Recent change to Galactic War - open conversation

Replies

  • When this change happened, I too hated it. Having spent the last few days getting used to it and completing my first post change one today, I have discovered... that I still hate it. Please make it interesting again.
  • I love the current GW. It allows me unlimited plays on hard teams to see what works and what doesn't. Great for team experimentation.
  • I feel a little dirty...

    my first 5 - yes five- attacks on daka were resisted, so i just retreated and changed Rey and fotp's positions. BAM- dead daka


    yay for "strategy"
    --Nud Stark--
  • Rolf
    1032 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I feel a little dirty...

    my first 5 - yes five- attacks on daka were resisted, so i just retreated and changed Rey and fotp's positions. BAM- dead daka


    yay for "strategy"
    And more importantly, did you even have fun doing it? Many of us are firmly in the camp that no matter whether you find it easier/harder, or you use more/less of your bench that it's *less fun*.
    Post edited by Rolf on
    My ally code: 296-673-769. Wish we could have more than 35.
  • Lets say 50% of the community was against how the old gw had a cheat, flaw, cheese ( what ever you want to call it). But they never complained that they will leave the game or pull finincal support. Having it the retreat option had no impact to anybody

    Now since the change, the other 50% is complaining saying the gw is no fun , some abandon the game and/or pull finincial support. In my eyses that this would be conisdered a bad business decision as it impacts your revenue and upset your client base.

    If the dev didnt care what their clients think then they might as well add jar jar binks as one of the toons
  • Rolf wrote: »
    I feel a little dirty...

    my first 5 - yes five- attacks on daka were resisted, so i just retreated and changed Rey and fotp's positions. BAM- dead daka


    yay for "strategy"
    And more importantly, did you even have fun doing it? Many of us are firmly in the camp that no matter wherever it's easier/harder, or you use more/less of your bench that it's *less fun*.

    Definitely not more fun.

    Now I'm sure CG would say the was an opportunity to use real strategy, and use a more appropriate team configuration, and i could have for instance swapped Ren for Rey. And if i didn't know any better i would actually think it was a better combo, but it wouldn't be. The thing that would have been better was the new rng seed.

    now let me explain what i would have done pre fix:

    Team: bariss (leader), lumi, foo, fotp, rey (this is all i have been running since fix as i just want to get it over with, foo is interchangeable)

    so after all the daka resists i took a significant amount of dmg to all characters. Used both heals, and still ended up with a couple half health characters (this is when i rest). Pre-fix i would not have have force quit (current retreat) but i would have retreated, removed fotp, rey, and foo and put in talia, ren, and probably sid. Talia would heal up barriss and lumi, and the overall dps would be low allowing their heal turnmeter to reset or newly so.

    next battle i would start as is or sub a few other healthy dps. Then with just the opposing tank or healer left, i would put rey, fotp, and maybe foo back in to get healed up.


    now i agree it was broken before as i COULD have force closed if it ever got ugly giving me the best of both worlds. Or tried to manipulate buffs, traunts, etc (which i never did by choice).

    To me, the old way gave me far more options to use my whole team creatively, and made me want to do so. I think burning 1 low level character to burn the enemies specials is the same add the old retreat to manipulate their abilities and imo kinda lame. I COULD also put in 5 lower characters and ley them all die to take out 2 or 3 enemy on a tough team. And i have since the fix just to try. But it is not fun, i know what is going to happen, and just takes longer.

    So instead, i now run the same 5 toons every match just to get it over with. And it usually takes 2 or 3 sittings to complete because i dont like it. The old way, i would complete it in one sitting cause it was so fun.
    --Nud Stark--
  • Ive played the new GW system for 4 days now and have completed all 12 battles each time without too much difficulty. Im lvl 60 with 8-9 purple heroes a couple 7 star. I am f2p.

    Frankly I dont care if EA changes it back mostly because I know they won't because Ive played enough EA games to know it is futile to hope for something that isn't in their interest. However i would like to write my opinion about the change and why it has happened.

    I submit to the community that this was simply a change to encourage the users of this game to develop more heroes with stronger skills thereby encouraging greater chance or consideration of the user to buy gems (spend real life $). No surprise there and I don't blame them for doing it, they need to get paid. I do however feel slighted when I am told the reasons for the change are:
    -what have you done to build your greater team
    -how can you use your entire collection to overcome the challenge
    - how can you dismantle an opponent while minimizing loss of characters, hp, reserving special abilities, and cooldown management
    - when facing particular teams i.e. stun, crit dmg, jedi, healers, revive, etc what elements of your party can you bring to defeat the challenge?

