Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Replies

  • Preemo_Magin
    1826 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    Wispsi wrote: »
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    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?

    This does not make sense...previously you could get the same results by closing the game...this was the only game mode in which closing the game works like this, so to say it was unintended is quite a stretch...so no, they have made it harder because now that is the only option you have, instead of being able to freely nullify anything inconvenient and guarantee that your entire roster has full health/CDs at the end of every fight AS WELL as being able to reset and pray for better rng if that somehow isn't enough for you.

    Uh, no.

    Say you tried stunning Lumi with Dooku with the very first move of the match and it didn't work. No big deal. Reload and try it on another. If it didn't work, again, not a problem. Reload and try it on another, say Kylo. Then you got an optimal result which it stunned two heroes! Great. Move on. You then attack an hero with Sid, but he misses. It's okay, relax! Reload, stun Kylo (and another hero) with Dooku and then have Sid attack someone else. If you are finding that you are not getting any luck with the RNG, shuffle your heroes' location and try again. Repeat till you win the match with minimal damage/loss.

    For those who say you get no chance to heal depleted heroes, you just need to reload many times to avoid getting into that situation in the first place.

    There is a reason why some considered force close (the new retreat) as a cheat because there were no consequences. In the old retreat, if Dooku failed to stun Lumi and retreated, he would go first again, but his lightning was consumed and not usable. Hence, there was a cost for retreating/reloading.

    So we should "thank" CG for making GW easier at the expense of making it incredibly boring and tedious.

    I guess there is also a reason why some players are raving about and defending the new retreat because you are almost guaranteed to get those loot.

    In the Challeges, if you lose, you restart. You still don't get any reward until you beat it. There's a reason why some consider things other do a cheat, and has little to do with fairness. It's just whats convenient to them. Maybe people already stated that they strongly prefer the old and another group the new. And both have problems that are serious....like hitting 5 times with a high speed team then retreating, rinse and repeat, or playing 50 times a battle and resetting.

    My fear is that if I could think of these two groups as my kids, I'd give them the only thing that would stop them arguing against each other:

    NO RETREAT AND NO RESET

    This conclusion is obvious...but the ideal sceanrio would have been NOBODY complaining about debuffs or or resets. Everyone was happy, and those that brught all this to the focus (when new content is what we all wanted) .... Well, what can I say but congrats.

    Oh, certainly. I can see that as a good possibility. In fact, all these feedbacks can potentially be used to take out "exploits" in the game to realise the first part of the below equation:

    "We want to make GW more challenging" = "You need to have a deeper bench" = Spend more money...

    Again, no disrespect intended whatsoever.

    I know. I agree 100%. I think that my current bench can take it most of the days. I would miss trying out different teams and synergies, but maybe that is best left to an Arena Simulator area. I wrote it mostly thinking of mid size benchs - all the thousands of players there....I was there a month ago, and the times I had failed GW irritated me a bit primarily because a full day till reset seemed an eternity.

    Edited: which suggests a new possibility that I think nobody ever mentioned. I'll post this separately.
    Post edited by Preemo_Magin on
  • Never managed to complete GW. Had no idea about the retreat thing which is a mute point anyway. In my experience I have found ( been playing 5 weeks now ) that from the 4th fight in I am getting matched with seriously op teams compared to mine. Im lucky if I get to the point where I pull 400 shards in a complete run before all my toons are wiped out. I did get to fight 10 once..woo hoo haha. I dont pay to play so im aware there is always going to be a disparity but surely fights that are around the same lvl couldnt be that hard to do. On the cynical side is this just a ploy to get you to spend money to level toons outside your A team faster...spend..buy energy...grind...refil...grind...spend etc.
    Anyway I may finish it one day but to be fair for me personally its one aspect of the game that is getting tedious and boring

    Just my opinion mind
  • Daprosy
    90 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Daprosy wrote: »
    @CG_JohnSalera I think you missed the main theme of this thread. The current GW changes have actually meant LESS use of a range of characters where running 3 or 4 healers with a 1 or 2 DPS guys is the way to go now.

    I wouldn't say I missed it. I'd say there are people saying that they're using fewer characters, and other people saying they're using more characters.

    Sorry if I came across rude...its just that GW now is just not fun anymore, and it is not any harder either IMO.

