Speed - Still the Bane of This Game
So originally, speed got so out of control, that damage would insta-gib a team before they had an opportunity to respond (Hi Rey!). People were upset as the fight was over before they even got to play. So we made Protection. That was to protect against getting blown up w/o a chance to respond. Awesome.
Then we made mods, and we put speed on them. Then we made the speed mods really rare. Meanwhile we made more and more assist combo's in game that can insta-gib through protection to where you're right back to your original problem. People just cycle the speed mods they saved up from their first comp and assign it to the new comp, due to the rarity, and this in turn just makes Arena a match of who has had the most RNG luck w/ speed mods.
This seems like from a design standpoint, you're identifying a problem, fixing it, and then making decisions to re-make the exact same thing a problem again. Arena should have like field modifiers or something to destabilize the speed emphasis. An enemy debuff like Grievous perhaps that inverses speed. The faster a toon is, the slower they perform and visa versa.
Currently, it's just kind of dull when you know who will win based off of who has the highest speed. I'd hoped this was just a JE thing for Droids but it's every single team.
Then we made mods, and we put speed on them. Then we made the speed mods really rare. Meanwhile we made more and more assist combo's in game that can insta-gib through protection to where you're right back to your original problem. People just cycle the speed mods they saved up from their first comp and assign it to the new comp, due to the rarity, and this in turn just makes Arena a match of who has had the most RNG luck w/ speed mods.
This seems like from a design standpoint, you're identifying a problem, fixing it, and then making decisions to re-make the exact same thing a problem again. Arena should have like field modifiers or something to destabilize the speed emphasis. An enemy debuff like Grievous perhaps that inverses speed. The faster a toon is, the slower they perform and visa versa.
Currently, it's just kind of dull when you know who will win based off of who has the highest speed. I'd hoped this was just a JE thing for Droids but it's every single team.
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But we've aeen toons with buffs at the start of encounters, and Cassian and some Zetas buff the whole team at the start. So I wonder if we'll see toons that debuff at the start if encounters, possibly with speed down.
Consider your hypothetical character against a team modded for speed vs. a team not modded for speed.
Both teams will slow down, but the speed modded team will still be faster than the other.
if players have better speed mods = luck / RNG
if players have worse speed mods = they didnt farm enough mods
Anyway, speed isn't that bad anymore. You make it seem like we're back at that point where RNG decided who's Poe got the first turn. Atleast with mods you have some sort of influence.
Another fix, is something I propose long ago, the higher the speed the less precise a toon is (decreasing potency, damage, having higher chance of being dodged...): increasing speed will be desirable to a certain point, but beyond that, the negative effects will overcome the benefits (imagine a bell-shaped curve with speed in the x-axis and benefits in the y-axis). So speed is still desirable, but will be strategically challenging to figure out the best combination.
In general, however, speed secondaries give you an ability to control your team in ways just not possible without.
I run a bounty hunter team and regularly beat teams (even Wiggs teams) with 7-10k more power than my own squad largely because of how I've modded my toons. And that is on my F2P account and simply farming 5DOT health mods.
I can easily get top 50 even though my average gear level is 8. I'm going against mostly G10 squads and still holding my own even on defense (I usually drop to mid 70's overnight).
this^^
Didn't realize how much I love setting up my turn order to match what I want to happen until I lost that control in ships
I want more way to customize, TBH.
Backwards thinking here. That's the good thing about the pre-mod era, strategy was more of an emphasis, now it's who had better RNG to get the better speed mods. A lazy system inspired by 90's RPGs implemented by the devs. Sigh.
In the pre mods era counters were made by using different characters or beating the AI gameplay, with the variety of characters/skills we have now, the game would still be a lot better than it was.
That said, I understabd the pleasure that comes from tinkering your team to go in an exact order... makes us feel like we actually control it more.
Imo, there are two issues with speed mods.
The first being the rng behind it all (after one month and a half of 4 refreshes each day of cantina energy exclusively to mod farming, of buying every mod pack possible, after checking every mod shipment each day with at least 4 refreshes each day... I've got exactly 1 mod upgrade to my main team).
The second is the prevalence of the speed stat. It is by far the most important stat.
There's little point in making it a percent increment or cutting it half (in many cases it still won't change the order characters take a turn).
Way forward? Don't nerf speed mods...
