Thoughts from a long time player
I've been playing this game since 2016 (with two "breaks" when my kids were newborns). I had a few thoughts on the state of the game currently and was curious how the community felt on these topics. This is the perspective from a 100% F2P player. I have never spent a cent in this game.
First and foremost, this game is more F2P friendly than any other mobile game I have personally played. I have over 9mil GP. All GLs except Rey (farming tickets currently). I have Starkiller, Executor and Raddus. Kyber 2 for GAC. Despite never spending money, I have stayed relatively competitive in this game for the entire time I have played (thanks to a few wonderful guilds).
GAC: Grand Arena feels boring. Perhaps this is simply the inevitable result of large, endgame rosters but every match-up feels the same. No variety. Jabba, LV, Rey+Ben + standard Omicron teams on defense. As has been stated, the "matchmaking" is as fair in a technical sense as it could be. A question I've been considering is if the most "fair" matchmaking = the most fun experience. I'm not sure the answer to this question but I lean toward no. The one thing I do know is that GAC used to be by far my favorite game mode and now it feels like a chore I am unmotivated to engage with.
TW: A mode I have usually enjoyed. In the past, I really felt like my roster as a whole was largely utilized and that made it a lot of fun. I was able to use many teams for both offense and defense that did not get much use elsewhere. Very fun to engage with the guild and work together. This simply is not the experience I have anymore. Similar to GAC, nearly every TW is the same now. Both front walls are all GLs with level 9 datacrons (only counters generally being other GL w/ similar datacrons). The overwhelming percentage of our rosters are completely useless now. This is not fun and most of the guild just does not engage anymore. We rarely get through the first wall. The pattern is now lose 3-4 in a row, win against a massively underpowered guild, lose 3-4 in a row, etc.
TB: Another mode that I loved that has now become a chore. I believe my guild got 29 stars in RotE last time. Can get all stars in DS Geo and nearly all in LS Geo (as I understand it is still mathematically impossible to get all stars). This mode really felt like it rewarded your progression. Working through Hoth to Geonosis. Feeling like LS was insurmountable at first but slowly making progress. Geo TB was not without its issues but overall I looked forward to it every month. RotE has potential but currently it feels like a chore. It is not fun to dump the absurd amount of resources into a character to get them to relic 7/8/9 just so you can platoon them. I want to actually PLAY with the characters I am putting all these resources into. This is a poor design and forces players to apply very high relics to characters we have no interest in (a recurring theme over the years). The battles are largely not fun to me. Reviving Nightsisters that hit for 500k damage? These battles take WAY too long. Applying confuse whenever you want to, ya know, use your character abilities? Getting dazed constantly. Many of these mechanics do not make for fun strategizing. They are just frustrating and time-consuming (to me at least). In my guild in particular, only a few members have some of the more obscure characters at high relics and we are dependent on them alone to fill the platoon. This has created large coordination issues that did not exist before and leaves many members frustrated. I think it is likely that in a few years as the power creep continues, many of these issues will resolve themselves much like LS Geo. In the meantime, a bit of a headache.
Conquest: The first few iterations of Conquest had me really excited. Fresh, new game mode where you could use a variety of teams. I was able to get the red box with a handful of energy refreshes. It feels like each new version just gets worse and worse. The game mode now consists of 3x refreshes daily (if not more), playing the same battles over and over again to get 40 battles with "____" faction. The teams never change. The team modifiers never change. Overprepared stats are absurd and hidden from the player completely. The player modifiers are also boring now (the fact that we still get duplicates on nodes boggles the mind). Fun modifiers seems to mean that players will theory craft too much and find ways to get achievements more efficiently. Like so many other modes, this is a chore and I have lost all interest. This game is time consuming enough. Playing the same battles against the same teams with the same modifiers repeatedly is not a good use of my time. So I don't do it anymore.
