Shard Economy Changes [MEGA]

Replies

  • Stenun
    851 posts Member
    edited November 2020
    Nyanperor wrote: »
    Stenun wrote: »
    Seriously, there are times when I despair of some of the players on this forum.

    *CG Announces a new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces another new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces yet another new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces a new feature designed to make things easier for newer players and non-Whales*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the older players and the Whales?!

    It seems like that for sure, but in this case older players are having their gear income reduced. If nothing was happening to them, they'd probably be perfectly fine with it, other than those people who feel "why are new players getting it easier, I had to work hard for my stuff"

    It "seems like that" because it IS like that.
    As a 5M+ GP player myself, Bronzium gear/shard farming is the least of my thoughts about this change. It is an absolutely ridiculous thing to complain about. There are many, many ways to generate shards for the Shard Shop and if you are really sitting on so many Ally Points right now then nothing is stopping you spending them all right now before the change and then sitting on the Shard Shop currency until a new character comes along that you want to gear up fast.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Fluffite wrote: »
    Probably far too difficult but why not change the shards required to unlock or star up by half for the older toons to 165 instead of 330?

    Honestly, sometimes, yes. There are certain things that are not written into the game in an easy way to change.
  • They finally found a way to get us to use up our ally points!
    Btw, let's not get too attached to 100k ally points = 100 shards. I just did 60k ally points and got 1x80, 1x50, 3x25 and 4x10 plus some singles for 4000 shard shop currency. That isn't typical, but a lot of people have been saying 100k = 100 shards based off of one example. Still have 250k left to use and may not get that many shards the rest of the way, but we need more examples before we say what is an expected rate.
  • They finally found a way to get us to use up our ally points!
    Btw, let's not get too attached to 100k ally points = 100 shards. I just did 60k ally points and got 1x80, 1x50, 3x25 and 4x10 plus some singles for 4000 shard shop currency. That isn't typical, but a lot of people have been saying 100k = 100 shards based off of one example. Still have 250k left to use and may not get that many shards the rest of the way, but we need more examples before we say what is an expected rate.

    I used 1.5 million ally points and got 35k shard shop currency.
  • Stenun wrote: »
    Nyanperor wrote: »
    Stenun wrote: »
    Seriously, there are times when I despair of some of the players on this forum.

    *CG Announces a new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces another new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces yet another new EndGame feature*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the newer players and the non-Whales?
    *CG Announces a new feature designed to make things easier for newer players and non-Whales*
    This Forum: Wait, what about the older players and the Whales?!

    It seems like that for sure, but in this case older players are having their gear income reduced. If nothing was happening to them, they'd probably be perfectly fine with it, other than those people who feel "why are new players getting it easier, I had to work hard for my stuff"

    It "seems like that" because it IS like that.
    As a 5M+ GP player myself, Bronzium gear/shard farming is the least of my thoughts about this change. It is an absolutely ridiculous thing to complain about. There are many, many ways to generate shards for the Shard Shop and if you are really sitting on so many Ally Points right now then nothing is stopping you spending them all right now before the change and then sitting on the Shard Shop currency until a new character comes along that you want to gear up fast.

    I think you are missing the underlying point...yes, farming shards for certain characters will be easier but we still have a major gear crunch. Helping one without the other seems counter intuitive. Add in the fact they actually will nerf gear acquisition slightly due to the Bronzium issue doesn’t help. A huge gesture of goodwill and to celebrate 5th years it would have been nice if the cost in the shard shop stayed the same instead of doubling. It is a big miss in my eyes.
  • An easy fix, in addition to the bronznium issue, could be to double the drop rates of hard to get gear in normal modes. Nerfing the gear grind is...not a nice thing to do.

    Overall I think this update is great for the game. Not only are there now 200-whatever toons to farm, new players don't get the benefit of the 50 free shards on new character release. It's a pretty daunting challenge for anyone who wants to collect Star Wars characters they actually know and like.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Just a few quick notes here:

    I'm not saying it's perfect, but saying that this hurts new players because they are getting toons faster and are still short on gear - yes this is true, but they are also spending half the time farming that, meaning they will also have more time/energy/crystals to put towards gear. So on paper it's a win, and I would imagine a net benefit when just looking at that area.

