Developers Q&A FAQ

Stores, Shipments & Packs

Abysmal_Void: You mentioned previously that you would not add "new" characters into the Galactic War, Cantina and Squad stores so it could serve a source of Shard store currency - truly appreciated - but would you perhaps consider refreshing farming spots for certain characters?

We know that some characters are not a good fit for the nodes that they are currently on. We would love to fix that immediately, but we also think there will be a lot of adverse effects from switching farming locations on players without advance warning, or without a long-term plan to communicate to players. We cannot share anything now but are currently considering options for tackling this.

Destrix: How is price for shards in Shipments determined and how will it look in the future?
Voodoo magic... No seriously, it's complicated and a part of the "secret sauce" that we won't share with players. We make changes to it as we deem appropriate.

HK22: One of the things that you guys released recently were the five dollar Lightside and Darkside Starter Packs. I know that I purchased them because it was a great value and I could support a game that I enjoy. My question is simple are there any more plans to release these type of packs such as a Fleet Starter Pack, or maybe a five dollar character of the month pack?

The revamped Starter Bundles are promotional offers primarily aimed at new players. We released them to the entire player base, because we didn't think it would be wise for longtime players to feel like a really good offer was being hidden from them arbitrarily. We will very occasionally put together bundles for those "lifecycle" purposes and will give everyone a chance to purchase them, but we have no plans at this time to release them regularly.

Is the daily crystal booster ever going to be brought back or replaced? If so, when? And if it will be replaced, what will replace it?

As we had said at the time the 21 day crystal offer needed to be suspended, we had hoped to be able to keep it in the game but were not able to due to factors beyond our control. Those factors remain beyond our control. I know it's frustrating when we can't provide more details, but we do not ever want to point the finger at a party or parties other than ourselves. That said, we are working on options which might bring back something similar. No guarantee that we will be able to do so at this time.

As a person who has literally invested thousands of real dollars into this game, I would like to know how many folks there are actually invested in this game with their own money and I mean thousands not just a few hundred.. do they play and devote the time and grind to fully understand the player frustrations? One of those frustrations is having not enough separation between the P2P and F2P player in the game.. So when will there be a cap increase?

Thank you so much for supporting the game. In terms of keeping a balance between various players' spending (and non-spending) behaviors, this is extraordinarily difficult. A healthy, long-lived free-to-play game needs all types of players. If we lean too far to one extreme or another, we risk alienating players on the other end of the spectrum. If the balance is lost, the game can spin out of control and crater. To the specific question about how many players of various spend levels exist in the game... that's confidential info and so it's not a question we can answer in a public forum. As noted above, there is no immediate plan to increase the level cap.
Speaking personally, of the five people in the room right now pulling questions and answering them, one is an intentional free to play player, and the other four of us have spent thousands of dollars of our own personal money.

Capital Games

TeshKarhann: It seems like a lot of your jobs overlap, like how is "Live Producer" different from "Lead Producer" and all the other titles? Do you all stick to your lanes at work, or do you all tend to have a culture of getting in each other's business to help out wherever you can? Can you share a story (just for funsies) of a recent argument about a new piece of content and how it got resolved?
We love this question, so much so that I bullied the others into letting me answer it, which is pretty par for the course in the dynamics of the Producers on this team.
In all seriousness, there are over 50 developers on this team, most of whom have practical skills like design, art, engineering, QA. Producers (and at EA we also have Development Directors) are responsible for the vision of the direction of the game and then ensuring the team is supported to get that execution done. It also means that sometimes we bump into each other because we all sincerely care about what we're doing and we want the game to be as good as possible. Each of the Producers that work for me own a space - from Feature to Live to Lifecycle, and then it's my responsibility to help support them and make them stronger, but to also roll my sleeves up and help where I can.
As for a recent disagreement - one of the biggest ones that ever happened on this team was the fight over TB having 12 hour or 24 hour phases. The initial intent of the feature was for it to happen over a weekend and be six phases that are 12 hours each. After testing with the beta group, it became very clear to me that we couldn't go under 24 hours per phase. Now, I will say that despite being happy with where we ended up, some of the original people in the 12 hour camp were fighting for TB/TW not to take up the whole week, so by making it 24 hours we are contending with them taking up more of your time and need to reflect on that.

Achilles: Does a department checking/testing updates - before release - exist?
Most certainly they exist! We have our QA and Game Balance Teams. Our QA team is a very talented group of Quality Assurance specialists who excel at triaging software issues and our Game Balance team assesses the tuning of characters and content. SWGOH is a big game with a lot of dynamic interactions and edge cases. We do our best effort to catch everything, but sometimes things slip through. After we have any major misses, we review our process and update it appropriately to try to prevent future issues.

jeffnorth86: There seems to be a disconnect between the EA help bug reporting and the actual Dev team. I reported the Hermit Yoda Zeta bug a week ago and was told the Dev team wasn't aware of the issue even though there's been a thread about it open since February on EA Help. When can we get some updates on these glaring and costly bugs?
We are aware of this bug and it's currently in our stack of "To Do". We have a lot of bugs come in and we do our best to prioritize them across us 1) needing to make new content 2) test the bugs and 3) making sure we haven't created any new bugs. I just looked at the ticket for it and we'll see if we can get that taken care of soon.

