I know most of my posts have been in regard to GW becoming fun and challenging to being a chore and near impossible. There is a simple fix, that can maintain the protection yet allow fairness in conflicts in GW, that is allow benched heroes to regain 1/3 of their protection per fight benched. It won't make it too easy, it adds a level of strategy (a bit like tyre choice in F1) and will allow you to face some of the later fights with protection.
However reading the above comment what struck me was the lack of a story mode. I know that being a licensed product in a Star Wars Universe that has regained control of the canon makes it difficult, but there must be areas that could be created. Maybe classic stories/missions that are agreed canon could exist. A "new hope" table which you could complete either as light side or dark. With a limited character choice like teh omega tables. But the lack of story mode is a shame. Similarly other "character collection" games usually include information about characters, so people new to the Extended Star Wars universe don't wonder why everyone thinks Plo Koon is hard done by, or ask "Why does Asokha have Nightsister synergy?"
There you go, a bit of extra feed back to go with - make GW fun and not a time sink.
GW is still taking the same time for me as it ever did. It nicely fills a 50 minute train journey to work.
The player still has a MASSIVE advantage over the computer, because he can retreat and try again. He even has some information about what random number rolls to expect.
I'm FTP and I have been careful about toon selection for both arena and GW. I guess that paying off. I can't say that I find GW any harder now than before the change. It's better, because it's more tactical. But it's no harder.
We’ve been watching the forums closely today. @EA_Jesse and the mods have been working hard to keep the extremely active pace of conversations organized to the best of their abilities. (Thank you guys!)
There have been a lot of strong opinions expressed today on the forums about the tuning changes in particular. Some players are clearly upset about the tuning changes, and some are very happy with them.
I’m hoping you can all give the update a few days of play before locking into your opinion.
This was a big set of changes, and one we needed to do for the long-term health of the game.
Why?
Well, a couple of reasons:
At the level 70 cap, the top end of the game was very much focused on speed and quick burst damage. There were fairly constant complaints on the forums about the domination of this particular strategy, and complaints that there were not enough viable squad builds.
As we were working on building out the level 80 cap increase, and even projecting beyond level 80, that “speed meta” only got significantly more dominant. This was leading to cases where one party could demolish the opponent before they got a chance to move. Not good.
Furthermore, the number of viable characters and squad builds also got narrower. Also not good.
So, we had to make changes. And they had to be fairly widespread. If we hadn’t made these changes the game was going to devolve into nearly instant combat.
Our goals were to move the game away from that speed-only outcome, and instead make more characters and party compositions viable. We wanted to create interesting interplays between different strategies – providing counters of one type of party against another. Based on our testing, there should be a lot more diversity showing up in the game in the near future as players start experimenting with different builds.
John,
I don’t question your intentions, as I know they are for the betterment of the game. Clearly the game was/is broken with speed-only high-dps outcome from a narrow pool of toons. This was a result of what I believe was the initial roll out of the game that was rushed in order to coincide with the release of “The Force Awakens”. This is capitalism at its best, and so I don’t begrudge that decision to make money. It also did allow me and others to have access to the game earlier. But now we are living with the results of that rushed roll out.
Since the roll out, we have had many toons changed. Some include:
Barris (who had a package for sale to acquire)
Old Ben (who was only available in packs)
Dooku (his evasion was fixed, but that fix really broke it again).
Then we had the major rebalancing to fix speed-only outcomes, not to mention the many glitches/errors.
The problem that I am having, and I think many others might be having, is the amount of time and resources it takes to develop a toon in an environment that has the rules changing. It’s as simple as that. Playing fairly under the current rules, I have developed my toons to maximize my game experience. This development has in some cases taken a month or more. The suddenness of changes, and the huge impact, has left me scrambling to redevelop new toons, and has put me significantly behind in the arms race of competitive advantage.
Perhaps, we can think outside the box.
• Is there some way to adjust the development process of a toon? I wonder if giving players a one time option to “undevelop” a toon and recapture core resources that can then be redeployed into new toons of our choosing? I heard this idea on the message boards, and I gave it some thought. There might be some merit to this.
• ‘Retooling’ shards can be acquired from un-developing a toon, that allows for like characters to be bought within a certain time limit.
• Hard mission retooling shards can buy current hard mission shards,
• Arena retooling shards can be used to buy current arena shards, and so on.
• In addition, we could then pick and pull the materials, so that new materials can be developed.
I can see a place where changes to the core game for the long term health of the game would not penalize long time players with sudden major changes to the game.
That's exactly the main point. In my post with numbered bullets I preface with me halting any spending whatsoever with the speed change and Poe/Droid destruction.