    We have expressed the displeasure with the bronzium/shard shop situation, and passed along the ideas for trying to correct this until they deal with the technical issue and can double those drops. We will have to wait and see how this plays out. The goal is to have it be equal to the current situation. Yes, we would always love a push towards the positive on the player side, but this was not the goal of this change (for older players).

    Any additional math/numbers on the bronzium/shard shop issue is always welcome. Thanks @Bulldog1205, we have been passing along numbers as we find them to make sure the issue is as visble as possible.

    And just a reminder to stay on topic, we dont need to bicker about complaints made. Everyone is going to have opinions on this.
  • How bout we just leave it the way it is CG?
    New players still get to have your hyper drive bundle for the low cost of 140$ and you dont tick anyone whose played the game for more than 2 years off.
    A new players progress means nothing to me, and I'm not going to bolster your numbers with an alt account. You just want to jam in as many new players as possible before this well runs dry.
    Call me salty, dont give af. This game treats veteran players like crud.
  • mesa176750
    663 posts Member
    edited November 2020
    Hey everyone. I'm happy for the new update that will increase the rates at which we can get legacy characters. This won't affect me too much other than farming a few dozen characters that aren't as valuable these days. But this will help new players a lot by cutting farming times in half. I applaud this decision by CG because it might help new players come into the game and gear up faster.

    One thing that makes me a bit concerned about the update is the bronzium pack value decrease. Myself and many other players have opened bronzium packs to get excess shards to spend in the shard shop for gear. This was by far my biggest income of shard shop currency and without any changes, it will become half as valuable. This will decrease the amount of gear that I can acquire through he shard shop overall, and it will affect everyone else that has the patience to open bronzium packs through whatever method you employ.

    A content creator has made a nice video to explain how this will affect you, as well as his suggestions to fix it, made by Bulldog and you can watch that here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVPpT3Fqb8o

    While that is disheartening, I think that there are a few solutions that could make this problem an easy fix for CG. I understand how difficult it must be for CG to affect the drop rates for 33+ characters in the old code of the Bronzium packs. Therefore the solutions I will present are ideas that can help fix this economy impact easily. I'll list them in terms of ease of access below. Some of these ideas are from Bulldog's video, so make sure to watch his video!


    1st option, easiest option: Half the cost of bronzium packs from 250 ally tokens to 125 ally tokens.

    This option will essentially double the amount of bronzium packs you will be able to open with the farming you use. This will make up for the fact that the character shards aren't doubled. I feel this would be the easiest option to employ because you should be changing one value in the bronzium pack code. This should be a quick and easy fix.


    2nd option, mid-easy option: Double the amount of ally tokens we obtain from our farming methods.

    This is similar to the first option, but if it's so difficult to change the value of the pack because of the code, you could change the amount of ally tokens we get from farming nodes, GW, daily objectives, etc. and in doing so you would also be able to open twice as many packs. One potential issue is that you probably would want to double the cost of the items you put into the weekly shipments to make up for this change.


    3rd option, most-difficult option: Completely revamp how the ally tokens will be used to purchase gear, possibly opening up an "ally shipments"

    This one would require a lot more time and effort to set up than the options above. Essentially this suggestion would be to make a more affordable ally token shipment tab that could be used to buy gear at an equivalent price of opening hundreds to thousands of bronzium packs and converting the excess shards to shard shop currency. This would require a lot of effort, and I worry about the price value of these pieces of gear. The prices of the gear available in the weekly shipments for ally currency is drastically more expensive than purchasing the gear with shard shop currency acquired via bronzium packs. That being said, this would be an easier option for most players to use the ally tokens, and would make a lot of people happy since they don't have the patience to open bronzium packs.

    Anyways, I'm posting this here so that hopefully other people can present their ideas on how to fix this problem, as well as hopefully draw attention to CG on how to fix the problem.
  • Terrible change. Theoretically nice, but in practice, noone past lvl 70 with one 7* will be better off. Any lost SSC is much bigger long time loss than accelerated old character farm.

