A different perspective on PhoenixGate
I consider myself to be a pretty objective person, but sometimes even I can get caught up in everything. I'll admit I was a little frustrated when it was first announced Phoenix were required for the Thrawn event. When this happens I usually take a step back and let things blow over before I form my final opinion. I felt like it was a good time to reflect now that the event has been over a few days. It should go without saying, but these opinions are my own and I don't expect them to reflect the majority of the player base.
What did CG do right? Everything (almost)
Before I cover the good, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. The devs handling of the flash event bonus tier was awful. I don't know if they didn't test it before release and frankly I don't care. They compounded the issue with poor communication. Far too often we have a lack of communication from the devs which hurts the game and needs to be fixed.
As I said I was frustrated at first, but after looking back on it I think the devs handled it all very well (minus the bonus tier of the flash event) and made Thrawn very attainable for anyone who plays this game even semi seriously including F2P. Making all Phoenix not just F2P but easy to farm was very generous. Shipments, cantina, hard node, guild/fleet/GW/cantina store and the shard shop + they had double drops for Phoenix. If you couldn't unlock Thrawn you had no one to blame but yourself.
Let's take a moment to focus on Ezra who in my opinion is the best member of the Squad. Seeing as how he was the most wanted Phoenix toon it would be perfectly understandable from a business pov if CG had left him P2P only, or even just shipments. Instead they not only had him in shipments, but he was in the Fleet store, Shard Shop and Cantina 2-B!
Moving onto the Thrawn event: Seriously, that intro was great. The gameplay was fun and most importantly it wasn't very difficult. After having to spend so many resources farming Phoenix it was nice not having to waste very much gear to unlock Thrawn. Tier 5 was easy to beat with gear 7 Phoenix and I personally beat tier 6 with 3 gear 7s and 2 gear 8s.
Onto Thrawn himself: Obviously he's not that great on defense, but he is huge improvement offensively for most teams and should help people reach higher ranks than they've ever previously achieved. He's also completely viable even at 5* in top tier of arena. He's great for Arena, Raids, GW and I assume ships too at some point in the future.
Flash Event: I already made my point regarding the bonus tier, but I was completely shocked by the rewards. A whole Stun Cuff and Furnace + 3 zetas! These are without a doubt the best rewards they've ever had in this game and feel well earned given the amount of resources needed to unlock. I know this varied from person to person but I had 20 Stun cuff and 40ish Furnace salvage drop from tier 3 which was a nice bonus. I should also add the bonus tier was very easy to complete with only gear 7 Phoenix which I very much appreciated.
Lastly now that I've written an entire book: An all round great toon who's viable at 5*, a complete Stun Cuff and Furnace, 3 Zetas and a goal to work towards that spiced up the normal monotonous routine made this one of the best months SWGOH has had imo.
What did CG do right? Everything (almost)
Before I cover the good, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed. The devs handling of the flash event bonus tier was awful. I don't know if they didn't test it before release and frankly I don't care. They compounded the issue with poor communication. Far too often we have a lack of communication from the devs which hurts the game and needs to be fixed.
As I said I was frustrated at first, but after looking back on it I think the devs handled it all very well (minus the bonus tier of the flash event) and made Thrawn very attainable for anyone who plays this game even semi seriously including F2P. Making all Phoenix not just F2P but easy to farm was very generous. Shipments, cantina, hard node, guild/fleet/GW/cantina store and the shard shop + they had double drops for Phoenix. If you couldn't unlock Thrawn you had no one to blame but yourself.
Let's take a moment to focus on Ezra who in my opinion is the best member of the Squad. Seeing as how he was the most wanted Phoenix toon it would be perfectly understandable from a business pov if CG had left him P2P only, or even just shipments. Instead they not only had him in shipments, but he was in the Fleet store, Shard Shop and Cantina 2-B!
Moving onto the Thrawn event: Seriously, that intro was great. The gameplay was fun and most importantly it wasn't very difficult. After having to spend so many resources farming Phoenix it was nice not having to waste very much gear to unlock Thrawn. Tier 5 was easy to beat with gear 7 Phoenix and I personally beat tier 6 with 3 gear 7s and 2 gear 8s.
Onto Thrawn himself: Obviously he's not that great on defense, but he is huge improvement offensively for most teams and should help people reach higher ranks than they've ever previously achieved. He's also completely viable even at 5* in top tier of arena. He's great for Arena, Raids, GW and I assume ships too at some point in the future.
Flash Event: I already made my point regarding the bonus tier, but I was completely shocked by the rewards. A whole Stun Cuff and Furnace + 3 zetas! These are without a doubt the best rewards they've ever had in this game and feel well earned given the amount of resources needed to unlock. I know this varied from person to person but I had 20 Stun cuff and 40ish Furnace salvage drop from tier 3 which was a nice bonus. I should also add the bonus tier was very easy to complete with only gear 7 Phoenix which I very much appreciated.
Lastly now that I've written an entire book: An all round great toon who's viable at 5*, a complete Stun Cuff and Furnace, 3 Zetas and a goal to work towards that spiced up the normal monotonous routine made this one of the best months SWGOH has had imo.