan to ease up the gear crunch was that forgotten or being planned?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - No, I haven't forgot and we are planning more. We added Kyros to Daily Activities completion and TW rewards, reduced the crystal and shard shop cost of G12 and added G12+ to shard shop, reduced the energy cost of Ship Energy, increased the refresh rate of Ship energy, and added G12+ to Ship nodes. Actually, my question back is define "easing"? I hear easing a lot, but it is very subjective. Mathmatically, we have eased the gear grind, but that doesn't mean that players actually "feel" the easing. This isn't being snarky, I am just genuinly interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    How about doing something to increase the obtainability of stun guns, stun cuffs and carbantis? You've introduced at least 2 new bottlenecks since those gear types were super relevant in to as far as useful gear levels go, and yet nothing has been done to make farming them easier. Makeing it easier to go from g11 to g12 to g12+ doesn't matter if you can't get the characters to that point to begin with.
    I have seen numerous ideas put forth from the community as far as easing the gear crunch (and its not even my job to look), including revamping raid rewards, adding additional tiers to challenges, increasing drop rates, increasing the amount of donations that are allowed, putting more in GAC, etc. It's not that difficult.
  • CG_SBCrumb wrote: »
    @CG_SBCrumb
    EDIT: The team has answered a ton of questions that I still need to post and many of stayed extra long today. I won't be gathering any more questions from the thread at this time but most answers live shortly!

    Stayed extra long? Isn’t it like 2:45 there? What time does your workday end? Think I may have found part of the problem...

    I only asked them to stay for an hour and half to answer questions and they stayed much longer than that. They also have their jobs to do

    I figured as much, but you left the low hanging fruit right there. After only spending ~2 minutes on the TB today I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands.
  • football questions and nothing about the release of journey guide lmao
  • Beeblebrox wrote: »
    CG_SBCrumb wrote: »
    Q: At one of recent Q&A you mentioned a plan to ease up the gear crunch was that forgotten or being planned?
    • A: CG_Cyanides - No, I haven't forgot and we are planning more. We added Kyros to Daily Activities completion and TW rewards, reduced the crystal and shard shop cost of G12 and added G12+ to shard shop, reduced the energy cost of Ship Energy, increased the refresh rate of Ship energy, and added G12+ to Ship nodes. Actually, my question back is define "easing"? I hear easing a lot, but it is very subjective. Mathmatically, we have eased the gear grind, but that doesn't mean that players actually "feel" the easing. This isn't being snarky, I am just genuinly interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    Seriously @cg_cyanides? Either you ARE being snarky, or you are utterly out of touch with your game and players! 99.9999% of players could tell you without even hesitating that the gear issues they were expecting to be eased were primarily those of Mk.5 Stun Guns & Mk.3 Stun Cuffs! These items would have been slightly eased by the reduction in the cost of Fleet Energy except that even in the face of players asking you NOT to you went and removed those as drops from Fleet Nodes. You then went and made it virtually impossible for players to be able to buy those or other gear from the GET store by making GET Mk.1 & Mk.2 tokens almost permanently needed for Epic Confrontation Characters and Capital Ships such that players have to hoard those tokens or face missing out on being able to compete in any other area of the game (LSTB need for Negotiator & GAS simply illustrates that!)
    SO far from "easing" those gear walls you've actually REDUCED the amount of that gear which players can reasonably obtain while at the same time massively increasing the new Kyrotech gear wall with increasing amounts needed on newer characters.
    Are you SERIOUSLY saying after the many many posts on this subject that you are completely oblivious to it, or were you actually just being snarky? Frankly neither answer makes you look good!!

    Maybe @CG_Cyanides is more of a visual learner

    hfdo7kuxxwyp.jpg
    hakvbstfkpuv.jpg
  • CG_SBCrumb wrote: »
    @CG_SBCrumb
    EDIT: The team has answered a ton of questions that I still need to post and many of stayed extra long today. I won't be gathering any more questions from the thread at this time but most answers live shortly!

    Stayed extra long? Isn’t it like 2:45 there? What time does your workday end? Think I may have found part of the problem...

    I only asked them to stay for an hour and half to answer questions and they stayed much longer than that. They also have their jobs to do

    sadly some of us have worked in it companies, it's not like you work at a construction site. plenty of free time at your hands. the guy next to me used to play strategy games at work ffs

    you also should have better picked the questions and especially the answers

  • veteransptsd
    1 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    When is the next "Scourge of the Old Republic" going to be launched? I already asked this on Survey Monkey when this Q&A was announced and still have not gotten an answer neither on these threads nor in an email. So, what's up? When is it, it's been three months since the last event. That one I missed due to being in the hospital for service connected disabilities, yeah, I'm a real Service Connected Disabled American Veteran, U.S. Army retired. Please answer my question, I'd love to get Darth Revan, already have all ability mats on stand by, including omegas and zetas just for him when I unlock him. I see where a Journey Guide is supposed to layout the timetable of such events, but I haven't found one or it hasn't been released yet. Thanks for a response.
    Post edited by veteransptsd on
  • Ultra
    11452 posts Moderator
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse
  • @CG_Cyanides

    The problem isn't so much G12 and above. Rather, its in the mid-tiers, starting around G8, where every single unit seems to need multiple completed Mk5 Stun Guns, Mk 3 Carbantis, Stun Cuffs or some other similar tier gear just to advance to G10 or 11. As a newer player who started over the summer, its a huge bottleneck.