Arena/Fleet: It is strange that there are still crystals in Fleet Arena while they have been removed from Squad Arena. It was nice to no longer have to do an arena climb daily. Past time crystals be moved somewhere else from fleet arena. I understand CG would be reluctant to invest any time/money into Arena but it would be nice if they simply changed your arena shard to your guild. A sandbox to play against our guildmates (won't hold my breath on this one).
DATACRONS: The driving force behind my waning interest in the game. As a long-time player, one of my advantages has always been mods. I took pride in meticulously modding my characters. I have a vast collection of great mods with high speed that took many years to build. Pay-to-play users can buy gear and build rosters much faster than I can. Always have. But you can't buy good mods generally speaking. They have massive RNG factors and require consistent farming over long periods of time. At the level I compete at mods now feel nearly useless. Offense/Crit Damage doesn't matter when they have +200% defense. Speed doesn't matter when Datacrons grant turn meter at the start and throughout the battle. The stats granted by mods are so overpowered by the stats granted by datacrons that my years of investing in mods feels devalued to almost nothing. Worse, a pay-to-play user can achieve this immediately with zero time investment. Buy the datacron packs and you instantly have a library of datacrons that invalidates my 7-year mod inventory. As a F2P player, crystals must be allocated efficiently. Adding a new mechanic that demands crystals feels like a nail in the coffin to F2P players that have any hope of being competitive. Moreover, the kits are so convoluted nowadays. Combined with ever-changing datacron abilities and I hardly understand what is going on half the time. Now add datacrons to GLs that already cannot largely be countered by anything else and you get boring stalemates. Walls of teams that have little to no counters. It would seem that datacrons are here to stay. The people I match with in GAC have massive libraries of them so CG is clearly making money.
I understand I may be alone in a lot of these thoughts. Maybe I've just run my course in this game after 7+ years. Maybe I am just far more busy than I used to be and the time sink feels more substantial. Maybe I am just an old curmudgeon (likely!). Ultimately it just makes me sad because I've enjoyed this game for so long and I am at a point where I don't enjoy it like I used to. Anyways, thanks to anyone that took the time to read and I am interested to hear how the community feels.
The Force will be with you. Always.
First and foremost, this game is more F2P friendly than any other mobile game I have personally played. I have over 9mil GP. All GLs except Rey (farming tickets currently). I have Starkiller, Executor and Raddus. Kyber 2 for GAC. Despite never spending money, I have stayed relatively competitive in this game for the entire time I have played (thanks to a few wonderful guilds).
GAC: Grand Arena feels boring. Perhaps this is simply the inevitable result of large, endgame rosters but every match-up feels the same. No variety. Jabba, LV, Rey+Ben + standard Omicron teams on defense. As has been stated, the "matchmaking" is as fair in a technical sense as it could be. A question I've been considering is if the most "fair" matchmaking = the most fun experience. I'm not sure the answer to this question but I lean toward no. The one thing I do know is that GAC used to be by far my favorite game mode and now it feels like a chore I am unmotivated to engage with.
TW: A mode I have usually enjoyed. In the past, I really felt like my roster as a whole was largely utilized and that made it a lot of fun. I was able to use many teams for both offense and defense that did not get much use elsewhere. Very fun to engage with the guild and work together. This simply is not the experience I have anymore. Similar to GAC, nearly every TW is the same now. Both front walls are all GLs with level 9 datacrons (only counters generally being other GL w/ similar datacrons). The overwhelming percentage of our rosters are completely useless now. This is not fun and most of the guild just does not engage anymore. We rarely get through the first wall. The pattern is now lose 3-4 in a row, win against a massively underpowered guild, lose 3-4 in a row, etc.
