Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Replies

  • I wonder the arena rank of those who say it is laughably easy. I'm a bit calmer today, but once again I'm running into teams with unusually high proc and crit rates everywhere.
  • Preemo_Magin
    1826 posts Member
    edited January 2016

    Best shot guide I read ever. Everything is accurate here, and key. I don't find this tedious, and there are other things you can do. But if you have 8 toons this pretty much sums things. Good job.

    Thanks. I should probably add, though people will learn from experience, that my top five is sufficient for a satisfactory battle outcome about 80% of the time, and 90% within the first 3-4 tries. I've only had one battle where I got to the point I had to sacrifice Poe, and that worked on the 2nd try.

    GW is a perfect distraction for me on my iPad to get me through my daily treadmill exercise, and I usually finish the map in 40-45 minutes. I don't use auto until it is clear I have the very last battle in the bag.

    Yes, same here. But my Poe is 4*. I am building a plan to test in GW with Poe and companions. I have been experimenting with other teams now. The challenge with GW is one tries to avoid risks at all costs. Reset allows me to just try out new things.

    I really wish I could finish it, and reset for NO REWARDS just to play.

    Actually, just a PLAY RANDOM team area could help do that. Right now only GW lets you play for fun. And I don't understand how pretty strong chars propose to have no place to test teams to gain a micro-management function they don't even need as they can 100% finish it with 70% of rooster alive...if not 100% alive.

    Why trade our only place just PLAY and try things out? The game needs more content and it's in the work. I wish the current model could co exist with per-turn squad changes so that everyone is happy. But I could be spared all that rotation, dancing, etc. myself with a few occasional resets I do every day, that'd be perfect. I complete GW in 40 mins. And anytime Infind myself doing a reset I ask myself "do I have a better plan?" And there usually is one.

    The only thing that isn't nice is doing politics to limit others options. Something that was dominant in the forum with the "bannable exploit" comments. Those kind of flame wars, uncalled, are what push me away from the game. If everyone could be happy and not see others loss as their win. Other's disadvantage as their advantage. That would make my day a GREAT day, everyday. I think CG is doing a good job in having taken more time to assess Vader situation, and although some "death penalty" I applaud CG for being so civiliced and patient. Like them reading the forum all the time.


  • d3gauss
    311 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    @antooki first, the change has only been in effect 2/3 days, so you couldn't really say if your luck will continue. But I am sad to tell you it will, because this is way easier. And for many of us easier does not equal more fun.

    The thing about roster depth doesn't make any sense. While retreating to remove debuffs was admittedly cheesy, you still ran the chance of some huge crits on a vital character taking them out of the game, and there was nothing you could legitimately do about it.

    This is no longer the case. If an important character dies, retreat. If sid dodges your lumis special, retreat. If poe lands expose on your whole team, retreat. Sure if you go in with the same team it will happen that way again, unless you change one action, then lumis special probably hits and poe gets resisted. No problem.

    This new method relies far more heavily on an A team than the previous method. That is because it allows an A team. Used to be sometimes I was scraping together my D team to finish, not anymore. For the most part my A team will make it all the way through. Maybe I will sacrifice one or two because I like how Cool downs and health ended, but I get to make the choice of which characters I'm going to sacrifice. And I get to spend hours letting the RNG work for me. It is tedious and not fun at all.
  • It's now impossible to lose GW being that you can reset it. Before I was nearly 50/50 on completing it. Now I know I can complete it every single time without fail. I simply just make the right moves until I win, resetting when it doesn't work. I guess it's supposed to be like a puzzle game now?
  • d3gauss wrote: »
    And I get to spend hours letting the RNG work for me. It is tedious and not fun at all.

    But do you really need (as in "can't finish otherwise") to do that? I imagine with your rooster maybe it's you trying to play it flawlessly, but not needed. Inimagine you with pretty strong A B and maybe even C chars.

    I was level 50 a while ago. And in the most difficult moments I retreated to clear debuffs and such. But if debuffs are gone, and reset is gone, while I can still finish with my rooster, anyone starting GW will have a very hard time until they have strong B and C and D teams.

  • d3gauss
    311 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    d3gauss wrote: »
    And I get to spend hours letting the RNG work for me. It is tedious and not fun at all.