    And if it's hard to fix it won't be fixed. Unending loyalty?
  • Ok, this is a lot to comb through. I've asked for a summation of key points raised by the comments in this thread, and will work on getting feedback to address some of those recurring points.

    Might take a few days, as tomorrow is a holiday. But, I know the goal here was to make it easier for newer players to unlock and level up units, while also trying as much as possible to minimally effect other parts of the economy for elder players.

    Will keep y'all updated when I have more.

    Great, my main question is, are you at CG considering doing this same exact things with gear ? Just simply doubling all the gear rewards for all nodes and stores. I think this would be a great idea and I think most everyone would agree with me.
  • Fieldgulls
    419 posts Member
    edited November 2020
    Kyno wrote: »
    Just a few quick notes here:

    The goal is to have it be equal to the current situation. Yes, we would always love a push towards the positive on the player side, but this was not the goal of this change (for older players).


    My comments not Kyno as have no idea what happened on the quote function:

    As Yoda would say in this situation, “this is why you fail”. Why is the goal to be equal to the current situation? Why can we not have improvements with both...here is the rub that has been bothering me for years with this game. One example (but you can use this for every new game mode)...Credit Heist and GAC....credit heists occur less frequently than pre-GAC. Why, well you earn credits playing GAC so to offset the less run credit heists. They do this on everything...nothing is done in an additive way. Release more characters that need gear...no meaningful content additions to the game to compensate. Release relics...no meaningful way to increase finishers. Please do not say Assault Battles as I still have half my guild cannot complete those...that is why raid releases where so beneficial to help the gear problem. Since this was abandoned in lieu of Galactic Challenges which does not make up for the potential gear loss...on top of that rewards have already been nerfed on that new game mode (no more crystals).

    Post edited by Fieldgulls on
  • scuba
    14034 posts Member
    I will say this @CG_Doja_Fett , I will give you guys props for announcing this change before it happens so you can get the feel of the community.
    Personally after reading the update multiple times, my reaction was mostly, meh it is good for new players and does nothing for me. I barely open the 5 free bronzium packs a day, mostly cause I am to lazy, to each their own on this.
    However after reading the community response I definitely see the bad part here (always seems to be something bad with announcements)
    The good thing is the change hasn't been implemented yet and hopefully there is a change to the planned change.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Jeebo101 wrote: »
    Ok, this is a lot to comb through. I've asked for a summation of key points raised by the comments in this thread, and will work on getting feedback to address some of those recurring points.

    Might take a few days, as tomorrow is a holiday. But, I know the goal here was to make it easier for newer players to unlock and level up units, while also trying as much as possible to minimally effect other parts of the economy for elder players.

    Will keep y'all updated when I have more.

    Great, my main question is, are you at CG considering doing this same exact things with gear ? Just simply doubling all the gear rewards for all nodes and stores. I think this would be a great idea and I think most everyone would agree with me.

    As they said in the post, they will be looking at options, and gear is in the realm, but they needed to make this change first and then look at how to make other changes.

    I would imagine the gear will be a more intricate change due to it not being as simple of an economic element as shards are.
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Fieldgulls wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Just a few quick notes here:

    The goal is to have it be equal to the current situation. Yes, we would always love a push towards the positive on the player side, but this was not the goal of this change (for older players).


    My comments not Kyno as have no idea what happened on the quote function:

    As Yoda would say in this situation, “this is why you fail”. Why is the goal to be equal to the current situation? Why can we not have improvements with both...here is the rub that has been bothering me for years with this game. One example (but you can use this for every new game mode)...Credit Heist and GAC....credit heists occur less frequently than pre-GAC. Why, well you earn credits playing GAC so to offset the run less credit heists. They do this on everything...nothing is done in an additive way. Release more characters that need gear...no meaningful content additions to the game to compensate. Release relics...no meaningful way to increase finishers. Please do not say Assault Battles as I still have half my guild cannot complete those...that is why raid releases where so beneficial to help the gear problem. Since this was abandoned in lieu of Galactic Challenges which does not make up for the potential gear loss...on top of that rewards have already been nerfed on that new game mode (no more crystals).

