Developer Q&A - 04/23/2020

TOPIC: General
Q: Will live PVP ever make its way to the game? I know its a big change but I enjoy the game and would like to keep playing after doing dailies and anything else.

• A: CG_Tophat - It could one day, but it's not on the development roadmap at this time. I know there's a number of people on the team that have an interest in it. The number of times it's come up as a conversation over the years is too many to count. So why haven't we done it? It comes back to something I wrote about in the sandbox mode response (and that I've said in a number of the Dev Q&As): it's all about tradeoffs. In our earliest conversations, we had a feeling that the characters we were making at the time were not diverse enough to make for a robust enough live pvp system (and we still needed to make guilds and raids). Over time the question then transitioned to, are there enough places for everyone to play (beyond the hardcore pvpers) and we tended towards making more general features. We made GAC because the play patterns were similar enough to other modes in the game that we believed generalized well for both pvp-ers and pve-ers alike. This is a very long winded way of saying I don't think the conversation about live PvP is dead by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a ways out if it ever comes to Galaxy of Heroes.
  

Q: Before a new month starts you guys put out a calendar of events. Is there a way we can have a calendar of events for the GAC quests? It’d be nice to know if an arena quest is coming up so we can save all 5 for that day

• A: CG_Miller - This is a great idea, and I will talk to CG_SBCrumb about what this could eventually look like for the players.
  

Q: About "What Kinds of Data do Guild Officers Want?" Topic, when we gonna get some responses?

• A: CG_Tophat - Just spoke to Crumb about this. I just asked him to put a meeting on the books for next week for us to review. Hopefully we have something new to share shortly. Thank you everyone that's added information to the thread.
  

Q: Why is Star Wars.com releasing new content info before It’s being revealed on SWGoH forum?

• A: CG_Tophat - As a game we work very closely with our Lucasfilm partners and part of that partnership is the release of information. Since we're part of an ecosystem of Star Wars content, sometimes the scoop comes out Star Wars.com.
  

Q: GL KYLO T6: can you explain why Rey’s event is pretty easy while even with using your very late “hint” and in-game feature to bolster Kylo in his own event as apparently his normal ,design isn’t enough to tackle Rey, Kylo,s event has ANY loss rates? it is beyond frustrating to lose tickets that take days to accumulate. Days— that’s even using crystal refreshes.

• A: CG_Coffee - Kylo's event is intended to have similar difficulty to Rey's. We noticed that players were struggling with his Tier 6 so put out the hints for strategy and squad. With the right squad giving Kylo turns and protecting him and heavy use of the event special on Kylo we internally have very high success rates. We hope these help to improve the win rate but will keep monitoring.
  

Q: Why do the galactic legends characters have such a rigid attack priority instead of a more random one?

• A: CG_Coffee - As the game has evolved we've gotten better tools to use when designing a character. For characters as powerful as Galactic Legends having them be a bit smarter allowed for us to focus on more streamlined abilities and avoid ending up with bloated kits.
  

Q: Why is Star Wars.com releasing new content info before It’s being revealed on SWGoH forum?

• A: CG_Tophat - As a game we work very closely with our Lucasfilm partners and part of that partnership is the release of information. Since we're part of an ecosystem of Star Wars content, sometimes the scoop comes out Star Wars.com.
  

Q: Hi CG! Have you guys thought of adding skins to already playable characters? Seeing the same characters in pvp all the time gets pretty boring and monotonous. Maybe different skins for characters could fix that? Ways of unlocking skins could be like portraits and titles, by completing events, quests, or achievements. Thank you for your time and I hope you all have a good day.

• A: CG_Coffee - This is a really interesting question that pops up internally as well. A challenge for us is that we already have multiple versions of the same character so we're concerned about it being confusing which one is being used. Secretly I do wonder how many different Han models we could get in.... We are also experimenting with things like we did for Galactic Legend Kylo where his appearance changes during his ultimate. There's also interesting design space for these character iterations - often they behave differently in a different outfit and we like highlighting that character diversity in another kit.
  

Q: When will Facebook connect feature will be back or at least u can bring back Ally code link technique that was used before FB?

• A: CG_Coffee - It's temporarily disabled while we fix an issue but will be back in a future update. In the meantime to link accounts you'll need to go through the Support team.
  

Q: Do you have any future plans to expand guild involvement? Such as weekly guild challenges, a trophy room, or something we can throw resources toward to build

• A: CG_Tophat - We've discussed it. We're actively working on shoring up solo play in the short term, but we've got an eye towards how that expands to group play in the future.
  

