Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Replies

  • Hi, thanks for adressing us on this. Personally I never used force close but am guilty of retreating for taunts etc. I felt there was a nice balance of pros and cons with the old system and it was much more demanding to clear GW. It was much more fun, as is often the case when a challenge depends foremost on your ability to problem solve and stay on top of the overall flow of events. An example:

    now I can use pawns to absorb specials, I could do this before as well. Now they have to die so the role goes to the absolute **** toons. Before I could weigh their continued value in the battles to come, the pros and cons of bringing them in again and healing them. This would affect timers on my healers which could also be spent on an unlucky crit mid battle etc. There was always a tradeoff and you had to adapt on the fly. There were consequences! Now? Just wait for RNGesus to bring you the victory conditions you're happy with before you move on. Its mindnumbingly tedious and cheesier than before. And I havent even reset the seed (swapped char places) even once! There is also a marked differences in the compositions Im up against. Now its 100% boring cookiecutter teams only varying in * count. Before at least 15% had other compositions (my subjective experience). I will steamroll pretty much anything except 7* QGJ, Leia, FOTP and Poe teams with a bit of luck. With both the old and new system. The main difference is not the time it takes but rather how that time is speny. Before I had to constantly adapt and think ahead as even if I retreated I might still loose someone or make the entire starting composition too weak etc etc. Now I can just pick teams on random and watch in auto if there's any potential. If there is I can try it until I win. No sense of urgency or consequences, noone can die by accident (brought on by my actions) and ultimately up to the RNG. I HATE Korean RNG style MMORPGs (eg. ArcheAge) as it saps all sense of control from you.

    I feel the buffs not carrying over isnt a huge issue. I never bothered resetting for this unless DV was on the other team, I had low HP toons with 4+ dots and his turn was coming up (or Poe ~÷×%**$&#+). Even then I had to assess the situation and might have let the toon die. It was always a tradeoff. Now either you have the bench and patience to clear GW or you dont. Theres not much else involved from the players perspective.

    Finally I would like to go off-topic briefly: please look over the drop rates, most people (paying and f2p) will just leave this game when they hit the purple mat wall post gear lvl 7. I would hate to see you guys not being able to finish this game as people will start abandoning the ship. Imo its currently too close to the Asian RNG model and I would have though there'd be numbers available to you guys on how this generally doesn't go down well in the US/Europe (again, look at ArcheAge)

    Thanks,
    Concerned fan
  • I am 2-2 in GW since the Retreat change.

    I was 8-for-about-45 previous to the Retreat change.

    For what its worth... It was more challenging prior to the change. In fact, had lost 3 a row. And was struggling to get into the final three stages. Now Im beating much better squads because I can reset and find a winning strategy.

    Definitely more difficult before.
  • For me, the option of retreating made GW more fun. As of now 90% of my toons are no more than canon fodder because bringing them to a fight would make my team a lot weaker. This meanse that i only have a handfull of toons that are viable for a full match. With retreat I could be more tactical by using toons tailored to the team i was meeting (toons dying after one or two round was not a big deal). I agree that removing debuffs with retreat was op. I would love to have a retreat option as well as restart option where buffs got removed and debuffs where not.
  • I finishes two out of two post patch GW. It is indeed a little harder. However it is still doable and it takes just a little more finess. And for the record I don't have a expensive 7star lineup.
  • I like the new changes, GW is now my 'training area', where I can experiment with new strategies and group compositions - it's proven to be quite educational for me!

    The two times I've tried the new GW I've made it to the end, but not without losses. Which is how it's supposed to be. But I'm genuinely and positively in favour of the new change thus far - it's made for more of a challenge without punishing each mistake I make. I feel like, before I was fighting the mechanics of the game, but now I'm fighting my opponents team. The latter feels much more rewarding for me.

    I encourage you to try the new GW a bit more, adapt your playstyle to fit the new mechanics, and then just experiment with new and different combinations. At least I'm finding it surprisingly rewarding :)
  • For me it's a little desaster, i got better and better and GW gets harder and harder, but with the same rewards. For now i can win GW, but it cost too many time for the same rewards. Why should i become better?

    I love the idee for the events, there are different Difficulty level, why not in GW?

    (and yes, sorry for bad english :) )

  • Hate the change. Cleared gw with the same 5 characters tonight. No point in changing anything anymore. I used to use all my 17 lvl 60s. "Gaming" the rng system is not strategy. "Oh dang they won every roll, let me just use the exact same toons in different slots and see if it gets better for me. .."

