Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Prev13456740
Hi everyone –

We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.

Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.

So, let’s talk about it.

First, here’s how Retreat used to work:
  1. Previously, you could start a GW Battle and then Retreat as soon as the AI team had taken at least one action. When doing this, a few things were retained and a few things weren’t.
  2. Things that were retained:
    • Character death
    • Health loss
    • Special Ability cool downs
  3. Things that were not retained:
    • Turn meters
    • Buffs, debuffs, and status effects (like stun)
  4. The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
That was never the design intent of this feature.

The goals of the Galactic War feature were to:
  1. Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard! 
  2. Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
  3. Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
  4. And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.

In pursuit of bringing the feature back in line with the original intent, here’s what we changed:
  1. Now, as long as you press Retreat before the battle ends, you exit the battle and everything is reset as if you hadn’t started the battle. It’s an instant rewind.
  2. This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
A common concern expressed is that this removes strategy. What is or isn’t strategic is a surprisingly subjective thing, so I don’t want to belabor this point. However, the strategic elements are now focused where they were meant to be:
  1. What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
  2. When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
  3. How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
  4. When facing a certain kind of party (stun lock, crit damage, Jedi party, healers, revive, etc., etc., etc.) what elements of your own collection can you best bring to defeat that challenge?

And there’s more, but those are the main ones.

A few more things to mention:
  1. Random number seed – A random number seed is a common programming practice where one number is generated randomly, and then used for a bunch of subsequent calculations. We know there have been active discussions around the random number seed being saved at the start of a battle for a given squad that you bring in. The result of this approach is if you repeat the exact same actions you will get the exact same results. Some folks have interpreted that as meaning there is no randomness in the battle. It’s an important distinction to make between the randomness set at the start of a battle vs. a bunch of randomness re-rolled within the battle. That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
  2. Galactic War tuning – We are constantly tuning how the game (including this feature) works. For GW this includes opponent selection, how much health is granted after a Victory, etc. We are not making any changes right now, but will revisit this next week after we have enough data to see how the current approach is working.
  3. Lack of mention in the first version of the Release Notes – When we put out the notes on this update, we failed to include this change. This was honestly an result of human error and Aaron has explained how it happened. Sorry about that.
  4. Change and iteration – We have said this before, but it bears repeating. We will constantly be changing and iterating on the game throughout its lifespan. We will be doing this based on your feedback, on our own internal designs and feedback, and based on a host of other inputs. Please expect things to keep evolving as the game progresses.

Long post, I know.

Lots to discuss here and we’re looking forward to talking things through with you guys to see how we can keep making this and other parts of the game more enjoyable. That being said we are not planning on reverting this change because the feature simply wasn’t working as originally envisioned.

Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further.

Thanks!

Replies

  • Lot of whining people are playing this game. After the update i went to GW and destroyed every opponent.
  • I like the changes, but I think people just feel like the odds are stacked against them. If somebody with an A Team of 5* characters gets matched up against several consecutive teams of 6* and 7* characters, retreat was pretty much the only way to win. I think if people were given more even matches the retreat function wouldn't be a big deal.
  • I have made some angry posts in the forum today, mainly because of the change. And most importantly the TIMING of the change. If we had advance notice, maybe things would be different. But you made this change just when you increased the level cap...so most of us wouldn't be able to create a deep bench if we wanted to because not only do we need to level our current roster, a great many are going to be losing hugely necessary mats and shards to work on creating that bench.

    I have 14 lvl 60 purple toons. I won't be making it through GW today. I have faced lvl 60 teams from round 3 on, and most of them have been Phasma led stun teams, with two mid range whale teams (7* fotp, etc). Not only that, one team I faced, which while it could hurt me should not have beaten me, was getting constant stuns, extra attacks, and crits no matter What team or combination I sent in. This was at Round 5! Round 4, 5, and 6 completely killed any chance of complete GW...now if I had time to prepare, to think it through, or even level more toons instead of looking forward to lvl 70 needs, I may not be so upset. But frankly, this change will kill leveling and mat farming for 98% of the player base.
  • Make the matchs more even i feel like im vsing top 10 in arena when i get to 11 or 12 battle makes it almost impossible for me to win
  • Nonemo
    1656 posts Member
    Thanks for the many clarifications. Yesterday when it all went down there was a lot of emotion and heated debate. Moving away from that and into some constructive dialogue would be great...