Q: Will any of the the required Galactic Legends characters thata are older get a rework or touch up, for example Rose or Phasma

• A: CG_Tophat - There are no reworks or touch ups planned at the moment. Also on our list to circle back to.
  

Q: There are some units who only appear in the Galactic Legends event like Zorii Bliss and the First Order Raider, are these intended to be event exclusive enemies or is there potential to see them adapted for play later as a way to give First Order and Resistance more options?

• A: CG_Tophat - For the moment they are event exclusive, but we're opportunistic if the ability to release them comes open. They aren't available yet, because in general our event kits don't have the same balance considerations our playable characters do. Meaning, we would need to likely update the kit and put it through the balance ringer. Right now Zorii and Raider aren't as high of a priority for us to get out relative to some other things we have in the works.
  

Q: Is a sandbox in talks at all?

• A: CG_Tophat - Could we see this come to SWGOH? Not at the moment. 1) There's a tremendous amount of UI work that would go into a Sandbox mode. When you start to think about all the different permutations that players would want to be able to try out (pick units, set ability levels, set mods, can event creatures be there, etc), it's very expensive. Now some players have pointed out they'd like to just be able to battle their buddies and whatever their lineup is. That is a little bit more feasible, but still not free and coupled with 2) there's nothing that we've seen that indicates that this would be a high engagement feature. In the past we've released some events with unbounded play and in general we see people's participation fall off pretty quickly. There are definitely hardcore players that we think would engage with this feature - there's no disputing that. But we believe it's a relatively small group. So the calculation we make is - do we make a feature that is incredibly heavy development-wise with a lot of ui and flow iteration (taking away from other things like more event types) for (what we think) is a small group of players, or do we keep development focused on making things that affect all players with either an immediate thing to do or that creates a long term aspiration? In general we tend towards the latter.
  

Q: Are there any new raid coming to SWGOH? We haven't seen many new guild activities in a while. And please make it hard!

• A: CG_Tophat - We were doing initial development on one last year, but we've paused work on it for the moment. We've been working on something that we think will have a wider impact on the overall playerbase that we'll discuss in more detail in next month's road ahead.
  

Q: I love how smart the theorycrafting community is. Were there any obvious designed interactions that the community missed? I’m sure there must’ve been. C’mon CG throw us a bone

• A: CG_Miller - It's a lot easier to answer "have there been interactions the community found that the devs missed" because that is an inevitability. It's a few dozen of us against thousands and thousands (and thousands) of you all, so we're definitely not going to be able to conceive of every possible permutation. However, when we have an interaction in mind that the playerbase missed, it's usually because they found a better one, and we're OK with that.
  

Q: First off, I absolutely love the game so thank you for all the work you guys put in! In regards to character release formats, can we expect more Hero's Journey and Legendary events or will it be exclusively the Galactic Legends event type going forward?

• A: CG_Coffee - Thank you for the kind words! We're happy you enjoy it. We absolutely plan to use Legendary and Hero's Journey type events again. Galactic Legends is a new type of event and character for us to work with but we'll still be doing other types as well.
  

Q: You mentioned once that Geo TB would go to a 4 24 hour phase cycle, to total 4 days. Is this still planned, or has this idea been scrapped?

• A: CG_Coffee - Personally I love the idea but we've heard conflicting opinions from the community. I'm happy to hear from players which setup they prefer and why.
  

Q: Will there be more love to epic events, like it was when luke skyewalker came out? The cinematics where absolutely amazing and many events after were not getting close to that format. I miss that stunning moment when you unlock the GL for example.

• A: CG_Tophat - The definition of more love is sort of nebulous, but if you mean more cinematics - yes, there will be more cinematics. We try to create cinematic experiences beyond just cinematics, with play mechanics, intros, etc.
  

Q: A while ago you mentioned wanting to update the request mechanic, have you considered adding a trade mechanic instead?

• A: CG_Tophat - I wrote about this previously (somewhere) - but our concern with a trade mechanic is that it would likely lead to a real world black market or gray market in Galaxy of Heroes gear. The things we'd have to do to limit that behavior would likely result in something that'd be really difficult for us to maintain and constantly concerned about the potential black/gray market impacts. Not at this time and unlikely ever.
  

Q: Why are packs a different prices in different regions? In Europe it seems unfair to be paying a higher price I’m what is already a stronger currency

• A: CG_Tophat - It's an exchange rate thing is the simple answer. We don't control the way those play out, but everything is pegged to USD.
  

Q: Why won't you give us a Princess Leia portrait? The late Carrie Fisher deserves to be honored.

