[MEGA] State of the Galaxy: November 2021

Replies

  • Kyno wrote: »
    Drathuk916 wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Drathuk916 wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Nauros wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    ShaggyB wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    ShaggyB wrote: »
    NicWester wrote: »
    I feel like the folks who say this is going to reduce income across the board are letting slip their chat status. Practically speaking, the maximum number of players per arena shard that could get first place in a day was 24. If you think 24 players (maximum) represent the experience of the rest of the player base then you're pretty out of touch. You weren't earning your crystals, you were part of a cartel that conspired to keep the crystals in their little group.

    For the rest of us, just being in Carbonite 1 is going to give as many daily crystals as we already get.

    So saying that everyone is going to suffer doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The 1% is going to suffer and the rest of us are going to get an increase based on what we deserve, so........

    Sucks to be you. Get good at Grand Arena.

    You do understand there are multiple arena shards, with new ones popping up all the time right.

    You do not like shard chats.... but a newer player that gets #1 because they have the best team in their newer created shard arena will be getting the shaft with this.

    Its always bad to take something from players, its never bad to add something.

    From the discussion we had, there are some cases where it's a decrease, but overall it's an increase.

    When looking at new shards which have the largest active population, this is a blessing, as many of them are averaging a very low income, compared to the average in the new system.

    Perhaps a better explaination is needed. The way im reading it newer players (lvl 85) are going to not be anywhere near kyber payouts.

    Initial gp will lock them in low. Skill will grow them some, but id think that #1 player with a low gp wont be clearing 500 a day

    Yes a small % of players will see lower income, in the situation your are stating.

    Are you sure it will be a small %? If skill rating is all that matters, then new players will eventually hit a wall where they can't win because the high leagues are populated by veterans. Unless they heed Carrie's infamous tweet about catching up, of course...

    Yes I am sure.

    Where do you predict this wall will be?

    My prediction is you can neither fall or climb more than 3 divisions from wherever you are initially placed. I think gac lovers are missing the overall downside for them. Eventually they’ll end up in a space where three matches they can’t lose based on their and their opponents rosters. Three they can’t win, and six where their skill might let them overcome their opponents advantage or their opponent has the skill to overcome theirs.

    This seems to me to be a net loss from a gameplay perspective for those that enjoyed gac and were going 10-2 or better each time.

    From a crystal perspective, most will see an increase sure, but the longer you’ve played the higher your income and the easier it will be to progress. The shorter your play time you’re less likely to see an increase in crystal income but even if you do it’ll be less so it will be harder to increase your income than under the old SA model.

    But once again the effect on current players is immaterial. A new player is now seeing a crystal income max that is smaller and therefore has less reason to whale. So while I believe the majority of players will eventually see this as a net positive for their crystal income, I also see it being harder for cg to acquire new spenders to replace retiring spenders.

    I am not a GAC fan.

    We also dont know the exact way this is going to be measured, and likely never will, but we should all realize that it doesnt need to be a 1 for 1 win to loss, they can be waited differently.

    Why would a new player see less income? You mean the top 50 on a shard may be seeing less income, what about the other few hundred that we locked in at 50?

    Will some, yes. Will investing in the game if they choose to still have a benefit, yes. In fact it will be a longer term benefit than arena with a rolling meta. A top end team can be surpassed multiple times in a GAC roster and still be relevant in the game mode.

    I am not a fan of the change or GAC, but there are some big benefits to the player base as a whole.

    I guess we just have to agree to disagree on the long term benefits on early investment. Under the SA model a few hundred dollars (hyperdrive + 20-40 a month until you’re outpacing your shards meta) could lock you into a healthy income for years and get you to the same free income of a six year player.

    This just isn’t possible under the new system. Yes the majority of players will see an increase in their crystal income. But the game needs revenue to survive. This is a great benefit to the player base in the short term. I just don’t see it being a benefit to the player base long term. Lost revenue from retiring players, lost revenue from players progressing at a faster pace than they were use to and therefore not feeling the need to spend, lost revenue from fewer players seeing the benefit of spending large amounts of money early as being enough to justify the expense.

    How will cg replace all of that revenue? It needs to come from players buying things they can’t get with crystals (omicrons, r9 mats) or it comes by cutting production/development costs. I’m very wary of either outcome. I hope I’m wrong and time will tell but my gut tells me this was a poor decision for the long term health of the game even though it will please a significant majority of current players.

    SA has a rolling meta, once a team can be countered it's done. There is no long term benefit there. The HDB gives you a great boost in all game modes, because it takes time off the farm as a whole, but does nothing better or worse in SA vs GAC.

    Overall investing in team in SA is very pointed and then dies off, the length of its life in GAC is much longer.