    That's horrible.

    This..
  • five2zero
    512 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    At this time there is no fun. Tie pilot or leia kills me with only one turn.
    Attackers are to powerfull against healers.
  • While hesitant to post in a thread with so much complaining, I would like to give my feedback about the change.

    The old retreat mechanic was easy to abuse. Taking out the fastest members with a high-speed team could give you almost a full round of attacks traded for a single attack against you. In the same battle you would then be left with 1-2 enemies and could leisurely retreat, bring in a full team of healers and perhaps a taunter together with heavily wounded dps to make sure that your entire team had high health and healing cooldowns ready for the next fight. If GW was supposed to be hard this had to go.

    That said, I actively avoided force-closing before the change partly from the fact that this didn't feel like it was intended, but also from the fact that an "undo"-button is not generally associated with hard content but rather with "easy-mode". To push this into what you intend for players to do feels wrong for me.
  • WildWest1974
    628 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    So, has anyone else actually tried sacrificing your lower ranked players? I did, and it's a viable strategy.

    I have about 12 toons close to my current rank(48), and about 20 more between 20 and 40. I sent a squad of five lower ranks in against a node of rank 48s. I was able to take out both healers and deal some good damage before they all died and I "lost". When I went back in with my A team, every dead enemy was still dead, the remaining enemies were still hurt, and they were still on cooldown. So I mopped em up.

    So, the tactic can still work, you just have to sacrifice a full squad (toons I wasn't going to use anyway) before you get the benefit.

    I can see this being very useful, especially when you hit a much higher ranked team in later stages.
  • obiwan1011
    396 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    So, has anyone else actually tried sacrificing your lower ranked players? I did, and it's a viable strategy.

    I have about 12 toons close to my current rank(48), and about 20 more between 20 and 40. I sent a squad of five lower ranks in against a node of rank 48s. I was able to take out both healers and deal some good damage before they all died and I "lost". When I went back in with my A team, every dead enemy was still dead, the remaining enemies were still hurt, and they were still on cooldown. So I mopped em up.

    So, the tactic can still work, you just have to sacrifice a full squad (toons I wasn't going to use anyway) before you get the benefit.

    I can see this being very useful, especially when you hit a much higher ranked team in later stages.

    "That's good. You've taken your first step into a larger world."


    On a side note, don't know why CGJohn mentioned this as part of the reasons for implementing force close as the new retreat. This was practised in the previous retreat as well.
  • Honestly I'm prolly done with this game specifically, and EA in general. I don't want a game mode I win every time, but without the old retreat there's no realistic way to beat teams that are 6-9 levels above me with better gear and more stars starting in battle 5. It's preposterous to think that's going to be fair or fun for anyone. Make the matches more even if you're going to take away, in my opinion, the best part about GW. Being able to strategize, bring low health toons in to heal at the end, that was awesome. Now it's reset until the RNG is in your favor, if it ever is.
    I highly recommended this game to several friends. I shall just as strongly recommend they spend their time and money elsewhere now. The game is not fair for f2p players.

  • CGJohn, if you want an executive summary of what the players who are critical of the change are saying, here it is:

    1. It has become more difficult only if you don't have enough healers - which is often the case for the new/low-level players. However, seasoned players actually find it no different, if not easier
    2. It has become less fun because the aspect of managing ability cool downs and subbing depleted heroes in and out are gone. GW is now more or less the same as an Arena match
    3. It has become a repetitious exercise of quit-reload to get the optimal result. There is zero consequence for poor outcomes during a match as you just need to quit-reload
    4. Restore previous retreat and allow effect status to remain to eliminate exploiting retreat after the A.I uses an ability
  • thanks EA! i won't spend more $ on this **** now! o:)
  • Relish_Yoda
    164 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    CGJohn, if you want an executive summary of what the players who are critical of the change are saying, here it is:

    1. It has become more difficult only if you don't have enough healers - which is often the case for the new/low-level players. However, seasoned players actually find it no different, if not easier
    2. It has become less fun because the aspect of managing ability cool downs and subbing depleted heroes in and out are gone. GW is now more or less the same as an Arena match
    3. It has become a repetitious exercise of quit-reload to get the optimal result. There is zero consequence for poor outcomes during a match as you just need to quit-reload
    4. Restore previous retreat and allow effect status to remain to eliminate exploiting retreat after the A.I uses an ability

    @obiwan1011

    Nailed it. Agree with all points.