• A: CG_Cyandies - Soon TM
  

TOPIC: Content

Q: With the Mandalorian coming to the game soon, can we also expect the addition of his ship the Razor Crest, and if so, are there any plans in the future for a larger bounty hunter fleet or a scoundrel fleet?

• A: CG_Miller - Bounty Hunters do have a lot of ships don't they? We're trying very hard to make sure that fleets contain ships within their own faction, but in some cases like Resistance there just isn't enough to go around. This isn't the case with Bounty Hunters so they are definitely a faction worthy of getting a "build around" unit.
  

Q: Why is Greef Karga going to be light side instead of neutral? Considering he was a secondary antagonist throughout most of the first season I really expected a neutral tag.

• A: CG_Miller - Greef's look doesn't really change throughout the series so that makes it incredibly difficult to make multiple versions of him. His kit takes inspiration from all the Chapters of The Mandalorian that he appears in, so we decided that his alignment should be lined up with what he displayed in the final chapter of the season for the sake of capturing the whole of the character and looking at where we'll use him in the future.
  

Q: Do you plan on adding any more divisions to GA? The top divisions have a wide range of power levels and I'm bound to come across some with GL Rey or Kylo sooner or later even thoug I'm still working on them.

• A: CG_Miller - Yes, we've got some work to do in order to add those new tiers, and we're waiting for a critical mass of players before we commit to that task.
  

Q: What is the thought process behind giving Cara Dune the "Rebel" tag?

• A: CG_Miller - Cara's skills come from her time as a Rebel Shock Trooper, and we really wanted to capture that in her kit. Making her work with things that look for the Rebel category was an additional way we could bring out the bad-ass Rebel soldier she is meant to be.
  

Q: Why do some feats that are earned during attack phases of GAC end during the set up phase? I would ask that the timers be adjusted, either to last an extra attack phase (preferred) or to end when an attack phase ends. There is no point for a feat (example, the need for speed feat) to continue another 24 hours during the setup phase when there is nothing we can do to complete it.

• A: CG_Miller - This is entirely on me, and before I answer this I have requested a tech solution to the problem. The reason this happens is that once a Feat's timer expires you can no longer claim the reward for the feat even if you accomplished it. The reason the feat runs an "extra day" is so that players have an additional 24 hours in order to claim a feat they have accomplished. It's not the most graceful of solutions to the problem, and I agree it does look weird, especially if you didn't complete the feat.
  

Q: Grand Arena Championship is a great mode. But it is only 5v5 and 3v3 with or without ships. Are there plans on adding more variety in GAC? Interesting examples would be 4v4 or 6v6 (Maybe with two leaders?) and even a mix of different squad sizes. Also, with now 8 capital ships, wouldn't it be cool to set 2 fleets? You could even implement special systems like duplicating characters ( of course limited and not for galactic legends ) or giving certain factions certain bonuses. Also, the territories could have some special functions like giving a small speed or tenacity boosts that way placing defenses and attacking would be even more strategic. GAC is such an awesome mode, I hope you keep improving it! Stay healthy!

• A: CG_Tophat - Unpacking this: 1) We're working on expanding the number of fleet defenses. 2) We have no plans at this time to introduce anymore permutations to GAC at this time. When we were doing all of the experimentation in the different TW bonuses and changes, one of the common complaints we heard from players is that it was hard to plan for as a player. Now even those bonuses were very distortionary of regular play patterns, there's a key lesson in there for us: change things, make sure players have time to develop new strategies, and don't change it too often. At the moment, we think there's a stable enough play pattern around 5v5 and 3v3 that's still interesting enough to excite players. At sometime, we'll likely look back into changes we could make into GAC, but not at this time. 3) Thanks! I hope you and yours are staying healthy too!
  

Q: We have had several light side Geo TB’s now, previously you had said the team wanted to see the data for progression and decide if any adjustments needed to be made. Now that you have seen the data, are there any plans to rebalance the TB? Or can we expect some power increase for our characters to make this mode more enjoyable? Even in a top 50 guild in the game from our perspective the guild really dislikes LS Geo in the rotation, we need fun added to it.

• A: CG_Tophat - Sorry to hear you aren't enjoying it. There are no plans at this time to change the balance of the Geo LSTB.
  

Q: With the new and final season of the Clone Wars coming to an end soon, can we expect in the future to see some new/returning characters introduced into SWGOH, like we are starting to see for The Mandalorian?

• A: CG_Tophat - Not in the near future.
  