The problem was not my goal of benefiting from OP toons. The problem was that you plan ahead 2-5 months and things get swinger around trying to find the holy grail of balance.
It does not make any sense to expect anything out of any combination of chars you select.
John, or if any at CG is financially inclined, here's a short reminder (or primer) on why your balancing causes so much damage to your business (on top of frustration and people quitting):
1) People sink money based on an expected
Return.
2) Risk is way to measure the chance of not getting the return expected.
3) Moreover, a risky investment is not like a casino play. It must offer -on average- a higher return that a safer investment, just because we also want to avoid volatility.
4) In a game like this investment is time and/or money that then get committed into a character (any currency and asset ends up being locked in a char sooner or later). The more money and/or more time invested, the higher the expected return.
GOH investment variables:
A) COST: Setting the price for things. CG sets the cost of bundles, shards, etc. across the game. So the cost is relatively well known. CG tries to make this hard to assess by not letting anyone know the probabilities across the game, and creating confusing and overloading currencies. People guess the cost of things. In terms of Time currency people do the same.
RETURN. GOH chars have certain return (the chars known performance). Their abilities relative to any other char is how to assess it.
C) RISK. The risk is controlled by the likelihood of the char no having any such performance. The higher the risk, the less valuable the investment, the less anybody would want to invest in that asset (digital or otherwise doesn't matter.
Now this is what you cause...
I) Gear requirement changes: When you change this, you change the costs of things. Now the Cost/Performance is affected, negatively. Had I known of the future change I would have not invested in the same way. This destroys value for the player, even if this change is global (in this case it makes the entire game less attractive, more boring or with lower return). If you make this for some characters, it has a more powerful effect, it makes the cost return higher for some, and lower for some others. Now it's not just lower return, but also a benefit to "enemies" that will not just make things more costly, but more costly just "for some".
II) Global change in balance. Aka as New (more fair or "interesting") Meta. This completely changes the Return across All Investments. It's akin to the SEC shuffling the return of every stock you own randomly. It doesn't matter if Google was producing more return that it should, or if it makes more sense in general. It materializes HUGE RISK, The ones least affected are those with mega huge portfolios, all maxed out. Same if the change is broad enough but not global.
III) Normalizing performance across chars. Unless all chars performance where mostly already normalized, this affects those that had chose a better performing char.
Anyone that is competitive will note the chars that are better, and will be willing to pay more. One way to pay more for this is Chromium (bulk purchases just to get some chars-extremely costly and inefficient but if the char commands an advantage and I am rich or ultra competitive, the return in my mind may be commensurate with the cost). Also hard mode farms are like this. Chars with only 1 hard mode are the most expensive. And those that assess the char performance (a return) as very worthy and that want the return sooner will refresh this mode for 50, 100 or more Crystals every day.
When you normalize performance and make every char as good as any other, you are assigning the same return to assets of extremely different costs. And IG-86 is very LOW COST. It provides little advantage as anyone can have it fast (meaning COST IS LOWEST), and if it is made perform similar or even better to let's say post nerf FOTP (I can use any other char that was initially good, then nerfed severely), then the FOTP return was awful: 10x the cost and now lower return than IG-86. I out this example to make it more intuitive. But basically normalizing return (aka "All chars exactly equally viable in Arena"), you are severely affecting the wealth (and value of investments).
IV) Whenever you make a change, and to the degree that change is significant, you are INCREASING RISK across the board. The more often you change mechanics or chars or balance anything, the more any investment has RISK. If you tell "We'll randomly change chars stats every week randomly " (just to illustrate) then no char can get a value assessment, or return. And then only sensible thing to do under that scenario is to only farm the lowest cost chars, and if you are risk averse, to invest as little as possible...for a person with lots of time this could be deciding to be F2P. For a person with good income and little time this could be "Invest moderately and in commodity chars".
V) Unexpected Acrions (i.e. Things that the investor was not expecting, regardless of what you had or not in mind) make people feel robbed. They cause request for refunds and lots of anger and bad feelings. Whenever something isn't communicated with a lot of advance time and properly, or made clear (e.g. "we will make good chars bad, and bad chars good, every month. We will not care if a char costs more, or if you thought the char was balanced. We have our own opinion and you must expect any char to suddenly change in performance". Or "We will monja-nerf this char 3 Montes from now. Be warned"...as examples). All this things are just so bad for the investor/player. Very very negative.
