I appreciate the message from them EP. I accept that the game needed adjustments for longevity, and I also accept that I need time to learn how to best play the game now.
What I have a hard time accepting is the fact that virtually all of my maxed characters are now of very limited utility. Like most FTP players, I followed the path EA gave us, leveling up my startup characters like Poe and building a Jedi team. Now, those characters' viability is significantly decreased. No, it's not the end of the world, but being faced with the prospect of having to start from scratch after having put all effort into getting Yoda is daunting, especially when my existing 8-10 maxed characters are now so weak that I can't even progress in the Arena or GW to gain the components to upgrade replacements.
I'm ok with challenges being challenging; I'm a little disappointed that the rewards are not useful. Maybe I've been updating the wrong characters (see above), but only one of the three drops is even required by my characters for gearing. And since I can't complete the omega challenge, I can forget about progressing anytime soon.
And that's the crux of my frustration--those that had large stables of maxed characters will love the update, because they have lots of options and can truly experiment and play the game you want them to. Those of us who had one good Arena/GW team and a backup GW team now have limited options other than to start from scratch, and that's not fun.
The only way to come close to salvaging this horrible horrible debacle is to undo the update and then implement a new rule that forces a team to be constructed as
1-tank
1-heal
1-attack
2-support
I think we should be encouraging diversity, not stifling it.
This update has ruined the game. i understand characters needed to be nerfed but this is taking it way too far. i have a full 7* gear 7/8 team and i cant complete the agility challenge. Protection was a waste of time. im contemplating deleting the app and i've spent so much money on the game. THIS SUCKS.
The updates are not fan friendly. Having less health in exchange for a shield that does not regenerate is ignorant. The majority of players play this game for fun not as a "life" and you have made this game so unfun. The drop rate for items to upgrade charachters is so slow you can't up new charachters to use in battle to replace the ones that are being killed due to having half the health. Game really sux now.
Who do i contact to get my money back spent to get 5 7* Jedi so i could get yoda all worthless now i need a huge refund and the i will stop playing the game is ruined
Guys, probably the most impassioned response on updates so far, reading the above.
I don't have a lot of time but want to provide a couple quick thoughts. I'm on the camp of being happy with the changes. I follow what you are doing and I think you did a good job at it.
- Careful with the 'Burn the Clock' Meta. Run tests with this team (or a variant thereof) and let's make sure you can beat it in 5 minutes. Barris (L), Lumi, Old Daka, RG, Fives. Maybe change (L) to Lumi, too.
- Consider letting players have a say on defense. An idea might be to let us choose the first action of every one of our heroes. Not who to target, just the first button to press. Yoda Battle Meditation? Phasma Advantage? Not only will it angle the meta a bit, it'll make it more fun to go against teams composed of broadly the same heroes.
- Address the graphic design issues that I'm sure you're all over of. An easy one is cleaning up the health bar on the top right. My vote is to make it a double colored bar for PTX and health, like Halo.
- Please, please, please, let us see the dodge/deflection ratings on players!
- Barris' clothing still moves when she's stunned. Kidding! LOL
Good job guys!
One other thing: Careful with the increase in time asked from your users. Now I can't auto-challenges. GW takes X% longer. Now the arena battles take 3-4 minutes each instead of 1-2. That's an extra ~hour or so that you're asking your user base to play each day. Nope. Careful. Fine line between chore and game.
The long, well written, perfectly elaborated post by John Salera is very nice, kudos, but I can't get around the fact that they seem to have been too late adapting. Again.
I mean, "the speed meta was getting out of hand". What speed meta? Everyone and their dog are playing Dooku dodge because his leadership has clearly been overcompensated with the last update.
A lot of things about this update are good and indeed add longevity to the game, but longevity doesn't mean every single battle has to be a tedious, endless chore. Basically, just removing protection from the Challenges and reverting the AI opponents to before wouldn't be too much of a drama, wouldn't it? Because now I spend 10 minutes wasting through the endless mobs of level 1 and 2 before finally wiping the boss within the minute. That ain't balanced.
Proud and Belgian officer of [DTA] BIER DTA | official Lando Calrissian fanboy KappaPride
I like the update. I guess I've just been around the block with games like this. In clash there are updates where characters are nerfed or buffed so you have to get a balanced lineup. Otherwise everyone attacks with one team and it gets boring.
Well done, guys.
And my Jedi team that I built up for yoda (now ready for next 7* yoda challenge) is still very useful.
