Cyanide wanted to know how to ease the crunch

Replies

  • Maybe if every character didn't need 97 of the same 4 things at each tier?
  • Viserys
    461 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    This. All of this.

    When we describe this game to a new user the word that comes to mind is "intimidating". New bottlenecks should come alongside the removal of old bottlenecks. The time it takes to make a character useable can stay the same but that's not what is happening. When the ceiling comes up the floor needs to come up with it.

    I am glad CG is trying to fix UX issues with early gameplay, but what they need to fix is the progression issue.

    People wouldn't hate Kyrotechs so much of guns, cuffs, and eyeballs weren't a big deal any longer. Also, stop putting the things in G1-G12 progression, the G13 piece is a sufficient and relatively fair bottleneck. I should not think "I want to gear X, but that's 4 other G13s I have to give up".
  • Krashxxxx
    226 posts Member
    edited December 2019
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    Not this
  • Ravens1113 wrote: »
    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. Mathematically, 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 genuinely interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    Firstly this isn’t a call out post, this is a response to a dev asking how we can feel the gear crunch easing so I’d like to answer his question.

    The players would feel the gear crunch ease if we had access to more gear pieces of mk3 carbantis, mk5 stun guns, Mk3 stun cuffs and mk8 gold eye balls. We need to have this old gear crunch alleviated to where we don’t feel an accomplishment from getting 1/2 fully crafted stun guns a month.

    Currently the only places we can get mk5 stun guns on a regular are the tables, farming. That’s it. We can’t afford to get them in the GET store because we need to horde 10’s of thousands to finish epic characters. Just shy of 70,000 GET. So that’s out. They rarely pop up in the shard shop store and that’s totally random.

    How can we ease this crunch? Simple.

    Add a new tier to all the challenges. Make guns, cuffs, and the golden eye balls prizes in the last tiers. It’s as easy as that. At the current rates of gear in challenges, if you do that you won’t overload the economy and can actually help your players feel like they aren’t suffocating under a gear crunch.
    You get each challenge 3 times. For example, add the mk5 guns to a new mace challenge tier. Make the range 3-5 on how many you can get. On average you get 4. So that’s 20 salvage a Day. 3 times a week gives you 60 salvage pieces. 4 weeks gives you 240 salvage. Just short if enough stun gun salvage for 5 Full pieces a month.

    Why does it need to be a new challenge level? We already get carbantis from the veers challenge. And I am more than happy with the rate of acquiring those. Add stun guns at the same rate to the mace challenge and another bottle neck piece (stun cuffs?) to the savage challenge, and I would be ecstatic.
  • Guzzernaut wrote: »
    Ravens1113 wrote: »
    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. Mathematically, 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 genuinely interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    Firstly this isn’t a call out post, this is a response to a dev asking how we can feel the gear crunch easing so I’d like to answer his question.

    The players would feel the gear crunch ease if we had access to more gear pieces of mk3 carbantis, mk5 stun guns, Mk3 stun cuffs and mk8 gold eye balls. We need to have this old gear crunch alleviated to where we don’t feel an accomplishment from getting 1/2 fully crafted stun guns a month.

    Currently the only places we can get mk5 stun guns on a regular are the tables, farming. That’s it. We can’t afford to get them in the GET store because we need to horde 10’s of thousands to finish epic characters. Just shy of 70,000 GET. So that’s out. They rarely pop up in the shard shop store and that’s totally random.

    How can we ease this crunch? Simple.

    Add a new tier to all the challenges. Make guns, cuffs, and the golden eye balls prizes in the last tiers. It’s as easy as that. At the current rates of gear in challenges, if you do that you won’t overload the economy and can actually help your players feel like they aren’t suffocating under a gear crunch.
    You get each challenge 3 times. For example, add the mk5 guns to a new mace challenge tier. Make the range 3-5 on how many you can get. On average you get 4. So that’s 20 salvage a Day. 3 times a week gives you 60 salvage pieces. 4 weeks gives you 240 salvage. Just short if enough stun gun salvage for 5 Full pieces a month.

    Why does it need to be a new challenge level? We already get carbantis from the veers challenge. And I am more than happy with the rate of acquiring those. Add stun guns at the same rate to the mace challenge and another bottle neck piece (stun cuffs?) to the savage challenge, and I would be ecstatic.

    Carbantis are the most widely available of the bunch, however they’re also needed the most. Think about how they’re needed for droid callers, mk5 thermal detonators, stun guns, as well as on their own. They’re needed in a lot of combinations. Getting an extra carbanti (literally an extra one or two) per roll of the “new challenge tier” level would help alleviate it.