VI) COST INCREASES. every price hike makes the return more costly. This helps monetize harvesting the players that have invested a lot. Like selling a sport car at a cheap price and then having ever more costly repair parts, or increasing maintenance costs. The performance of the car (or game "fun") gets eroded as the return on investment (Fun/Cost) changes. At every threshold you cost, people quit. Eg. A subscription game that stays the same cost (Spotify?) has a constant relation. When you make things suddenly more expensive, you have people or reassess who they are (Whale, Dolphin, Fish, Krill, F2P). The more you increase prices without creating more fun (however the player defines it) the more people change their spend. If you increase fun and sell IAP for content, it's just a purchase. If you enhance the game and make it a bit more expensive to do things you may make a large reward. If the fun goes down and the price up, people reassess their investment levels.
Now, I see huge risk in GOH, and shift to "make every char viable" (normalization), a lack of wanting to provide a lot of advance details on upcoming changes (the detail is important), I see communication that contradicts what is said (slow char gets more damage or HP and fast char gets less damage or HP)- misdirection that ENSURES A BAD investment, I see sudden unexpected nerfs, I see that EXPENSIVE chars are made equal or worst than very easy farms (turning high price items to provide lower return than cheap items-sigh-, I see sudden devaluation of assets and new very expensive ways designed to continue gaining functionality (Purple Matt not needed anymore, new Omega matts), I see new mechanics introduced that make it harder to assess the value of chars, I see constant price hikes as a trend ("economy balances@) like lower return for Miney or Droid events, bug fixes of GW that today require Crystals for refresh (bug or not bug doesn't matter, that's your explanation but it doesn't avoid the price hike), Yoda lowered returns, Droids removed from shipments, etc, etc, I see gear reque changes (price hike), etc. I see more time needed to complete things (if the activity is n't fun and it is grind, this lowers our return!), and I see think like no real improvement in you ability to help users better assess how things will exactly change with sufficient advance time (RISK + Unexpected changes)...
Then I see CG wasting a huge amount of money -in spite of how tremendously successful it has been in making money so far there much more left in the table- and a huge disappointment of thousands of players that is totally counter to your retirement plans, that causes frustration and anger of people -just the opposite of what your goal in life should be for a game company (yes, if a doctor can make money and make patients worst, it's no doctor but something of the worst kind....) that...
...why not reassess the level of risk you want to cause (no more swings, ninja nerfs), the way that risk is communicated (early advance note or very clear rules on the frequency and degree of expected swings), the expected pricing of things (should we expect refresh costs to maybe triple in the future? etc), the level of normalization you seek (every char washed out)...as a starter.
Reassess the RISK of chars, the commitment to keep COST predictable (sudden changes), the direction of COSTS (will everything go up), and the level of commitment to keeping individual chars performance rather stable.
Otherwise, High Risk, Dimisishing rewards, Washed out game....we'll all Be F2P or rather doing something else.
Why can't you be like Suoercells and make money and be loved?
That's a big post, dealing with many aspects of investing. BUT it doesn't offer any solutions. The status-quo is not a solution.
Overall, I like where John is taking us. I am only suggesting an alternative path that minimizes player loss.
what an ugly thing to say... does this mean we're not friends anymore?
For those of you struggling with GW... Here is a comp that will allow you to beat all 12 fights without losing a character. Bariss, RG, clone sergeant, JC, and fives. Play smart and you won't have to retreat or lose a single character all GW ( max level)
i'm new here in the forum and first of all i want to thank the devs-team for their work (coding and forum support).
i, too, had some problems with accepting many of the changes with the recent update, but i got along and i think i get the general idea behind it.. some slight new balances would need to be done, but i guess that's always gonna be the case (yes, i was a bit sad to see e.g. res.pilot (not often used.. so i liked her) being nerfed, so that other attackers are better in general...but hey, let's go on).
my case here: in general the game gets a little boring/tedious/repetetive and gw can be quite annoying, if you don't want to farm barris just for gw... that's why i have some general proposals..
lets go from table to table (no. 6 is my main proposal):
1. light/dark side and cantina battles: thx for making them a bit more challenging with the update.. these were to easy before - so, here should be no changes from my point of view
2. challenges: i found the first changes after the update too hard, but now it's a too easy again... but in general it's ok more or less because it's only about collecting those items
3. events: the credit and training droid events are a little silly.. i'm questioning if anyone uses them.. they are just too expensive in energy for a bad result.. just make them a bit more attractive.
the new events (ewoks and omega events): i think, the idea behind it is great, but they are seriously too easy to finish.. if you are beyond lvl70 (and you are lucky enough to have some of those 4*-toons, which many people aren't ), then you just have to click the auto button.. so, i guess, they could be made a bit harder, no?
4. shard store: hmm.. we just don't get enough for our shards, to be honest.. sorry to critisize that, but it's really not a lot you get per shard.. and a general question about darth vader: is there any 7* vader out there? was it even planned? or even a 6*?