One point I agree has merit is the lack of protection refresh between GW stages. It seems like either we should get it or the opponents shouldn't have protection since opponents can already be several levels stronger.
It took me almost 2hours to finish galaxy wars.And what I find is the protection sucks.When you meet LV74or LV75 teams in gw，it is a tough battle.Hope EA could let theprotection recover after finish every battle
I think its better if they just get rid of the protection at the moment since we have no way to recover protection. The change they did with the defence is enough to make the game balance in my opinion.
Or at the very least remove protection from things like GW.
One other thing: Careful with the increase in time asked from your users. Now I can't auto-challenges. GW takes X% longer. Now the arena battles take 3-4 minutes each instead of 1-2. That's an extra ~hour or so that you're asking your user base to play each day. Nope. Careful. Fine line between chore and game.
Well they have def made it a chore. More time spent on the game does not mean more fun or more content. They just made they current content slower and more frustrating (challenges, GW,) I haven't done a single lvl 8 nose but they seem impossible. Add that you have to grind 50 of multiple items out and it is tempting to leave for another game.
The update may improve arena in the long run which is good, but doing so by making the daily game play miserable is not good and why everyone is complaining.
I'll give it another week and see, but I'm not hopefully and I'm def not spending!
This just made a snappy fun game a real bore, yeah some may have hours to sit grinding out wins but the majority see this as chore and no real fun whatsoever, i invested money in this game because i can play it for 5-10 mins at a time, now i cant and its spoilt the quick fun, all the time invested in my squad is now useless, ill be asking kindly for a refund!
The bottom line for any game is enjoyment. These updates have affect every area of the game play and I now find the game a joke and not so enjoyable anymore. I spent a few months getting into the top 500 ranks and building characters to combat higher players.
Now I'm lucky enough to complete tier 1 challenge and get pass three Galatica war missions. I would recommend talking to people like marvel alliance on how they overcame similar problems in their game.
A major change like this should have been beta tested by users and these flaws in the game would have been quickly identified. Get your characters right and I dont want to see 6,000 critical do nothing to my enemies, it's a joke.
Personally I'm a fan of the update overall, bit there are a few things I think that need to be tweaked. I hate people that complain without offering any suggestions so here it goes:
GW: Unless you've been grinding since last year, you probably don't have a deep enough roster to complete this. I'm a top #10 player on my shard, been playing since mid-january but my b and c teams can't compete in the later nodes yet. I suggest regenerating protection no matter what after each fight, somewhere between 25%-50%.
Royal Guard: I love how you guys have tried to make arena and squad building in general more strategic...but as it stands right now there is no build that I can think of that RG doesn't make sense on. Maybe tweak his passive so it only effects certain synergies (empire or support toons or something). This will still make him influential in a fight but he's not quite so "plug and play".
Also Kylo won't counter with retribution if he has foresight.
Also when guild goes live you guys should make an option to have us spar with guild members free of energy. It will help us develop strategies and give us something to do while we wait for cooldowns to finish or energy bars to refill.
Will keep an eye on this now very tidious game during the next days to see if dev's listen and have any interest in keeping it alive (reroll the update!) in the meantime my 5 star rating goes to 1.
Fix galactic war, protection should come back fully after every battle, or at least heal after every battle even if it is depleted, or let it heal when a character is not in use, at least it would give some strategy on which characters to rotate i and out
I honestly appreciate the post from John, that was unexpected! There are definitely issues with the update, but it seems they have a willingness to listen and work on the game. I signed up yesterday only to vote in the poll. I was livid! This update feels like an entirely new game! Either there needs to be less grinding or you're going to have to nerf some of the AI toons. It can't take all day to complete the daily challenges! Maybe the character nerf will help in the future, that is to be seen, the reasoning makes sense, but it is irritating for a guy that has spent hours and hours and money to build characters that seem almost useless now.
They are right GW needs to be tweaked.
Challenges need to be tweaked. Sunday will take forever!!
Ewok event - you make it sound like this great thing. It's dumb. As are the events in general. Played two now. Yoda, only had troops to get a 4*. And not enough time to grind out anymore.
And the omega which I had Plo but had to upgrade him to make it through.
Having events that require building troops for a month is a fail.
I loved the old game. The jury is still out on the upgrade. We shall see. As I said in the poll, I will not spend another dime until I figure out if this is something I will stick with or not. I spent money thinking this was a game that I would be playing forever, I hope that is still true!