    Kyno,

    All I’m saying is I don’t think cg has thought through the changes to the games economy. A huge influx of crystals to the player base means the real dollar amount of anything cg is trying to sell us is significantly less. The lesser mobility caused by your income being based on your playing habit relationship to all players and not just those that started in the arenas at the same time also decreases the roi on any real dollars players choose to invest.

    I just don’t see how this change generates more revenue for cg. A game can’t survive on declining revenue.
  • GJO wrote: »
    To be clear.... you'll have ship arena (which is far less important than squad) AND for getting the old crystals from squad you'll need ships as well?
    Is GAlaxy of Ships the name of the game?


    Yes, it’s the “ Shipload” of content
  • Ragnarok_COTF wrote:
    I fail to see the issue here. Consider two players, one at 5M and one at 8M. Their initial seeding will have them spread very far apart. If they should meet someday, that means that the 8M player has been losing and the 5M player has been winning. In theory, their skill gap should be enough to make the matchup interesting. If it is not, the 5M player will lose some skill rating and the 8M player will gain some back, and the system corrects itself.

    Then Kyno responded:
    This seems to be the general idea, ...
    I will also add that unless you are the best player at your GP, when higher GP players make it to your area, they will have been beaten by others at your GP, proving it can be done....

    Yeah, except you're both wildly, wildly wrong. There is no amount of skill difference that will make a 5Mgp account competitive with an 8Mgp account. Instead, what has to happen for these two to meet is the 8M gp player puts in no effort at all - probably because they hate the game mode. If the score difference at the end of their match is very similar, again, it's because the 8M gp player puts in no effort at all. There aren't any 8M gp players that don't know how to construct a team with synergy or who don't have the "skill" to google counters.

    The whole "skill rating" bit is a myth in such a matchup. For other matchups, sure. The distinction between Kyber 1 and Kyber 3 might be based on skill. But when 8M meets 5M the distinction isn't skill. The distinction is that one cares enough about the game mode to make an actual effort and the other doesn't.

    If one doesn't care at all and the other squeaks out a win by 12 points from 1st attack and taking down 2 characters out of a squad of 5, that's not "making the matchup interesting" (to quote Ragnarok).

    "Skill" will certainly play some role in sorting between a few players here and there, but most of what will be assigned to "skill rating" is simply the amount of time people are willing to invest -- researching the opponent's defensive tendencies, researching potential counters in advance, re-researching actual counters once the defense is revealed. Etc. Etc. Etc.

    "Effort rating (with some smaller contribution from skill)" is a much better description than "Skill rating (with a small contribution from effort)".

    Matching a 5M gp player who actively plays against an 8M gp player who hates GAC and wants nothing to do with it isn't "interesting". The fact that neither of you two seem to realize that 5M/8M gp matchups are never going to happen without the 8M gp player giving up on GAC makes your analysis curiously suspect.

    Why not honestly deal with the ramifications of a long-term GP barrier to new accounts, once 8M gp inactives sort themselves to the bottom? Why do you pretend that there's such a thing as "skill" that lets a 5M gp player win a close match against an 8M gp player that makes an effort?

    Every highly-ranked newer account is going to lose crystals from this. People who love GAC will love it more, since they will have inactives sorted out of their division permanently so they don't open each GAC round with 2 to 4 battles against haters who autodeploy. People who hate GAC -- or even just people who have gotten used to the status quo and liked the game well enough as it was -- will build in resentment.

    in the meantime, the biggest problem with this is that by removing entirely the option of buying the HyperDrive Bundle as an early way to get ahead in Arena and begin a massive crystal surge, the HBD folks will have to compete directly against folks who earned their way to level 85 and have thus been playing longer and have advantages the HDB doesn't provide.

    In the old system, newer accounts didn't have to compete against older accounts for crystal income. Now, they do.

    As a result, CG has massively discounted the value of the HyperDrive Bundle, presumably hoping that instead of getting lots of people purchasing HDB they will get lots of people purchasing lots of smaller packs essentially forever since there's no natural endpoint. With the Arena system, once you hit #1 you could coast on that income if you were skilled at planning your resource use. With the new GAC system you will always have older accounts ahead of you.

    Maybe some people will be motivated to spend more and more money with no limit. But it provides an inherent disincentive to spend money for newer players, meaning that they might never pick up the habit.

    Having new accounts compete with older accounts was always a bad idea, which is why the old system avoided it.

    Maybe the new system will still work to bring in new paying players and the game can continue. But that seems like a very risky gamble.
  • @NicWester
    A thing you may not be considering is that even though income will go down initially, a large part of that income gets funneled into staying at the top of arena. If people ... can put their gear and omegas and zetas on characters and teams they like instead of the 10 teams some youtuber told them they need to get asap so they can break into their local arena cartel and finish the game as fast as possible… Is that bad?