5. gw: i don't want to write that many things again.. many things were said after the update, so i guess, you guys are having some plans already.. it's just veeeeery time consuming.. but i like the general idea of gw! perhaps just 9 battles instead of 12?
6. (main proposal) arena: i know, this is quite a bit of a change and quite a bit of coding work.. but there are so many games out there, in which you actually play life against another person.. i personally think, that introducing a whole new arena mode with life battles, real pvp, would be faaaaaaar more interesting for us users..and i'm more than sure, that the game would get many more new users because people just like this competetive style.. i don't know exactly, how the prices for your daily positions should be split then and bla bla... but these are details... the general idea would be "getting away from ai"..
would that be possible from your side, devs?
apart from that, i really enjoy the game and i am very much looking forward to the guild stuff coming soon and some other new features..
I think its clear that profit is all that ea cares about. I for one and looking forward to playing a different game from a different company.
I wont make the mistake of playing a game by EA ever again. Since EA doesnt care about quality video games, only about quantity of zeros on bank account, i guess thats fine. I have no interest in such pathetic values.
The game has been absolutely ruined. Pre-update the game modes felt like a bit of a chore but there was a silver lining in that new content was coming in the form Guilds and raids. The addition of Protection and wide sweeping nerf to damage has made the game unplayable.
Before the update it was, at the very least, possible to beat a Dooku/Royal Guard team and now it is virtually impossible. Not to mention the return of DROID/tank teams. Doesn't that seem a bit counter-intuitive considering this update was supposed to address defense? Well it completely failed.
GW? Used to complete it daily. Haven't touched it since the update rolled out. What is the point of even having protection in a game mode like this? It doesn't make any sense and is just the latest in a long line of questionable decisions this dev team has made.
Just to let you know, we are continuing to read your posts and monitoring the overall (and evolving) tenor of the feedback.
I'm hoping after the update from 24 hours ago that Challenges are no longer a pain point. They should feel pretty similar to how they felt prior to the Thursday update. Please let me know if otherwise.
Galactic War is under active discussion on the dev team. We are hearing your feedback and will be discussing options early next week.
Thank you!
Thank you for the note, it seemed that we were screaming at a closed door. I am glad to hear that the team is listening. As I have said in multiple posts since the update, I loved the game before and I hate it now. GW was fixed, now it is broken, I don't know what is going on in Arena, teams that I used to easily beat to claw up to 1 everyday, were slaying me without mercy, weak teams that should be easily beaten. Yes, challenges are fixed now. Protection, why not just decrease attack level across the board, protection seems to involve some sort of unknown voodoo to work. The change in the way every toon attacks and deals damage is completely offsetting. Used to know what each attack would do, now maybe yes, maybe no
0 Fun, not enough time in the arena to do battles with new Meta.
Challeneges and GW is so much harder.
Cannot upgrade my gear, game is pointless now.
Second this post. Lame way to "improve longevity". Nurf healers in GW with "shield" (bye well learned technique to advance bench thru GW) Add "event" that you pretty much need to buy into. And the list of dollar grabbing tweaks go on. You either need to be a whale, or resign to an ever unsatisfying grind. The mouse is in the house...
I am still totally on the fence. I am glad you are trying to change the game away from the speed meta. However as a FTP it is now really hard to me to prioritise where to put my resources. As the challenges are so hard now I would need to pour resources into attackers to beat Veers and Tarkin and I just don't want to do that. I think one solution to help FTP players would be to add a few more characters into each of the places to farm (arena shipments, gw shipments, cantina tokens and cantina battles). So for example I am farming both an ewok team and a rebel team. However with the current update I am pretty desperate to land a high health, high protection character that hits hards. Savage would be perfect. But im farming Storm trooper Han. There aren't too many other characters that meet this criteria (maybe 5's aside) that are FTP farmable. Or at least can be farmed in a hurry to help us catch up with these changes that have been made in the update.
In addition I think RG needs some sort of look at. The whole point of this update was to create variety in teams. But he will be in every team still. Maybe change it so he can only taunt once or twice. Not every time you knock an opponent down half their health. He is so hard to kill and protects all the other characters so much more than all other tanks.
In addition I think the nerf to speed characters was too harsh. I agree there should have been a nerf. But protection did that already. Eeth Koth is completely useless. And to add insult to injury yoda sucks now. And yoda is the greatest jedi ever known and he is the only reason I farmed Koth. If I knew yoda would be so bad I would have farmed.......you guessed it......savage!.
So I guess I think it may have been better to introduce protection first and then change speed meta in another update. Or at least not have nerfed certain characters so much.