  • Ultra wrote: »
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse

    except the drop rate on gear was lowered with these changes.
  • Man, that bugs section really pi$$ed me off. Bugs that hurt players go untouched because it's "too hard" or "too expensive" to fix them, but bugs that help players are squashed immediately, not to mention knowing exploitation is actively punished.
    #CloneHelmets4Life...VICTORY!!!! :smiley: "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." The more you tighten your grip, CG/EA, the more whales will slip through your fingers (and go F2P or quit).
  • Thats bull. There will not be a mass exodus from LSGEOtb.

    If we want GET2, 1 star gives more GET2 then a full LSHOTHtb.

    Now there will be people quiting and most of us will consider this a massive joke until you fix it or release power increase.

    Also its insulting to have r7 characters and watch them only get through a few rounds.

    I think you need to drop the difficulty on phase 1 for sure
  • yohann269 wrote: »
    Ultra wrote: »
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse

    except the drop rate on gear was lowered with these changes.

    And its not nearly enough
  • Jouh
    64 posts Member
    "The difficulty is intentional. We've tried to account for player theory crafters who generally do a great job of finding very powerful strategies in these pieces of content. "

    CG true reply: "We tried to increase the gear crunch for everyone, so you can only win when you paid. F the theory crafters who tried to reduce our revenue for making the game less demanding as intended"
  • Dnoff423
    403 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    Ultra wrote: »
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse

    That only reduces the gear crunch for the handful of newer characters and G13. The real gear crunch people are complaining about is getting characters to Gear 12 (aka stun guns, stun cuffs, golden eye balls, etc. As I said before). People arent asking to be able to farm 50 fully crafted stun guns everyday that would be ridiculous. No one is asking for that as far as I know no one ever has. People just want the gear crunch eased a little bit with respect to those gear pieces, of which multiples of the same piece like stun guns are required for virtually every character. Adding another tier to daily challenges would solve this quite easily without making it so people could max out too quickly like you are afraid of.
  • Ultra wrote: »
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse

    Everything you just listed helps with the g12+ crunch. None of that helps with the g8-11 crunch. That’s especially true since they decided to take that gear off of fleet nodes when they made the changes to the energy, which made and still makes little to no sense.
  • Mzee
    1777 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    Every question I really cared about was just a vague response that did not tell me anything.

    "Q: You’ve stated that the difficulty will not be rolled back after this TB (sic) and that it is to stay the same, can you provide some information as to what’s coming to help level the playing field. Players are worried that this new addition will be hidden behind some massive paywall that will weaken the total community by player retirement.
    A: CG_Tophat - There's a discussion in the community that with this Territory Battle is setting up for a future progression system element that is imminently planned (the theory is typically this seems to be in the next two or three months). Geonosis Light Side is intended to be a long term piece of content that will take some time to master. The difficulty is intentional. We've tried to account for player theory crafters who generally do a great job of finding very powerful strategies in these pieces of content. We do not at this time have an expansion of relics, level cap increase, etc planned in the next three months. We will be actively monitoring player participation (and related behaviors) in the Geonosis Light Side territory battle. If there is a problem (your example is mass exodus) we will intervene and make changes. Hope this helps allay any concerns."

    This was facepalming. So essentially we will have the lstb unplayable for the next 3+ months and will have to do it alternating with dark-side TB.

    If CG/EA was actually honest and transparent about more of these things then that would help mitigate the pitchforks a lot. When the issues are evaded it comes across that the community is completely right in their criticisms.

  • Mzee wrote: »
    Every question I really cared about was just a vague response that did not tell me anything.

    "Q: You’ve stated that the difficulty will not be rolled back after this TB (sic) and that it is to stay the same, can you provide some information as to what’s coming to help level the playing field. Players are worried that this new addition will be hidden behind some massive paywall that will weaken the total community by player retirement.
    A: CG_Tophat - There's a discussion in the community that with this Territory Battle is setting up for a future progression system element that is imminently planned (the theory is typically this seems to be in the next two or three months). Geonosis Light Side is intended to be a long term piece of content that will take some time to master. The difficulty is intentional. We've tried to account for player theory crafters who generally do a great job of finding very powerful strategies in these pieces of content. We do not at this time have an expansion of relics, level cap increase, etc planned in the next three months. We will be actively monitoring player participation (and related behaviors) in the Geonosis Light Side territory battle. If there is a problem (your example is mass exodus) we will intervene and make changes. Hope this helps allay any concerns."