    When I review the OP the fundamental point to this change is to encourage the players to have more heroes at a higher level and with more skills. Its obvious how this would benefit EA.

    I work in business and Im not offended when I am forced to spend more money. I am offended when the service provider disregards my intelligence by attempting to make me think their business decision is derived from the origins of more strategic game play rather than monetary gain.

    To review... The original retreat function did the following:
    -removed buffs on opponent, wiped debuffs from my team, and turn meters were reset.

    The new retreat function does the following:
    -resets the battle to the beginning of the battle scenario including rng, cooldowns, and hp.

    So basically instead of retreating in mid battle with a shorter interval between resets you have to do it at the beginning of the battle scenario. The success rate is still achieved if your roster is large enough to accommodate. Key words "if your roster is large enough to accommodate." Get more heroes with more skills. You may have been proceeding through the game in all modes with a roster that was effective enough to complete LS, DS, cantina, arena, and GW before the change but that roster may have been only 8-10 heroes. You now may need to expand your roster to 10-14 depending on their skill/star level. That would equate to a 20-25% expansion of heroes for the newer user. The new user is the target audience with this change. As you can tell from the forums those of us that were fortunate enough to use the original system had plenty of time to level and farm our heroes to an adequate level already. Frankly the leveled established user in this game is small, it is just the beginning and the game is growing quickly. The new players will encounter difficulty and be enticed into spending to be able to compete.

    On the point of not including this change in the update notes. No worries EA. I understand and you owned up to it. I can understand that these things happen and it was simply a mistake by someone that was probably working their butt off to get all this work done. Who doesn't make a mistake sometimes?

    Lastly, to those that repeatedly say something to the effect "I am glad this change has happened. The game is better now and more enjoyable. I wish the retreat function was removed altogether or limited." I say fine, okay. It's good to know you are happy with the change. However if a challenge and strategic game play is what you desire I would suggest you wipe your account and replay on a fresh server with the new changes. I'm sure your satisfaction in the game would be even more enjoyable this time around. No? You'd rather keep your current hero roster considering your are +62 with 12 purple geared heroes and five 7 star? Im shocked, why the retreat from a challenge? I thought strategy was your greatest desire? Yeah...
  • Rolf
    1032 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Thanks for the example. That's similar to what I'd been doing before the switch. So was that unintended manipulation of the rules? Frankly, I have no idea. It seemed to be what they wanted us to be doing as it was the strategy that made the most sense.

    And it was much more fun, strategically, because you always had that urge to try and get "one more attack" off to knock out an enemy before retreating. Sometimes you paid the price for that as you didn't get your injured character out in time. Frustrating, but it made things interesting. (I actually didn't know about force-closing until right before the update. Would've saved me some lost GW's lol, but it still seems like cheese.)

    Now with the update it's like you said. Plow ahead with your A-team. You took that interesting risk and lost? No worries, rinse and repeat. But removing all types of retreat (as some have suggested) would be even worse. Then we'd just be afraid to risk anything at all.

    Glad to have this conversation open though. I fully agree with you John that the game can't be run by committee, but thanks for listening to our opinions in any case. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the upcoming new features!
    My ally code: 296-673-769. Wish we could have more than 35.
  • Change ot back
  • Keyzer_Soze
    117 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I see plenty of good arguments. I've made plenty of long posts but they end in ridicule so I'm done with that.

    All you can do is respond and nod, it's very sad. It's clear they're turning the difficulty up and the free ride is coming to an end so with that enjoy it while it lasts. Watch your wallets...

    Actually, I'm going to bring out my wallet. Challenge accepted.

    Never **** about a free ride.
  • Wow, so many unhappy people.

    I'm quite happy with CG's open communication and direction they are taking the game in.
    Personally I have no problems with the current GW.

    But here's an idea to appease everyone: How about creating 2 buttons for retreat. 1st button can be the old retreat option, 2nd can be the current "restart" version. That way there's loads of strategy options.