    I see 2 situations where people are now using more heroes...first where they dont have 3 or 4 healers (Talia doesnt count). Or where their main squad has been murdered by higher level opponents and then you have to chuck in more heroes as a last resort, or use the 5 pawns to soak up specials, not strategically swapping various toons as before.

    The way retreat works ATM means you can restart ensuring you dont loose a healer, or if you run into a much higher level team, strategy is now limited. Which isnt a bad thing IMO...but if buffs were carried over and retreating was as it was before, the use of deeper rosters would be more useful, and more importantly more fun!

    As more people realise healer heavy combos is the way to go for GW...I really dont see it being a much harder challenge, as you can just restart if things go pear shaped. If a separate challenge is made which replicated the old GW mechanics but with buffs carrying over when retreating I will be a happy camper and i assume others will be too.

  • Rolf
    1032 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Daprosy wrote: »
    @CG_JohnSalera I think you missed the main theme of this thread. The current GW changes have actually meant LESS use of a range of characters where running 3 or 4 healers with a 1 or 2 DPS guys is the way to go now.

    I wouldn't say I missed it. I'd say there are people saying that they're using fewer characters, and other people saying they're using more characters.
    Count me in the "fewer" column. Before, I had to switch out injured characters, figure out who had CD's ready, etc. Now it's just "one team to rule them all."

    I've easily won every GW since the change, which is better than I was doing before. The big difference for me is that when I lost, it was because an unlucky series of focused attacks took out one of my A-team and my bench wasn't always strong enough to carry me to the end. Now, I just reset and the A-team gets another chance to win unscathed. Repeat ad nauseum. Emphasis on nauseum.
    My ally code: 296-673-769. Wish we could have more than 35.
  • obiwan1011 wrote: »
    With all due respect,

    "We want to make GW more challenging" = "You need to have a deeper bench" = Spend more money...
    d3gauss wrote: »
    You have to know, as it is your game, how ridiculously difficult you made it to gear and level up more than a handful of characters.

    Gear is also ridiculous, you could run a match 6 or 7 times before you get the piece of green gear required to do one piece of low level gear. Once you are above green it could be a day of refreshes per gear.

    And then you have shards...sometimes you might get 3 or 4 a week.

    To build out your bench / collection spending money is certainly an option. As is being patient. As is being focused and deliberate as to which holes you have in your suite of characters and being hyper-focused on each one in turn. Trying to bring up a bunch of characters at the same time will slow the perceived progress for any one character.

    GW isn't complex enough to have holes in your stable. Pretty much the only time you are going to lose characters is when a broken character one shots your guy.

    There honestly aren't counters to other things, not as much as you would think, maybe you designed there to be counters, but you didn't implement it properly.
  • What if there are no retreats whatsoever, but you are allowed to RESET THE ENTIRE GALACTIC WAR? Combine this with the suggestion to be able to review the entire battles ahead and now you have an amazing challenge. Of course, the line up of enemies will NOT change until Gw reset time at 12 ET.

    A variant of this is to have nodes 4 and 8 act as restore points. If you go back there you can chose to restart at those points. This would save the enormous grind of early battles, and node 8 would be a gift from Cg to mid-bench players. Of course, it will be hard. It will be strategic, and there will be no easy way to play against the RNG.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    Woo-hoo.I was able to complete 75-80% of GW with 3 healers, Rey, and FOTP. Thanks for the recommendation. That made it much easier.
  • What if there are no retreats whatsoever, but you are allowed to RESET THE ENTIRE GALACTIC WAR? Combine this with the suggestion to be able to review the entire battles ahead and now you have an amazing challenge. Of course, the line up of enemies will NOT change until Gw reset time at 12 ET.

    A variant of this is to have nodes 4 and 8 act as restore points. If you go back there you can chose to restart at those points. This would save the enormous grind of early battles, and node 8 would be a gift from Cg to mid-bench players. Of course, it will be hard. It will be strategic, and there will be no easy way to play against the RNG.

    If there is no retreat whatsoever, people will resort to force close. If CG blocks that, expect a lot of backlash...
  • MeetraSurik
    313 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Snip
  • I'm using way more characters - using waves of teams vs. certain builds. Old method I could use a very small core of toons almost all the way through GW.
  • @Qeltar - I do want to address your comprehensive and well-considered post. However, forgive me if I don't respond line-by-line as I think that will bloat this one conversation beyond the point of usefulness for the rest of the folks.

