Thoughts from a long time player

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Replies

  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    DarthRambo wrote: »
    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.

    I think at the end of the day, the answer lies a lot at 7+ years thing. I ponder sometimes if there's really anything that would get me as connected/excited about the game as I used to be and can't find a thing even if cg did perfectly would cause that. Maybe temporary engagement like a new mode done right, but that's it.
  • TVF
    36524 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    I meant only care about if people are f2p, not that no one cares about f2p people always bringing it up.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • MrRandyWatson
    261 posts Member
    edited March 2023
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    edited March 2023
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.

    Why do you care those who care says it? If noone really cared, noone would be saying it. Just like saying you are a whale isn't automatically a brag, saying you are f2p isn't either. It can be, it may not be.

    And when it's obviously a brag, if you think that there is nothing to brag about it, why do you care? I simply don't understand why something that's a barometer for me for reasons of my own, but one that I share the same mindset with many others would bother anyone else.

    If not for this new breed of f2p jumpers (ones that jump at it everytime someone mentions f2p) it's simply a point of information that has some relation to the topic...and would pass just as that like other information (that people don't even respond to).
  • MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.

    Why do you care those who care says it? If noone really cared, noone would be saying it. Just like saying you are a whale isn't automatically a brag, saying you are f2p isn't either. It can be, it may not be.

    And when it's obviously a brag, if you think that there is nothing to brag about it, why do you care? I simply don't understand why something that's a barometer for me for reasons of my own, but one that I share the same mindset with many others would bother anyone else.

    If not for this new breed of f2p jumpers (ones that jump at it everytime someone mentions f2p) it's simply a point of information that has some relation to the topic...and would pass just as that like other information (that people don't even respond to).

    That bolded part right there is why -- its personal to you. Just like nobody wants to hear about another person's fantasy football results and why nobody wants to hear about a dream someone had last night - they only matter to you and don't add context to the conversation (even when the topic is specifically spending money being F2P is irrelevant).
  • MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.

    Earlier in the discussion someone enquired what an early start account looked like years later if no money had been spent.

    I don't see anyone bragging about being FTP in this thread.

    Indeed, it has taken more a FTP slant by posts like yours.
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.

    Why do you care those who care says it? If noone really cared, noone would be saying it. Just like saying you are a whale isn't automatically a brag, saying you are f2p isn't either. It can be, it may not be.

    And when it's obviously a brag, if you think that there is nothing to brag about it, why do you care? I simply don't understand why something that's a barometer for me for reasons of my own, but one that I share the same mindset with many others would bother anyone else.

    If not for this new breed of f2p jumpers (ones that jump at it everytime someone mentions f2p) it's simply a point of information that has some relation to the topic...and would pass just as that like other information (that people don't even respond to).

    That bolded part right there is why -- its personal to you. Just like nobody wants to hear about another person's fantasy football results and why nobody wants to hear about a dream someone had last night - they only matter to you and don't add context to the conversation (even when the topic is specifically spending money being F2P is irrelevant).

    It's most definitely and evidently not only about me. Others that share it also like to talk about various topics surrounding it. There may be various f2p mindsets and I think mine is one of the most dominant and common ones. It also evidently adds context to the conversation where being f2p is one of the larger contexts amongst others. It's also certainly not the only context as this is obvious in the op post. Whether this context matters to you or not is your thing, the context is objectively there.
  • MaruMaru wrote: »
    MaruMaru wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    If everyone on this thread removed "F2P" from their posts would it change any of the substance in the post itself?
    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.

    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.

    That's hardly the case given mentioning f2p seems to causes a ruckus across the board these days. Last time I checked this is not how "not caring" looks like.

    This feels like someone at work saying every time, every SINGLE time the topic of college comes up they say I graduated with a 3.99 GPA. First, nobody cares. Second, you have no idea if others graduated with a 4.0 because they have the sense to realize that it means absolutely nothing/

    F2P = some odd brag that makes no sense to me whatsoever and serves to distract from the discussion - as I said earlier: remove F2P from this thread and the meat of the content is totally unchanged.

    Why do you care those who care says it? If noone really cared, noone would be saying it. Just like saying you are a whale isn't automatically a brag, saying you are f2p isn't either. It can be, it may not be.

    And when it's obviously a brag, if you think that there is nothing to brag about it, why do you care? I simply don't understand why something that's a barometer for me for reasons of my own, but one that I share the same mindset with many others would bother anyone else.

    If not for this new breed of f2p jumpers (ones that jump at it everytime someone mentions f2p) it's simply a point of information that has some relation to the topic...and would pass just as that like other information (that people don't even respond to).

    That bolded part right there is why -- its personal to you. Just like nobody wants to hear about another person's fantasy football results and why nobody wants to hear about a dream someone had last night - they only matter to you and don't add context to the conversation (even when the topic is specifically spending money being F2P is irrelevant).