    In my opinion the change was an improvement. While I still can breeze through GW with little difficulty, I suspect the change has made it harder for developing players due to the current matchmaking system. I keep reading posts by people <lv60 who run into top tier forms. That seems to be the by far biggest issue right now.
  • I like how it works now. I think adding a limited number of retreats (but keeping time meter, buffs and statuses) per WAR would please those that want some per-turn activity to help them when opposing teams is their exact Nemesis. 5? Maybe after five you can reset with Crystals for 5 more. This would likit abusenof this feature to thise special cases where the matchmaking is making an odd call.

    Also, it would be nice if all the flamers vs those that though Reset was likely closer to what CG envisioned to issue an apology. A chance to reset your karma of sorts.
  • So I ran gw last night since the new update and was able to pass it after a few retreats (aka fc). I have 2 high powered squads, 2 mid level and 2 for cannon fodder. Like many have expressed, I found the whole experience much duller than the old model. Never used fc in the past as I never really saw a need for it. I guess I consider myself lucky to have been able to enjoy the benefits of the old model for a month or so to get my squad powered up to be able to still complete gw after the update but I can't help but feel bad for new guys having to run the new version of gw and super grind to get a halfway decent squad to compete. I'm not f2p but I'm more like krill status compared to some of the whales, and the old model of gw was still challenging. To sum things up, I think this new change to gw was an epic fail and took a lot of fun out of the end game. I also think it will also convince a large chunk of newer players not to invest in the game after having had a little taste of the old model and seeing how much harder and more $$$ it'll take to build a decent squad. Perhaps a tweak like leaving buffs and debuffs on subbed players when they reenter the fight would be more fair, but as I stated sometimes having to play the same node several times to find the right rng combo gets dull real quick.
  • better matchmaking and a little more health gain for your entire lineup in between battles and this whole thing will be fine.
  • Doj
    27 posts Member
    Hi everyone –

    We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.

    Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.

    So, let’s talk about it.

    First, here’s how Retreat used to work:
    1. Previously, you could start a GW Battle and then Retreat as soon as the AI team had taken at least one action. When doing this, a few things were retained and a few things weren’t.
    2. Things that were retained:
      • Character death
      • Health loss
      • Special Ability cool downs
    3. Things that were not retained:
      • Turn meters
      • Buffs, debuffs, and status effects (like stun)
    4. The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
    That was never the design intent of this feature.

    The goals of the Galactic War feature were to:
    1. Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard! 
    2. Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
    3. Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
    4. And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.

    In pursuit of bringing the feature back in line with the original intent, here’s what we changed:
    1. Now, as long as you press Retreat before the battle ends, you exit the battle and everything is reset as if you hadn’t started the battle. It’s an instant rewind.
    2. This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
    A common concern expressed is that this removes strategy. What is or isn’t strategic is a surprisingly subjective thing, so I don’t want to belabor this point. However, the strategic elements are now focused where they were meant to be:
    1. What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
    2. When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
    3. How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
    4. When facing a certain kind of party (stun lock, crit damage, Jedi party, healers, revive, etc., etc., etc.) what elements of your own collection can you best bring to defeat that challenge?

    And there’s more, but those are the main ones.