    Um, you realize that Arena only requires one exceptionally well developed squad while GAC requires numerous well developed squads, right?

    GAC constrains roster development far more than Arena ever could.
  • Kyno wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Nauros wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    ShaggyB wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    ShaggyB wrote: »
    NicWester wrote: »
    I feel like the folks who say this is going to reduce income across the board are letting slip their chat status. Practically speaking, the maximum number of players per arena shard that could get first place in a day was 24. If you think 24 players (maximum) represent the experience of the rest of the player base then you're pretty out of touch. You weren't earning your crystals, you were part of a cartel that conspired to keep the crystals in their little group.

    For the rest of us, just being in Carbonite 1 is going to give as many daily crystals as we already get.

    So saying that everyone is going to suffer doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The 1% is going to suffer and the rest of us are going to get an increase based on what we deserve, so........

    Sucks to be you. Get good at Grand Arena.

    You do understand there are multiple arena shards, with new ones popping up all the time right.

    You do not like shard chats.... but a newer player that gets #1 because they have the best team in their newer created shard arena will be getting the shaft with this.

    Its always bad to take something from players, its never bad to add something.

    From the discussion we had, there are some cases where it's a decrease, but overall it's an increase.

    When looking at new shards which have the largest active population, this is a blessing, as many of them are averaging a very low income, compared to the average in the new system.

    Perhaps a better explaination is needed. The way im reading it newer players (lvl 85) are going to not be anywhere near kyber payouts.

    Initial gp will lock them in low. Skill will grow them some, but id think that #1 player with a low gp wont be clearing 500 a day

    Yes a small % of players will see lower income, in the situation your are stating.

    Are you sure it will be a small %? If skill rating is all that matters, then new players will eventually hit a wall where they can't win because the high leagues are populated by veterans. Unless they heed Carrie's infamous tweet about catching up, of course...

    Yes I am sure.

    Where do you predict this wall will be?

    Was comparing the 110th toon with a guild mate (11 placements = 22 teams = 110 toons). I'm far and away the inferior player (same number of GLs, both have executors), their mods are better. I don't see how I get beat with the bottom of the rosters being what they are. This was with a 700k GP difference (6.3 to ~7M). A 3GL 5M GP roster would be farcical.

    Smaller GP rosters cannot compete in the higher leagues if the defensive team placements are fixed. Period.

    There is a gp threshold that it matters less, but that's much higher, consider the gp threshold where both players will have 110 reliced toons and only difference can be relic levels. I think this starts around 7.5m gp.

    And this means that an account at 4M GP and getting 1st in arena today will have their crystals cut just about in half. They will eventually be able to get back to 500/day, but since they are now bringing in fewer crystals it will take them longer than it would have without this change.

    And what about the other 4M GP players in the shard?

    I mean, by definition (and I thought it was rather obvious) a 4M GP player that is not finishing top 100 in arena will, at least initially, get more crystals.
    No one is saying this isn't a change, but everyone is acting like the only players who are affected are the ones getting first/second every day. What about everyone who is not in that potential 48 player per shard group?

    Well, many of them will be doing better, some will be doing the same, some will be doing worse.
    Will it take longer? Didnt they just make the first round of changes that will effect that timeline?

    Yes, for anyone earning fewer crystals, it will take longer. They made the g12 grind much easier, but did nothing to ease the relic crunch.
    There are many assumptions and guess work going on about where everyone starts and where they will be, but all in all this is better for a large majority of players, and not all of them are at the top.

    I made no assumptions, and we don't have to guess about where everyone starts, and most players probably have a good idea of where they are going. And honestly if you would have read my other posts on the subject, I am in favor of this change, aside from the continued issue of cheating that hasn't been addressed yet. Member tournaments? I member.

    Breaking top 100? More like the yop 20 or even 10. 4m GP is around 250 average

    The amount doing worse should very low. You can see from the numbers you have to be in chromium just to start bringing your average down to lower than anyone outside of the 100 mark.

    In phase 1 they did g12 (ish), but they still have more planned.

    Again, over the number of shards, and the number of players, the way the shard PO system was lined up, this is a net benefit for the player base.

    Many of the conversations start with a 500 crystals income, when that is a very limited group that actually bring that in. I am not saying you said this exact number, but others have and that is what I was referencing.

    I would question your recognition of tournaments if you are comparing the 2 in any direct way.

    Without knowing how wins and losses move us around, I think players dont have a good idea of where they are going, or how long it will take them to get there.

    You kind of amaze me sometimes. I never once said the amount of players hurt by this change was a lot.

    And I'm not comparing the game modes, I'm comparing the cheating. Tournaments were shut down largely because cheating was rampant. I see no reason why that won't be the same here, though not sure they'll be able to just shut down GAC.