    Qeltar wrote: »
    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.
    This is a very confusing statement.
    Last night Aaron said this was done because some people were retreating and some were force-closing, and since you couldn't stop the force-closing (which is not even really accurate) you wanted everyone to be on equal footing, so you changed retreat into force-close. This makes more sense than the idea that you intended the game to mimic behavior that 48 hours ago required force-closing the app.

    What I posted in this announcement speaks to the broader issue we were looking to address. I believe in the post you're referencing @CG_AaronNemoyten was looking to summarize and perhaps didn't get to some of the deeper issues at hand. (FYI - I reviewed my original announcement with Aaron, Jesse, and several other key team members to ensure alignment with my statement.)

    Qeltar wrote: »
    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 why didn't you ask us about it before making the change? It's nice of you to ask our views now, but the damage is done. It's not like anyone actually thinks you are going to back it off now.

    To be blunt, once we looked at this one area of the game more closely, it seemed so obviously incorrect I didn't consider having a discussion with the community about it. That being said, this also brings up the broader topic of when the dev team should "consult" with the community vs. continue to implement the over-arching design plan.

    This can't be design by committee -- that's a guaranteed disaster.

    I need to discuss this with @EA_Jesse and a few others to determine how we'd like to proceed. Ultimately, I'd want to find a balance between seeking feedback before something's launched vs. after it's available for play-based feedback. Some games have a pre-release / limited invite environment to handle this, but there are some reasons why this might not work for us.

    Stay tuned.
    Qeltar wrote: »
    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.
    And let's be clear that this could also be used against the player. Figuring out the right time to retreat was part of the strategy.
    But if you didn't want it to be used to clear buffs/debuffs, why didn't you change the code to prevent this from happening? Yes, I know "we're working on it but it takes time". Fine, so take time. GW has been the way it was for months. Only a tiny handful of people complained about it. There was no reason to change it.
    There's a list of bugs a mile long in the Bugs area. Virtually none of them were addressed in this patch. But a major change to GW was? Why?

    I think I've addressed this in the broader post I did a little while ago. Bugs are being worked on. Some are client-side and need to wait for a client release. There are a ton of bugs being addressed in the upcoming update.

    Further, your feedback and the feedback from those who preferred the old approach have been heard loud and clear. We just need to figure out where that kind of experience can work best. It might be a different mode for GW than originally envisioned, or it might make more sense as a separate activity. Either way, though, it would need to be built that way from the ground up and not leave the loopholes of the previous version.

    Skipping a bunch of stuff which I believe I covered in the recent update I provided. Let me know if otherwise.
    Qeltar wrote: »
    I loved GW. It was the only game mode where I actually had to think and plan and keep track of cooldowns. I wrote a 5,000-word guide to it. And now the whole thing is a bore. There's nothing challenging or interesting in the game now at all.

    Your passion for this mode -- and for the game as a whole -- is truly wonderful. Seriously. I'm very sorry and quite bummed you and others are not happy right now with this change. However, we felt we had to fix what we saw as broken. We'll continue to iterate on the game, and do what we can to ensure you and others enjoy and love the game.
    Qeltar wrote: »
    I simply fail to understand how any of this had to happen at all. As a programmer myself, I find the idea that force-closing couldn't be dealt with a myth.

    Edited for brevity...

    Instead, you put in a "quick fix" that doesn't fix anything, and makes the game either impossible (for newer players) or a cheesy bore (for older ones). Such a waste. :(

    This last point I've seen elsewhere and wanted to address it.

    Basically the contention is that we took this approach because leaving the prior approach to Retreat and "fixing" it was hard. Or that the more complex approach was too low of an ROI. Or other reasons posited which basically mean we took the lazy way out.

    Believe me or not, that's not the case.

    We did what we did in order to bring the feature back in line with the design vision.

    Hope that helps. Happy to discuss further here or via PM.

    Thanks.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    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.

    Yes, a non attack or defense up option would be nice. There have been times where a toon is in red and almost dead. My healer is the next to move after that toon and the only option is for that toon to attack whatever baddie is left which is like a Kylo Ren or Dooku who returns fire. Then that toon ends up dying when they did not need to.
  • Daprosy
    90 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I'm using way more characters - using waves of teams vs. certain builds. Old method I could use a very small core of toons almost all the way through GW.