Thanks for taking on our feedback
LOLS at thought anyone takes on feedback. If general feedback (not whale song) was taken on, this game would be improving and growing a solid star wars fanbase. It would respect its audience, rather than annoy it. Etc...
But we hear ya DG.
1. light/dark side and cantina battles: thx for making them a bit more challenging with the update.. these were to easy before - so, here should be no changes from my point of view
Wait until you get to the higher level hard mode battles. Even people with fully maxed out teams are saying they can't 3 star them or beat them at all. lol
GW is still taking the same time for me as it ever did. It nicely fills a 50 minute train journey to work.
The player still has a MASSIVE advantage over the computer, because he can retreat and try again. He even has some information about what random number rolls to expect.
I'm FTP and I have been careful about toon selection for both arena and GW. I guess that paying off. I can't say that I find GW any harder now than before the change. It's better, because it's more tactical. But it's no harder.
Completely agree with you. Was against the update at first, then the next day there was a fix and GW got back to the same level as before, but you need to switch your team members a bit more. For example I used to only use Phasma (7 stars) as lead, now half my battles are with Dooku (5 stars) as leader. The Dooku evade helps me get through some battles, when he dies I switch to Phasma and finish GW. So I changed my strategy, which used to be build one super-strong team and crush through GW, now I built a more varied method but it is still manageable.
And YES, the retreat is a huge factor in finishing GW.
Just to let you know, we are continuing to read your posts and monitoring the overall (and evolving) tenor of the feedback.
I'm hoping after the update from 24 hours ago that Challenges are no longer a pain point. They should feel pretty similar to how they felt prior to the Thursday update. Please let me know if otherwise.
Galactic War is under active discussion on the dev team. We are hearing your feedback and will be discussing options early next week.
Thank you!
I have to say that after reading this I feel a bit of relief, I am still holding onto my money until a plan is put in place for a change to GW though.
Prior to the update I spent all of my resources farming Jedi to get Yoda and then run a solid Jedi team. The Jedi are my favorite part of Star Wars and that is why I chose that route. I had pretty good success in Arena and Galactic War, but never really felt like my teams was overly strong but balanced enough to win and I consistently stayed in the top-10 in Arena with it. Post update, my squad is all but useless. Individually Yoda, Qui Gon Jinn, and Lumina have good utility but as a Jedi squad itself; the Jedi suck. I did not play this game to toss random characters that have nothing to do with each other into a squad and play. While I think it's fine for those that like to do that, I feel that I should be able to build a Jedi or Rebel squad and be competitive but that is just not the case now, especially not post-patch. For me personally, playing a Rebel squad, or a Sith squad, Droids IS Star Wars, that's why I play. If I wanted to play an RPG with random characters I could've played the Marvel game because players from different faction do team-up and even change sides here and there, but I chose to play Star Wars instead.
Over the weekend I accepted the fact that the changes to the Jedi attack strength, and the addition of Protection and higher HP caps means that I need to try something new. I swallowed my pride and moved on and took an interest in the Resistance squad. I figured that in this meta something like Expose would be a good effect, plus Poe's taunt, Rey and Resistance Pilot's foresight, and Finn's higher Protection and Health would make for a decent squad. I was pretty wrong, couldn't do a single thing with Royal Guard and some of the other mish-mash of troops. Count Dooku is still widely used on my server and it's almost impossible to land an attack without it being dodged and then when you do hit it's only taking protection away.
I understand the addition of Protection and why some damage was mitigated either directly or indirectly by increasing HP and / or Armor. The game was definitely too fast before and something needed to be done, but there are still some tweaks needed here. Evasion as a leader bonus, is too strong in conjunction with high levels of Protection and Health. Count Dooku as a character with his regular abilities is average to above average in my opinion, his stuns are annoying but he's not awful. His leader ability is way too strong and I think that's why he's still so widely used the way he is now. As players manage to buy more Darth Maul and when Obi Wan (Old Ben)'s leader ability is fixed you'll probably see similar issues.
Lastly, I think the teams needs to think about Star Wars from a fan's point of view. What is it about Star Wars that is exciting? What is it about Star Wars that makes it Star Wars and drives people to play Star Wars themed video games? Some people get behind the Rebels, some get behind the Empire, and some will additionally get behind certain characters like Anakin / Vader, Yoda, Han, and the newer characters like Rey and Kylo Ren especially because we don't know what awaits their future. But ultimately those characters align themselves with a certain faction. Anakin as designed in this game aligned himself with the Jedi (until later), Luke eventually aligned himself with the Rebels and later the Jedi, and Rey will most likely align herself with the Resistance and probably Jedi as well. If you think about it that way, this game is NOT Star Wars, it is just put the best random character whether they're relevant to the Star Wars universe or not together and play the game because that's better than team synergy. Not that it's necessarily wrong to just put random troops together who's abilities have some synergy to them, I CAN totally understand that, but unfortunately that is and has been the ONLY way to play this game to-date. Building a full squad of one faction is not feasible if you want to be highly competitive and players should have that option as well. Unfortunately for me that's the option I would like to have for this game and not having it now post-patch makes it hard for me to stay interested and continue to invest time or money in this game. Let the community flaming begin...