First, make them more available,
second, boost other stats to a point there is actually stats that are close to the speed prelevance.
Make fixed mods stats (like primary), and you'll have whine because every team has the same stats / strategy than any other.
Good point of random stats is diversity. You can beat a team with a slower boba, and being in trouble against another team because he has speedy boba etc...
This is working until people reaches unbelivable amounts of speed and you can't do anything against it.
Then there will be a new release that will crush this and same story starts again.
Maybe it is time to get DEF buffed, so it will balance against SPD.
this ^^^
This can never happen. That ship has sailed a long time ago.... people would leave in droves if a major change like this was made.
I agree with what the OP is saying that so many of the changes have been designed to counteract problems associated with speed. That's why we now have characters who taunt before the encounter even begins, so that a fast character couldn't just wipe out a squishy one with no chance to respond. But now we have AOE effects that inflict mass tm removal or ability block, making the speed of the characters who can apply those effects the decisive stat.
1. Order, Who goes first... This is perfectly viable strat, as someone said mods can allow you to build a team to attack in a specific order ... which is cool. Massive speed mods (and the rarity of them) can cause some issues here, but there are toons that can counter (shore, baze etc).
2. How many/fast you attack. While I think the order problem is mostly solved by toon composition and planning, this product of speed can get very nasty and is a lot more difficult to account for. The top uber mod builds can almost double the base speed. This means even if you use optimal counter builds the other team could be going twice as much which is a big deal.
I think the big problem with speed on mods is how large the variance is AND how rare those variances are. If a mod can have a variance 3 to 26 that makes balancing issues imo. At that point speed is so important that even team comp might not overcome such a large speed difference. If you are not lucky to have 15-20 great 10+ speed mods you lose.
Now team compositions/selections is a double bladed solution. Characters take so long and so many resources to level/gear that you could be locked out for a very long time to compete again... simply due to poor speed balancing. In some cases more than one character might be needed to counter a new leader ability or zeta
I think the root cause is the multiple upgrade system of secondary stats.
How could they fix?
1. Remove multi-upgrades on mods... each secondary is only applied once. Rare gold mods would either not upgrade ANY secondary stats or add 4 new ones for a total of 8 to give benefit for getting that rare mod.
2. Limit secondary upgrades to only one per stat. You get that nice gold mod at level 1. By level 12 each stat gets upgraded once in order no random doubling up on upgrades.
If they were to implement these they would have to readjust current values to the max (if over currently).
These methods would reduce the variance of speed, which still allows for attack order strategies but remove the huge swing that could allow a huge advantage just in the number of times someone can attack.
I'm with you, you have no real choice now though. The Mod either has speed, or it's useful for 2nd tier characters. Speed trumps all. If that was gone, you'd get to make meaningful decisions like, health, protection, offense, crit, yadda yadda. All stats where you can tune a character. Speed is just a race for a single stat. There's no choice, only more speed. I actually want what you want. Choices.
Speed helps but it can be countered with the right strategy.
How many have left because it is how it is? That's never a reason to make or not make a change.
Personally, I'm 100% F2P now, I used to pick up crystals now and then. On precedent, I refuse because of this.
When you can change your pay model to make everything free and just charge $100 each for speed mods, and nothing would change, that's a game design issue. (Not saying adopt that idea, just using it to illustrate the single mindedness of the game.
Question - What do you mod to counter speed?
Answer - More speed.
Speed wouldn't be an issue if this game wasn't full of glass cannons that are either you kill them in the first round or they kill you in the first round. Speed isn't the problem, it's the amount of damage that we can deal compared to how much health and protection we all have. Speed is only important because the first move is so important. If matches were designed to last a few more rounds strategy would come into play with the other stats, but right now they aren't as useful because they make long term impacts, where as speed is really used for it's immediate starting impact.
I agree on principle. I think nerfing Speed or buffing everything else is nothing but semantics. The issue is speed is too strong. The other alternative is re-approach Protection. It went in to stop insta-gibs. That's the main issue, speed demon results in your team being 3/5 before you take your first turn. GG!
Someone can be fast if their move doesn't result in instant death.
Agreed. I kind of agree with a lot of thing sin this post. I assume that the speed fight was what EA wanted. But now it's 1) a Pandora's box and it can't be shut and 2) as you said, since only speed matters, any other secondaries are going to be subsequent.
I like Mods, but as a form of customization it's kind of failed...