    But do you really need (as in "can't finish otherwise") to do that? I imagine with your rooster maybe it's you trying to play it flawlessly, but not needed. Inimagine you with pretty strong A B and maybe even C chars.

    I was level 50 a while ago. And in the most difficult moments I retreated to clear debuffs and such. But if debuffs are gone, and reset is gone, while I can still finish with my rooster, anyone starting GW will have a very hard time until they have strong B and C and D teams.

    I probably don't need to, but you do need to account for the broken characters. And being reckless for the sake of expediency, as in all things, is just a poor move.

    As for new players, I have always felt by game flavor and it has been confirmd here by devs...this should be hard, and you should have to be established to win. New players should not win.
  • CG - Why did you do this to a game with such high potential? If someone is holding your loved ones hostage, just give us a sign...

  • For those who prefer the new retreat, it is "better" because it's nothing more than a quit-reload. Zero consequence even if RNG worked against your favour since you can always reload for a fresh start. Let me say that again. Z.E.R.O. consequence. Hence, as long as you have the patience to retry battles, completing GW is actually easier because you are getting unlimited trials to derive the most optimal result. I fail to see how this makes players use their bench more because you don't need to in the first place.

    On the other hand, while the old retreat could be abused to waste the A.I's buff/debuffs, the health status was retained when you retreated. There was a consequence if RNG worked against you. You couldn't just restart fresh and try again - unless you used force close. If one of your core heroes got killed, it did hurt and impacted your chances of completing GW as there was no second chance. You had to rotate others in and out while you try to heal depleted heroes - which was a feature that is not available in any other modes in the game, making GW a fun and unique experience.

    So CGJohn, which retreat provides more challenge while encouraging players to utilise a wider roster? I don't think it is even close.
  • Terendol
    24 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    <accidental double Post>
  • You tuned the AI too. You need to admit that. It behaves far more aggressively since the patch. Also, the AI gets probably 2x the damage and health of a human controlled team at same level.

    You just want people to spend money. You can post all the altruistic game developer garbage that you want to - but the fact of the matter is you want to frustrate people into spending money, even though that money doesn't even begin to level the landscape.

    AI pumping is seriously dishonest and shows the classic EA lack of integrity. I mean, look at clearing the stages - even when you out level and out gear a light side or dark side stage the AI is tremendously over buffed, each stage taking 10 minutes (so you never want to do it again and buy sim tickets).

    But go ahead, legitimize or rationalize it how you want. This is the greediest mobile grinder I have seen.
  • TwoThumbedBobKelso
    127 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    We should be able to choose not to attack in order to heal when there are less enemies. Choosing not to attack should be a strategic option but with limited use.
    Post edited by TwoThumbedBobKelso on
  • I don't care about the GW change. It's the same as force close now. Whoopy.

    I do think it's laughable that the reasoning was to encourage people to 'use their bench'. Newsflash! Most players don't have much of a high level buffed bench. Most would be lucky to have 5-8 strong toons unless they are in the high level P2P severe minority.

    So, if it was for more bench play... I suspect it was for more profitability by pushing people in yet another area to spend more to get more.
  • d3gauss wrote: »
    Chico wrote: »
    They removed the mechanic that was originally built into the game because it removed buffs and debuffs. The thing is, it worked both ways, both opponent and you got your buffs cleared. I accepted this as part of the game.

    It was fun to swap in characters in and out. Now it's just a long grind. It's just another arena mechanic when I liked that GW was a different approach.

    I find it tedious to keep resetting matches to ensure that it went as perfectly as possible so my team is capable to compete in the next round. It's boring.

    Bring back the original mechanic. I'd love if they fix the debuff/buff error if the devs feel it will make it fair.

    Don't buy that line. They took it out because it cost less to do than to fix the force close exploit.

    I work in this industry, I know exactly how the meeting on that one went. There were two ways to do it, the right way and the cheap way. It's all about the ROI.

    Same here, seen the insanity first hand. Part of it is the techies are usually not management, it's some non-tech guy who doesn't see it...
  • Varlie
    1286 posts Member
    Since it seems the people are split nearly 50/50 on the issue, will you (CG/EA) consider making the following change to GW?

    Change the current, updated version of retreat to "Restart Battle" and then add a new "Retreat" option that worked like it did before but kept all the buff/debuff, health, and activation status on each character.