TB: Another mode that I loved that has now become a chore. I believe my guild got 29 stars in RotE last time. Can get all stars in DS Geo and nearly all in LS Geo (as I understand it is still mathematically impossible to get all stars). This mode really felt like it rewarded your progression. Working through Hoth to Geonosis. Feeling like LS was insurmountable at first but slowly making progress. Geo TB was not without its issues but overall I looked forward to it every month. RotE has potential but currently it feels like a chore. It is not fun to dump the absurd amount of resources into a character to get them to relic 7/8/9 just so you can platoon them. I want to actually PLAY with the characters I am putting all these resources into. This is a poor design and forces players to apply very high relics to characters we have no interest in (a recurring theme over the years). The battles are largely not fun to me. Reviving Nightsisters that hit for 500k damage? These battles take WAY too long. Applying confuse whenever you want to, ya know, use your character abilities? Getting dazed constantly. Many of these mechanics do not make for fun strategizing. They are just frustrating and time-consuming (to me at least). In my guild in particular, only a few members have some of the more obscure characters at high relics and we are dependent on them alone to fill the platoon. This has created large coordination issues that did not exist before and leaves many members frustrated. I think it is likely that in a few years as the power creep continues, many of these issues will resolve themselves much like LS Geo. In the meantime, a bit of a headache.
Conquest: The first few iterations of Conquest had me really excited. Fresh, new game mode where you could use a variety of teams. I was able to get the red box with a handful of energy refreshes. It feels like each new version just gets worse and worse. The game mode now consists of 3x refreshes daily (if not more), playing the same battles over and over again to get 40 battles with "____" faction. The teams never change. The team modifiers never change. Overprepared stats are absurd and hidden from the player completely. The player modifiers are also boring now (the fact that we still get duplicates on nodes boggles the mind). Fun modifiers seems to mean that players will theory craft too much and find ways to get achievements more efficiently. Like so many other modes, this is a chore and I have lost all interest. This game is time consuming enough. Playing the same battles against the same teams with the same modifiers repeatedly is not a good use of my time. So I don't do it anymore.
Arena/Fleet: It is strange that there are still crystals in Fleet Arena while they have been removed from Squad Arena. It was nice to no longer have to do an arena climb daily. Past time crystals be moved somewhere else from fleet arena. I understand CG would be reluctant to invest any time/money into Arena but it would be nice if they simply changed your arena shard to your guild. A sandbox to play against our guildmates (won't hold my breath on this one).
DATACRONS: The driving force behind my waning interest in the game. As a long-time player, one of my advantages has always been mods. I took pride in meticulously modding my characters. I have a vast collection of great mods with high speed that took many years to build. Pay-to-play users can buy gear and build rosters much faster than I can. Always have. But you can't buy good mods generally speaking. They have massive RNG factors and require consistent farming over long periods of time. At the level I compete at mods now feel nearly useless. Offense/Crit Damage doesn't matter when they have +200% defense. Speed doesn't matter when Datacrons grant turn meter at the start and throughout the battle. The stats granted by mods are so overpowered by the stats granted by datacrons that my years of investing in mods feels devalued to almost nothing. Worse, a pay-to-play user can achieve this immediately with zero time investment. Buy the datacron packs and you instantly have a library of datacrons that invalidates my 7-year mod inventory. As a F2P player, crystals must be allocated efficiently. Adding a new mechanic that demands crystals feels like a nail in the coffin to F2P players that have any hope of being competitive. Moreover, the kits are so convoluted nowadays. Combined with ever-changing datacron abilities and I hardly understand what is going on half the time. Now add datacrons to GLs that already cannot largely be countered by anything else and you get boring stalemates. Walls of teams that have little to no counters. It would seem that datacrons are here to stay. The people I match with in GAC have massive libraries of them so CG is clearly making money.
I understand I may be alone in a lot of these thoughts. Maybe I've just run my course in this game after 7+ years. Maybe I am just far more busy than I used to be and the time sink feels more substantial. Maybe I am just an old curmudgeon (likely!). Ultimately it just makes me sad because I've enjoyed this game for so long and I am at a point where I don't enjoy it like I used to. Anyways, thanks to anyone that took the time to read and I am interested to hear how the community feels.