    On point 1: I ran FOTP surrounded by 4 healers for all matches this morning. Just cruised through it all. Was more fun before, really.

    As a positive: the shards at the end look to be Chromium players now! Got one Leia shard and one QGJ shard. Yay! Several hundred GWs later I can have a chromium character without buying a pack...

    Lineup:
    Barris (L) - Bronzium Pull!
    Daka - Useful stun
    Lumi - Healer/Attacker
    JC
    FOTP

    @CG_JohnSalera What if you revert to the old method (plus point 4 above) and tweak the lineups/buffs to make it as challenging as you intended to in the beginning?
  • One point I would like to make is that having a strong team and high arena rank makes Galactic War INCREDIBLY difficult.

    But this increased difficulty doesn't give increased reward.

    You face top 50 arena standard teams from battle six onwards. You cannot hope to have multiple squad combinations capable of standing up to that, and inevitably you leave each round several damaged.

    The rewards system of GW punishes you fit having a strong team and good arena rank.

    At least retreating to heal up gave you a chance.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    Lavigkaye wrote: »
    thanks EA! i won't spend more $ on this **** now! o:)

    Yes, after the update P2W players have even more of an advantage and even then the drop rates and chromium packs have been horrible. This game has become a grind and no longer fun. I will no longer spend any money on it.
  • Preemo_Magin
    1826 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I think that old and new retreat both have pros and cons. Old added a new meta-battle mechanic, including rotating, high speed swarm teams, anti buff and status tactics, mixed fodder tactics (eg. Bring Sid and 4 level 1 char to heal Sid), etc. My take away is that many people would love meta-battle options. Some others, more than meta, are still not developed enough to pass Specific high power enemies. If you fix the debuff and status loses and keep time meter, they still won't pass, and will still complain. But heavy fans missing the meta-battle options are very real and several high spenders miss it. Some others find that the outcomenof a COMPLETE battle can't be influenced sufficiently with the current option of just selecting a team and how to fight. Thus, for them now is Reset until luck or RNG helps them.

    On the other hand many high spenders (meaning people that love the game, know a lot and play very regularly and use a very wide variety of toons) also said they love the ability to test team build outs. They are out seeking to create the ultimate team setup. That testing squad scenarios was something they appreciated and reset was the place to do it. Some others (I include myself here) think the meta-battle and micro management, the clearing of debuffs, statuses and gimmicks of old retreat made GW easier...diminishing value of taunters, debuffers, cleaners, etc. and wasn't a fair fight to the enemy which can't retreat, can't use they abilities, and has to fight 5 vs my 20+ char rooster in one battle.

    My summary is that CG is trying to please two different groups of people (each having f2p and p2p) that are very passionate about different things:

    1) Meta-battle richness at per turn level and meta-battle options that make the game interesting and more amusing. Deeper. While the current retreat was flawed, they miss the meta battle. I feel if meters, status, etc. are kept, the "fixed" meta battle will even more boring. But I liked the concept of coming up with creative ideas or reading micro-tactics like the Sid heal-by-sending-level1-chars - even if I found those not to mybtaste was interesting tou could do it if needed.

    2) The meta is the long term effort of how to select, design, build, scale and put teams into production versus specific enemies, and exactly how manage a battle once you are in and fairly dealing with taunters, debuff ir whatever is oresent. Practice and patience is enough. Team desing and execution. And try innovative ideas about teams, things never seen, in the quest to build amazing teams.

    In the posts there is also a good chunck of frustation related to difficulty (some find current or old too easy or hard). but this is not a fundamental difference: they just either want to lass GW and can't, or can pass so easily (the other extreme) that get bored. Both methods have a mix of these two.

    But can't CG please both, and make the game more amazing? What if the meta-battle is just a call for more strategic options within battles? What if it hooks a very loyal happy group of advicates and spenders? What if those that want to test things and love resets could still do it?

    I think both can be monetized. And that if CG saw value, could evolve the game to cater to both. While this takes time, a quick fix can be as follows:

    Short term, relabel Retreat to Reset. Fix the old retreat for the most gross cheats (keep debuffs, status, buffs and turn meters) and add it as a second Menu Option. Limit Retreats to 5 per battle.

    At some point later create an Arena playground, and at that moment limit Resets to the same 5 per battle. At that point, GW will allow you to Reset or Retreat a certain number of times...and if tou can't pass, you really need to become better at GW.