    It was shut down due to the event style itself being open to a particular type of cheating. GAC is does not have that particular flaw, or any flaw that allows it to run the show the way it did there.


    Kyno is on a roll for being totally and objectively incorrect today. Cheating is rampant in GAC and CG is loathe to take any action. It's been well documented.
  • @Ragnarok_COTF
    To improve your analogy. It will match a [bi]cyclist with a [motor]biker only if they are routinely completing the course in the same amount of time. And if that's the case, who cares what contraption they rode on?

    Because that's not what it does. It matches the bicyclist against a motorbiker depending on how many head-to-head races they win. And when they settle in at 50/50 and get squared off as "even", what's actually happening is that 50% of the time the motorcyclist is having a beer at a local pub and doesn't bother showing up and 50% of the time the motorcyclist thinks, "I should win a couple races, just so I don't fall further," shows up, and speeds off into the sunset, winning the race with no competition at all.

    Neither winning because your competition didn't show up nor losing because your competition is completely beyond you is a "fun" outcome.

  • Sounds good, no complaints here.
  • @NicWester
    A thing you may not be considering is that even though income will go down initially, a large part of that income gets funneled into staying at the top of arena. If people ... can put their gear and omegas and zetas on characters and teams they like instead of the 10 teams some youtuber told them they need to get asap so they can break into their local arena cartel and finish the game as fast as possible… Is that bad?

    Um, you realize that Arena only requires one exceptionally well developed squad while GAC requires numerous well developed squads, right?

    GAC constrains roster development far more than Arena ever could.

    GL farming gets you more than one team, so does GAS and so does Sith Empire with Malak.

    You need several teams to do anything in TB's and TW's too.
  • MasterSeedy
    4965 posts Member
    edited December 2021
    @ScoundrelRui

    So you agree with me that Arena constrains your roster choices less than GAC, and that this leaves you more free to pursue the strategies that make you happy and/or that help accomplish guild goals (like prioritizing all DS teams for a while when first reaching DS GeoTB)?

    Because although everything you wrote supports my argument, your tone makes you sound like you think you're disagreeing with me.
  • Please don't remove the shard rewards for squad arena. I gain 75 per day off of that and it is very helpful. Or at least find a way to give us shard generation elsewhere.

    From my understanding, everyone gets a base of 50 crystals, fight and win, you get more. No different from squad is now.
    Also fleet squad isn't being affected, get your ships to snuff and get more from there.
  • @ScoundrelRui

    So you agree with me that Arena constrains your roster choices less than GAC, and that this leaves you more free to pursue the strategies that make you happy and/or that help accomplish guild goals (like prioritizing all DS teams for a while when first reaching DS GeoTB)?

    Because although everything you wrote supports my argument, your tone makes you sound like you think you're disagreeing with me.

    So my question is once the matchmaking, if it works, sorts itself out properly for fair matchmaking, wouldn’t GAC allow you to build your roster more broadly?

    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else. In GAC you can go beyond that once things (hopefully) become balanced. Now I am just as skeptical as you they can get it right. However if they do, wouldn’t GAC allow these passion projects to flourish? Like Imps where it’ll work towards SEE. Or bad batch for Peon Vader.

    I agree, if the matchmaking fails then this is a moot point. However if it does actually work, wouldn’t this be better?
  • A lot of people keep talking about skill. I know a lot of people who have skill who don’t like the gac game mode. It is a silly argument to make.
  • @MasterSeedy

    I'm saying that for anyone who has been playing for a while that it really doesn't matter because you will have built up a variety of teams for different reasons. Some people have their passion projects that have no real use in game but they just like them.

    I didn't relic my geo's for arena, it was for wat shards and GAC, but my guild didn't ask me to. I got SEE (only GL) before GAS, so he was never going to be used in arena, good for TB and GAC though.

    I'm currently working on JML, it was going to be partly for arena, but mainly to beat SLKR in GAC because of the nerfs. A side bonus is that it gives me a reason to gear up my rebels too.
  • This change is a kick in the teeth to players like me who’ve spent 5-6 years playing a game focused upon the squad arena game mode and crystal income there.

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    I just spent the last 4 months, $400 and countless hours (eg on maxing conquest) to get a Lord Vader team for the arena crystal income. It is still 6 weeks away from being finished, and now I will never get to use it for the entire reason I did any of this. I hate GAC. I didn’t get it for that, and I’m likely quitting before ever using this team.

    Thanks a lot, CG, for taking a game I loved for the past 5 1/2 years and destroying it for Christmas.
  • This change is a kick in the teeth to players like me who’ve spent 5-6 years playing a game focused upon the squad arena game mode and crystal income there.