Q: Are there plans to give us 8 full fleets worth of ships? There are currently 8 capital ships, but only 41 smaller ships. At the 7 smaller ships per fleet, we would need 56 ships to round this out. It might be a great opportunity to add value to generic pilots such as TFP and Resistance Pilot by giving them more than one ship to pilot. We need more ships and more opportunities to use ships in non-PVP modes.

• A: CG_Tophat - We're releasing all sorts of ships. We don't release ships to the idea of having x number of complete fleets. We release them in response to the meta to drive changes in the meta. My hope is that we have many full potential fleets in the future. Regarding more opportunities to use ships, agreed - we're looking into adding more defenses to GAC and we're working on creating some more spaces to play with them.
  

Q: Are there plans to rework some of the Galactic Republic jedi with dated kits like Mace Windu?

• A: CG_Tophat - None at this time, unfortunately. We hope to circle back to them at some point.
  

Q: Many players didn't find the duel between Rey and Kylo very compelling. Do you have plans to use this mechanic again? Are there any changes planned to make it more interesting to play?

• A: CG_Miller - The feedback on this feature has been fantastic and we are reading all of it. We definitely like the new way to engage with the game, and if we return to the Duel as a mode in a future event you can rest assured that it won't be an exact carbon copy of the way we did it in the Rey and Kylo GL events.
  

Q: Will we ever see an arena fleet without Bossk? I'm so sick of him in fleets!

• A: CG_Miller - While we love the Hound's Tooth, we agree that its presence is a little too ubiquitous for our tastes. This is why you've seen the new Capital ships look for specific factions for bonuses, and why the last two ships we added were tanks (the Hyena bomber and Republic Y-wing). As a matter of fact, you can probably put money down that any bombers we add in the future will be a Tank first and foremost in an effort to pry that slot away from the Hound's Tooth.
  

Q: Now that you are starting to introduce content from the Mandalorian, it is planned to introduce the Mandalorian tag?

• A: CG_Miller - Mandalorian is a very difficult category name to throw into the game. For one it could refer to the race of humans from the planet Mandalore. For another it could refer to the creed by which Mandalorians stand. And then there is a third reference and that is the show called The Mandalorian. If we were to add it, it would probably be in the definition as the first example (someone from Mandalore), but Jango Fett and Boba Fett are not Mandalorian which would exclude them from getting the category. This would be confusing to a lot of people while at the same time being canonically correct. Since there's no real pressing need or mechanic we want to tie around being Mandalorian, we're keeping it out of the game for now.
  

Q: Why is GL Rey not tagged as a Jedi?

• A: CG_Miller - This is a two part answer. The first is that while Rey identified herself as "All the Jedi" at the end of Rise of Skywalker, up until that moment she was on a unique path all her own, and can be argued isn't ever a Jedi in the traditional sense. Second is that after Jedi Knight Revan we have to be incredibly careful about who gets the Jedi category, as he is always looking for another Jedi to strengthen that team even more. When taken together I hope you can see our reasoning behind not giving Rey the Jedi category.
  

TOPIC: Mechanic

Q: What does it mean to have more than 100% defense, shouldn’t they just not take damage?

• A: CG_Miller - When a game allows bonuses to go higher than 100% it's usually to provide a buffer against things that lower the amount, and those debuffs to be more obvious. If a character has "120% Defense" and then something lowers it by 20% it will read as 100%, but the player knows the -20% did *something* at least. If it were just 120% behind the scenes and displayed at 100% you wouldn't see any change if you hit it with -20%, and your immediate reaction is that its a bug or broken in some way.
  

Q: Why do the galactic legends characters have such a rigid attack priority instead of a more random one?

• A: CG_Coffee - As the game has evolved we've gotten better tools to use when designing a character. For characters as powerful as Galactic Legends having them be a bit smarter allowed for us to focus on more streamlined abilities and avoid ending up with bloated kits.
  

Q: Recent videos on YouTube show infinite loop between Anakin (Jedi Knight), Nighsister Zombie and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren with a permanent taunt from zombie. The zombie-Anakin loop is often use in Phase 3 HSR. Do you plan to modify/adapt the kit of one of the characters? For example, limiting the bonus turn of Anakin when à ally from Galactic republic dies)

• A: CG_Tophat - We're aware of it and we're currently monitoring it. There's a chance we take action on it. It's a lower priority than some other things we are working on at the moment, but we are actively reviewing.
  

Q: When will we able to slice 1-4 dot mods into 5-dot mods? Especially useful for newer players after they start off with lower end mods. And if never, why not?