    A few more things to mention:
    1. Random number seed – A random number seed is a common programming practice where one number is generated randomly, and then used for a bunch of subsequent calculations. We know there have been active discussions around the random number seed being saved at the start of a battle for a given squad that you bring in. The result of this approach is if you repeat the exact same actions you will get the exact same results. Some folks have interpreted that as meaning there is no randomness in the battle. It’s an important distinction to make between the randomness set at the start of a battle vs. a bunch of randomness re-rolled within the battle. That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
    2. Galactic War tuning – We are constantly tuning how the game (including this feature) works. For GW this includes opponent selection, how much health is granted after a Victory, etc. We are not making any changes right now, but will revisit this next week after we have enough data to see how the current approach is working.
    3. Lack of mention in the first version of the Release Notes – When we put out the notes on this update, we failed to include this change. This was honestly an result of human error and Aaron has explained how it happened. Sorry about that.
    4. Change and iteration – We have said this before, but it bears repeating. We will constantly be changing and iterating on the game throughout its lifespan. We will be doing this based on your feedback, on our own internal designs and feedback, and based on a host of other inputs. Please expect things to keep evolving as the game progresses.

    Long post, I know.

    Lots to discuss here and we’re looking forward to talking things through with you guys to see how we can keep making this and other parts of the game more enjoyable. That being said we are not planning on reverting this change because the feature simply wasn’t working as originally envisioned.

    Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further.

    Thanks!

    @CG_JohnSalera so, the only challenge in the game was the benefit of an unintended design flaw. Yet, current designed key card battles is a main end game feature, which is completely unused!

    I'm thinking that you should go back to unintended consequences. Especially if you allowed 2 months of game play with it!!!!

    FYI, my game time has decreased drastically, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
  • My only real issue is the whale teams that are full 7*. I was blessed today and made it through without hitting one, but yesterday I hit one at stage 7 or 8 and my mostly 6* and 7* teams in any combo just couldn't get past their speed\crit that FTP players don't have access to. Matches just don't feel fair...matches should be challenging not impossible.
  • Imo new version of GW surely enjoyable for a late game player who had a lot of good toons. I'm quite new for this game ( start to addict 3 weeks ago). By spending some money I could have my best 5 toons to be contend in arena but for new GW , it's not enough. We all know that make a good one toon take a time(and you can spend money to speed up process). So I think I will enjoy this new GW in next 1-2 months.
  • How am I expected to make a deep bench at the same time the level cap is raised and keeping just the main squad viable takes all my resources? I was going to start collecting stormtrooper Han shards just to expand my bench, but I feel like I have to go and finish off Sidious just to remain competitive.

    Lazy that you guys couldn't keep status effects when retreats happen. Best of both worlds, I'd say. Now my B and C teams are useless while I keep my main 5 at pace.
  • Nonemo
    1656 posts Member
    @420_Fett With all due respect, you're bringing up a point here that I personally have a very hard time grasping. I just never understood why it's so much more fun to retreat mid battle (and effectively nullifying a lot of abilities that are part of the game experience) than to restart the battle and try an entirely new strategy. The second option, to me, just seems much less "chopped up" and more fluent.

    When I did the old form of retreating I just got caught up with the tedious task of keeping EVERYBODY alive, literally only playing the battle for a few swings at a time, switching in the right team for the heal, then quickly taking them out again. It took forever and I didn't get the feeling that the battles really mattered.

    I wasn't playing the battle, it was more of me playing the game dynamics.

    But that's just my point of view. What I really want to stress though is, that even though you feel that this change is a terrible turn for the worse, I think it might be appropriate to not start speculating in how all the other players feel... Or claiming that now people will stop spending money... I don't see how ANYBODY could possess knowledge about that at this point in time. So it's very hard to take those claims seriously. Sorry for being frank here.
  • I've said many times over the last few days that the change was a much needed fix. I'm still able to get through it, maybe even easier than before, but that is not the case for low level players.

    GW is introduced at Lv 40 and lv 40-59 players just do not have the resources available to flesh out a roster of multiple teams.

    Currently I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is that GW picks your battles based on your/their power level. Weaker teams first and then climbing to higher teams without doing a level check.

    What if you did a level check first and then pulled teams from that level range. Let's say +/- 5. Most of the complaints I see involve level 40 somethings going against lv 60 max geared teams.
  • I never had issue with the retreat because I never used it in battle so the biggest complaint didn't affect my game. The only thing I was hoping for is more content.