    This way, the people who like just resetting the battle with new heroes can play with the new way and people who prefer (for lack of better word and really not wanting to insult anyone) a more strategic method of playing both have options.
  • obiwan1011 wrote: »
    For those who prefer the new retreat, it is "better" because it's nothing more than a quit-reload. Zero consequence even if RNG worked against your favour since you can always reload for a fresh start. Let me say that again. Z.E.R.O. consequence. Hence, as long as you have the patience to retry battles, completing GW is actually easier because you are getting unlimited trials to derive the most optimal result. I fail to see how this makes players use their bench more because you don't need to in the first place.

    On the other hand, while the old retreat could be abused to waste the A.I's buff/debuffs, the health status was retained when you retreated. There was a consequence if RNG worked against you. You couldn't just restart fresh and try again - unless you used force close. If one of your core heroes got killed, it did hurt and impacted your chances of completing GW as there was no second chance. You had to rotate others in and out while you try to heal depleted heroes - which was a feature that is not available in any other modes in the game, making GW a fun and unique experience.

    So CGJohn, which retreat provides more challenge while encouraging players to utilise a wider roster? I don't think it is even close.

    Agree.
    I would have thought adjusting force quit to operate like retreat would encourage deeper roster and limit # of retreats to curtail retreat abuse. Sounds like EA/CG wanted one but not both, couldn't fix force quit to work like retreat, and killed retreat because it was easier fix, now trying to rationalize as better strategic and intended function of GW.
    Make retreat like it worked before, limit number (per battle or total number), and make force quit restore previous match up as was (no reset) when closed. Then, I think GW works the way it was intended. You could even make retreat work like energy, arena timer; certain number for "free", could refresh number of retreats available for crystals.
    The current function isn't really fun strategy. It's tedious, free trial and error.
    Even with retreat and 15 lvl 60 characters before, there were GWs I couldn't complete and exhausted my roster on a few occasions (never used force quit to reset a match and didn't retreat to debuff, seemed like cheating to me). The retreat was useful, but it had consequences because dead characters stayed dead and health/CD were still in play. Now, I just reset and try again without much roster management.
    GW isn't really any more difficult, but certainly less enjoyable and certainly doesn't feel like a war strategy game. Yeah, still some strategy and thought, but I have trouble understanding how the current functions were intended to represent a war strategy type progression game.
    "That is why you fail."
  • EM650 wrote: »
    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.

    Even funnier, a "small spender" in this game is like what, $300, which buys you zero respect, maybe even ridicule around here for being a loser and a whiner...
  • TyloRen
    381 posts Moderator
    It used to be fun, full of strategy. Now you are hoping that the AI picks your lesser players, rather than part of your "A Team". Also, the new update targets healers first....which, while I think is a good development, it sucks for GW. I don't want to have to make all of these players amazing just to be able to survive...Luminara, Barriss, Elder, Daka (who I don't have) and Talia (whose heal is garbage for GW). I've even started leveling up Ashoka just so I have another "healer".

    The old way, you could plan ahead, knowing that you have, say, 2 turns left on a cool down, bring the opposition down enough so you could retreat, suffer the consequences from said retreat, and hopefully get that player back to usable. Instead I'm going in and out of battles, knowing that if one player goes first, or if one player gets killed I HAVE to reset, otherwise there is no way I'm winning GW

    Now I'm dealing with 7 star, purple, and baller teams halfway through, who i get torn apart by because my entire roster isn't 7 star, purple, and baller (there is no way unless you drop $5k). And I've spent a good amount of money on this game.

    This new development needs to be changed asap, especially since it was done without any kind of announcement.

    The developers tried to play the "we are one of you" cards before, and now I don't believe it one bit. Fix your game or give me a refund. I'm already forming my dispute.
  • The new retreat does not make it more challenging. What you need is 3/4 healers (Lumi, JC/Barriss, Talia/Old Daka) + 2 damage dealers + 1 buff or de buffer (you probably don't even need this). Then may be 2 back up DD+stuns then you are set. It is almost certain that without a deep bench you would need at least 2 healers in a match when facing teams of the same power as yours to get back to full health at the end of the match. So in total you need about 8 chars (I only used 7 to complete the last 2 GW though).