• A: CG_Cyanides - We originally had slicing for all mods back when we were working on slicing, but we decided to limit it to 5-dot mods only. One issue we ran into was how do we handle having a 4-dot level 15 mod slice from 4A to 6E? 4-dot mods already have all the rolls in them they are just lower values than at 5-dot and 6-dot, so slicing all the way from 4A to 6E wouldn't have any additional rolls but would still require all the resources. We would have had to revamp the entire system to allow for any mod <=4-dot to be sliced straight to the A rarity of the next dot level, and we had to cut that work. Outside of the technical complexity of the system, when we introduced slicing almost 2 years ago, we gathered some qualitative data that suggested that mods were very confusing to players (and I bet they still are today to some). We felt that adding another layer of complexity with being able to slice any mod would have been a negative. We don't have any plans to allow for <5-dot mods to be sliced.
  

TOPIC: Bugs

Q: What is your plan to improve the ai performance of GL Rey? The way she is now makes her objectively worse than kylo in all modes despite steeper unlock requirements. Stuff like the interactions shown in videos should never happen.

• A: CG_Coffee - The interaction in the video was addressed and has been fixed.
  

Q: There are several errors in the german localisation (and i'm sure also in some other languages), which are known for a long time, but never corrected (example: Xanadus Blood). can we please get correct ability descriptions?

• A: CG_Tophat - Put them in Answers HQ. High Command and Jedi Mind Tricks have been trying to clean those up for awhile. They just did a batch of them a few months ago. Please send them our way!!!
  

TOPIC: Quality of life

Q: Would it be possible to add some confirmation warning dialog for joining to grand arena? This is common issue that people joining accidentally but there is no rejoin button, so having such warning would be helpful.

• A: CG_Tophat - It is possible. I just wrote the ticket and put it into the backlog. No promises on when it shows up, but we'll try to get it figured out soon.
  

Q: Is displaying in-game stats something within reach for the development team? Example if character 1 and 2 are granting character 3 potency up could CH create an in battle screen or pop up that would show the total potency character 3 has

• A: CG_Coffee - We have a lot of interest in this and think it's a great idea, it comes down to implementing it. It's not a simple task to get in so needs a good chunk of time allocated to it. Getting the UI to work how we want, displaying information well, is a difficult task and would take away from building other new things for the game.
  

Q: Why isn’t all gear available to make into salvage? For instance, Mk 12 armatek tactical data, which is a g12 piece would theoretically fit in well with creating electrium conductor salvage, but it’s not a choice to use. What is the point of having a game mode such as the salvager where we can trade old or unneeded gear for other needed equipment if you can’t even use some of the gear in that game mode?

• A: CG_Cyanides - The answer is actually due to some technical limitations. When we originally designed the Scavenger, we set it up for all gear pieces to be included. Once we got further in the process however, we had to make decisions on which pieces of gear could be converted as we could not support having all gear pieces included.
  

TOPIC: Art/Sound

Q: Something with GL Rey's face looks off, why is it so hard to capture female faces?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - This is a good chance to talk about process and to clear up a few misconceptions. Lets get into it
  
  Female faces are challenging with low poly budgets. Even though we increased our poly count by double, our direct competitors literally use 3x the amount of polys our new models do. Your follow up would be "then why dont you do the same” and that comes down to a decision we made a long time ago to make sure that Galaxy of Heroes would be playable on a very wide variety of devices. The more we push into higher poly count, the more we exclude some Star Wars fans. It’s a delicate balance and we err towards letting more players play.
  
  To give you a concrete SWGoH example, the WIP model for GL Rey that was shared in our State of the Galaxy reports is the exact same model and texture that was used in game, and the exact same model that was used in our promotional videos. I read a lot of comments along the lines of "why did they change the mode;" or "why didnt they use the one from the youtube video". We did - we had to lower the texture resolution in-game and we don't get the benefits of the fancy lighting and shaders you have at your disposal when making a promotional video, but it’s the same asset throughout, even for her unit icon. Same thing with the Cara Dune model used for promo materials this week. Same model and texture, but the texture is uncompressed and there's fancy shaders and lighting we can't replicate in-game.
  
  Conventionally attractive female faces are hard to caricaturize, it's a typical challenge any artist faces. Daisy Ridley is a very beautiful woman and she comes with a very precise set of challenges when it comes to bring her into our art style because depending on the angle her face shape changes a fair amount, meaning that if you model her to look just like the reference from the front, her 3/4 view may look like a different person altogether, same with the profile view and so on. More unique looking faces like Adam Driver's or Oscar Isaac's are much easier to capture likeness wise because they are much easier to stylize and remain in-character, but it's not even a male to female comparison, Mark Hammill and Harrison Ford look like different people every time I see a photo of them, yet they remain recognizable - it’s a difficult challenge. To lead into the next question, Gina Carano, who is also a very beautiful woman, has particular facial traits that make it much easier to slightly exaggerate her features to make her more recognizable.
  