    A nice modest addition would have been to add some of the farmable toons to shipments in the various Arenas so free players could have more selection so teams will have more variety outside of Sidious, Luminara, Phasma, etc. I was thinking it would be great to see Geonosian Soldier, Nightsister Acolyte, Talia, Jedi Counselor,maybe a less popular Chrono character perhaps.

    It would be awesome if all Arenas had the same shipments area so no matter which Arena tokens you won, you'd just select which character to farm, combining all the separate area characters from Cantina, Galactic and Squad Arenas into one window, so now players can farm characters easier, rather than having to limit farming certain characters from certain events. This again sounds like a nice middle ground. Free and pay players would see more synergies, breaking the monotony even more. Second, you're not selling out the paying players keeping their key toons intact so their paid for advantage remains.

    Just a thought I wanted to speak on in such a venue. The free side of the game is suffering from limited choices. I'm sure the P2W player base must be tired of fighting the same teams endlessly. This change adds more to everyone's game along with longevity. I could see those rage quit players maybe coming back to the table even...

    Most F2P players want a reason to exist, this would help, give us more diversity...
  • Darivon
    134 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Ty for the infos/clarifications. In my opinion definitely a (necessary) step in the "right" direction.
    If it's something you are still discussing: Adjusting/increasing the rewards would be appreciated cause that random Ewok shard at the end always felt kinda meh. Guess now it's more justifiable right?
    Another point could be to (minimally?) increase the percentage of health regeneration after each successful battle, as stated in the Galactic War Rules, in game. At the moment the % is so small it's not even noticeable. I've never seen it my self but @Heronmar pointed out he noticed it cause one of his units went from "yellow HP" to "green HP". Could/should be considered fair.
    (On a side note not related to this topic but while i am at it: The PvP Arena Squad setup doesn't save. My team composition always swaps back to what it was 2 days ago as soon as i log out of the game. Means my Dooku is suddenly in the team instead of Poe and the leader gets swapped to Phasma instead of Sid. Without me doing anything. Fix would be cool. Ty )
    Post edited by Darivon on
  • So what seems to be the goal of GW is to use your collection in battles which doesn't seem to happen in the current or previous versions. I'd LOVE to see the game mode require more the usage of more B C or D teams.

    Currently the problem I see with that is generally you are matched with 12 A teams ranging from below you to above. With the leveling requirements in shards and gear it seems impossible to have a non level capped deep bench (you level up as you farm gear and shards). So in my case I could use my B or C teams early and win a battle or two, but because of the weakness that allows that I could use my A team and lose no health. There isn't an incentive for my B/C team. If I level/gear my B/C team, the levels of the A teams I face get stronger and I can't keep up with them.

    What I think could be really cool was if you could show ALL 12 battles, scaled to your A B and C teams (maybe your top 12 power levels?), then put battle limits on characters (say each character can be used in 4 battles). Then you would have the strategy of choosing which matches to use your stronger ones on and which to try to defeat with the weaker.

    Anyway I think that would be really fun because it would give uses to more characters you otherwise don't use. Because currently the most fun I had pre update was using my b team guys occasionally in helper GW roles. Now GW is just arena squad x12 more battles
  • Terrorize89
    434 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    A few more things to mention:
    1. Random number seed – ...Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.

    @CG_JohnSalera At first I thought this was the case, however after a few attempts I found this not to be the case. If you swap any members around with existing members, say I move Lumi from slot 2 to 5, and Daka from 5 to 2. They both give the same results. The only time moving members around produces different results is if you change the leader, like swapping Sideous with Lumi. So unless you change your leader, the only other way to change the result is to sub in a new character. (This is all barring changing actions in the match).
  • Nonemo wrote: »
    @420_Fett With all due respect, you're bringing up a point here that I personally have a very hard time grasping. I just never understood why it's so much more fun to retreat mid battle (and effectively nullifying a lot of abilities that are part of the game experience) than to restart the battle and try an entirely new strategy. The second option, to me, just seems much less "chopped up" and more fluent.