    Because any project needs to have defined goals to allow for it to be done efficiently and not explode into a never ending process.

    The defined scope of this process was to increase shard income, and keep all other elements equal.

    This allows them to then move onto a different project with a different focus.

    If they increased the gear in this one location as a part of this process it would slow any progress on the next step as they would need to get data on the new balance of the system before they could do anything with it.

    Correct, they have an economic balance they strive to keep as things move forward. They are working on increases now as elemental projects for each piece. The game is designed around a pace and an economic balance to keep that pace. Also if you go back and look at the numbers you will see a net increase over time, but yeah not straight up adding new on top of old.
  • scuba wrote: »
    I will say this @CG_Doja_Fett , I will give you guys props for announcing this change before it happens so you can get the feel of the community.
    Personally after reading the update multiple times, my reaction was mostly, meh it is good for new players and does nothing for me. I barely open the 5 free bronzium packs a day, mostly cause I am to lazy, to each their own on this.
    However after reading the community response I definitely see the bad part here (always seems to be something bad with announcements)
    The good thing is the change hasn't been implemented yet and hopefully there is a change to the planned change.

    I do have to agree, as much as I've been ripping into how the other economies could potentially be in shambles. I love that this communication came out well in advance of the change, and that they are actually using community input to map the potential effects it will have on the game.
  • As a long time player (and long time poster) if they don't double bronzium acquisition rates along with the change, this is a definite step backwards for anyone who has been playing the game for any significant amount of time.
    Unless CG's message is "Happy Anniversary! You're being punished!", I think they need to rethink this change - or at least delay it's implementation until they have actually figured out AND corrected the bronzium "technical issue". And no, vague promise to "explore increasing this rate in a future update" doesn't do anything. We heard that about Teebo's stealth bug, uneneding loyalty bug, disappearing buttons, etc. Figure out how to make it work before releasing it - otherwise you're just making the gear crunch worse for veteran (i.e. loyal) players.
    In game name: Lucas Gregory FORMER PLAYER - - - -"Whale blah grump poooop." - Ouchie

    In game guild: TNR Uprising
    I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
    *This space left intentionally blank*
  • Vendi1983
    5018 posts Member
    edited November 2020
    How about they just double the drop rate for characters in the bronziums? They can obviously adjust things like this easily enough for Double Drop events. Then they don't have to change the price of them, which would result in more "useful" gear dropping along with character shards. (You know, the one full carbanti you get every 3 years in a bronzium?)
  • Kyno
    32087 posts Moderator
    Vendi1983 wrote: »
    How about they just double the drop rate for characters in the bronziums? They can obviously adjust things like this easily enough for Double Drop events. Then they don't have to change the price of them, which would result in more "useful" gear dropping along with character shards. (You know, the one full carbanti you get every 3 years in a bronzium?)

    Doubling the drop on bronzium was the plan, but they ran into an issue when trying to implement that.

    As pointed out by many players there are options, and we have passed them along as best we can.

    Lower cost on bronzium packs

    Double SSC on bronzium toons (does open up the double dip, as these shards are double elsewhere, but that should be minor)

    Double ally tokens given in this period while they work it out.

    And a few others that popped up.

    Hopefully we get this all implemented in a single go, but they are not likely to pause the release to account for changes not listed in the post. We are trying to get all the feedback to them as quick as possible to hopefully see a change....
  • TVF
    36527 posts Member
    1) spend all your ally points now and up through the change going live
    2) after the change goes live, save all your ally points until they update bronziums to re-level them

    problem solved

    (unless they never re-level, of course)
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • TVF wrote: »
    1) spend all your ally points now and up through the change going live
    2) after the change goes live, save all your ally points until they update bronziums to re-level them

    problem solved

    (unless they never re-level, of course)

    These are good solutions in a world where we assume they fix it in a timely manner. Otherwise most SSC for people relying on Bronziums will essentially be halted entirely until it's fixed, which could be right after the update, or it could be a year from now. At which point they may as well have not fixed it at all cuz we'll have adapted by then.
  • If they are even remotely concerned with the extra gear we would get if they doubled ally points then they aren't really considering changing the economy to decrease the early/mid level gear bottleneck. Doubling the gear from ally points is close to the least possible thing they could do there.