Q: Why does Cara Dune look so much better Galactic Legends Rey?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - I really like how both of them turned out but I agree that Cara Dune is among the best in the game. I can go into a bit more depth, however.
  
  Back in ... around October/November is when we started considering higher polygonal meshes for our big releases and Rey was the character we chose as the prototype for that change. We knew that our previous lower poly models were preventing us from reaching a certain level of quality, 3/4 views were very affected by the fact that we didnt have eye sockets or mouths modeled, making those textures look warped at those angles, the lower the number of polygons you use in a face the worse the lighting will make that face look, etc. Anyways, our character artist was very excited about the possibility of taking the next step in fidelity and Rey was the first character that came out of that new pipeline, next up was Finn, Poe, then Kylo. As with most artists, he has simply gotten better, faster and more confident with each subsequent character release, so with the Mandalorian characters you are just seeing our team grow in skill and execution as time goes on.
  
  The funny thing is, and we do take this as a compliment, are the comments I heard this week whether we hired a new artist or something. Nope, its the same guy we've used for the last 3+ years. Increasing the number of available polys is a better fit for his talents and we are also able to provide much better reference now. Both of these key aspects, along with a more concerted effort to raise the level of quality in our game along with getting more and more reps in are what amount for the increase in quality a lot of you have commented on this week.
  
  And Rey for us is more than just her model - she was a character that took a lot of effort from a lot of different departments. Her number of animations is incredibly high, about 3x more than any other character (same for Kylo), plus cinematic needs, making a separate version for the beginning of the event (with JTR's kit) and the duel does take more time to prep and make sure it's bug free. As a point of reference, anytime we make something new, like the duel, or setting up an environment to switch in real time to another environment, it adds a bunch of dev time because it introduces bugs and we have to make sure it works with our current codebase. The models and textures themselves, however, don't take all that much longer than they usually do. For this new batch, Cara was basically spot-on right away, however, with Greef he took us a few tries to get the character right because Carl Weathers has a very assymetrical face and it's very easy to just make him look like one of his previous characters instead of Greef Karga.
  

Q: The Jango Fett blaster sounds is one of the most iconic and satisfying audio clips in the game. What are some of the audio files you most enjoyed creating and what are some you look forward to in the future?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - The audio team utilizes the Star Wars sound library as much as possible. However, when it comes to the Force there's not a lot of audio for it in the movies. That's when we get to make a lot of sound from scratch. Malak is absolutely one of my favorites. I got to dive into some deep tones and had a lot of fun with it. I also enjoyed putting together the Raddus and setting up the audio states for that. When you use the Raddus' Holdo Maneuver, I made an audio state to duck out all audio and music to emulate the silence that the movie has. It came together nicely and I was ecstatic to bring that to our game.
  

Q: There is a small audio track when you unlock and promote specific characters and it's different for most characters. I like them and ramp up the volume when promoting a character. How much consideration during the development goes into choosing this track? Are there plans to update the tracks for some characters that got none or some generic track? Also would it be possible to allow a way to listen to it again after promoting the character to 7*?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - Mid last-year the audio team did a huge update to our unlock stingers. Everyone now has their own stinger rather than generic. Some still have generic ones that don't fall under anything like Light side, Dark side, Imperial, Rebel, First Order, Separatist, etc. And special main characters like Rey, Kylo, Han, Anakin, Ahsoka, etc. have their own unlock music stinger. However, if you've already unlocked those characters before I've updated them, there's currently nowhere else in the game their music pieces play. It is something the audio team is thinking about and we hope to find ways to play their unlock stingers elsewhere so you don't only get to hear that music once
  

Q: Do you guys use sound clips from the movies for some of the characters defeat sounds (such as Vader’s Nooooo) or do you have to recreate them yourselves?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - We created Vader's "No!" by recording a voice actor and then processed it to sound like Vader. We do use voices like Chewbacca, some of the Ewoks, and the Jawas from the movies. The other special case is that we were able to use Anthony Daniel's voice from Battlefront for our C3PO.
  