    When I did the old form of retreating I just got caught up with the tedious task of keeping EVERYBODY alive, literally only playing the battle for a few swings at a time, switching in the right team for the heal, then quickly taking them out again. It took forever and I didn't get the feeling that the battles really mattered.

    I wasn't playing the battle, it was more of me playing the game dynamics.

    But that's just my point of view. What I really want to stress though is, that even though you feel that this change is a terrible turn for the worse, I think it might be appropriate to not start speculating in how all the other players feel... Or claiming that now people will stop spending money... I don't see how ANYBODY could possess knowledge about that at this point in time. So it's very hard to take those claims seriously. Sorry for being frank here.

    Point taken however my opinions are just that 'opinions'. They are what they are. Never claimed to possess knowledge of anybodies future spending habits hence the prelude to the opinion 'I think.....' The bottom line is I THINK the devs could have come up with a much better solution to fix the gw problem instead of seemingly taking the quick easy fix. We wouldn't be seeing this much blow back otherwise.
  • Slewfoot wrote: »
    better matchmaking and a little more health gain for your entire lineup in between battles and this whole thing will be fine.

    I agree with this.
  • Jabba
    1033 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Original post was quoted 3 times, removed the duplicate entries. - EA_Jesse
    Hi everyone –

    We wanted to have an open conversation with you all regarding the recent change to Galactic War. We made the change to bring the feature back into alignment with its original design vision.

    Clearly this one change has driven a ton of forum activity. While many folks have said they like the change to Retreat, many others are quite unhappy about it.

    So, let’s talk about it.

    First, here’s how Retreat used to work:
    1. Previously, you could start a GW Battle and then Retreat as soon as the AI team had taken at least one action. When doing this, a few things were retained and a few things weren’t.
    2. Things that were retained:
      • Character death
      • Health loss
      • Special Ability cool downs
    3. Things that were not retained:
      • Turn meters
      • Buffs, debuffs, and status effects (like stun)
    4. The net result is you could go in and out of battles and take advantage of the things that are not retained. For example: if the AI party had built up buffs for them or if your team had debuffs / dots / status effects / etc., by using Retreat you could wipe out that part of the game. Couple this with the turn meters being reset, and the player could use the menu system to greatly impact the outcome of the battle.
    That was never the design intent of this feature.

    The goals of the Galactic War feature were to:
    1. Provide a real challenge to players. In other words: it’s meant to be hard! 
    2. Provide a place in the game where your entire collection can be brought to bear. Potentially every character can help you succeed (more on this below).
    3. Provide a “war of attrition” where health is persisted as you progressed in battles, not as you danced in and out of a given battle as was previously happening.
    4. And this will have more impact as the meta continues to expand,) provide a place where there’s an ever-evolving set of challenges in terms of which characters / parties / builds can be most effective.

    In pursuit of bringing the feature back in line with the original intent, here’s what we changed:
    1. Now, as long as you press Retreat before the battle ends, you exit the battle and everything is reset as if you hadn’t started the battle. It’s an instant rewind.
    2. This allows you to try different party compositions to unlock the victory. As a result, progression happens at the “Battle level” and not at the “turn level” as before.
    A common concern expressed is that this removes strategy. What is or isn’t strategic is a surprisingly subjective thing, so I don’t want to belabor this point. However, the strategic elements are now focused where they were meant to be:
    1. What decisions have you made in terms of how you build out and upgrade your overall collection. In other words, beyond your “A Team” how strong is your bench?
    2. When approaching a battle, how can you use your collection as a whole to overcome the challenge? Here is something we haven’t seen anyone mention (apologies if we’ve missed it…): there is still very much a use for the lower power “pawns” in your collection. If you want to absorb the special attacks from a given opponent party, you can send in one or more lower power characters. They’ll likely take one for the team (e.g., die), but then you can bring in your stronger characters to mop up.
    3. How can you dismantle a given opponent party while minimizing loss of characters, minimizing lost health, reserving your special attacks until they’re absolutely needed, and micro-managing the cool-downs of all of your characters?
    4. When facing a certain kind of party (stun lock, crit damage, Jedi party, healers, revive, etc., etc., etc.) what elements of your own collection can you best bring to defeat that challenge?