    This, this this! Why are you the only one talking about this in these terms? CG is doing this to solve a problem they see. Looking at the results this change will achieve, it's probably one (or both) of the following (Remember, they only care about enjoyment and engagement to the point it makes them money. That's not a judgement, it's why they exist, and without the profit motive I wouldn't have this outlet for my Star Wars "fix", so I'm good with that.):
    1. They aren't getting enough people sticking around early game. This might be compared to MSF or some other game that directly competes, and they don't see enough people staying past a certain point, and they believe allowing folks to level these toons up faster will keep them engaged and turn them into people who spend on gear (which is the main thrust of what they sell to monetize the game).
    2. They have determined (or want to determine) if lowering the amount of "free" gear they give for shard shop will increase (or have any effect on) spending.

    Frankly, I don't believe (based on historical communications) for a second that a technical issue is what's got the bronzium change FUBAR. There have been several very easy solutions posited in this thread to net-neutral that piece of the gear economy. They could do it if they wanted to. This tells me they don't want to, which tells me the second objective is most likely what's intended.

    There is a possibility of a 3rd objective, and that's some huge change coming that would upset the applecart, that change being something that effects bronziums, ally points, or shards, etc. If that's the case, then they are still lying to us at this point. Remember they sold kyros as "diversifying the gear grind" and couched it in terms to leave the impression they were trying to ease it. We all know how that's working. Again, they could make this net-neutral for older players, you have to wonder what the real reason is for not doing so?
  • Ok, this is a lot to comb through. I've asked for a summation of key points raised by the comments in this thread, and will work on getting feedback to address some of those recurring points.

    Might take a few days, as tomorrow is a holiday. But, I know the goal here was to make it easier for newer players to unlock and level up units, while also trying as much as possible to minimally effect other parts of the economy for elder players.

    Will keep y'all updated when I have more.

    Then to be quite blunt, why didn't they implement a solution that did that? Not to be too cantankerous, but I'm not sure I believe that was the actual goal, because this is a big nerf (Bulldog has already done the calculations) to older players who buy a lot of gear in the shard shop.
  • jrodfantastic
    63 posts Member
    edited November 2020
    What impact does this accelerated collection of character shard impact the credit economy for newer players? Credits are a struggle for players until they reach about 3mil GP. If newer players are star-leveling characters at twice the rate they were before, doesn’t create twice the strain on credits?
  • What impact does this accelerated collection of character shard impact the credit economy for newer players? Credits are a struggle for players until they reach about 3mil GP. If newer players are star-leveling characters at twice the rate they were before, doesn’t create twice the strain on credits?

    I don't see it having any impact at all personally. My account is 2.5 million GP and I've progressed faster than the fast majority of players because of the amount I've spent on the account. With the exception of 1 instance during a livestream because I needed the credits literally that instant, I haven't spent any resources, even arena currency, on credits. And I have a huge surplus. I buy mods from the mod shop 2-3x a week because I have the credits available.

    If you have a long term credit crunch you are probably spending credits to level and star up characters that you can't gear yet anyways.

    Part of me wonders if this is simply CG seeing a way to make more money from gear. If new players are getting these characters to 7 star quicker they are going to want to gear them quicker to keep up.

    Bottom line is gear is almost always the bottle neck. It's the most expensive part of the game. And this update does nothing to change that. Giving new players quicker access to characters isnt all that helpful if they can't gear them up anyways.
  • So I went and did the bronzium math for my video. If you do all the first level energy refreshes every day, you will be losing 2 full stun gun prototypes a month from the bronzium nerf.

    Thank You BD for doing the math.

    Given the crunch on GET-1 w/ Malak, GAS, HODA, & Wampa, Shard Store is my #1 source of extra Stun Guns outside of Siming the DS Nodes.

    This is exactly what I was fearing more than anything. Stungun crunch just got more painful.