    You need to make sure that these 8 chars have similar power though, otherwise you may face high power teams that you cant beat because one of your char's power is too high. Always leave targets with high hp last. Facing high DD teams is a bit tricky but with a few FC/retreats to change the seed you should be fine.

    I think to make it better for new players, it is probably better to have GW normal and GW hard (but that should be reserved for monthly and weekly events, I don't want to spend 2 hours grinding for both normal and hard in weekdays).
  • obiwan1011 wrote: »
    For those who prefer the new retreat, it is "better" because it's nothing more than a quit-reload. Zero consequence even if RNG worked against your favour since you can always reload for a fresh start. Let me say that again. Z.E.R.O. consequence. Hence, as long as you have the patience to retry battles, completing GW is actually easier because you are getting unlimited trials to derive the most optimal result. I fail to see how this makes players use their bench more because you don't need to in the first place.

    On the other hand, while the old retreat could be abused to waste the A.I's buff/debuffs, the health status was retained when you retreated. There was a consequence if RNG worked against you. You couldn't just restart fresh and try again - unless you used force close. If one of your core heroes got killed, it did hurt and impacted your chances of completing GW as there was no second chance. You had to rotate others in and out while you try to heal depleted heroes - which was a feature that is not available in any other modes in the game, making GW a fun and unique experience.

    So CGJohn, which retreat provides more challenge while encouraging players to utilise a wider roster? I don't think it is even close.

    Very good points. The past few days of gw have been a tedious chore to say the least. I had never once used fc in the past but did use retreat on occasion. Less often as time went on and my roster powered up and expanded. I agree that the big consequence of getting sloppy during the earlier gw was that if you lost any of your lead characters that was that and they were done until the restart. Now I'm all for taking the debuff cheesiness out of the old retreat model but don't just throw a half *** attempt of a fix like this and call it more strategic. Running the same battle 4, 5, or 6 times in some of the harder nodes is not strategic. It is dull and gets stale real quick. If there are this many experienced players who feel this strongly against the new retreat/fc model then I think there should be some serious thought put into maintaining the old model while fixing the glaring exploits therein. I'm fairly confident the devs can use their creative geniuses and come up with a model that the majority of gamers will be happy with. The people have spoken!
  • Terendol wrote: »
    You tuned the AI too. You need to admit that. It behaves far more aggressively since the patch. Also, the AI gets probably 2x the damage and health of a human controlled team at same level.

    You just want people to spend money. You can post all the altruistic game developer garbage that you want to - but the fact of the matter is you want to frustrate people into spending money, even though that money doesn't even begin to level the landscape.

    AI pumping is seriously dishonest and shows the classic EA lack of integrity. I mean, look at clearing the stages - even when you out level and out gear a light side or dark side stage the AI is tremendously over buffed, each stage taking 10 minutes (so you never want to do it again and buy sim tickets).

    But go ahead, legitimize or rationalize it how you want. This is the greediest mobile grinder I have seen.

    And this as well. How does an equal powered ai version of sid sidestep my lumi force push 95% of the time while my sid gets slapped silly by an equally powered ai lumi waaayyyy more frequently?
  • The new GW made the game boring. With old retreat system, even if it was unintentional, it made GW a totally different game, with constant swapping of various characters. Now you can't really swap out in the middle of the game and it works best if you use the same 5 highest-ranked/equipped/starred toons from the beginning to the end. New GW DESTROYED the most important aspect of GW - variability, distinct character from other modes of the game. Now you get to play the same 5, maybe 6 characters over and over again all over the place.
  • Since the update, I breezed thru GW the 1st day, then made it 3/4 thru the next two days. Now it is pick team, start battle, AI dodges your must hit specials, retreat, tinker, repeat. Restarting repeatedly to grind through takes forever and is seriously boring.
  • Vallik
    163 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    It's now impossible to lose GW being that you can reset it. Before I was nearly 50/50 on completing it. Now I know I can complete it every single time without fail. I simply just make the right moves until I win, resetting when it doesn't work. I guess it's supposed to be like a puzzle game now?