    If CG is worried about GW getting too easy because of this, a solution would be to extend the length of GW. Now it's 24 teams if I'm not mistaken. Add another 6 harder teams, that way more people will get more rewards, and hopefully everyone, including the devs will be happy.
  • Riggs wrote: »
    Lets say 50% of the community was against how the old gw had a cheat, flaw, cheese ( what ever you want to call it). But they never complained that they will leave the game or pull finincal support. Having it the retreat option had no impact to anybody

    Now since the change, the other 50% is complaining saying the gw is no fun , some abandon the game and/or pull finincial support. In my eyses that this would be conisdered a bad business decision as it impacts your revenue and upset your client base.

    If the dev didnt care what their clients think then they might as well add jar jar binks as one of the toons

    That's the same 50% bro, more like 90%. All FTP.
  • Tis is my first post ever on the forum, and i am not a whinner butt i got a team all level 58 (im 53) lead was lumi, dooku sid en daka i got destroid and my B team exploded at fight 9
    How am i suppost to get to fight 13
  • I debated whether to just let this post go, but it's toxic enough that I felt I had to address at least some of it...
    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.

    After I posted the announcement on Friday, I wasn't really able to get back in front of a computer until late on Saturday. I was reading posts, but not in a great position to respond in the manner I wanted to until today.
    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.

    I don't remember saying that we would run all planned changes by the community. That's honestly not viable. Where did you read that?
    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%.

    Lots here. :)

    Again, I believe your expectations as to what gets published to the community before going live isn't in alignment with mine. But extending that to a "lack of professionalism" is a major stretch, IMO.

    If the "two companies" you're referencing is Capital Games and Electronic Arts, I'd like to clarify something. EA is thousands of people; CG is tens of people. Only about four of us (all at CG) were involved in the release notes. We made an oversight in not including the server-based update which is where the GW change happened. We've discussed and apologized for that. Just wanted to boil it down for you so you don't think thousands of people somehow had a hand in these release notes. :)

    Where did anyone say there would be "0 balance changes outside the ones inherent to raising the level cap"? I don't recall anyone saying that.

    Further, some bugs can be addressed without a client update (which takes more time) and some can be done in data or via the server. We're doing what we can.
    So by my count, that's two lies that have come out of CG/EA.

    What are you referencing?
    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.

    @CG_AaronNemoyten misunderstood, was trying to help quickly, and updated his post as soon as he got updated info. If he knew otherwise and posted bad info, that would be a lie. That's not what happened.

    Here and elsewhere I've pointedly contested anyone who's calling us liars. There's a reason for that: we aren't liars. If we were, we should just shut down these forums and all walk away. (What's the point of a forum filled with lies?)

    We're working hard to be transparent and working hard to make this game better and better every day. Communication is difficult, especially given how few of us there are and how many of you there are.

    The balance of your post I won't cover since I believe we have discussed the situation in other posts already.

    Please give us the benefit of the doubt. Don't jump to conspiracy-based conclusions about our actions. We aren't that kind of people. :)

    Thanks!

    I apologize for all the vitriol in that post. That bit was kind of stream-of-consciousness after trying NEW GW for the first time, and in hindsight should've been much more tempered. I especially apologize for misinterpreting your comments in the "Happy New Years!" thread. You'd mentioned nothing to the effect of what I had inferred, only that the first update was going to be one to raise the level cap, and generalities on the substance of the later update. So almost everything in the parts of the post you'd quoted were wrong, and I should've checked my 'sources' before spewing all that.

    I do also want to say that I understand why you decided to change GW. The ability to focus-fire an enemy team one at a time while sustaining minimal losses did go against the spirit of the game mode. The rampant save-scumming that was popularized on these boards themselves had made a joke of what was supposed to be a difficult, nigh impossible game mode.

    I do wish you'd covered the balance part of my post, though. I'd pointed out ways to attain that change you were seeking without taking the old retreat method out entirely, which I haven't seen you directly comment on yet. I'm going to try to expand on that part of the post, hopefully in a manner that's a bit easier to understand.

    First off, the psuedo-random number generation, or random seed, is a clear flaw in the GW system. It works fine for other game modes where you're not given the capacity to try the same number list over again, but not GW. If you don't use actual randomness, but give us any capacity to load a previous save whatsoever, we're going to be able to save-scum every single GW through 12 tedious matches, every single day. All it takes is loading when you get a bad number set, and continuing when you don't. If you leave the psuedo-random number generation, your only way to combat save-scumming is to keep the difficulty high by other means, which can't ever work all the time, and is needlessly frustrating for us.