    Have you tried using 3 healers and 2 DPS guys? I really dont see how you would need to use waves of teams? As there is no time limit you can slowly take out 1 toon at a time, staggering the heals.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    Got to round 12 in GW with jc, lumi, poggle and ig 86 left! And I BEAT IT! Feel sooooooooo good! My 4 were still standing at the end. Who says the new GW was boring!?

    It depends on what toons you have. I was able to slaughter the entire GW today, until the last 2-3 battles with Barris, Lumi, JC, Rey, and FOTP. For the last 3 battles I rotated back in my normal "A team".
  • Since @CG_JohnSalera seems to be responding to the recent posts in the thread, I'm quoting myself in hopes of receiving a response. Sorry about that.

    Please don't do this. I spent hours last night preparing a list of posts to respond to, along with the update post I put up earlier.

    I'll keep plugging away through the thread as quickly as I can, but doing so simply takes time.

    Thanks for your patience! ;)
  • Varlie
    1286 posts Member
    Some people accuse the devs are LAZY. I think ALOT of players are LAZY!

    @Daddyngo007, can you explain this? The one thing that I've been pushing since the change is that it reduced then amount of strategy needed to complete the war. Cg_JohnSelera said that we are now relying on the RNG and challenged us to try not thinking this way.

    In the old way, I would look at the upcoming force and (as suggested) build my A-team for that battle. If things went sour, my goal was to at least take down the big target before retreating in order to save my heroes for later battle. I never retreated to clear buffs/debuffs and I never force-closed out of a battle. The were several times that I lost a key person around battle 8-10 which made the following attacks that much more difficult and challenging. I still won all but one war. It required tactics to know when to retreat, who to sub in.


    Now, it's too easy and does not require strategy. If you lose someone you restart.

    I think the part that the devs disagreed on most, and maybe @CG_JohnSalera can confirm this, is the way we would take out all but one target, retreat and bring in light hitters and wounded in order to heal them up for the next battle. If that was worse in their view than removing the buff/debuff on retreat then their change makes prefect sense.
    .
  • EM650 wrote: »
    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.

    Yes, a non attack or defense up option would be nice. There have been times where a toon is in red and almost dead. My healer is the next to move after that toon and the only option is for that toon to attack whatever baddie is left which is like a Kylo Ren or Dooku who returns fire. Then that toon ends up dying when they did not need to.

    This could work well if not attacking had important cooldowns maybe every 3 turns. Otherwise it's an invitation in GW to leave a tank or two alive just to reset all cooldowns. Nobody attacks until healer is ready, and then heals, and then resets all cooldowns.
  • Qeltar
    4326 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    @CG_JohnSalera - Thanks for the detailed reply. I write too much and wouldn't expect a point-by-point. :)
    This can't be design by committee -- that's a guaranteed disaster.
    Fair enough, and your prerogative. It's your game.
    My only objection on this score is as follows. The only way that the old system was a "problem" is that obviously more people were completing it than you wanted. Fine. But there are also tons of bugs that the community has identified, some of which make things much harder, and nearly none of these were fixed. Some of these relate directly to GW itself, such as matchmaking. This made it seem to a lot of people as if you were prioritizing in a manner contrary to their interests. If that makes sense.
    I think I've addressed this in the broader post I did a little while ago. Bugs are being worked on. Some are client-side and need to wait for a client release. There are a ton of bugs being addressed in the upcoming update.
    Alright. People get impatient about this stuff because many of these have been around a long, long time, and are frustrating. But I will shut up about it now. :)
    Your passion for this mode -- and for the game as a whole -- is truly wonderful. Seriously. I'm very sorry and quite bummed you and others are not happy right now with this change. However, we felt we had to fix what we saw as broken. We'll continue to iterate on the game, and do what we can to ensure you and others enjoy and love the game.
    Well, I'll temper my comments slightly. Today I did actually run into an extremely hard team and for the first time since this change, had to go to my bench. I still don't like the "reload save game" aspect of GW now, but I did enjoy figuring out how to beat this team. (The team was full of broken characters and insanely OP but that's a different issue.)
    Basically the contention is that we took this approach because leaving the prior approach to Retreat and "fixing" it was hard. Or that the more complex approach was too low of an ROI. Or other reasons posited which basically mean we took the lazy way out.