    You do not get to declare what "nobody cares" about. Form some people it's a meaningful distinction. For others it is meaningless. What is odd is that you feel the need to make antagonistic comments about a topic you claim to care nothing about. The mention of F2P was a minor detail in the overall OP yet that is the only thing you seemed to hone in on. It seems personal to you.
  • LordDirt
    4941 posts Member
    This thread is all over the place now. Lock this crap up.
    Why wasn't Cobb Vanth shards a reward for the Krayt Dragon raid? Why wasn't Endor Gear Luke shards a reward for the Speeder Bike raid?
  • MaruMaru
    3338 posts Member
    LordDirt wrote: »
    This thread is all over the place now. Lock this crap up.

    The same thing will keep on happening as long as people keep insisting making an issue with it. I'm rather sure the problem didn't emerge all of a sudden. We were talking about various things as long as the game existed. What changed is the gradual loss of any term besides f2p/whale which creates a false dichotomy. Something rather easy to heal by just introducing those terms back and taking any of the terms at face value.
  • scuba
    14034 posts Member
    One of the things that makes this game very ftp friendly is also what leads to all the monotony.
    The release cycle on units is slow, once every couple of months? Most of the new marquee units are useless (not meta defining or great teams)
    GLs have also lead to this, as they tend to be the supior team(s) and there is only 7(?) of them
    Fleet is just fleet and just so bad with variety.
    Datacrons could have changed some of this up and added variety, than IMO they just mucked it all up with not making them focus on the non gl stuff more, and just use them to make strong teams stronger. Also with all the RNG built into dc's
    Conquest they screwed up with making it so tedious so after the first run thru, the fun tends to go out knowing the grind that follows it.
    I still enjoy the game and new content when it drops, but all the new content gets stale quick. The TB seems they kind of understood this as the time commitment for it, IMO, has been drastically reduced with more emphis on platoons than missions and reduction of the number of waves.
  • I’m in agreement that they missed the mark with DCs. When they were first announced it genuinely sounded as though they were going to take the lowest teams and give them bonuses to help them challenge the top non-GL teams. Allowing phoenix/ewoks/geos their moment in taking out all except GLs could have brought novelty back to the game. Instead they’ve caused the kind of stagnation the OP talked about in TW and the like. In my guild we do clear walls full of LVcrons, but that doesn’t make it fun to see TW-after-TW. Then they’ve been used to encourage spending with the latest marquee toons, hence the crons focused on Hondo etc. I get why CG do it (it boosts their income and keeps the whales/dolphins happy they invested), but it means a potentially game altering experience for the majority of players just isn’t there and does the opposite in removing innovation. This could be rectified by reducing the requirements on teams to access DC tiers or other ways I’m sure.
    Account started June 2020. 100% FTP. 8.2m GP. JMK, JML, SLKR, and SEE. Exe and Levi. Ally code 117-269-921. Swgoh.gg
  • Just like nobody wants to hear about another person's fantasy football results and why nobody wants to hear about a dream someone had last night - they only matter to you

    Yeah, that's not how being social works. Lots of people care about things that matter to other people just because they matter to those other people.

    Caring about the people around you just naturally merges with caring about whether they feel successful or not, whether they've had a good day or not, etc. Some of us listen to others on that basis alone. Heck, there are people who come through here that don't know what they're doing and they're level 40 and everything is confusing to them and they're in the middle of levelling up Jedi Consular and you know what? I've helped some of those people in the past. I've made plans for people on how to spend guild tokens and Galactic War tokens, etc. I didn't do it because it mattered to me, personally. I did it because it mattered to them personally, and then ***because it mattered to them, it became of consequence to me***.

    So you can talk about how annoying it is that other people are talking about things that only matter to them on a community forum. You get to do that. it's your forum as much as anyone else's. But you're flat out wrong that personal points of pride only matter to the individual. Lots of us care about the people around us for no other reason than that they're people around us.
  • Just like nobody wants to hear about another person's fantasy football results and why nobody wants to hear about a dream someone had last night - they only matter to you

    Yeah, that's not how being social works. Lots of people care about things that matter to other people just because they matter to those other people.

    Caring about the people around you just naturally merges with caring about whether they feel successful or not, whether they've had a good day or not, etc. Some of us listen to others on that basis alone. Heck, there are people who come through here that don't know what they're doing and they're level 40 and everything is confusing to them and they're in the middle of levelling up Jedi Consular and you know what? I've helped some of those people in the past. I've made plans for people on how to spend guild tokens and Galactic War tokens, etc. I didn't do it because it mattered to me, personally. I did it because it mattered to them personally, and then ***because it mattered to them, it became of consequence to me***.

    So you can talk about how annoying it is that other people are talking about things that only matter to them on a community forum. You get to do that. it's your forum as much as anyone else's. But you're flat out wrong that personal points of pride only matter to the individual. Lots of us care about the people around us for no other reason than that they're people around us.

    Empathy stats off the charts XD
  • Phoenixeon
    1842 posts Member
    edited March 2023
    Ppl's team count increases overtime, so you will face the same team comp over and over again in the very end, that cant be hepled.

    Sure, they have increased the teams numbers at each area on defences, but soon the game will face the same problem again, because ppl's available teams are increased.

    Boring? Sure, i personally prefer characters banning and super buff tw they did in the past, at least i can see some different team comps, but well most of ppl are against it.
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