    Trust me, nobody in this discussion is asking for a full piece of each material every single challenge day. We all get there has to be bottlenecks in place for monetary reasons and to slow progressions.

    The tier challenges aren’t event the only solution! Reduce the currency required in the guild event shop by 25% for the cuffs, biotechs and carbs while also adding a slot for stun guns to potentially pop up.
    Add in stun guns to the TW rewards.
    Increase the amount of salvage available for purchase in the shard shop from 6 to 10 given its random nature.

    There are so many avenues to truly let the players feel the ease of the gear crunch. It’s up to @CG_Cyanides to actually follow through and do what he can to help the players out as he claims to want to do.
  • I totally agree with the first post in this Thread. The easing of the gear crunch is done in a few select fields of Kryotec and G12 salvage but that doesnt help us, as was stated, to make it easier for us to engage with relics. Many toons reside in the long winding process of getting enough stun guns and stun cuffs.
    Cyanide's claim that he doesnt know, what we want is somewaht surprising, seeing the rather frequent topic of stun guns and stun cuffs forum posts. He is more like unwilling to adress more.
    Additional to that, did they say in the last Q&A that the new challenge tier will come at some time. I fear they just want to cover it up for not releasing it in the end.
  • KKatarn
    629 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    He is lying. Because i really don't see how one of the people responsible for the game doesn't know that almost every character needs STUN GUNS between G9-G11.

    The alternative would be a titanic level of incompetence and that is a lot harder to believe. :#
  • The devs should really participate in this thread. There are lots of useful suggestions here.
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    KKatarn wrote: »
    He is lying. Because i really don't see how one of the people responsible for the game doesn't know that almost every character needs STUN GUNS between G9-G11.

    The alternative would be a titanic level of incompetence and that is a lot harder to believe. :#

    He's lying about what exactly? Have you read the anwser he gave? Let me refresh your memory:
    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. Mathematically, 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 genuinely interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    Save water, drink champagne!
  • I think the OP's proposal is pushing it. Handing out almost 5 stun guns per month is not "easing" the pain, it's removing that item from the list of bottlenecks. Not that I'd complain - it's just an exaggerated expectation, imo.

    Personally, I'd already be happy if not every new toon (and especially the g12 finishers) required the same gear: Golden eyeballs, mk5 Droid callers, Carbantis of course and the dreaded Kyros.

    Give us some toons that let us use the stockpiles of (currently) trash gear. Turning heaps of trash into relic materials sounds like a neat concept, but limiting what you can put into the converter for a specific material only creates new bottlenecks...

    So in reply to @CG_Cyanides question about the definition of easing: Easing the gear crunch means for me that the gearing process of a new toon actually becomes faster. Especially as nowadays pretty much everything below g12 is trash anyway. "Easing" does not mean replacing one bottleneck item with another (more expensive one).

    I think you contradicted yourself a little bit. Replacing one bottleneck with a more expensive one is exactly what they did with G13 immediately followed by relics. The only way to amend that and to legitimately “ease” the crunch would be to, as you said, almost eliminate the earlier bottleneck entirely.

    Oh but don’t worry. Relic 7 won’t be the final bottleneck through the Relic system, so nobody should be worrying that stun guns in challenges would be too generous.
  • leef wrote: »
    KKatarn wrote: »
    He is lying. Because i really don't see how one of the people responsible for the game doesn't know that almost every character needs STUN GUNS between G9-G11.

    The alternative would be a titanic level of incompetence and that is a lot harder to believe. :#

    He's lying about what exactly? Have you read the anwser he gave? Let me refresh your memory:
    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. Mathematically, 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 genuinely interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    I think he’s being called a liar for not knowing what easing the gear crunch is or how to make the players feel the easing. If he’s the lead developer of in game economy he has to know the biggest choke points of gear in the game. To say he doesn’t know what it is, sounds disingenuous or if he truly doesn’t is a bit alarming and is another red flag that the devs are out of touch with the community and the needs in this game. They know what they need to do, but until they feel a crunch themselves, they won’t do what’s necessary for the good of the community and the long term health of the game
  • JacenRoe
    3016 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    JacenRoe wrote: »
    This company is bringing in millions of dollars. We shouldn't have to advocate for their bottom line. It is disgusting that the customer has been tricked into looking after CGs profits. Let me tell you are a secret... They are fine. They can afford to ease the early bottleneck. They can afford to remove it completely. Any claim to the contrary is a lie and you are being played if you believe it.

