Forum Discussion

Drewblood9's avatar
Drewblood9
Rising Traveler
22 days ago

At a Loss

I was so hopeful when they announced this new update, I watched the full Ahnald video, and I insisted to my guildmates that we should wait to see the episode structure before we start complaining about anything. My hopes were dashed when I saw the new Galactic Challenge. For a game with consistent issues, and a relatively unresponsive dev team, I was so hopeful because I thought, like many other, that this might mark a new period in SWGOH's history after 9 years of playing. I can admit when I'm wrong.

I was concerned with the new marquee system when it came out with the Naboo raid, as I felt it further divided free-to-play players from paid players. Don't mistake me, I understand that paid players are going to have an advantage -- SWGOH needs to make money if it's going to continue to exist -- but it quickly became impossible for a F2P player to see anything past the second marquee event. When they announced the new update, they promised that F2P players would see an increase, or (at least) not a decrease in equipment income in a notoriously grindy game. This assuaged my fears concerning the marquee system -- I can't benefit from it, but people I care about can benefit from it.

I could still enjoy the game because I could work towards the Red crates, and help my guild. The Red Crates, of course, being the maximum reward for Galactic Challenges -- an event system that has had notorious issues -- and a consistent method of gear collection. And then they revealed the episode pass -- again, not a problem by itself, CG needs to make money to keep this game alive -- while some of my guildmates said that they had to reconsider playing, and one even quit. As I watched my guildmates become increasingly concerned, I advised caution -- we didn't even have the events yet, or the episode pass. Was $20 a month aggressive? Yes. Was it egregious? Yes. Would I have spent that money on the game anyway? Without a doubt. I enjoyed this game, and I have purchased a number of LSBs, when I have some extra cash lying around, throughout my nine years playing, and I don't regret it. 

And CG continued to ensure us that F2P players would still benefit -- or at least remain neutral. When the most recent Galactic challenge came out, however, and I saw that the challenges were not placeholders, and that they had in fact gotten rid of the "Win the battle" feat, replacing it with two feats that ostensibly required purchase, between an upgraded character that released within the last 48 hours and requiring the episode pass outright, I was gutted. I had been fine with the marquee system, because at least there was an alternative way for me to get equipment. I had been fine with the Episode pass, because at least we were getting new content, and I would willingly sacrifice some gear in exchange for new content. Frankly, any of these changes by themselves would have been fine, but to introduce all of these changes that blatantly favor paying accounts, while still insisting that it was benefiting us, is not just wrong, it's outright demeaning. 

This was my favorite game to play on my phone. It was difficult enough and grindy enough that I could pour hours into it, slowly building up shards and testing team configurations, all while aiding a community that developed around myself and my friends. This change, however, just makes me sad. There's no other way to explain it, as reductive as it is, because I've had so much fun on this game, and to see it make this change is devastating at best. As much as a quick change, like just removing these feats, would help this situation, it really just feels like the CG dev team does not care.

Thanks, Meathead, EA, and the team at CG for making a fantastic game. I'm so sorry that you decided to do this, and I hope, for other players, that you fix this quickly. 

  • Even if you take out the horrible cash grab feats, they could have at least gave us one of the easier GC's for the first time with the new system.  Having all rebel fighters means no GL available to use.  The only saving grace, is that the AI was fairly terrible.  Any rational player would have used Aphra's second special as an opening move, but she didn't always do that.  Still took me several tries (was quite unsuccessful with my g12 Saw lead, managed with Jyn) which is quite tedious.  I think the only reason I managed was because I had managed to get Luthen up to R3.  Not sure how well it would have gone without him in the line-up.  So couple that with the other ftp feat being 400% tm removal.  The community has complained endlessly about a counter for this type of feat.  At least you could have a GL in the squad for this one, but you never know if it is ok to win the match or not since you really don't have a clue if you have done enough.

    All one has to do is skim through the forums.  Countless hate threads about this update right now.  These changes might even be worse than the addition of datacrons.

  • Presaria71's avatar
    Presaria71
    New Adventurer

    Everything from CG these days is trash.    The was on the decline, now they sped up the end.   Too bad for everyone involved

  • Sadly the heads of CG are not very good at there job.  They instead of acting as a successful department would operate, they decided to chase the money.  Instead of making the players want spend it.  This has regretably forced many long term players such as myself to quit.  

    This game is not a job,  people cannot be expected to invest even more time and money without major improvement's.  This is a sad attempt by them to try to report a higher yearly earning.  Yet all this did was kill off more loyal players.

  • gufu21's avatar
    gufu21
    Seasoned Scout

    You are correct. The devs do not care. 

    I've been playing this off-and-on since 2016. I've seen numerous conflagrations come and go, with all the threats of quitting and boycotts and all that. Out of the maybe dozen or so big uproars I've seen, I think CG might have bent twice (the first disastrous roll-out of mods, and the initially overtuned HSTR). Every other time, CG has just gone silent until it blows over, and it almost always has.

    The fact of the matter is that CG is only interested in money, and I can nearly guarantee you that they've already raked in tons of it from this update. There are enough whales that will spend thousands on any new content no matter what, so CG has no incentive to do anything different. The outcry of any number of dolphins and F2P doesn't move the needle at all for them. 

    • larsbabaghanoush's avatar
      larsbabaghanoush
      Rising Novice

      trash update from a trash dev team. same week that a friend's account got hacked & CG said, sorry, nothing we can do. TRASH! no more spending from me back to F2P. great job, CRAPPY GAMES

  • Drewblood9's avatar
    Drewblood9
    Rising Traveler

    I'm boosting this again, because I do hope that something will come of CG's attempts to make good on this. I saw the most recent news announcement from CG_Meathead and I'm hesitantly hopeful (?). I'd love to think that the episode pass GC feat might only be present for the first few, but I'm pretty pissed about it still. I definitely won't be buying the LSBs that are coming up, and it sucks that CG would shift so significantly.

  • "Unresponsive dev team".  You can't seriously expect a burglar to want to talk to the owners of the house he robbed.

    • Drewblood9's avatar
      Drewblood9
      Rising Traveler

      I've seen some useful responses from them in the past. It's rare, and it usually takes 3-4 years, but I'm still hopeful.