    I really hope they just cut the cost of Bronziums in Half to 125, that seems like the most logical solution & gives up nothing but some extra crap gear that we had too much of anyway & now trash for relic mats.

    That 1 change would be a tiny boost in low level gearing & relic mats gearing & take all the negative feelings away from what would basically be a nice upgrade for new accts & those of us that still have some older toons to farm.

  • So what's the general opinion? Is it a good idea to burn all ally points on bronzium packs before the update? If the update will double our shard shop currency stash, it sounds like a good idea.
  • They should have kept the Shard currency prices the same to, you know, ease up on the much needed gear crunch.
  • Gifafi
    6017 posts Member
    Ravens1113 wrote: »
    Gifafi wrote: »
    Gifafi wrote: »
    seeing a lot of salt. 2 points:

    1. if you are worried about a newer player "catching up" to you bc of some farming changes for older toons, my advice is to git gud.

    2. if you are angry bc new players will be able to get things easier than you did. then my advice is to walk everywhere like your forefathers did. Not fair you get to ride in a car. I might allow one of those bicycles with the giant wheel in the front if you post proof your great gpaw rode one. In other words, git gud

    If that's what you think most of this thread is about, then you obviously didn't read it all. And if this is your attempt at summarizing a thread that raises genuine concerns about gear crunch and other aspects of the in-game economy, then my advice to you is git gud at reading.

    lol of course I haven't read 7 pages of nonsense. I also don't recal saying "most" of whatever this thread is about was what I posted. I opened another thread on the issue and saw the same whining tho, if that helps. But we do have people itt upset bout how this doesn't help their particular gear wants, if that counts
    Ravens1113 wrote: »
    Gifafi wrote: »
    seeing a lot of salt. 2 points:

    1. if you are worried about a newer player "catching up" to you bc of some farming changes for older toons, my advice is to git gud.

    2. if you are angry bc new players will be able to get things easier than you did. then my advice is to walk everywhere like your forefathers did. Not fair you get to ride in a car. I might allow one of those bicycles with the giant wheel in the front if you post proof your great gpaw rode one. In other words, git gud

    I haven’t seen anyone complain about either of those. Pretty sure people are positive about this change for new players.

    The issue, which of course you miss, is that they are not doing anything to ease the gear crunch at all! In fact, they’re making it worse by doubling the shard shop currency, all while keeping bronzonium rates the same, effectively making the crunch worse. So again, CG has failed to help its veteran players and have made things worse actually. Although I must say, the more they do things like this and ignore their veteran players, the easier it is to give my money to MSF over SWGOH 🤷🏻‍♂️

    what would doing something for new players have to do with old players? Did you want something too, is that it? Oh, you wanted help with the gear YOU want? I mean, don't we all. Not sure of the relevence tho

    also, how is it worse? And has it even happened yet?

    You’re the one bringing up non relevant complaints in the thread. Outside of a singular complaint about this helping new players the complaints are bronzoniums being devalued which hurts peoples main source of shard currency which is a big chunk of gear farming.

    But I’ll answer your question with another question. Why are you trying to deflect people’s concerns over a lack of mid to end game gear farming by bringing up one complaint about new player help.

    I honestly wonder if there’s ever a single thread on this forum that you actually contribute to in a positive manner. I highly doubt it though.

    lol ok. Every thread I see you in you are either complaining about the gear crunch bc you want more gear. I mean, who doesn't want more gear, but constantly complaining about it, especially in threads that have nothing to do with it, is...odd. Do you think CG is gonna break down and be like "FINE, here's 14 stun guns, Ravens, leave us alone now!!"?

    Well, tbf, it's either that or complaints about not having a GL at 6m+, somehow(!). Oh wait, it's bc you focused on things that help your guild more than a GL would. Like, um, well, I guess I have no idea what would help a guild more than a GL.

    ps if you want to find some helpful posts by me try New Players. If you want to find me lolling at complaints and insanity, then here is good.
    Monel wrote: »
    Not really impressed as a vet, but it definitely is good to try and help keep newer players around.

    And today's Veteran's Day, no less! When we gon' get the blue suits, CG??
    Maybe End Game isn't for you
Sign In or Register to comment.