    I’m not advocating for them. That’s absurd. I am recognizing a reality. They won’t make content unless they rake in absurd amounts of money. There will always be gear paywalls. They will never take them down entirely. That being the case, what is a reasonable argument for removing some old ones even though it won’t happen.

    There are a lot of great suggestions, but that isn't my point. My point is that we all need to stop operating under the notion that they can't address this. They absolutely can. They simply refuse to do anything but make it worse. Their is no advantage to being delusional about why they are doing the exact opposite of easing the crunch.

    Does anyone honestly believe this million dollar revenue stream would collapse if stun guns were a little more available? Because that is how they talk and it gets repeated by a lot of players. It needs to stop.

    Nobody is delusional. But saying ‘here is reasonable suggestion for why and how they could do something for us and still make tons of money’ MIGHT be more well received than saying ‘these greedy devs are ruining the game!’ There is probably very little chance they will listen either way. However, the latter option definitely has Zero chance.

    You have to see something from someone else’s perspective to convince them of anything. Of course the game won’t collapse, and they currently make millions. But they would not be permitted to use the Star Wars IP for a game that just barely pays its own expenses, or makes a few thousand profit, or even makes a million or two a year. Their jobs depend on making enough to keep a company of 5-6 dozen software engineers, artists, managers, and others paid. Then they have to fork over millions to Disney for permission to continue working, and have millions left in profit. So that being the case (like it or not), what’s a reasonable argument that they might listen to for giving something away they could make money from. Of course they won’t starve if they gave away stun guns. That is irrelevant. What is relevant is, why should they not try to wring every nickel out of us ever way possible until they bleed us dry? I’m not advocating for them or saying I like the model by trying to suggest something that might actually happen (0.01% chance) as opposed to perhaps insulting them, or suggesting things that will never happen, or at the least just not acknowledging how things look from their position.

    Them putting ZERO thought into how something feels from another’s perspective is how we ended up with the difficulty of LSGTB, or 5* unlocks on Epic confrontation events, or no Mace/lesser Clone Wars Jedi reworks during the Clone Wars content period in the game.
  • Ravens1113 wrote: »
    leef wrote: »
    KKatarn wrote: »
    He is lying. Because i really don't see how one of the people responsible for the game doesn't know that almost every character needs STUN GUNS between G9-G11.

    The alternative would be a titanic level of incompetence and that is a lot harder to believe. :#

    He's lying about what exactly? Have you read the anwser he gave? Let me refresh your memory:
    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. Mathematically, 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 genuinely interested in what everyone's definition of easing is to see if I can some how help that feeling.

    I think he’s being called a liar for not knowing what easing the gear crunch is or how to make the players feel the easing. If he’s the lead developer of in game economy he has to know the biggest choke points of gear in the game. To say he doesn’t know what it is, sounds disingenuous or if he truly doesn’t is a bit alarming and is another red flag that the devs are out of touch with the community and the needs in this game. They know what they need to do, but until they feel a crunch themselves, they won’t do what’s necessary for the good of the community and the long term health of the game

    This. Liar is a strong word, but it is hard to believe someone who develops a game (and claims to play) couldn't understand the most obvious frustration for players. Either by reading the forums for ten minutes (not sure they do) or by looking at data. Checking the swgoh.gg profile for almost any player would show it or maybe there's a way to see an overall picture of needed gear on their end.

    If he/she was "genuinely interested" in our opinion, a quick post saying, "Ah, I see what you are saying, maybe we'll work on it" or "Oh, you mean that gear crunch!" would be better than letting us drone on with each other for days. Genuine interest means you want to know the answer. We are providing it. Over and over and over. Also, it was already widely available.

    I wanted to put an analogy here to round things out, but I am actually having a hard time finding one that fits.
  • It’s been mentioned above but I’d agree with the OP. I’d like to see the items referenced (stun guns, carbantis, stun cuffs and golden eyeballs) added to HAAT rewards.
  • @CG_SBCrumb it seems Cyanides hasn’t been on his forum account since August 30th, do you think you could notify him of this thread? Or anyone that can use all these great ideas mentioned here? There are several ideas in here that help the players immensely without hurting profits
  • Spang wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    I don't think a quest is a good argument for easing gear.

    You really have a knack for debating/contradicting even if somebody agrees with you. I wonder how could you have only 17907 posts on this forum.