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    I just spent the last 4 months, $400 and countless hours (eg on maxing conquest) to get a Lord Vader team for the arena crystal income. It is still 6 weeks away from being finished, and now I will never get to use it for the entire reason I did any of this. I hate GAC. I didn’t get it for that, and I’m likely quitting before ever using this team.

    Thanks a lot, CG, for taking a game I loved for the past 5 1/2 years and destroying it for Christmas.

    How would your farm have changed?
  • @Ravens1113
    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else.

    Well, okay. But so does HSTR or you get terrible rewards. So does Galactic Challenge, which will allow you 2nd best rewards every week with a single GL, but will not guarantee you that with 0 GL. This isn't even mentioning LS Geo TB.

    There are plenty of reasons to get a GL, and with the RPS meta you can pick from several (at the very least LV, JML, SEE, and GLOW). So, sure, you can say that for early game players SA might force a GL effort earlier than the player would otherwise choose it, but it also might not. In a lower-gp guild having the only (or one of the only) SLKRs gives you a **massive** boost to the amount of g12 gear you soak up, which means you progress much more quickly by prioritizing a GL than by prioritizing anything else, even GAC-priority squads in a game where GAC's crystal flow has started.

    I will likely have all the crystals that I used to have, and with minimal effort, though I hate GAC and will be unlikely to stay in the highest division because of that (it's likely Kyber-2 for me). That's my choice and though I'm not happy about it, it's not what most worries me.

    No, it's the fact that newer accounts will now be competing directly against older accounts that makes things so dangerous. The facts around whether GAC constrains choices more than Squad Arena (I think it clearly does, but it's not something for which either of us would have conclusive data) are interesting, but I only brought it up because someone else had said that SA constrains player choice without any acknowledgement that even if it forces you to build a specific team, once you have one single team done, you're on to whatever you want for a good long while. With GAC's priority on multiple GL's to block progress with specific required counter-squads (that have been nerfed and are now less reliable), things become much more grindy in GAC than in SA with its "one team & you're good to go!" requirement. So having refuted (or at least complicated) the simple narrative that SA constrains player choice, I'm much more interested in talking about other things that are actually problems with or benefits of the new system, rather than things that are exactly as good or as bad about SA or GAC no matter whether the current system or the recently proposed system is in use.
  • Ravens1113 wrote: »
    @ScoundrelRui

    So you agree with me that Arena constrains your roster choices less than GAC, and that this leaves you more free to pursue the strategies that make you happy and/or that help accomplish guild goals (like prioritizing all DS teams for a while when first reaching DS GeoTB)?

    Because although everything you wrote supports my argument, your tone makes you sound like you think you're disagreeing with me.

    So my question is once the matchmaking, if it works, sorts itself out properly for fair matchmaking, wouldn’t GAC allow you to build your roster more broadly?

    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else. In GAC you can go beyond that once things (hopefully) become balanced. Now I am just as skeptical as you they can get it right. However if they do, wouldn’t GAC allow these passion projects to flourish? Like Imps where it’ll work towards SEE. Or bad batch for Peon Vader.

    I agree, if the matchmaking fails then this is a moot point. However if it does actually work, wouldn’t this be better?

    I don't think so. Here's why.

    For arena, if you want 500 crystals a day, you now need to have a GL and if you want it easy you the new meta.

    Under the new system to get the same 500 crystals a day you'll need 6 or 7 mil gp to realistically have a shot at high aurodium or kyber. And it isn't 6 million of trash gp but of competitive teams probably including 3 or 4 GLs.

    So the barriers to entry are much higher for the top payouts are much higher. If you actually want to get there every toon you gear will need to be focused toward gac.

    If you want to focus on passion projects, you obviously still can and maybe even get more crystals than not caring about arena at all. Though in most shards, you can not care and easily get too 100 for quite some time as long as you actually do some battles. I'm sure you'll be able to get 100 crystals a day easily enough while still farming side projects but if you want the top prize it will be more difficult.

    Especially for newer players. The players that are currently at 8 mil gp players will continue to have a lead that will be insurmountable by a lower gp players
  • Don't trust the MM.

    They haven't gotten it right yet and allow cheating in the current version of GAC.

    Don't trust CG to make or enforce these changes without breaking the game.

    Don't trust CG...


    So, still not paying any money.. Prove me wrong CG.

  • My concern is that regular arenas you get a minimum chance of 5 battles to earn your payout as well spending crystals to increase the chances. In GAC you get one chance. From what I’ve seen there isn’t even a large increase of crystals by any means.

    I don’t win ever single GAC but I do earn #1 in arena almost every day. Meaning the growth of my account will decrease by a very large percentage. Even with better matchmaking someone has to lose and that someone will have their payout halved when instead we could both be getting #1 in payouts in regular arena.