    its abit like that i went up against a team i really had no place beating and lost 3 times then fell upon the perfect RNG

    opponent team was all 7 stars Maul, FO Pilot, Leia, Ben, Sid

    i opened up with sid on the fo pilot my fo pilot assisted double crit 1 shotting him

    my second move was my fo pilot 1 double crit one shotted maul with an assist from daka stunning Leia

    and i mopped up form there
    if that happened to me in arean i would likely throw my phone at the wall but i was very happy to have it happen in my favor

    my follow up team was Qui gon, Leia, Ben, Sid FO pilot also all 7 star

    i just kep moving units around until i got the correct double stuns from daka early and was able to build from there

    it kinda makes it pointless just remember what moves stun what then try different things from there

    i also had a team with Poe, Poggle, Gen warrior, sig and Fo pilot all 7 stars for my 9th fight that i had 3 units dead before i could move swapped my order of units around and kept doing so until poe did something other than taunt then i could attempt to stun and move on from there

    GW is just **** now

    but we better not critique it to much because the next step ir u can retreat or u lose and have to spend crystals to get back in

    (hope im not giving them ideas this is an EA owned game afterall)
  • There's a lot of anger. I sorta understand - I was unnerved the first one or two times I tried retreating and it didn't work the way it used to. That was when I checked the forums. Honestly, I don't terribly mind the new Galactic War. I used to beat it daily, and I haven't failed to beat it with the new system yet. I don't pay any money (bought a few crystals twice, but that's it really). I'm sitting at ~Rank 180 on average when the prizes come in. What I hope CG will use to go forward with GW is rather than rolling back the exploit, make a much wider bench sensible. Due to the current new-ness of SWGoH, most teams are non-diverse, "sensible" options. Once there are new characters and more time to explore and use them, a large bench in the GW helps you overcome other teams in the most logical way - i.e. GW evolves from a game of pure attrition where we meatgrinder, retreat, and strike to one where we are forced to evaluate the opposing team and assemble the best team to beat it. Given that we KNOW there are more characters and features incomiing, it makes sense to lay the ground for greater diversity now. This way people with rock solid A-Teams dominate Arena, whereas players who like a broad team and slower progress (like me) gain advantage at the GW. This seems in line with the note that was made about maybe dealing with the RNG reset issue that so many are angry over.

    The way to win is not exploiting glitches in the mechanics - It's strategy and tactics. Which would make it like Space Chess, which is cool.
  • Guys, I think everyone should give it a rest. Same arguments repeated ad nauseaum.

    Devs, you have enough material here, why don't you close the thread? You have already said as of now, the change stays, no going back. I guess you have enough ideas repeated a gazillion times for implementing future changes.
  • kgwzz
    23 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I think it would be more fun if the teams we faced in gw were more varied, forcing players to use the different strengths of our characters, e.g. the regular A team for the typical arena lineup, then a speed team to face a relatively slower first order team, and then bring out the jawas when you see a droid team.

    In data analytics speak, maybe the developers could ensure that the cosine similarity of each opponent exceeded a minimum distance from one another.

    One thing i did not like about the old retreat option was that i could put out a fast team, e.g. dooku, sid, daka, geo, poggle, and get 4 or 5 hits in before getting hit just once, and then retreating and doing this again. Once the opponent is reduced to two or three characters i would just bring in a healer and heal everyone.
  • Vallik wrote: »
    but we better not critique it to much because the next step ir u can retreat or u lose and have to spend crystals to get back in

    (hope im not giving them ideas this is an EA owned game afterall)

    Yes, please don't feed them with wrong ideas! All we ask is to restore the old retreat and make the buff/debuffs stay as well. I can't imagine all the backlash if CG put in a X crystal cost per retreat.
  • As a F2P player I managed to beat GW about 20 times. Since the game update I've been slaughtered every time I gave it a go. Only need 10 Lumi shards to get her to 7*...

    So EA, please reduce the difficulty of GW! :expressionless:
    SWGOH.gg profile - Our guild, 3720 to 1, has 1 spot open! [49/50].
  • As a F2P player I managed to beat GW about 20 times. Since the game update I've been slaughtered every time I gave it a go. Only need 10 Lumi shards to get her to 7*...

    So EA, please reduce the difficulty of GW! :expressionless:

    Just reload and try other sequence of actions till you get the optimal result. Do you not realise that CG has actually done you a favour and made GW easier with the infinite reload?
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