    Believe me or not, that's not the case.

    We did what we did in order to bring the feature back in line with the design vision.
    Alright, if you say that's why you did it, I'll take your word for it. But I'm sure you can understand how it looked from the outside, especially after Aaron's comment.
    Quit 7/14/16. Best of luck to all of you.
  • EM650
    1120 posts Member
    EM650 wrote: »
    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.

    Yes, a non attack or defense up option would be nice. There have been times where a toon is in red and almost dead. My healer is the next to move after that toon and the only option is for that toon to attack whatever baddie is left which is like a Kylo Ren or Dooku who returns fire. Then that toon ends up dying when they did not need to.

    This could work well if not attacking had important cooldowns maybe every 3 turns. Otherwise it's an invitation in GW to leave a tank or two alive just to reset all cooldowns. Nobody attacks until healer is ready, and then heals, and then resets all cooldowns.

    Or how about a skip turn button that if pressed just skip that toons turn and therefore does not allow that toons cooldown to be effected at all? If they had 2 moves until they could use their AOE, then they would still have 2 moves until they could use their AOE. They just simply lost their turn.
  • EM650 wrote: »
    EM650 wrote: »
    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.

    Yes, a non attack or defense up option would be nice. There have been times where a toon is in red and almost dead. My healer is the next to move after that toon and the only option is for that toon to attack whatever baddie is left which is like a Kylo Ren or Dooku who returns fire. Then that toon ends up dying when they did not need to.

    This could work well if not attacking had important cooldowns maybe every 3 turns. Otherwise it's an invitation in GW to leave a tank or two alive just to reset all cooldowns. Nobody attacks until healer is ready, and then heals, and then resets all cooldowns.

    Or how about a skip turn button that if pressed just skip that toons turn and therefore does not allow that toons cooldown to be effected at all? If they had 2 moves until they could use their AOE, then they would still have 2 moves until they could use their AOE. They just simply lost their turn.

    I think off topic, but if it can save a toon in Gw....then I'll be brief: you healer is 2 turns to cool down. You are against Chevy or Barris. Your team is 30% HP. Just have any high damage pass...skip all attacks for two turns. Barris does so little damage it's no threat, just 1k or less. After 2 turns you Lumi heals 40%. Keep on passing, now Lu i heals 20%, one more round, another round for another 20%. Now do another pass for 2 turns so Lumi has 0 cooldown on heal. barris will have made 5 hits of 800 avg, and max 4k. So even if she hit the same char 5 times, you are still 70% ok, and the rest is 100% healed. All the cools downs and specials are reset too.

    A cooldown on "Pass" turn only allows you to skip one turn, and then enemy Barris has to die.

  • @obiwan1011 - Thanks for you posts, and I particularly appreciate your attempts to give me an "exec summary". :) That being said, I have actually read every post here and many / most of the posts elsewhere.

    Here are the points you mentioned:

    Difficulty - As you've probably seen, some people feel it's more difficult and yet others feel it is bone easy. Partly that (must?) relate to where they are in their player lifecycle as well as the choices they've made as they've build out their collection. We'll be reviewing the data attentively next week.

    Team Diversity
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    It is my considered opinion that the lack of diversity in team composition has little to do with the previous retreat.

    I agree. I believe it's reflective of the current state of the meta. There is tuning work to be done, and the designers are (constantly) working on that. And, as new characters are released which enable new strategies or counter old ones, the meta will shift and broaden. (At least, that's the goal.)

    Strategy
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    I am aware that you are not inclined to discuss about this as it can be highly subjective, but I must insist since the previous retreat was what made GW fun and unique. It offered an element that was not available in any other modes.

    I can see this point (and have heard it from others). As I mentioned in the earlier post, there is a different experience here than originally planned and clearly there are those that enjoyed it. What the team needs to determine is where -- and importantly when -- we could integrate this idea in the game.
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    P.S. Cannon Fodder: Not sure why you believe this is not discussed in the forum as plenty of people have mentioned about this.

    What I was referencing (and have seen folks not fully understand initially in this thread) is that under the current system, you can still leverage your less characters effectively. Just by throwing a single unit against to the opposing party, you can effectively eliminate the other team's first special ability. That unit will die in all likelihood, but that is part of "using" your whole collection.