    They need to make a new mode that gives additional daily crystal income to work along with this. Otherwise all these shard and gear increases will be for almost nothing. Crystals are the real source of income here and now they are making that harder for us to get it. Very nervous about this idea.
  • Ravens1113 wrote: »
    @ScoundrelRui

    So you agree with me that Arena constrains your roster choices less than GAC, and that this leaves you more free to pursue the strategies that make you happy and/or that help accomplish guild goals (like prioritizing all DS teams for a while when first reaching DS GeoTB)?

    Because although everything you wrote supports my argument, your tone makes you sound like you think you're disagreeing with me.

    So my question is once the matchmaking, if it works, sorts itself out properly for fair matchmaking, wouldn’t GAC allow you to build your roster more broadly?

    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else. In GAC you can go beyond that once things (hopefully) become balanced. Now I am just as skeptical as you they can get it right. However if they do, wouldn’t GAC allow these passion projects to flourish? Like Imps where it’ll work towards SEE. Or bad batch for Peon Vader.

    I agree, if the matchmaking fails then this is a moot point. However if it does actually work, wouldn’t this be better?

    I don't think so. Here's why.

    For arena, if you want 500 crystals a day, you now need to have a GL and if you want it easy you the new meta.

    Under the new system to get the same 500 crystals a day you'll need 6 or 7 mil gp to realistically have a shot at high aurodium or kyber. And it isn't 6 million of trash gp but of competitive teams probably including 3 or 4 GLs.

    So the barriers to entry are much higher for the top payouts are much higher. If you actually want to get there every toon you gear will need to be focused toward gac.

    If you want to focus on passion projects, you obviously still can and maybe even get more crystals than not caring about arena at all. Though in most shards, you can not care and easily get too 100 for quite some time as long as you actually do some battles. I'm sure you'll be able to get 100 crystals a day easily enough while still farming side projects but if you want the top prize it will be more difficult.

    Especially for newer players. The players that are currently at 8 mil gp players will continue to have a lead that will be insurmountable by a lower gp players

    Bronzium 1 will have a starting GP of 3.1mil, which will earn them 100 crystals from the daily rewards and doing next to nothing
  • Ravens1113 wrote: »
    @ScoundrelRui

    So you agree with me that Arena constrains your roster choices less than GAC, and that this leaves you more free to pursue the strategies that make you happy and/or that help accomplish guild goals (like prioritizing all DS teams for a while when first reaching DS GeoTB)?

    Because although everything you wrote supports my argument, your tone makes you sound like you think you're disagreeing with me.

    So my question is once the matchmaking, if it works, sorts itself out properly for fair matchmaking, wouldn’t GAC allow you to build your roster more broadly?

    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else. In GAC you can go beyond that once things (hopefully) become balanced. Now I am just as skeptical as you they can get it right. However if they do, wouldn’t GAC allow these passion projects to flourish? Like Imps where it’ll work towards SEE. Or bad batch for Peon Vader.

    I agree, if the matchmaking fails then this is a moot point. However if it does actually work, wouldn’t this be better?

    I don't think so. Here's why.

    For arena, if you want 500 crystals a day, you now need to have a GL and if you want it easy you the new meta.

    Under the new system to get the same 500 crystals a day you'll need 6 or 7 mil gp to realistically have a shot at high aurodium or kyber. And it isn't 6 million of trash gp but of competitive teams probably including 3 or 4 GLs.

    So the barriers to entry are much higher for the top payouts are much higher. If you actually want to get there every toon you gear will need to be focused toward gac.

    If you want to focus on passion projects, you obviously still can and maybe even get more crystals than not caring about arena at all. Though in most shards, you can not care and easily get too 100 for quite some time as long as you actually do some battles. I'm sure you'll be able to get 100 crystals a day easily enough while still farming side projects but if you want the top prize it will be more difficult.

    Especially for newer players. The players that are currently at 8 mil gp players will continue to have a lead that will be insurmountable by a lower gp players

    Bronzium 1 will have a starting GP of 3.1mil, which will earn them 100 crystals from the daily rewards and doing next to nothing

    Yes I said you can do next to nothing and still get 100 crystals a day. However with focus you can be getting 500 a day from squad arena by the time you hit 3 mil gp.

    On my alt, I'm at about 2.5 mil gp and about two requirements away from a GL. In that shard a GL with decent mods can take 1st. So at 3 mil go, that is a difficult but achievable goal.

    With the changes, that is no longer the case. A 3 mil gp player will not be getting 500 Crystals a day from gac no matter how focused they are.