    And there’s more, but those are the main ones.

    A few more things to mention:
    1. Random number seed – A random number seed is a common programming practice where one number is generated randomly, and then used for a bunch of subsequent calculations. We know there have been active discussions around the random number seed being saved at the start of a battle for a given squad that you bring in. The result of this approach is if you repeat the exact same actions you will get the exact same results. Some folks have interpreted that as meaning there is no randomness in the battle. It’s an important distinction to make between the randomness set at the start of a battle vs. a bunch of randomness re-rolled within the battle. That being said, we are still discussing the ideal way for this to work. Currently if you change positions of the members in your party, that will invoke a re-roll of the seed. So, some players are focusing in on that as their “strategy” in order to keep re-rolling the seed in order to get a desired result. That isn’t how the feature is meant to work. Stay tuned, and don’t be surprised if we make a change here.
    2. Galactic War tuning – We are constantly tuning how the game (including this feature) works. For GW this includes opponent selection, how much health is granted after a Victory, etc. We are not making any changes right now, but will revisit this next week after we have enough data to see how the current approach is working.
    3. Lack of mention in the first version of the Release Notes – When we put out the notes on this update, we failed to include this change. This was honestly an result of human error and Aaron has explained how it happened. Sorry about that.
    4. Change and iteration – We have said this before, but it bears repeating. We will constantly be changing and iterating on the game throughout its lifespan. We will be doing this based on your feedback, on our own internal designs and feedback, and based on a host of other inputs. Please expect things to keep evolving as the game progresses.

    Long post, I know.

    Lots to discuss here and we’re looking forward to talking things through with you guys to see how we can keep making this and other parts of the game more enjoyable. That being said we are not planning on reverting this change because the feature simply wasn’t working as originally envisioned.

    Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further.

    Thanks!
    Hey Mr Salera
    I want to start with thank you for a great game I was hooked on my battlefield 4 on ps4 for ages until I found this my 10 yr old son thanks you as well now he gets his ps4 back a lot more now daddy not on it all the time lol. Don't worry about the bashers of new update haters are going hate regardless I was lucky I concentrated on leveling my bench while waiting for level 70 update I have over 20 toons at level 60 and 13 in purple that's all you need to get through new galactic war I won't finish all even with that but challenges are good it's why we play games I finished my first one in less time than before update retreated maybe 10 times went through just about entire bench but I'm sure will only get easier after I level even more reserves I don't whine I just over come obstacles only suggestion I would like to share is maybe reward each individual battle participants little more health after victory not a lot to where it gets easy again maybe 2 bars more. I have a question played war2glory for years before this and was invited to play test server where few of us tryed to find glitches exploits we were given u limited diamonds to try every possible scenario I did that while I played a regular server as well I'm a 45 yr old disabled loads time on my hands lol is there a test server for this just curious. Anyway will end with this games a great time killer its Star Wars chess in my mind games are supposed to be challenging people who spend money are supposed to have advantage it's why we spend your staff has done a great job in my opinion with this game thanks again
    Post edited by EA_Jesse on
  • I played GW and beat it easy. Tonight it might kick my butt. That's gaming folks. I am reading a lot of moaning because people lost GW. How lame would a game be if we always win. I like the new system. It means when my dooku dies in round 3 I can bring him back and try again with chewie. Keep up the good work and don't be depressed with the usual drama queens who threaten to quit because of a small change. :'(
  • Zehava wrote: »
    How am I expected to make a deep bench at the same time the level cap is raised and keeping just the main squad viable takes all my resources? I was going to start collecting stormtrooper Han shards just to expand my bench, but I feel like I have to go and finish off Sidious just to remain competitive.