Q: @CG_AU-D10 How do you design sound effects? Does it frustrate you that most players have the sound turned off?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - That's a big question that I can answer in many ways! The audio team utilizes the audio from the movies as well as make our own sound effects, especially for Force users where the movies don't have a lot a sound for the Force. That said, that doesn't mean we grab sounds from the movies and just plop them in. A lot of the recordings are from the 70s and 80s, so we try to process them to be more clean and vibrant. When it comes to designing a sound around a character we have to think what that character represents. So, when I designed Malak, he is an evil dude who sucks the life out of people. In general, lower tones represent evil, and since he uses the force to drain the lifeforce of Jedi, I used breathy voices in my sound to represent that. As for the frustration part, a little, haha! But being a mobile user myself I understand. A lot of the time when I play a mobile game I'm not in an area where I'd want my sound on to disturb others, unless I had headphones. It makes me appreciate it more when I see comments on the work the audio team does. Let's me know at least someone out there gets to hear our work. :)
  

Q: What does Darth Nihilus say in the game? I can't unhear "hand over the flash drive" LOL

• A: CG_AU-D10 - Haha! I mean, he really does want that flash drive back. He's actually reciting the Sith code, then we reversed it, and then added some effects to make it sound mysterious and eerie.
  

Q: What is your favorite sound in the game?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - Mine personally is the very first sounds I made for the game, which would be Mother Talzin's abilities. It was a milestone for me to to create and implement those and to say that I was officially a part of the SWGoH universe.
  
• A: CG_Miller - I am really a fan of Nute Gunray's laugh when he extorts someone. Captures that character perfectly.
  
• A: CG_SBCrumb - Grevious' laugh is also very good
  
• A: CG_Coffee - I've changed my answer 10 times since reading this but I'll probably settle on Jango's blasters.
  
• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - I made the Chewbacca cinematic (yes, I know, it was long, my bad) and seeing audio being placed on it for the first time I was floored because all of a sudden it really hit me that I was truly making something that was part of the Star Wars universe. More recently I really enjoyed the audio done for the Holdo Maneuver, that was rad."
  

Q: Can we expect more characters to get animations in their inventory page; at the very least, the ones in journey guide that don’t have one yet?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - Absolutely, we recently worked on one idle animation for Jedi Training Rey, so that should be in soon ... and Padme is next. We try to fit these in as we can, the hope is that every Journey Guide character will get one this year. However, I do like the reddit threads when they get stealth added and people find it as a surprise so for the rest you'll have to wait and see ;)
  

Q: When you design character animations, do you take into account that many players will only ever see them at 4x speed?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - Ugh, well, yeah, kind of. I am not going to go into detail, but the way our game handles speed settings has caused a few headaches for the art team. We do make sure animations don't look ridiculous in 4x, because I myself play at that speed, but they are all made to look their best at 1x. What I do with every new release is that when I want to see a characters animations for the first time I go down to 1x and, for The Mandalorian in particular, I make sure that sound is ON for his Disintegration ability because that makes me very happy inside.
  

Q: Within this COVID life, any chance you can share some of the background scenes that are used for battles? Because they would be excellent for Zoom backgrounds. =) And what are you all doing to personally avoid getting cabin fever?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - Oh I would love that, I think the backgrounds we made for the Galactic Legend events are some of our best yet, specifically that low angle on Kijimi. I think this is a cool idea and will bring it up with marketing because anything that isnt shared in-game is mostly out of my hands. For us personally, seeing people get creative with their Zoom backgrounds has been a treat, I've been partial to the Distracted Boyfriend meme as a background for a while now.
  

Q: Can you add grievous’s cape in game? It would be difficult to make it work with his attack animations but having it just in the character screen would be fantastic

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - We considered it when we worked on his rework a while ago. He typically doesn't fight with his cape on so, as you say, it would be an addition for his out of combat screens. It would definitely be cool looking but it's really out of scope budget wise, especially considering it wouldn't even be used in battle. Making these characters as close to the fantasy as we can is a constant tug of war for us and we need to know when we need to compromise, adding a cape out of combat is a pretty good example of that.
  

Q: I have an artwork question. With the announcement of the Mandalorian coming to the game, would your art team consider having the character’s armor appear at unlock as he did in Ep. 1? Then as players achieve pre-determined gear levels, the character gains pieces of beskar armor with the full set achieved at gear 13? That could be a fun way to add some pride and accomplishment for players gearing him and be true to his journey in season 1

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - We did consider it and it's a good idea. It's out of scope for what we have planned for him at this point though, so we focused on the cool stuff that he does in the show with his "starting" armor
  

Q: Which department is in charge of the game trailers like the Mandalorian trailer for SWGOH that launched today?