Hey, John, thanks for the response and the teams continued work and thoughts on the current update. I appreciate and agree with the idea behind a lot of what you've done and do think that ramping up difficulty in certain areas of the game was necessary for its longevity, but I think the way these changes were implemented to really ONLY factor in to Arena and (seemingly) to never have taken into account GW or Challenges is pretty disheartening.
I usually buy the extra 100 daily crystals on the reg because I really thought the game was worth my time and money for that $11 a month. It helped me upgrade my characters at a rate that felt normal without ever having to overspend. I enjoyed playing it and felt good supporting it unlike pretty much every other FTP game on the app store. I never felt like the game forced you to pay to win unlike **** or even SWC, and I loved that. I was always able to finish my dailies without eating up a ton of my day and it was something fun for me to do over lunch or while watching tv at the end of the day. Unfortunately, I think I'll be holding off on the extra 100 for the foreseeable future until I see how the update is dealt with and whether or not those crystals are even worth it anymore.
GW as it was the primary way I was able to earn enough gold on a regular basis to continue to level my toons and stay competitive with the current missions and challenges(not just Arena) that were opening up for me. With GW taking as long as it does now, along with the massive change that protection brings to it, there's no way I'll be able to keep up with the curve the game is on currently. If protection is going to stay then it absolutely needs to be able to regenerate between GW matches. It's a new concept in Arena and one that takes some getting used to, but I think it works for the most part.
Gold needs to be easier to come by or leveling toons needs to be drastically reduced. As it stands now with the changes, keeping up with the level curve and trying to bring other low level toons up to speed is excessively costly and asking to much of the player to sit as long as they need to try and make what they need to continue. The reward needs to reflect the time spent.
Really hoping to see some headway made on getting this game back to a place where it's fun and not a chore. Good luck!
I feel like the set of unbalanced characters has merely been changed, not eliminated. I fully agree that balances had to be made, but I think many characters have somewhat too low of damage now. The longer battles, too, I feel have perhaps been done a little too far. I will still play with more drawn out battles, but I prefer them a little quicker. I also don't like that I feel even more like I can't trust whether a character will be good or not. For example, I've been working towards grievous, but after seeing what happened to Yoda I don't trust he'll be a good investment anymore. Really, I suppose what I mean is that some characters that really should be good have been turned all but useless (ex: Anakin), when I feel useless characters this is exactly what the update was supposed to fix. I'm not saying these harder to get characters should be dominant, but I feel it's owed to the people who get them to make them at least competitive. I haven't tested the characters that were useless before, so I don't know to what extent they've been fixed. I don't dislike the update. I think much of it needs further tweaking, but I won't delete the game by any means. Oh, and in the case of protection, I don't like it as it stands but I think as the game evolves around it I could learn to like it. It does need to be fixed in GW, though.
John Salera, what you have done is quite simply made the characters people spent MONTHS working on much weaker. What you suggest is to grind other characters (shards, money for promotions, ridiculous gear requirements) - all that for a set of characters. This is several months of just grinding without ability to compete at top level.
People either need SEVERAL TIMES MORE free energy, or shard / gear requirements need a drastic downward adjustment.
With all due respect, months of grinding just to be able to compete again is not what is highly sought after by a lot of players - there are other things in life. It was a huge mistake to make outrageous nerfs to so many chars which were so insanely hard to get and level/gear up. A huge mistake - of yours, likely.
@CG_JohnSalera my other point I forgot to mention in the first post I posted on this thread is, (and im sure you guys are but just a friendly reminder lol)Please evaluate droids and other super hard hitting toons with how much protection you give them because it can really break the game and become the only choice if you have say IG86 and some other hard hitting toons that have to much protection and than you throw in the big wall Royal Gaurd and you can finish off said threat and now it's basically over because those "cannons" will get multiple HUGE hits because of all the extra protection. Which is why I hope they get lower protection.
I say this because toons like kylo ren for example hits a 3rd as hard as some of these droids and big cannon minions and the high health of kylo ren have become irrelevant compared to the DPS the other toons have if kylo can barely touch their protection because you also nerfed slow high health minions. I'm NOT saying give them a huge buff but please consider a minor DPS buff.