The Force will be with you. Always.
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To me, SWGOH had become the game it was always supposed to be: a collecting and resource management game.
All the rest is too tedious to even bother anymore (looking at you too, Marquees!).
I would like to know how has become the roster of F2P who have been playing for years.
Thanks a lot.
I've run out of all enthusiasm for it. Alas.
You can have mine if interested. I started in November 2015 (or thereabouts). Anyway: 674 838 413
Thank you very much.
That was very helpful.
And I assume that you are F2P 100% too?
@GegeGerard24
Not FTP, but I took a 6 month break and I only purchased crystals once. Started in Jan 2016, so if I hadn't bought any crystals I could have started sometime in April-June 2016 and been in the same place (or better) if I had not taken a break.
So it's a good representation of where an FtP player **could** be, if they started in the first half of 2016 without taking a break, even if that's not exactly how I played.
Yes, it's a FTP account.
I'm with you on a lot of things. One area where I'm not is moving crystals out of Fleet.
The GAC crystal progress is very slow. I think that there needs to be a way that new players can zoom up in one area of the game to gain a steady crystal income. Fleet Arena makes the most sense. GAC already has crystals and is not something you can rush to the top in. TW and TB depend on having a great guild, not developing your own roster. You can be essentially an alt grabbing tickets for the big hitters and play a sub-1M account while collecting rewards from a 30+ star RotE effort. Reva Shards, too. If you added crystals to that... I just see that as too much reward for doing nothing other than giving Raid tix to a guild that is short a contributing member. Raids are pretty much the same problem.
GCs? I guess, maybe? They're at least an individual effort, but CG wants to continue to force people to develop new factions, and one thing you won't have at the beginning is diversity.
Conquest? Well, no. there's no way you can zoom to the top there.
Don't forget that purchasing the Hyperdrive Bundle is good not only for what it gives you the day you buy it, but it also races you ahead in your fleet shard -- it provides compound interest, of a sort, if you buy it early. CG wants to keep that dynamic alive to encourage more people to buy the HDB.
So... crystals stay with Fleet Arena for a good, long time, I'm thinking.
I'm also more optimistic about TB than you are. I agree that Dathomir is terrible and that some of the modifiers seem designed to make life agony, but
1) Most aren't. A lot of the modifiers work for me and create interesting battles.
2) This time period where we're bringing toons to high relics just to platoon them will be over soon.
Remember, with 180 toons or ships to donate to Ops missions, that's still a max of 3.6 toons per player, assuming there are zero times where you spend consecutive days on the same planet. 3.6 toons isn't even a single full squad, and the actual number of toons is less because of the number of ships included in Ops Missions (remember the pilots don't have to meet the relic target).
So if you had zero toons of a given relic level, in order to get to the point where you fill all platoons and then fight 2 missions, you're looking at about 13 toons instead of 10. That's a 30% tax, sure, but there are a lot of battles. even just doing 3 per planet is 45 toons for battles + the same 3 for Ops Missions. Now the tax is down to just over 6%.
So, yeah. When you only have 3 r9 toons and they're all going to Ops missions, that feels terrible. When you have 23 of them and 3 of them are going to Ops missions it will feel very different.
This is one that -- other than Dathomir -- feels like it's on the right long term trajectory. None of us could do much in LS GeoTB when it first came out. RotE is similar.
Just wait. They'll come out with another DS character or two that can tank for See vs. the NightSisters, then they'll come out with another DS toon that can prevent revives or that allows Jango & Boba to stick around and nuke the NightSisters themselves, since they already have that ability. Then they'll come out with a must have ship or three that will make those impossible DS Fleet missions into cakewalks. And all the while you'll be plugging away at those high relic requirements.
We'll get there. It takes time, but we'll get there. My Guild Leader already gets perfect waves through the r8 planets when she has favourable deployment assignments from the Bot. I'm doing fine in LS & Mixed through r7.