    And given that the higher gp players will always be getting more Crystals than the lower ones, it is unlikely that it will be possible to ever grow a 3 mil gp roster to get the 500 crystals a day. Because once the 3 mil gp account grows to 4 mil gp, all the accounts above them has also grown an equal (or greater since they get more Crystals) amount. So it becomes an ever moving goal post.

    Of course you can win the lottery and solve that problem but that isn't really a good solution.

    I think the fatal flaw in this game mode is that it makes a moving goal post that is likely unachievable unless there is a mass exodus of older players.

    A challenge is good but it has to be eventually achievable in order to be a good one.

  • In the meantime, the biggest problem with this is that by removing entirely the option of buying the HyperDrive Bundle as an early way to get ahead in Arena and begin a massive crystal surge, the HBD folks will have to compete directly against folks who earned their way to level 85 and have thus been playing longer and have advantages the HDB doesn't provide.

    In the old system, newer accounts didn't have to compete against older accounts for crystal income. Now, they do.
    I've read this a few times now. When I started a new account a year ago, the top 200 in SA had bought the HDB. It isn't a guarantee to make a big crystal income.

    The second part of the quote I agree with. They should make GAC leagues that are mergers of SA shards from around the same time (maybe 3-6 months).
  • This change is a kick in the teeth to players like me who’ve spent 5-6 years playing a game focused upon the squad arena game mode and crystal income there.

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    I just spent the last 4 months, $400 and countless hours (eg on maxing conquest) to get a Lord Vader team for the arena crystal income. It is still 6 weeks away from being finished, and now I will never get to use it for the entire reason I did any of this. I hate GAC. I didn’t get it for that, and I’m likely quitting before ever using this team.

    Thanks a lot, CG, for taking a game I loved for the past 5 1/2 years and destroying it for Christmas.

    How would your farm have changed?

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    How would your farm have changed?

    Had I known 3 mo ago that arena crystal income was going away, I wouldn’t have rushed the farm, not lost sleep over conquest so much, and paid more attention to strengthening other parts of my roster. But as it is, I put in a massive amount of energy and money (for me) to never see the pay off of using it for crystal income in squad arena. I wouldnt do this for GAC. This change defeated the entire purpose of rushing my farm.

    Had they given us some notice, I wouldn’t have put all this in, not have been so ****, and would be more likely to adjust to the change. I’ve played for 5.5 years and have been a staunch supporter of the game. I think I and many others deserved the courtesy of a heads up. That would certainly help with player retention.

    As it is, it is a far too sudden move after us being able to plan on arena being there the past 5-6 years, plan our farms around it, farms which take 6 months, but they give us virtually no notice it’s being yanked away.
  • @Ravens1113
    SA forces a GL at this point. Nothing else.

    Well, okay. But so does HSTR or you get terrible rewards. So does Galactic Challenge, which will allow you 2nd best rewards every week with a single GL, but will not guarantee you that with 0 GL. This isn't even mentioning LS Geo TB.

    There are plenty of reasons to get a GL, and with the RPS meta you can pick from several (at the very least LV, JML, SEE, and GLOW). So, sure, you can say that for early game players SA might force a GL effort earlier than the player would otherwise choose it, but it also might not. In a lower-gp guild having the only (or one of the only) SLKRs gives you a **massive** boost to the amount of g12 gear you soak up, which means you progress much more quickly by prioritizing a GL than by prioritizing anything else, even GAC-priority squads in a game where GAC's crystal flow has started.

    I will likely have all the crystals that I used to have, and with minimal effort, though I hate GAC and will be unlikely to stay in the highest division because of that (it's likely Kyber-2 for me). That's my choice and though I'm not happy about it, it's not what most worries me.

    No, it's the fact that newer accounts will now be competing directly against older accounts that makes things so dangerous. The facts around whether GAC constrains choices more than Squad Arena (I think it clearly does, but it's not something for which either of us would have conclusive data) are interesting, but I only brought it up because someone else had said that SA constrains player choice without any acknowledgement that even if it forces you to build a specific team, once you have one single team done, you're on to whatever you want for a good long while. With GAC's priority on multiple GL's to block progress with specific required counter-squads (that have been nerfed and are now less reliable), things become much more grindy in GAC than in SA with its "one team & you're good to go!" requirement. So having refuted (or at least complicated) the simple narrative that SA constrains player choice, I'm much more interested in talking about other things that are actually problems with or benefits of the new system, rather than things that are exactly as good or as bad about SA or GAC no matter whether the current system or the recently proposed system is in use.

    So looking at yours and Helmet’s responses this seems a tad more clear.

    The way I see it now is that you need to spruce up that GP to max out those rewards.

    So with these changes….

    Those in newer shards no longer have access to the immediate 500-200 crystals per day to hoard and empower your roster. Now it’s in GAC so that income is reduced. Ok point taken.