Can we please get a constant flow of professional communication? There are various times when we can’t get an answer to important community questions and issues for months. Even if we could just know it’s getting worked on or receive an update once a week on things being addressed/worked on we would all be extremely grateful

Improving the cadence and quality of our communication is a strong desire of the team. What you're seeing tonight is an effort in that direction. In the coming weeks, I will publish an updated plan for how we plan to keep the communication flowing.

There are a few bugs and AI issues that have been present, both in the past and currently, which I believe should be addressed.

So Q:
What exactly is the timeline in how an AI issue is evaluated and approached? From the time a bug or AI issue is posted on Answers HQ or here, what would be the expected turnaround time for the issue to be fixed?

1. RE: Bugs/AI: I just personally wrote these down and will make sure they're logged in our JIRA (bug tracking database). I don't have an answer for you right now, but I'll look into it.
2. RE: AI Evaluation Generally: It varies, honestly. Length of time depends on if we have a big piece of content we're working on in the background (like the Sith Triumvirate) and whether it is an issue from a design intent perspective and a system capability perspective. So the answer is ultimately it depends, but we largely treat them alot like other bugs. How many people are affected? Is it outside our design? Etc. I can tell you that the design team and I regularly talk about AI priorities and issues on a weekly basis, so it's not something we ignore.
3.
Erik Larsen as the Player Lifecycle Producer, *can you give us some insight to where we are in the life cycle?* It seems to me we are in the declining stage as many players are feeling burnout from too much content being

My role is to help think about and manage how players experience the game throughout their lifecycle from a new install all the way up to the elder game. So, it's a bit different than what you're asking. But, to answer your question anyway, from looking at any performance metric, the game has never been stronger. We have now been out for over 840 days (!) and due to the overwhelmingly positive response from players, we continue to not just sustain -- we continue to grow. That said, we know there are things we need to do better, we know the game isn't perfect, and we are committed to working hard to deliver the best possible game experience to you and the rest of the players around the world. The amount of time players spend in the game is something we keep our eye on. With the recent Quality of Life release, there were a number of features added to the game with the sole intent of reducing the amount of time players need to spend engaging in certain activities. We will continue to monitor the data and your feedback and make adjustments as needed. Hope that helps!

Wow, very nicely put together. Thanks.

Amazing how much of that never happened or was just not true.

"botabu;c-1823335" wrote:
Amazing how much of that never happened or was just not true.

Regarding?

I didn’t add stuff they answered that ended up happening, such as mod management.

Didn’t see the point of compiling stuff that is no longer relavent (feature doesn’t exist anymore) or upcoming content that exists in the game unless it’s asked a lot even today such as mod selling feature

"Boba_The_Fetter;c-1823381" wrote:
Why are they so steadfast on Porkins not coming to the game? Every other character was answered with 'I can't talk about that'

Maybe Hootkins bought the character rights and banned it 15 years ago...

I doubt it though or he would have had to biy the island of dr moreau.

Dr_Alan_Grant: Is there any thought about having a players highest rank throughout the day count for their payout?
Spoiler
The answer is no. This sort of system ultimately doesn't reward the play pattern we believe drives competition, which is players should battle for the top spot at a specific payout time. This also likely facilitates collusion behavior that we think is detrimental to the game.

And yet collusion behavior is EXACTLY the outcome we have from NOT having this system. I believe they way overestimate the collusion that would take place with the suggested change, and that it would certainly be less than that in the top 10 or 20 with the agressive arena mafias we currently have.

"Javabeeker;c-1823552" wrote:
Dr_Alan_Grant: Is there any thought about having a players highest rank throughout the day count for their payout?
Spoiler
The answer is no. This sort of system ultimately doesn't reward the play pattern we believe drives competition, which is players should battle for the top spot at a specific payout time. This also likely facilitates collusion behavior that we think is detrimental to the game.

And yet collusion behavior is EXACTLY the outcome we have from NOT having this system. I believe they way overestimate the collusion that would take place with the suggested change, and that it would certainly be less than that in the top 10 or 20 with the agressive arena mafias we currently have.

By “facilitates collusion behavior that we think is detrimental,” they mean that more than 24 people would receive first every day. With enough coordination you get could the top 100 or even 200 to all get first place rewards.

Under the current system, it’s a much smaller amount of collusion lol.

"Boba_The_Fetter;c-1823381" wrote:
Why are they so steadfast on Porkins not coming to the game? Every other character was answered with 'I can't talk about that'

I always assumed his name and appearance was too PC unfriendly.

"Ultra;c-1829925" wrote:
We are getting another Q&A!

Lets compile questions in advance, and avoid repeating the same questions, and post the best of those prepared questions.

The Q&A lasts for a few hours and not everyone can be active or online during that time. So its best if we can all get together and compile a list to ask them as soon as Q&A starts

Ultra, how and where would you like questions compiled for the next Q&A? I suspect there will be tons of questions around new TW field, GA tourney and future releases and game balancing. Thank you, as always.