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    I think (and I have a good handle on TVF-speak after years of rigorous study) the point TVF is trying to make is "If you approach something from the standpoint of 'I'd like this for a quest' then things will get dismissed." Not that CG ever needs a reason to ignore / dismiss any suggestions.
  • They don't even have to touch the existing gear to address this. They could just take the same basic concept of the Hyperdrive Bundle and create a new item/currency that instantly takes the player's chosen character to G10 or G11 and make them available only through monthly login rewards as a means of controlling their distribution.

  • Why not just increase drop rates? Even 50% would be a lot better than we currently have, but ideally I’d like to see 100% for an item. We need so much of everything and for an ever increasing roster.
  • Everytime they 'ease' some piece of the gear crunch they quietly move others from farmable locations to the crystal store.

    Remember when you could farm Mk V droid callers? Remember when Mk IV comlinks and even whole prototypes were in multiple shipment locations? How often do you find Mk VIII Neuro bionics salvage in shipment locations anymore?
  • Removing stun guns from fleet node,removing stun guns from guild store and haat making gear13 need stun guns carbantis removing gear from gac does anyone mention this?All those actually tripled the grind.
  • BB1180 wrote: »
    They don't even have to touch the existing gear to address this. They could just take the same basic concept of the Hyperdrive Bundle and create a new item/currency that instantly takes the player's chosen character to G10 or G11 and make them available only through monthly login rewards as a means of controlling their distribution.

    So to fix the problem of a gear crunch you want to basically do the move the monetary necessity from one part of the game to another...
  • Its all actually very very simple. Leave everything alone and stop requiring GET for meta character shards. If they just allow us to use it for gear, while the gear crunch doesnt go away, I think it puts everyone in a position where progress is continually being made and leaves everyone with a much better taste in their mouths.
  • Synaptic
    38 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    @CG_Cyanides , I have created a visual guide to help define easing. You can use the information conveyed below to extrapolate and define easing for any and all other gear pieces needed to get from G1 to G11 that currently have the same issues:

    vfgma41.png

    While I realize this may come across at somewhat glib, I do not believe it is any more at risk for doing so than your request to define "easing" for you.

    The message essentially distills down to " it shouldn't be as hard or harder to get your characters to G12 as it is to get them from 12 to relic status." Which is what it currently feels like. The point at which a character is useful has moved further along. Move the bottleneck with it. Having people get stuck at G8-10 for these gear pieces goes counter to your push to make new players able to contribute to guilds quicker.
  • Oaktree168 wrote: »
    Its all actually very very simple. Leave everything alone and stop requiring GET for meta character shards. If they just allow us to use it for gear, while the gear crunch doesnt go away, I think it puts everyone in a position where progress is continually being made and leaves everyone with a much better taste in their mouths.

    This would be the best course but they’ve said on podcasts multiple times and here on the forums they have no intention of changing the Epic confrontation farming and unlocking settings. It’s a poor move on their part but they’ve dug their feet into the sand just as they’ve done with the LS geo TB difficulty
  • BB1180
    12 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    Ravens1113 wrote: »
    BB1180 wrote: »
    They don't even have to touch the existing gear to address this. They could just take the same basic concept of the Hyperdrive Bundle and create a new item/currency that instantly takes the player's chosen character to G10 or G11 and make them available only through monthly login rewards as a means of controlling their distribution.

    So to fix the problem of a gear crunch you want to basically do the move the monetary necessity from one part of the game to another...

    It would be a monthly login reward. Thats free, not monetized. Does it completely clear the gear grind for you? No, but they're never going to go that far with it. But it would allow players, especially newer ones, a chance to fast track one or more characters past some of it.

    Understand, I'm not saying its the best solution or even the one I favor. I do, however, get the sense that CG is reluctant to directly impact the gear economy they've created. This is just an alternative that would allow them to help players get one or more characters through much of the mid tier G8-G11 grind each month without having a direct effect on the gear economy.
    Post edited by BB1180 on
  • YetiYeti
    434 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    Simple solution: Add playable content that rewards only Stun Gun Salvage, Carbanti, Stun Cuffs, Raid gear, Golden Eyeballs, etc. Make them like non-simmable Omega rewards. Don't make them ridiculously hard, so they give us something to do in the game with our teams, and don't become a stumbling block of themselves. Give us like Each one every two weeks or something and have it give a non-trivial amount of salvage like 5-15 pieces.

    Also: Raise the RAID ONLY gear from 3 for 252 in the Shard shop to freaking 6 for 210. It's ridiculously annoying when you need a mk7 Nubian or something and it takes two weeks to get it. All it does is slow down a gearing process that (in the case IM thinking of is Carth) necessary for progressing past a major speed bump. These pieces are rarely available for crystals, as well. Remarkable that they're like this... but yea.
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