    Also, as I've seen others clarify, we have a warning which appears that you're not bringing in a full squad if you are fielding less than 5 in a squad. You are free to ignore that warning. It's a convenience feature we mainly put in for early players who were sometimes accidentally entering Battles with a less-than-full squad.

    However, I noticed you indicated in a later post of yours that this use of the "pawns" in your collection was a reason we made this change. That's not the case. This is simply one of the strategies that are available under this approach.

    Hope that makes sense. ;)

    Thanks!
  • Varlie
    1286 posts Member
    This may not be the place for this suggestion but I know it's got the attention of the development team.
    How about asking Pass/Rest option to each character in addition to their normal attacks. Passing on any one round would reduce their countdown on all of their (and just theirs) abilities by 2.

    This could add a whole new aspect to the war. You have to decide whether it's worth giving up an attack in order to use a bigger attack or heal earlier.
  • Embo wrote: »
    When I first experienced the new GW, I have to admit I was concerned that I wouldn't have the ability to get far, thereby decreasing how many toons I could keep at the same level I was at. My goal, being a f2p player is to at least be able to "hang in there". I don't expect to be #1 in the arena. Heck, I'm overjoyed if I crack the high 200s! I just want to have fun and have a fighting chance at experiencing moderate success.

    When I played GW yesterday and today, I did get through it. I thought it was fun to retreat and try a different squad mix to see if that one would fare better against the team I was facing. I tried mixes I never thought of trying before. I had to get creative. I know more today than I did yesterday about what toons synergize well and which ones really don't. I got to see it in action and not what it looks like "on paper". I might not complete it every day but after what I saw yesterday and today, I think the change does not detriment f2p players at all. I think if you made good decisions about who to train, who to equip, who to promote, what shards to farm, etc. that you have just as good of a chance to get through the whole thing as you did prior to the update. Maybe even better. I'm enjoying the credits, ability mats, and all the other goodies I'm collecting as I'm making my way through it.

    I just quoted this posting from @Embo because this is really where we wanted to feature to be for folks. A place to explore the inner workings of the game more, a place to try new things.

    Just brought a smile to my face, and wanted to thank you for posting it! :smiley:
  • @obiwan1011 - Thanks for you posts, and I particularly appreciate your attempts to give me an "exec summary". :) That being said, I have actually read every post here and many / most of the posts elsewhere.

    Here are the points you mentioned:

    Difficulty - As you've probably seen, some people feel it's more difficult and yet others feel it is bone easy. Partly that (must?) relate to where they are in their player lifecycle as well as the choices they've made as they've build out their collection. We'll be reviewing the data attentively next week.

    Team Diversity
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    It is my considered opinion that the lack of diversity in team composition has little to do with the previous retreat.

    I agree. I believe it's reflective of the current state of the meta. There is tuning work to be done, and the designers are (constantly) working on that. And, as new characters are released which enable new strategies or counter old ones, the meta will shift and broaden. (At least, that's the goal.)

    Strategy
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    I am aware that you are not inclined to discuss about this as it can be highly subjective, but I must insist since the previous retreat was what made GW fun and unique. It offered an element that was not available in any other modes.

    I can see this point (and have heard it from others). As I mentioned in the earlier post, there is a different experience here than originally planned and clearly there are those that enjoyed it. What the team needs to determine is where -- and importantly when -- we could integrate this idea in the game.
    obiwan1011 wrote: »
    P.S. Cannon Fodder: Not sure why you believe this is not discussed in the forum as plenty of people have mentioned about this.

    What I was referencing (and have seen folks not fully understand initially in this thread) is that under the current system, you can still leverage your less characters effectively. Just by throwing a single unit against to the opposing party, you can effectively eliminate the other team's first special ability. That unit will die in all likelihood, but that is part of "using" your whole collection.

    Also, as I've seen others clarify, we have a warning which appears that you're not bringing in a full squad if you are fielding less than 5 in a squad. You are free to ignore that warning. It's a convenience feature we mainly put in for early players who were sometimes accidentally entering Battles with a less-than-full squad.

    However, I noticed you indicated in a later post of yours that this use of the "pawns" in your collection was a reason we made this change. That's not the case. This is simply one of the strategies that are available under this approach.