TB is something I see as very, very well set up for a long time. I don't mind the ramp up.
Thanks a lot for having shared that.
Got it, thanks.
=====
You both have an amazing roster!
You both gave me a "picture" of what F2P account could achieve in years of playing, so that I can at least compare it to the P2P acc.
Thanks again.
I don’t remember who, but I watched a YouTuber talk about the possibilities of platoons in GAC to shake things up. You can deploy certain toons for certain bonuses, and then not use them for your battles. You get to choose whether to platoon or not. Since rosters aren’t even pre-endgame, you could do something along the lines of: Choose 3 of these 10 characters for first bonus, 5 of these 10 for a second bonus, and 10/10 for a third bonus. Make them key characters like Mara Jade, CAT, Han Solo, 5s, etc… characters that would make a noticeable hole in a cookie-cutter team. I think there is some merit to the idea.
I think we all feel and see that the game has been in autopilot mode for some time now, and this was not a hidden intention of the developers. Yes, that's why almost every game mode has become repetitive and boring, because they don't care if we enjoy it, the events just keep coming and we participate in them like robots. And that's not a good thing, unfortunately...
Returning to the basic question: I'm a very small fish in this game, I spent little on it, but I don't have high expectations in return. I feel like I've already paid them what they deserve for my entertainment, and from now on I'm also on autopilot, not trying to stay competitive in every game mode. I play when and as I feel like it, I don't give in to the pressure that comes from the algorithms on purpose.
So maybe this is the solution for all ftp players: enjoy what you can and don't cringe at the fact that things used to be better. Because I don't think those honeyed times will ever come back, when every part was really enjoyable.
F2P Lives Matter.
No thank you
https://swgoh.gg/p/535567518/
I agree with you. This is something I've been considering quite a lot lately. Feels silly but I've been playing this game for so long at a "competitive" level that it's tough to scale it back. A more casual playstyle might be the answer.
Fair question. I suppose initially it was necessity. I simply did not have extra money to spend on a mobile game. Over time it turned into a challenge of sorts. Almost like a sense of pride maybe. How competitive can I be without spending any money on this game? Furthermore, in my opinion your money just does not go very far in this game. I can buy entire AAA games for the price of some of these packs in the store that provide very marginal benefit to me personally (perhaps just a symptom of playing for so long). It never seemed like a good investment in a general sense. I believe you are correct about enjoying what I can and letting the rest go. Old habits are hard to break.
GAC: I feel the same monotony with 5v5. However, I actually like 3v3 a lot more. 3v3 offers more variety and although there are staple counters, I always discover something new to work with. Asure, using a counter with less than 50% success rate on swgoh.gg is sometimes not really wise, but in 3v3 there are more posibili. And as F2P in Kyber1, most of time, I don’t have the roster anymore to clear the board while maintaining a challenging defense, so zone placement becomes key. There is lots of strategic thinking involved. Not dull at all.
TW: if your guild can’t clear the front wall, I would fire the TW coordinator of your guild. It clearly tells me your guild is too casual in terms of TW. Otherwise consider investing in some TW omicrons as a group. Some are very helpful breaking a GL wall.
TB: for sure ROTE is the new kid on the block. And fore sure you can’t expect the same walkthrough like GeoTB. if your guild can’t platoon some of the obscure toons, it’s time to review your guild members’ commitment to the guild. Sometimes whales in the guild need to step in and help out with that (why the heck are they called whales in the first place? ROTE finally gives them a purpose)
Conquest: if you invest sometime in understanding the mechanics, achieving red crate as F2P on your level should be a walk in the park. I follow Songeta’s advice to three star everything and then work on the feats via the datacron bonus nodes. It saves lots of time and you get enough DC materials to at least build 3-5 L9s per conquest. Also make sure you safe enough crystals for energy refreshes prior to that. It is still a chore, but at least you maximize your rewards.