Not a fan if the update. It appears an overwhelming majority is in this camp. Upping the difficulty is not the same as balancing the game or improving its longevity. I agree with many that the game is slow and tedious now. When many of us found enjoyment in improving the characters and building out our favorites we now find that many of the popular and successful characters will suck in the future barring a partial or complete rollback of this new update.
For those who are arguing that SIM or auto play people don't appreciate the game, some of us don't care to spend the time on challenges or storyline at a certain point and just want to unlock new toons. I would rather spend my time seeking out new characters to add to my teams than battling for scraps.
If the devs wanted to add to the longevity of the game they could be original and add new characters and challenges rather than make the existing ones slower and more difficult while castrating many popular characters.
Having said all that, I was a FTP and they won't miss me if I leave. This game was supposed to be fun for a SW fanatic like me but it's becoming more tedious and time consuming than a watered down console game.
I used to win easy now it's hard or impossible, to do something, why you update the opponent but no our avatars? I will need to start from 0 is the only chance to win a battle. I really like this game a play every day, but this update is awful. </3
GW is everyone's #1 source of progress (credits, mats, training droids) Personally previously the game was taking too much time in the day (wife ready to slap me) Now with this I will not have time to beat GW which having spent too much $$ on this game just to not have to spend as much time on it is a big slap in the face. I see no desire in spending 3 hours a day on this game and will be checking in to see if it changes back in GW but am quitting this game regretting having wasted my hard earned money on it. EA.. this game has taken a change for the worse. I don't see how it will survive as is.
Still speed meta... everyone goes first before my crew. Ig-86 still one hits my maxed han. They still kill my daka first. And I was a level higher than them. I'm afraid to play gw, cause I know you screwed that up. Gw made this game some what fun. Two thumbs down.
Replies
What I have a hard time accepting is the fact that virtually all of my maxed characters are now of very limited utility. Like most FTP players, I followed the path EA gave us, leveling up my startup characters like Poe and building a Jedi team. Now, those characters' viability is significantly decreased. No, it's not the end of the world, but being faced with the prospect of having to start from scratch after having put all effort into getting Yoda is daunting, especially when my existing 8-10 maxed characters are now so weak that I can't even progress in the Arena or GW to gain the components to upgrade replacements.
I'm ok with challenges being challenging; I'm a little disappointed that the rewards are not useful. Maybe I've been updating the wrong characters (see above), but only one of the three drops is even required by my characters for gearing. And since I can't complete the omega challenge, I can forget about progressing anytime soon.
And that's the crux of my frustration--those that had large stables of maxed characters will love the update, because they have lots of options and can truly experiment and play the game you want them to. Those of us who had one good Arena/GW team and a backup GW team now have limited options other than to start from scratch, and that's not fun.
Good idea!!
One other thing: Careful with the increase in time asked from your users. Now I can't auto-challenges. GW takes X% longer. Now the arena battles take 3-4 minutes each instead of 1-2. That's an extra ~hour or so that you're asking your user base to play each day. Nope. Careful. Fine line between chore and game.
I mean, "the speed meta was getting out of hand". What speed meta? Everyone and their dog are playing Dooku dodge because his leadership has clearly been overcompensated with the last update.
A lot of things about this update are good and indeed add longevity to the game, but longevity doesn't mean every single battle has to be a tedious, endless chore. Basically, just removing protection from the Challenges and reverting the AI opponents to before wouldn't be too much of a drama, wouldn't it? Because now I spend 10 minutes wasting through the endless mobs of level 1 and 2 before finally wiping the boss within the minute. That ain't balanced.
Well done, guys.
And my Jedi team that I built up for yoda (now ready for next 7* yoda challenge) is still very useful.
One point I agree has merit is the lack of protection refresh between GW stages. It seems like either we should get it or the opponents shouldn't have protection since opponents can already be several levels stronger.
My .02 :-)
Or at the very least remove protection from things like GW.
Well they have def made it a chore. More time spent on the game does not mean more fun or more content. They just made they current content slower and more frustrating (challenges, GW,) I haven't done a single lvl 8 nose but they seem impossible. Add that you have to grind 50 of multiple items out and it is tempting to leave for another game.
The update may improve arena in the long run which is good, but doing so by making the daily game play miserable is not good and why everyone is complaining.
I'll give it another week and see, but I'm not hopefully and I'm def not spending!
Now I'm lucky enough to complete tier 1 challenge and get pass three Galatica war missions. I would recommend talking to people like marvel alliance on how they overcame similar problems in their game.