I ask only for one thing. EA to inbox me 50 million credits.
I get their reasoning for the update. I get all the changes. Compensation of crystals is nothing. 50 million credits allow me to choose 5 meta characters and 7 star them, gear them, max the abilities, and level them up. The rest is my problem.
Is only fair to get my time spent on nerfed champs for 5 new ones.
I ask only for one thing. EA to inbox me 50 million credits.
I get their reasoning for the update. I get all the changes. Compensation of crystals is nothing. 50 million credits allow me to choose 5 meta characters and 7 star them, gear them, max the abilities, and level them up. The rest is my problem.
Is only fair to get my time spent on nerfed champs for 5 new ones.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they reset my account to level 1 and gave me back every crystal I bought, not in-cash but just the crystals themselves so I can start over again. I would be fine with that if it were an option.
I ask only for one thing. EA to inbox me 50 million credits.
I get their reasoning for the update. I get all the changes. Compensation of crystals is nothing. 50 million credits allow me to choose 5 meta characters and 7 star them, gear them, max the abilities, and level them up. The rest is my problem.
Is only fair to get my time spent on nerfed champs for 5 new ones.
At first I have to say I hated the changes. Now after playing it I like that Arena can be more diverse. I like most of the overall changes. However GW takes way too long. The grind for credits is just ridiculous as well as the grind for gear. There must be some middle ground somewhere. I work 50 to 60 hours a week and it's hard to find time to grind for credits and gear. I understand EA needs to make money but the amount of credits you get per purchase is just way too little. It's about half what it takes to get one character from 6 Stars to 7 Stars. I think with a fix to make GW less of a grind would make a huge difference. As it is right now many days I don't have time to finish.
I might get nuked but I like the changes made in the update. Glad they fixed the challenges. I have had to retreat more on GW but have been able to finish every day.
I am now resorting to pleading. PLEASE CHANGE BACK. This game has gotten significantly less fun. It is becoming a headache just to play. please listen to 75% of your customer base.
I am now resorting to pleading. PLEASE CHANGE BACK. This game has gotten significantly less fun. It is becoming a headache just to play. please listen to 75% of your customer base.
GW needs attention, honestly, didn't your team try this out before releasing it to the public? What a terrible idea. Who actually got paid to think that was ok? What about arena? The matches are too long now, some ending in draws that clearly shouldn't have because you broke the mode. Please fix what you broke, you are getting trashed on iTunes and obviously in here as well. Fix it guys, I'd rather have the other version back, your repair is complete garbage.
Use the force Luke.... and get rid of that stupid musket.
(...)But the lack of story mode is a shame. Similarly other "character collection" games usually include information about characters (...)There you go, a bit of extra feed back to go with - make GW fun and not a time sink.
At first I have to say I hated the changes. Now after playing it I like that Arena can be more diverse. I like most of the overall changes. However GW takes way too long. The grind for credits is just ridiculous as well as the grind for gear. There must be some middle ground somewhere. I work 50 to 60 hours a week and it's hard to find time to grind for credits and gear. I understand EA needs to make money but the amount of credits you get per purchase is just way too little. It's about half what it takes to get one character from 6 Stars to 7 Stars. I think with a fix to make GW less of a grind would make a huge difference. As it is right now many days I don't have time to finish.
(...)But the lack of story mode is a shame. Similarly other "character collection" games usually include information about characters (...)There you go, a bit of extra feed back to go with - make GW fun and not a time sink.
Turkano
Sign me in!
That would be fun if GW was tied to a character's story and maybe rotated it every few days. Maybe earn shards towards that character. I know I'm not the only one in this boat either, but when you add career, wife, baby(s) you can't spend an hour or two on GW, then arena, then Challenges, other farming; there has to be some real selectiveness with time spent. If GW was a 30-min investment I think that would be fair.