Datacrons: I feel your pain. I was an avid critic of datacron myself when it first came out. I saw exactly the devaluation of mods happening, which you mentioned. Nevertheless, I made my peace with DC. Sure they devalued mods to a certain extent, but having a decent mod inventory ON TOP of great datacrons is still an advantage long term players only can enjoy. Some datacron abilities are also amplified in usage only if you have the right mods. Also getting enough datacrons to compete with the big guys does not always mean you have to spend. With some luck and efficient usage of reroll materials (TW!), you can build a decent DC portfolio also without spending.
The most strong trait of a F2P player is we have to survive by anticipating and adapting to new situations better than the spenders. This takes lots of time. But as I said many times before, time is the real currency of F2P.
All very reasonable criticisms. I am certainly not trying to suggest in any way that I am doing everything I can and hopelessly falling behind in the game. It more of a matter of being motivated to engage with these modes. You have provided excellent advice for conquest. However, it is not a matter of attaining the red crate for me. It's that the process required is monotonous and unenjoyable. Perhaps my guild is too casual for TW/TB but I think that ultimately highlights my underlying issues. This was not the case for the overwhelming majority of my time in this game. The time and coordination this game required previously feels vastly insufficient now. This saps the fun out of many of modes. Lastly, I have trouble demanding anything from any spender in this game as a F2P. Feels inappropriate for me to give an opinion on how someone spends their money in this game.
Does your being F2P make DC's better? Change matchmaking? Add new game modes?
You have no idea if I'm F2P or not and guess what? nobody cares.
I opened this original post saying how this is the most F2P-friendly game I've ever played. The mention of F2P was to provide perspective on my personal experience. F2P vs P2P certainly changes how you allocate resources. I think it would be hard to argue that something like datacrons did not have a disparate impact on F2P players but that is a completely different discussion. This post was never about F2P vs P2P. It was about seeing if the community feels like the time investment this game now requires is commensurate with the enjoyment it provides. I was curious if others feel similar to me in that the "fun" seems to be going down while the time spend in-game keeps going up.
All the new toons (GLs), omicrons, datacrons, gear changes, the game is evoving in a much faster pace the recent few years. You can't approach those things with always the same playstyle obtained years ago. Sometimes we "create" our own monotony by falling into the same old habits/routines. We as players also have to evolve with the game if we want to maintain the fun level. "Fun" is a fragile thing. It loses its value very fast. And once you experienced a certain degree of fun, it becomes harder for the next new thing to be fun for you. That's why the complexity of this game is increasing fast in order to sustain fun. And for seasoned players like us, it means chasing new fun in the game requires more and more time investment (because we are able to unlock them). If you are not willing to invest the time, then your fun will naturally suffer. It does not mean the game is in trouble though. New players still have tons of fun, because their entry level is much lower.
In my experience the only people that care are those that keep saying they're f2p.
It's not relevant most of the time anyway.
Wise words and a very illuminating perspective. There is a certain part of me that really struggles to play at a casual level. That competitive fire wants more. Seems that I need to accept that I am only afforded a casual experience with the time I have to invest. Easier said than done after 7 years.
It sure is relevant for my wallet
Yeah, unfortunately, casual time investment and seeking fun in competitiveness are totally excluding each other in this game. The only way out of this dilemma is to change your source of fun. There are for sure fun stuff in this game suitable for casual time investment. Question is always if you are willing to adapt. Unfortuately, most people in similar situations like you choose to quit and to seek fresh new fun in other games.
I also put them on defence in GA, just so I can imagine my opponent looking at it and wondering if they’re missing something. Find your joy in the game where you can.
Furthermore. The real renewal would be if they finally let go of our hands and we could play freely. Guild GAC. Friendly GAC. Guild TW. Live PVP. Just a few examples that could be used to a) not get bored, b) not to be repetitive and c) to motivate the game again.
In my opinion the new characters are less interesting than a new game mode where we can fight with each other in our guild.
Unfortunately, none of the above is in the interests of the developers.