A major change like this should have been beta tested by users and these flaws in the game would have been quickly identified. Get your characters right and I dont want to see 6,000 critical do nothing to my enemies, it's a joke.
Personally I'm a fan of the update overall, bit there are a few things I think that need to be tweaked. I hate people that complain without offering any suggestions so here it goes:
GW: Unless you've been grinding since last year, you probably don't have a deep enough roster to complete this. I'm a top #10 player on my shard, been playing since mid-january but my b and c teams can't compete in the later nodes yet. I suggest regenerating protection no matter what after each fight, somewhere between 25%-50%.
Royal Guard: I love how you guys have tried to make arena and squad building in general more strategic...but as it stands right now there is no build that I can think of that RG doesn't make sense on. Maybe tweak his passive so it only effects certain synergies (empire or support toons or something). This will still make him influential in a fight but he's not quite so "plug and play".
Also Kylo won't counter with retribution if he has foresight.
Also when guild goes live you guys should make an option to have us spar with guild members free of energy. It will help us develop strategies and give us something to do while we wait for cooldowns to finish or energy bars to refill.
Thanks for hearing me out.
They are right GW needs to be tweaked.
Challenges need to be tweaked. Sunday will take forever!!
Ewok event - you make it sound like this great thing. It's dumb. As are the events in general. Played two now. Yoda, only had troops to get a 4*. And not enough time to grind out anymore.
And the omega which I had Plo but had to upgrade him to make it through.
Having events that require building troops for a month is a fail.
I loved the old game. The jury is still out on the upgrade. We shall see. As I said in the poll, I will not spend another dime until I figure out if this is something I will stick with or not. I spent money thinking this was a game that I would be playing forever, I hope that is still true!
I usually buy the extra 100 daily crystals on the reg because I really thought the game was worth my time and money for that $11 a month. It helped me upgrade my characters at a rate that felt normal without ever having to overspend. I enjoyed playing it and felt good supporting it unlike pretty much every other FTP game on the app store. I never felt like the game forced you to pay to win unlike **** or even SWC, and I loved that. I was always able to finish my dailies without eating up a ton of my day and it was something fun for me to do over lunch or while watching tv at the end of the day. Unfortunately, I think I'll be holding off on the extra 100 for the foreseeable future until I see how the update is dealt with and whether or not those crystals are even worth it anymore.
GW as it was the primary way I was able to earn enough gold on a regular basis to continue to level my toons and stay competitive with the current missions and challenges(not just Arena) that were opening up for me. With GW taking as long as it does now, along with the massive change that protection brings to it, there's no way I'll be able to keep up with the curve the game is on currently. If protection is going to stay then it absolutely needs to be able to regenerate between GW matches. It's a new concept in Arena and one that takes some getting used to, but I think it works for the most part.
Gold needs to be easier to come by or leveling toons needs to be drastically reduced. As it stands now with the changes, keeping up with the level curve and trying to bring other low level toons up to speed is excessively costly and asking to much of the player to sit as long as they need to try and make what they need to continue. The reward needs to reflect the time spent.
Really hoping to see some headway made on getting this game back to a place where it's fun and not a chore. Good luck!
People either need SEVERAL TIMES MORE free energy, or shard / gear requirements need a drastic downward adjustment.
With all due respect, months of grinding just to be able to compete again is not what is highly sought after by a lot of players - there are other things in life. It was a huge mistake to make outrageous nerfs to so many chars which were so insanely hard to get and level/gear up. A huge mistake - of yours, likely.
I say this because toons like kylo ren for example hits a 3rd as hard as some of these droids and big cannon minions and the high health of kylo ren have become irrelevant compared to the DPS the other toons have if kylo can barely touch their protection because you also nerfed slow high health minions. I'm NOT saying give them a huge buff but please consider a minor DPS buff.
Line: xSNAKEMAN
For those who are arguing that SIM or auto play people don't appreciate the game, some of us don't care to spend the time on challenges or storyline at a certain point and just want to unlock new toons. I would rather spend my time seeking out new characters to add to my teams than battling for scraps.
If the devs wanted to add to the longevity of the game they could be original and add new characters and challenges rather than make the existing ones slower and more difficult while castrating many popular characters.
Having said all that, I was a FTP and they won't miss me if I leave. This game was supposed to be fun for a SW fanatic like me but it's becoming more tedious and time consuming than a watered down console game.
NONE OF US ARE MAX LEVEL.
CHILL OUT