Replies
However reading the above comment what struck me was the lack of a story mode. I know that being a licensed product in a Star Wars Universe that has regained control of the canon makes it difficult, but there must be areas that could be created. Maybe classic stories/missions that are agreed canon could exist. A "new hope" table which you could complete either as light side or dark. With a limited character choice like teh omega tables. But the lack of story mode is a shame. Similarly other "character collection" games usually include information about characters, so people new to the Extended Star Wars universe don't wonder why everyone thinks Plo Koon is hard done by, or ask "Why does Asokha have Nightsister synergy?"
There you go, a bit of extra feed back to go with - make GW fun and not a time sink.
Turkano
The player still has a MASSIVE advantage over the computer, because he can retreat and try again. He even has some information about what random number rolls to expect.
I'm FTP and I have been careful about toon selection for both arena and GW. I guess that paying off. I can't say that I find GW any harder now than before the change. It's better, because it's more tactical. But it's no harder.
That's a big post, dealing with many aspects of investing. BUT it doesn't offer any solutions. The status-quo is not a solution.
Overall, I like where John is taking us. I am only suggesting an alternative path that minimizes player loss.
i'm new here in the forum and first of all i want to thank the devs-team for their work (coding and forum support).
i, too, had some problems with accepting many of the changes with the recent update, but i got along and i think i get the general idea behind it.. some slight new balances would need to be done, but i guess that's always gonna be the case (yes, i was a bit sad to see e.g. res.pilot (not often used.. so i liked her) being nerfed, so that other attackers are better in general...but hey, let's go on).
my case here: in general the game gets a little boring/tedious/repetetive and gw can be quite annoying, if you don't want to farm barris just for gw... that's why i have some general proposals..
lets go from table to table (no. 6 is my main proposal):
1. light/dark side and cantina battles: thx for making them a bit more challenging with the update.. these were to easy before - so, here should be no changes from my point of view
2. challenges: i found the first changes after the update too hard, but now it's a too easy again... but in general it's ok more or less because it's only about collecting those items
3. events: the credit and training droid events are a little silly.. i'm questioning if anyone uses them.. they are just too expensive in energy for a bad result.. just make them a bit more attractive.
the new events (ewoks and omega events): i think, the idea behind it is great, but they are seriously too easy to finish.. if you are beyond lvl70 (and you are lucky enough to have some of those 4*-toons, which many people aren't
4. shard store: hmm.. we just don't get enough for our shards, to be honest.. sorry to critisize that, but it's really not a lot you get per shard.. and a general question about darth vader: is there any 7* vader out there? was it even planned? or even a 6*?
5. gw: i don't want to write that many things again.. many things were said after the update, so i guess, you guys are having some plans already.. it's just veeeeery time consuming.. but i like the general idea of gw! perhaps just 9 battles instead of 12?
6. (main proposal) arena: i know, this is quite a bit of a change and quite a bit of coding work.. but there are so many games out there, in which you actually play life against another person.. i personally think, that introducing a whole new arena mode with life battles, real pvp, would be faaaaaaar more interesting for us users..and i'm more than sure, that the game would get many more new users because people just like this competetive style.. i don't know exactly, how the prices for your daily positions should be split then and bla bla... but these are details... the general idea would be "getting away from ai"..
would that be possible from your side, devs?
apart from that, i really enjoy the game and i am very much looking forward to the guild stuff coming soon and some other new features..
greets, p_h
I wont make the mistake of playing a game by EA ever again. Since EA doesnt care about quality video games, only about quantity of zeros on bank account, i guess thats fine. I have no interest in such pathetic values.
Before the update it was, at the very least, possible to beat a Dooku/Royal Guard team and now it is virtually impossible. Not to mention the return of DROID/tank teams. Doesn't that seem a bit counter-intuitive considering this update was supposed to address defense? Well it completely failed.
GW? Used to complete it daily. Haven't touched it since the update rolled out. What is the point of even having protection in a game mode like this? It doesn't make any sense and is just the latest in a long line of questionable decisions this dev team has made.
No more decreases! Are you kidding?!
– Yoda
Second this post. Lame way to "improve longevity". Nurf healers in GW with "shield" (bye well learned technique to advance bench thru GW) Add "event" that you pretty much need to buy into. And the list of dollar grabbing tweaks go on. You either need to be a whale, or resign to an ever unsatisfying grind. The mouse is in the house...
LOLS at thought anyone takes on feedback. If general feedback (not whale song) was taken on, this game would be improving and growing a solid star wars fanbase. It would respect its audience, rather than annoy it. Etc...
But we hear ya DG.
Wait until you get to the higher level hard mode battles. Even people with fully maxed out teams are saying they can't 3 star them or beat them at all. lol
Completely agree with you. Was against the update at first, then the next day there was a fix and GW got back to the same level as before, but you need to switch your team members a bit more. For example I used to only use Phasma (7 stars) as lead, now half my battles are with Dooku (5 stars) as leader. The Dooku evade helps me get through some battles, when he dies I switch to Phasma and finish GW. So I changed my strategy, which used to be build one super-strong team and crush through GW, now I built a more varied method but it is still manageable.