• A: CG_RagingSpaniard - We have an internal marketing team that handles all promotional materials of that kind. We typically collaborate pretty closely, thats why, for example, the promo videos for Darth Revan had some similar shots to our event cinematics since I made the storyboards early on and they got to reinterpret them in their own way. Our Mando content doesn't have any cinematics with it so they went ahead and had some fun, I think they came out really great and I'm always happy when we get to give them some feedback and ideas ahead of time.
  

Q: What is a typical workflow for the audio team?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - The audio team starts by looking at what is coming up for the next update. From there we discuss with the other teams what we want for those items. Then we'll reach out to Lucas if we need specific sounds. Then we continue to work with the environment, animation, and VFX team to see what they're doing. We'll get with tech artists to discuss any technical items we may need to implement our sound. Once environment, animation, and VFX are done, audio usually starts our work at this time. Audio in in the industry is usually one of the last steps in the pipeline so we can see the final product we're working with and make sure our audio matches with the visuals. We'll create our audio (usually 3 variations to not make it sound repetitive), make sure it is ready for mobile, put it in our audio engine, and finally into the game!
  

Q: What was the toughest challenge the team had with the audio?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - We originally were using a lot of the same sounds for lightsabers. We decided that we wanted to update them to all sound different. So we made a specific sound for Green, Blue, Red, Purple, and Yellow saber users. Characters who have special sabers that have unique sounds to them are Kylo, Traya, and Ezra. For the colors, we had to think what the saber color represented and made the sounds from there. For example, Blue represents justice so we made a higher and brighter hum for it. Another example is purple is a combo of blue and red saber tones so you get both the bright and gritty. It took a lot of thought and care to represent these colors and we hope it brings a bit of extra character to the sabers and their users!
  

Q: I like the audio for Grand Arena Championship league promotion / mod upgrades, are those original sounds? What other original sounds have you developed? Like the rancor sound or any blaster effects or anything were in-house? Who voiced Darth Nihlus?

• A: CG_AU-D10 - Thanks! Those are original! A lot of the force abilities are originals as well since there aren't a lot of sounds in the movies to represent them. Pretty much all of the UI buttons are originals as well. The song in the ship cantina is an original (you'll also see that the musicians are in time with the music!) The Rancor and blaster sounds are from the movies, but a lot of them are old recordings so we did spruce them up a little. Nihilus was one of us reading the Sith Code that we reversed and added a ton of effects to it to make it dark and mysterious.
  

Reserved

I'm sorry TopHat, but you lost your Q&A privileges when you skipped the last one

You'll have to go back in line and wait for your turn

#BringBackCoffee

1. Is a new Epic Confrontation in development?
2. GAC has been out for a year now... What about other plans to evolve GAC that was mentioned a year ago when it launched such as, Inter-Guild GAC?
3. Is there a new raid in progress? Can you tell us what era it is? Perhaps on the latter half of TROS that the game hasn't covered yet :wink: ?
4. Other than a new raid, what other new content is in the works? CG_Sven mentioned a new mode where you use all your toons in a previous Q&A, any updates on that?
5. Now that players can solo the sith raid, there will be an issue of multiple players getting RNG'd out of the top 10 of the sith raid where the bulk of the raid rewards are. Any plans to address this? I think a distributed reward system that was previously in place should be re-implemented but handing out the top 10 rewards like the Pit Raid
6. Which department is in charge of the game trailers like the Mandalorian trailer for SWGOH that launched today?
7. Which feature or content was most impacted by the virtual / remote work environment shift due to 'Rona?
-----------------
AUDIO QUESTIONS

1. What is everyone's favorite audio in the game? Emperor Palpatine's has to be my favorite. I do enjoy Vader's defeated cry
2. What is a typical workflow for the audio team?
3. What was the toughest challenge the team had with the audio?
4. What does Darth Nihilus say in the game? I can't unhear "hand over the flash drive" LOL
5. What are some rejected audio related ideas that never made it in the game? Have you considered making the Leader slot character saying a short one-liner at the start of battle like KRU saying "Let the past die"?
6. Did the game or any content was delayed because of the audio issues? Such as getting approvals for using audio files due to licensing? How long does the approval process take?
7. I like the audio for Grand Arena Championship league promotion / mod upgrades, are those original sounds? What other original sounds have you developed? Like the rancor sound or any blaster effects or anything were in-house? Who voiced Darth Nihlus?

Hello,

1-Why aren't you the first source of information about your game anymore ?

2-When can we expect to have new content in the game? (Content = new game mode or new raid not new character,not new packs, not harder events)

3-Can we expect something to do during covid crisis? (buying packs is not something to do)


Big thumb up for the art departement on the new mandalorian characters, they look awesome !

Thank you