    Hope that makes sense. ;)

    Thanks!

    Appreciate the response. Since I have already expressed my view several times, I won't labour them any further.

    Hope to see some of the great suggestions from the forum to be implemented as you continue to improve and introduce new contents to this game. Thanks.
  • KAULI
    517 posts Member
    I managed to finish GW 2 days in a row since uptdate. Have to say Im begginer on GW (15 times finished) and I had the luck to get Rey on my first pull.
    Last fight was too much. More than 100 tries, 1h+.
    I see the challenge, but theres a point where its not funny.
    Maybe it could be better with a minor boost after you beat each round in a row or something. Or reset skills by 1 each each fight.
    Something that makes it a bit less stressful!
  • Sexytime wrote: »
    I dont get why you the developers keep on defending a mistake you guys made when majority of your player base is already calling you out on the **** poor decision you've done with GW. Do you even play the game? Did you make the game for yourself or for the players? Jesus, learn to freaking listen will ya. The changes in GW sucks. Fix and get with the program or lose even more players.

    For balance, I also wanted to quote this one from the other end of the spectrum. :)

    But, to answer your question... yes, we play the game. A lot. I personally got to 58 during soft launch. Then had my account reset / wiped when we did our world wide launch in late Nov, and hit 60 in early Jan. I'm planning to get it reset again this week so I can play through once more. Each time, I'm taking a different approach to the game to feel how it plays for different types of players.

    We made the game for ourselves as well as the players and the fans. Really, there is no distinction as we are players and fans ourselves. (SeewhatIdidthere?)

    But, seriously, I'm sorry you and others aren't enjoying the change. Stick with us if you can. There's lots of cool stuff ahead! :)
  • JohnnySteelAlpha
    2794 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Daprosy wrote: »
    I'm using way more characters - using waves of teams vs. certain builds. Old method I could use a very small core of toons almost all the way through GW.

    Have you tried using 3 healers and 2 DPS guys? I really dont see how you would need to use waves of teams? As there is no time limit you can slowly take out 1 toon at a time, staggering the heals.

    Will depend a lot on your RNG matchups. I'm getting really tough opponents starting very early. I had to face 3x Poe g8 speed teams today (Poe and then some combo + Jinn + FOTP + GS + Leia + Dooku + Sid + Poggle + Sid + Phasma). The first one started at node 6. I then had the second two on nodes 9/10 back to back. The last one on 10 was a completely 7* team of Poe/FOTP/Phasma lead/Leia/Jinn. In between was all 61+ level g7/g8 teams consisting of Sid / Vader / Kylo, etc. I didn't have any layups in there.

    As far as healers, I've had a 7* g8 JC for probably over a month now, Barriss and Lumi was one of the first I farmed as well...also have a 6* g7 Ackbar that I'd throw in there as a healer with his cleanse.

    Against multiple Poe / Speed rush down with high dps combos though you're not going to heal your way through those teams without losing multiple toons. FOTP, Leia, Jinn, GS can each end you with an assist / multi-hit barrage in one turn. That traditional healer / dps combo only gets me through about node 5/6 now.
  • @CG_JohnSalera

    The design by community approach, as you mention, can be disastrous. You have a few biases on forums that will tend to overstate the negative and generally overstate the difficulty. The second one in particular worries me as it can lead to an overly simple game lacking challenge.

    Seeking community feedback is great and should continue, but on difficulty level of content please stick to your original intent and do not cave to the pressure to reduce the challenge.
  • What I don't understand is how the matches are being made. For me my first opponent already consists of a team of Level 56s while my friend starts with teams of 48s while we are both on level 61 with our arena team and purple gears... so for me at battle nr 9 I already get a team of 5 Level 61s with Kylo and Phasma in there .. most of them 7 star and all of them purple gear... and this is battle nr 9!! still 3 more to go. For my friend at this stage it will be a lot easier. Don't understand it. Don't think it has anything to do with the update though. It has been like this before already :/
  • I'm happy with the change as it really made me stop trying to DPS my whole way through it. I find it easier complete now with having to stop and think about the characters I use. I didn't realize how much i was making it a grind until the update. A strong healer is key and using retreat to reset the battle if a main character dies because of a miss step. We all make them so its nice to not have to live with the mistake.
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