    Hope for the best. I liked Resets more, but I have been on the other side, and when something you love is gone and you can't do anything, it feels like a huge loss as you are powerless and the game makes you too involved.


  • @AnakinVader30 far from it. I have a lot of 4* that I just unlocked because I don't chase all of the 7* that everyone else does.

    I don't really compete hard in pvp because my server is a lot of whales. I am just looking for one interesting game mode and to collect characters here.
  • Ok yeah, my 3rd day playing under the new rules. It definitely forces a shallow not deep bench. I can use the B team for maybe the first battle. Then I better have all my 6* 61 purple healers in there with A couple heavy hitters because that is ALL that will get me through even a couple of the ridiculously high teams I face after that. It's a definite now. I just went free to play. Prolly won't miss my 50-100 a week. You took my favorite feature and made it as boring as simming 100 times a day for purple gear. So sad.
  • Like the new GW system now than before...
  • Like the new GW system now than before...

    Shocking!
  • you made the change because it wasent intended in the first place,

    1. it is meant to be hard, but not impossible. for some of us it was actually near impossible. not it actually got impossible. why(atleast for myself)?

    i havent manage to get an whole bunch of strong charecter's i have 4-5 thats it. rest is medium and below. and when i am level 60 and faces opposition according to my level i had an hard time in gw, only managed to finish it 1 time since i started playing. the other times i usally ended up 3-4 chest below the last one. Now i am only managing 3-4 chest and after that i only have low level charecters left(below lvl 40) and meeting lvl 50+ purple gear team. i die pretty fast.

    so for me gw was hard even with retreat,force quit. but now it is impossible. It seem like your game mechanics do not calculate your entire team composition strenght when you set up matches, but looks at the player level(i am 60).

    I hope you will also look up the match setting mechanics, because now gw have become unplayable for me, and that have resulted in me loosing interest in the game.

    No i do not expect gw to be easy to finish, and something i might only finish 1 out of 10, and i would be fine with that. but i am proberly currently at 1 out of 70 gw run's. this is not an way to keep players in the game, when finding gear takes ages to be able to compete with players at your equal level.

    i got the same problem with arena, but i am fine with it. i used to be just around 400-600 mark. now i hardly get past 800, and declining. Might be on an hard server with player playing lots more then me. It an fine line between making an game challenging and hard, or challenging and almost impossible. Last one will not keep playing in the long run.

    hope you can make the game more enjoyable then it is now on certain area's.

    increase drop rate on gear, Shards an bit. Change gw match making mechanics to be more in line with your actually roster of charecter's.
  • MeetraSurik
    313 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Throwing my two cents in to this discussion, since the first thread on the topic hasn't seemed to have gotten any dev posts since the first few pages.

    We've now had 2 giant balance changes come out without any notice whatsoever. CG/EA have said that both releases should've been broadcasted before. The lack of transparency here is quite disconcerting. The Barriss nerf being hush hush before it came out the subsequent backlash that ensued brought a statement saying that we're not going to be getting any more surprises.

    Then, we got this. The lack of professionalism shown by CG/EA to (without notice) spring something this big on us, intended or not, is inexcusable. That the patch notes were released a mere ~20 minutes before the patch went live, and they were released with the apparent blessing of the two companies while omitting the GW change in the notes, is quite disturbing. Similarly, having been told that we were going to be absolutely 0 balance changes outside the ones inherent to raising the level cap is quite insulting. I find it especially egregious that Leia's multiattack chance was addressed, while "Against All Odds" is left to continue to proc at 100%.

    So by my count, that's two lies that have come out of CG/EA. Counting Aaron's (forgivable, imo) misunderstanding of the psuedo-random number generation in battles, and subsequent (false) reassurances that the number generation is 100% random, that's three.

    Now, with all that said, on to my opinion on the GW change. First off, that you rolled it out while keeping the atrocious matching/scaling problems and other bugs in the game is infuriating. What makes it worse is that you've now mentioned impetus at CG/EA to fix some of it, but have decided to roll this out anyway.

    I'm hearing a lot that the behavior of retreating once your enemy's cooldowns have been popped, and possibly switching teams before re-entering the battle, was never intended. Some of the playerbase even feel that this behavior should be considered cheating. It's also been brought up that the ability to force close the app, effectively loading a save state made at the last retreat/match start is also an unintended behavior. And again, players have called this out as cheating.