    Lazy that you guys couldn't keep status effects when retreats happen. Best of both worlds, I'd say. Now my B and C teams are useless while I keep my main 5 at pace.

    I tend to agree with most of this. I'm mostly a F2P player (spent about $40) and getting a bench team worthy of using is going to be difficult and/or REALLY time consuming. The resources required to keep your top 5-6 at max level leads to slow work of leveling/gearing up a new character - much less multiple. I know the goal is not to rush through building a stacked set of 15 max characters in a week, but the line between rewarding progression and frustration is thin for these types of games.

    I never completed a GW table until I learned about retreating. It was still difficult for me, but do-able as a higher 50's level and finishing that last battle felt great. I'm afraid this new change is going to put me back at 200-400 GW shards per day. At level 60 I should have a chance at "end game" content completion - not lucky to make it half way through a table which is where I sit today after the change. Maybe that's what you want, but the unintended version of GW was a lot more fun IMO. I'll keep grinding for now...
  • Do you really want discuss about this topic? Then how did you delete other posts about GW? There are over 400 opinions. This seems like you don't want to talking with players.
  • Nonemo
    1656 posts Member
    @adaylife80 Let's be honest. When emotions start flaring a lot of topics get posted. All of them don't contribute to the quality of the discussion. I'm an offender myself there. Getting a fresh start for the discussion is a good thing. And this thread has so far been very level headed and constructive.
  • JerBu
    41 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    2 week player. Beat GW for first time tonight. The whole thing just feels better. Works better. Love the change. Understand I may not beat it tomorrow. That's how it should be.
    Keep up the good work
  • "Beyond your A team how's your bench / depth". In other words spend MORE fn money to rank up those characters because your 'B' 'C' and beyond bench that averages out in the ranks of 1-30 simply can't compete with AI ranks of all 60's.
    Liked it before. Bringing in characters in the teens to try and get off a shot or two and exhaust the enemy of their turns. Deeper and more strategic experience than 5 on 5.
  • adaylife80 wrote: »
    Do you really want discuss about this topic? Then how did you delete other posts about GW? There are over 400 opinions. This seems like you don't want to talking with players.

    They merged them into a new thread for good housekeeping, they weren't deleted.

    @CG_JohnSalera if GW is intended to be the pinnacle of end game achievement and the difficulty is designed to match that, I'm more than okay with that idea. The issue then, is that the rewards Aren't in a place to match. The credits are nice, but not enough to do more than gain one level or so or a lower end promotion. The ability mats won't do anything beyond one skill improvement (maybe a rank 3-4) and the single shard is mostly laughable for the final reward.

    I don't have the perfect solution here but could we get some sort of meaningful increase? At least base it on level. This could also be a way to give free players a chance at harder to obtain shards. Whatever you guys decide there just increase the value and then have GW as the grand game me that I think it was dreamed of.

    Disclosure: I'm not a f2p player, nor a whale
  • I had a couple questions about the new GW:

    If you send a team out there and they all get killed, will the enemies health and cooldowns refresh once you come back with a different team, or will they be at whatever they were left with?

    If you "retreat" a match, will the next match that you go into play out the same exact way (as in critical hits, attacks dodged. etc.) if you do the same exact actions? This has seemed to be the case in my small sample size, so I was wondering if this was the case for others.
  • There definitely needs selection tuning. From level 3 forward all teams were WAY above even the best of my characters. I've got a deep bench and the way it is structure now pretty much guarantees I'll not finish it for months. I'm all for a challenge, but this is just torture. Worse than enduring the drop rate for purple gear. I am NOT ftp. I spend a moderate amount, at least 50 a week. This is the first Friday I did not buy any crystals. Frankly the sheer impossibility this change suddenly made is making me lose interest. It was my favorite part of the game until you suddenly made it demoralizing. Change something fast, or I think I won't be the only one shifting from pay to play to free to not at all.
This discussion has been closed.