    So what they’re doing is trimming the crystal income for newer players trying to induce spending. I think older/heavier accouns will see short term (at the least) in terms of crystals, even after the matchmaking sorts itself out.

    Hmmm this is getting deeper the more it’s discussed. I dig it lol
  • This change is a kick in the teeth to players like me who’ve spent 5-6 years playing a game focused upon the squad arena game mode and crystal income there.

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    I just spent the last 4 months, $400 and countless hours (eg on maxing conquest) to get a Lord Vader team for the arena crystal income. It is still 6 weeks away from being finished, and now I will never get to use it for the entire reason I did any of this. I hate GAC. I didn’t get it for that, and I’m likely quitting before ever using this team.

    Thanks a lot, CG, for taking a game I loved for the past 5 1/2 years and destroying it for Christmas.

    How would your farm have changed?

    Could you not give us a ramp period? A 3-6 month heads up to adjust our farms?

    How would your farm have changed?

    Had I known 3 mo ago that arena crystal income was going away, I wouldn’t have rushed the farm, not lost sleep over conquest so much, and paid more attention to strengthening other parts of my roster. But as it is, I put in a massive amount of energy and money (for me) to never see the pay off of using it for crystal income in squad arena. I wouldnt do this for GAC. This change defeated the entire purpose of rushing my farm.

    Had they given us some notice, I wouldn’t have put all this in, not have been so ****, and would be more likely to adjust to the change. I’ve played for 5.5 years and have been a staunch supporter of the game. I think I and many others deserved the courtesy of a heads up. That would certainly help with player retention.

    As it is, it is a far too sudden move after us being able to plan on arena being there the past 5-6 years, plan our farms around it, farms which take 6 months, but they give us virtually no notice it’s being yanked away.

    I don't know what your roster is like, but I would've thought that it would be very well rounded after 5.5 years.
  • I’m so glad I managed to switch focus in time to getting executor instead of another GL. That decision is even better now. If they had announced executor one month later I’d been really fudged.
  • Just want to make sure I understand the division system.
    As I read it you need a ver good account to get about 500 crystals per day.
    Minimum 5-6 mil GP and and 2-3 GL.
    That’s at least two year of work.

    The old system I got 500 crystals early on in the game (I bought HP boundle)
    No cheating and not joining a shard mafia but a bit of whaling.

    So if a new account is started now they will have to settle with a much lower crystal income the first two years.
    In my case I would have lost almost 100 000 crystals the first year.

    This would make it even harder to reach the higher divisions/ rewards.

    Is there something I’m missing?
  • Kyno wrote: »
    [
    So you don't want to face players who are as good as you are in GAC and have a similar win ratio?

    Ehm... yes i don´t, and i guess every other one also :)

    we wanna win, regardless if my opponent is a superhero or mickey mouse... that was the only reason we have got revan, darthrevan, gas, rey, JML and so on and so on at day1 of their release^^

    i don´t see a benefit now for grabbing the new meta at day 1... now it´s skill based... we will experience a boring sinus curve... win/loose/win/loose... boring... anything you can do is buying 3 legends or 5 omicrontoons... you will end up further up and experience the same boring sine curve a little bit higher than before

    have played over centuries such skill based games... it´s more or less boring, cause you will be stuck and you can´t improve any further all at the latest when you can't buy anything more
  • Salv
    28 posts Member
    edited December 2021
    I love this change - for myself I can see only benefits:
    - gac is my favorite game mode, now it will award meaningful rewards
    - my crystal income will improve (4.5M finishing top20/50 in arena)
    - i can freely chose when to fight gac, no static po time and no fear about the snipers
    - I was extremely cautious to raise any skill, add a single gear piece for toons in my top X - now I can finally spend all these 400+ zetas without being punished at all

    Only problem I see is with all relatively fresh players who were finishing top5 in areana - their income will be significantly reduced. This might also discourage spending for new players, because they won't get an immediate benefit - it will take long time to climb to kyber.

    Maybe one more (really small) thing against the change - so far GAC was a purely skill game (roster development + actual matches), not a wallet size comparison (like arena) - this will change now, but I can live with that:).
  • Based on my math, it can easily occur that a lower league's average is higher than a higher leagues's minimum rewards. And the equation still stands if you go slightly above the minimum. This could result in willfully thrown matches, because switching back and forth between two leagues can easily result in lower income than staying at the top11% of the lower league.

    As GAC was supposed to be the top competitive mode, taking W/L into account makes sense here. But doing it without restrictions is a horrible idea.

    The notion of getting matched up against someone who is by all objective measurement out of your league, just because you are doing superb is a bad one. This is not a fair matchup, and the fact that you might be able to squeeze a win doesnt change that in the slightest.
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