    We never should've gotten the GW change, or any balance changes, in this patch. We were told that balance-affecting changes wouldn't be happening until the forthcoming patch. Furthermore, we should've been told well in advance that this change was coming. The most egregious bugs W/R/T unintended power level such as FOTP or Leia should've been fixed before rolling this out, as well.

    Regardless of the optical screw ups that occurred, the change to GW should've happened much differently. Buffs/debuffs should have been made persistent across GW battle instances. The psuedo-random number generation should've been replaced with actual RNG. The capability to load via force-close should've been removed. Doing these things would've removed the need to gimp an actually elegant feature, while still keeping the incentive (or even capacity) to cheese rather low.


    Along with these actions that could've raised the overall difficulty, the tuning of opponents should've been divorced from Arena ranking. The matchmaking algorithm should've just taken power rating into account, applied a negative percentage in the beginning of GW matches, leveling out in the middle, and ending with facing teams that have X% more power than yours. It would've still ended up with mismatches based on the success of the enemy team's composition, but you wouldn't have level 50 blue gear f2p people going up against p2w 60's with 5 star Dooku's.

    Speaking of new/f2p players, I think it's quite ridiculous that this change has been implemented without lowering the overall difficulty of GW. Previously, save-scumming was the only way for new/f2p players to have a chance at beating GW every day. What you've effectively done is created a new power barrier between new/f2p players and the established/p2p players. I know a certain amount of this is inescapable, and there's even a financial benefit to putting a soft cap on the power level of the f2p player, but you've still got a sizeable amount of people that were able to farm Phasmas and Luminaras basically for free. New players have to fight these teams to progress, and that's not fair.

    The way you've released this GW change has irritated the majority of the player base, myself included. You've not solved the issue of cheesy tactics, and some are even saying that you have only served to make it worse.

    Full disclosure: I've spent ~$350, and haven't lost a GW for almost a month straight at this point.
    Post edited by MeetraSurik on
  • Huh.... I didn't know you could retreat... I miss all the good stuff playing fair (or oblivious)
  • Cythis wrote: »
    1) Better rewards

    2) X amount of free resurrections (Bacta tanks) then add a cost to resurrect. Win / Win - I'll leave the details to your team.

    3) Better rewards

    No, too much of a payers model.
    IGN: Malmsteen's Comet
  • Ajizay wrote: »
    I like the new changes, GW is now my 'training area', where I can experiment with new strategies and group compositions - it's proven to be quite educational for me!

    The two times I've tried the new GW I've made it to the end, but not without losses. Which is how it's supposed to be. But I'm genuinely and positively in favour of the new change thus far - it's made for more of a challenge without punishing each mistake I make. I feel like, before I was fighting the mechanics of the game, but now I'm fighting my opponents team. The latter feels much more rewarding for me.

    I encourage you to try the new GW a bit more, adapt your playstyle to fit the new mechanics, and then just experiment with new and different combinations. At least I'm finding it surprisingly rewarding :)

    Agree. I usually lose a few toons during the GW, but lose fewer now. Society has such a short attention span that your approach isn't common. I ran into a 7* Leia, 6* Rey, 7* Phasma, 7*Lumi, 7* Poe team. My A team lost a few times before I decided to switch it up. Brought in some different toons, Poe mostly, and beat them despite losing Poe. He did his job. Personally i love the change and I am not a big spender, don't have Dooku or Barris.
    IGN: Malmsteen's Comet
  • Swgoh_sir_randy
    1 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Not going to complain and carry on, but the update has been made makes the game AI too unrealsitic.

    You say it's been made more "challenging". Not true. The designers must have been drunk or angry and made the tweaks too steep.

    It's only a game and if you're hell bent on making things too hard for people and making them spend more money, you're greed has just got the best of you. Good luck, but I hope you fail.

    The game was fun while it lasted, but it's just plain silly now.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member

    Someone (P2W) got to level 67 within the first day. Some else just posted the ability mats they get at level 70. GW pulls from other teams (it is assumed) +/- your level. When P2W are able to jump so far ahead so quickly, how difficult will their opponents be in GW who are still at level 60 or 61? Do you think that this change effects them very much?

    Now how much do you think that this change effects not only F2P, but smaller spenders who are still at 60 or 61? Not to mention how do you compete against those people in the arena. They just turned GW into one long grind of arena battles.
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