    You had mentioned considering this next bit, so i'll be breif. Assuming you find a way around the random number problem, then all that needs done is to eliminate all the benefits of using retreat in the unintended ways you'd pointed out. Buffs/debuffs and turn order could be made persistent after retreats, and reset at the end of a match. Pair that with any method to counter force closing, such as by automatically killing off everyone in the match after the close, and you're done.

    Making those (admittedly large) changes would mean that you can still retreat to change up your lineup, and also switch out anyone at low health. IMO, that's more in-line with your original intent of the Galactic War game mode than either the old way or the new.
  • TyloRen wrote: »

    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.

    I fully clear GW every day. My roster is contains 7* JC and Sid, 6* Phasma, Jawa, Kylo, Lumi, and Daka. I've not spent anywhere CLOSE to $5000. What you're talking about could be done with $500, lol.

    I spent $0 and will prove the wallet warriors wrong one day :D.
    Qui-Gon progress in cantina currently 4* gear lvl 7.
  • quix wrote: »
    Wow, so many unhappy people.

    I'm quite happy with CG's open communication and direction they are taking the game in.
    Personally I have no problems with the current GW.

    But here's an idea to appease everyone: How about creating 2 buttons for retreat. 1st button can be the old retreat option, 2nd can be the current "restart" version. That way there's loads of strategy options.

    If CG is worried about GW getting too easy because of this, a solution would be to extend the length of GW. Now it's 24 teams if I'm not mistaken. Add another 6 harder teams, that way more people will get more rewards, and hopefully everyone, including the devs will be happy.
    I like the idea of two retreat buttons, seeing how it basically gives both sides what they want.

    Ally code: 323-282-152. Member of TNR. The New Rebellion
  • I am not able to manage the ally. have one ally in option and 3 request option. How use this option?
  • ccfoo
    154 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    I decided to call it a day for this game. I can clear GW since the update, but it is just so meaningless repeating the battles over n over again, just substitute a character from time to time and try again until RnG falls in your favour.

    It's only the 7 battle today and I face these characters:

    Lvl 62 7* Sid
    Lvl 62 7* Lum
    Lvl 62 6* kylo
    Lvl 62 5* Daka
    Lvl 62 5* Dooku

    So much RnG in play for this battle. No matter how I tried, a toon of mine has to die due to double heal immunity, double stunners n double counter attackers and it's only the 7th battle. Not the most difficult battle I faced in GW, but it's annoying at 7th battle.

    I'm so tired. It has not been more difficult, but extremely time consuming and battery draining. The enjoyment factor isn't there anymore. And till date they never explain to us how GW matchup works, just implement the change quietly and we have to accept it.

    Bye my Star Wars friends. Time for me to breathe some fresh air outside.

    Post edited by ccfoo on
  • ccfoo wrote: »
    I decided to call it a day for this game. I can clear GW since the update, but it is just so meaningless repeating the battles over n over again, just substitute a character from time to time and try again until RnG falls in your favour.

    It's only the 7 battle today and I face these characters:

    Lvl 62 7* Sid
    Lvl 62 7* Lum
    Lvl 62 6* kylo
    Lvl 62 5* Daka
    Lvl 62 5* Dooku

    So much RnG in play for this battle. No matter how I tried, a toon of mine has to die due to double heal immunity, double stunners n double counter attackers and it's only the 7th battle.

    I'm so tired. It has not been more difficult, but extremely time consuming and battery draining. The enjoyment factor isn't there anymore.

    Bye my Star Wars friends. Time for me to breathe some fresh air outside.

    Today the last 5-6 teams of gw were exactly like this, sometimes they had a phasma instead of kylo. Everybody is changing their tactics for the new GW. And the tactic is try to stun, if the stun lands keep on playing. If the stun misses, retreat and retry another target.
  • I didn't read though all the updates, but from my understanding, this is done to prevent players to used a weak team to take high damage attacks from their A team, which is a reasonable. However, after a few days of playing, I found that the GW is quite impossible to complete now.

    In GW mode now, it seems like the objective is to grind though the hard matches (keep retreating until you find the right combination of characters and/or moves to finish the match without getting anyone kill). To me, it seems like a backward step from let's get some unusable characters kill so that maybe I can get though the harder stages.

    Ever since I passed lv40, I have only finished GW 4 times, and they all came before the update. I know it hasn't been long since the update, but I have only been able to reach the last round once. If making the game harder means keep repeating 1 stage for result, then you succeed. But the fact is that this is quite boring...