And YES, the retreat is a huge factor in finishing GW.
I have to say that after reading this I feel a bit of relief, I am still holding onto my money until a plan is put in place for a change to GW though.
Prior to the update I spent all of my resources farming Jedi to get Yoda and then run a solid Jedi team. The Jedi are my favorite part of Star Wars and that is why I chose that route. I had pretty good success in Arena and Galactic War, but never really felt like my teams was overly strong but balanced enough to win and I consistently stayed in the top-10 in Arena with it. Post update, my squad is all but useless. Individually Yoda, Qui Gon Jinn, and Lumina have good utility but as a Jedi squad itself; the Jedi suck. I did not play this game to toss random characters that have nothing to do with each other into a squad and play. While I think it's fine for those that like to do that, I feel that I should be able to build a Jedi or Rebel squad and be competitive but that is just not the case now, especially not post-patch. For me personally, playing a Rebel squad, or a Sith squad, Droids IS Star Wars, that's why I play. If I wanted to play an RPG with random characters I could've played the Marvel game because players from different faction do team-up and even change sides here and there, but I chose to play Star Wars instead.
Over the weekend I accepted the fact that the changes to the Jedi attack strength, and the addition of Protection and higher HP caps means that I need to try something new. I swallowed my pride and moved on and took an interest in the Resistance squad. I figured that in this meta something like Expose would be a good effect, plus Poe's taunt, Rey and Resistance Pilot's foresight, and Finn's higher Protection and Health would make for a decent squad. I was pretty wrong, couldn't do a single thing with Royal Guard and some of the other mish-mash of troops. Count Dooku is still widely used on my server and it's almost impossible to land an attack without it being dodged and then when you do hit it's only taking protection away.
I understand the addition of Protection and why some damage was mitigated either directly or indirectly by increasing HP and / or Armor. The game was definitely too fast before and something needed to be done, but there are still some tweaks needed here. Evasion as a leader bonus, is too strong in conjunction with high levels of Protection and Health. Count Dooku as a character with his regular abilities is average to above average in my opinion, his stuns are annoying but he's not awful. His leader ability is way too strong and I think that's why he's still so widely used the way he is now. As players manage to buy more Darth Maul and when Obi Wan (Old Ben)'s leader ability is fixed you'll probably see similar issues.
Lastly, I think the teams needs to think about Star Wars from a fan's point of view. What is it about Star Wars that is exciting? What is it about Star Wars that makes it Star Wars and drives people to play Star Wars themed video games? Some people get behind the Rebels, some get behind the Empire, and some will additionally get behind certain characters like Anakin / Vader, Yoda, Han, and the newer characters like Rey and Kylo Ren especially because we don't know what awaits their future. But ultimately those characters align themselves with a certain faction. Anakin as designed in this game aligned himself with the Jedi (until later), Luke eventually aligned himself with the Rebels and later the Jedi, and Rey will most likely align herself with the Resistance and probably Jedi as well. If you think about it that way, this game is NOT Star Wars, it is just put the best random character whether they're relevant to the Star Wars universe or not together and play the game because that's better than team synergy. Not that it's necessarily wrong to just put random troops together who's abilities have some synergy to them, I CAN totally understand that, but unfortunately that is and has been the ONLY way to play this game to-date. Building a full squad of one faction is not feasible if you want to be highly competitive and players should have that option as well. Unfortunately for me that's the option I would like to have for this game and not having it now post-patch makes it hard for me to stay interested and continue to invest time or money in this game. Let the community flaming begin...
Best Regards
I get their reasoning for the update. I get all the changes. Compensation of crystals is nothing. 50 million credits allow me to choose 5 meta characters and 7 star them, gear them, max the abilities, and level them up. The rest is my problem.
Is only fair to get my time spent on nerfed champs for 5 new ones.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind if they reset my account to level 1 and gave me back every crystal I bought, not in-cash but just the crystals themselves so I can start over again. I would be fine with that if it were an option.
Like that thought
this is very true
It is my assumption that they are not the same people.
#commited
Sign me in!
That would be fun if GW was tied to a character's story and maybe rotated it every few days. Maybe earn shards towards that character. I know I'm not the only one in this boat either, but when you add career, wife, baby(s) you can't spend an hour or two on GW, then arena, then Challenges, other farming; there has to be some real selectiveness with time spent. If GW was a 30-min investment I think that would be fair.