    This was facepalming. So essentially we will have the lstb unplayable for the next 3+ months and will have to do it alternating with dark-side TB.

    If CG/EA was actually honest and transparent about more of these things then that would help mitigate the pitchforks a lot. When the issues are evaded it comes across that the community is completely right in their criticisms.

    IMO that answer basically means they need a "your example is mass exodus" to start doing something about it. But this time I think they do not realize which category of players they might loose. I hear a lot from shards arena whales about loosing interest for investing any more and most likely quit the game. I'm actually about to quit myself even though I'm not a whale. I was spending probably $80-120 a month last 3 months, but certainly going to stop feeding the troll from this moment.
  • Jouh
    64 posts Member
    [/quote]

    IMO that answer basically means they need a "your example is mass exodus" to start doing something about it. But this time I think they do not realize which category of players they might loose. I hear a lot from shards arena whales about loosing interest for investing any more and most likely quit the game. I'm actually about to quit myself even though I'm not a whale. I was spending probably $80-120 a month last 3 months, but certainly going to stop feeding the troll from this moment. [/quote]

    Unfortunately this is the behavior which continue to justify the arrogance of CG. Words dont matter because it is auto filter out. All of us need to stop giving money to CG. As customers, will you continue to pay for an inferior product? If it is a normal company, heads will have roll the one its employee treat its customers and keep launching inferior products. Malak shards, TB got issues. I cant understand why everyone still spending money on this game.
  • Ultra wrote: »
    CG_Cyanides isn’t wrong

    You can’t deny that adding kyrotech to dailies, TW rewards, and g12+ pieces to fleet eases the gear crunch

    Making fleet energy accumulate (6 min per energy) and 50 per refresh (up to 3) the same as PvE also reinforces that

    Gear will always be needed, and that is the nature of the game. Expecting enough gear to quickly max out all toons isn’t healthy for the game

    Before those changes that Cyanide mentioned, the gear crunch was worse

    As a player of about a year, it's often easier and faster for me to get a character from G12 to R4 or 5 than it is to get them from G8 to G12. No one is arguing that the things you mentioned aren't helpful. However, nothing has been done to ease the path *to* G12, which is frequently the actual barrier for entry.

    When you need 500+ carbantis for just one character to get there (I'm looking at you Kenobi/Fives/Sun Fac/SRPF), that's ten full weeks of STR gear challenge rewards for just the one character. It's the same story with stun guns, stun cuffs, and eye balls. If the gear crunch has supposedly moved to G13 and relics, why are we still stuck on gearing people to g9/10 at this point? All the G12+ pieces in the world do nothing to help me if I am stuck farming hundreds of carbantis and stun guns and cuffs needed to get to G12. Guild currency can only speed you up so much, and doesn't actually get you any stun guns. It seems telling to me that it makes sense to spend earned guild currency on a gear piece that you can earn for free in a daily challenge.
  • Can we get a lock mods on the players. Once I have perfected a character I would like to be able to look it. Due to the cap on how many mods we can have I use charters to store mods. However, I would like to search all characters without messing up a character I’ve already set to “best mods”.
  • Can Jawas have zetas please.?
  • 50% of players: Give us content please.
    30% of players: Please give us something to do.
    20% of players: I love your game, but I'd like something to do everyday. Or at least most days. Or a few days a week. Just give us something we can play.

    CG_Tophat: "The short answer is no... while there are some players that want to play more our data indicates that we already ask a lot of a lot of players time."

    F'n ridiculous. Originally the answer was (paraphrased) "no - there are technical limitations that mean our servers can't handle the load." Now all of a sudden it's - no that burden our player base." I mean it's true. By definition. But then there's a million other equally trite tautological answers.


  • No_Try
    4051 posts Member
    50% of players: Give us content please.
    30% of players: Please give us something to do.
    20% of players: I love your game, but I'd like something to do everyday. Or at least most days. Or a few days a week. Just give us something we can play.

    CG_Tophat: "The short answer is no... while there are some players that want to play more our data indicates that we already ask a lot of a lot of players time."

    F'n ridiculous. Originally the answer was (paraphrased) "no - there are technical limitations that mean our servers can't handle the load." Now all of a sudden it's - no that burden our player base." I mean it's true. By definition. But then there's a million other equally trite tautological answers.


    That's a biased point of view. Having fresh things to do is not the same as more things to do. There have been many topics throughout time that the workload is too much as well as too less. So yeah, it differs for everyone. I'm on the burning out side because of the daily arena grind that I can hardly sustain with no enjoyment, the usual -necessary evil- thing. I want fresh things, but not more things. i.e. a sandbox mode wouldn't hurt me, but another -must do to keep up- would. That's why they introduced simming to rancor, gw, many events hopefully haat, and unluckily not hstr.
  • On arena point, i have the thank CG because it become so much less competitive. Quite a lot of the heavy weights in my shard have left which make climbing easier. Thank you devs!
This discussion has been closed.