    But what the hell? I haven't pay a dime for this overall wonderful game. So why should I complain?
  • obiwan1011
    396 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    1. I believe CGJohn has made it clear that he has no intentions whatsoever to bring back the old retreat to GW because it is against their original design philosophy. Hence, even if everyone hated the new retreat, it is fruitless to point out its shortcomings. A lot of us made noble efforts on why the old retreat is better, but it unfortunately ain't coming back
    2. Be careful what we wish for. A lot of us have already called out enough on how the new retreat (or the previous force close) can be exploited to derive optimal result > CG implements true RNG (which I think is under consideration) > more reloads required because every roll in a match is different > more tedious > (CG may decide to completely remove retreat and penalise force close) > more challenging > need deeper bench > spend more money or else... That's disaster for many, especially for the new/low-level players
    Post edited by obiwan1011 on
  • obiwan1011 wrote: »

    2. Be careful what we wish for. A lot of us have already called out enough on how the new retreat (or the previous force close) can be exploited to derive optimal result > CG implements true RNG (which I think is under consideration) > more reloads required because every roll in a match is different > more tedious > (CG may decide to completely remove retreat and penalise force close) > more challenging > need deeper bench > spend more money or else... That's disaster for many, especially for the new/low-level players

    I agree, if they totally remove the retreat it will become more difficult.
  • Artas
    223 posts Member
    edited January 2016
    Interesting... stages 8, 9 and 10 come with lvl 60-61 toons and the last stage with lvl 58-59 toons... Nice balance though... Seems that devs didn't realize how to make GW harder... Shouldn't it go harder when progressing in stages? I spent almost two hours to pass 11 stages and was defeated in stage 12 as had no more good toons. Thank you but not anymore. This is not my job but just a game and this game takes too much time.
    My lvl is 63, chars 5-6*, gear lvl 7-8...
    Post edited by Artas on
  • Take away force close/retreats altogether. Get the matching right! Players on lower levels should not be able to finish the GW. If they want to progress in GW then improve their chars. It's a mockery/insult to higher level players that a player say level 50 can clear all 12 rounds of GW. Joke! It's about progression and improving your chars/team to compete at a higher level, not LUCK!

    I mean some people could clear it without retreats from level 40 onwards...so you want to remove retreats and make matching harder? That seems a tad unreasonable. Many people already struggle...

    The difficult scales with the player (or is meant to :D)...why even bring it out at level 40 if you are not meant to be able to beat anything until you hit level 70?
  • J7000
    2059 posts Member
    Just fought a level 62 full 7 star FO team + POE. After that I had 4 more battles. I did make it but daannng. Wait until that becomes 4 battles.
  • My net review is slightly positive.

    My level has gone from 59 to 61 since this happened, and I think except once I finished GW (I was previously at 7/10 wins). I think I prefer the current system; it encourages you to try new squads or strategies, or (on last fight) if you know you have enough of a roster to get through by killing one or two enemies each time, do it that way. Most recently I won with I think no deaths - some substitutions of damaged characters and once or twice retreating and trying a different squad and choice of which enemy characters to attack, but no deaths. So it (so far, limited number of samples) seems easier but also requiring a bit more thinking, which is a good thing.
  • Rolf wrote: »
    I feel a little dirty...

    my first 5 - yes five- attacks on daka were resisted, so i just retreated and changed Rey and fotp's positions. BAM- dead daka


    yay for "strategy"
    And more importantly, did you even have fun doing it? Many of us are firmly in the camp that no matter whether you find it easier/harder, or you use more/less of your bench that it's *less fun*.

    I absolutely agree with you. "Basketball coach" GW was fun strategy. "Groundhog day" GW is trial and error, the complete opposite of strategy. Definitely, it was much more fun before the nerf.
  • I'm finding a lot more healer teams since the update. Half of my teams in GW last night were running 3+ healers. I only used retreat a few times in the past so i don't really miss it. Most nights i sail through GW but on a rare occasion i get a few really nasty teams back to back that give me a hard time. Have not failed one yet since the update.

    Is it harder/easier? To be honest it's easier now but i think it's because our server just hit 60 a few days before the update. When i was in the low 50's i was put up against level 60 teams with purple gear, more stars and a lot more power. I was still able to beat most of them but would fail now and then. One time at level 48 i was put up against a level 60 team :( I think the teams before the update were harder because people tried to make a great GW team. Now it seems most in my GW are running healer teams making it kinda boring since it's not much of a challenge anymore.
This discussion has been closed.