DEVS Please Fix GAC

As long as CG continues to not focus on FUN, a solution will never be implemented. They are more than happy to relentlessly add new skins to the game. The cycle is coming back around where players start dropping out because it occurs to them, “hey why am I doing this? I came for escape but am just in another rat race. And for what?”.

So many decisions to keep fun out of the game. Look at platoons in TB. You get to relic up toons that you are forced to not be able to play with… yayyyyy! 

Sorry you feel my response is a cop out. But there is no solution until EA/CG commits to the player experience.

Your writing is all over the place GrayJediWarrior.  It's impossible to be constructive with you, unless it's exactly what you want to hear.  Unfortunately, there are flaws in large parts of your logic.

There's nothing I've read that ATM has written that isn't right......or at least a valid opinion.  

There are definitely problems with GAC, but I’m not sure there are any good solutions. Any solution is bound to cause other problems and complaints.

That being said, the original post and followup seem very much like a user error issue. 

I’m FTP since 2016 and that’s my read. I remember having only 1-2 GLs and still slowly, steadily advancing after the GAC changes.

I’ll admit that when the LSB bundles for GLs came out it was disheartening to see young accounts instantly jump up, but CG is going to monetize where they can. In the end it made me a better player, learning to be more efficient, out-pointing many opponents where both sides fully cleared.

Everyone is entitled to & allowed to express their feelings and opinions.  However, if you can’t find ways to enjoy this universe/game you are purportedly a fan of, you need to do the cost benefit analysis of whether it’s something you want to continue to pursue with eyes wide open to the fact that a company, who is in business to make money, isn’t going to cater to your individual whims. 

For someone who "doesn't " care about GAC you've certainly written like 2000 words complaining about it. And yes I have all gls and 13.5 mil gp, but its certainly not cushy in k1 facing accounts with a million more gp and tons of datacrons i dont have. Somehow though I'm able to win more than average. But YOU started complaining about YOUR matchups, and yet you beat 2 accounts bigger than yours, and maybe could have beaten the third. 

You say I should make an alt and spend zero money and tell you what I think. I dont have to, have you ever heard of AhnaldT101? Somehow he was able to make it all the way to k3 as a ftp and document the process on YouTube. Hes certainly had rough matchups where he had no chance, but by trying win every one you can,  you CAN advance. 3 of the 9 matches in your last 3v3 round you didnt even do a battle. What if you could have won some of those and those wins would have bumped you up a league? And you know that not even doing 1 auto battle really kills your skill rating and that also makes it harder to advance?

I agree theres issues but you just dont seem to understand that all your solutions won't actually work in the long run. Sure you could increase the number of battles to get rewards similar to TW. Great! So what are you going to do when theres a wall of big accounts doing that bare minimum in Aurodium and you cant get past them? Unfortunately whatever you change the bare minimum too a lot of players are going just do that. 

Your solution of matching by gp then relic levels then gls then g13 isn't going to work either. Everyone isn't going to fit neatly into 8 player matchups. So someone will get a rough bracket. Sorry I guess. And as we saw in the old system people are going to keep characters at g12 and hoard and then upgrade them all at once to try and game the system. Also, not all gls are created equal. How would your system account for someone with say slkr rey see jml and someone with all other stats the same but they have jmk jabba leia and glat (or lv)?Or do we now then have to account for which specific characters people have? And how would it then be fair for the 4 gl player to face 6? F them I guess.  

CG should tweak the algorithm more and at least try to pair some of the bigger lazy accounts together, but at the end of the day theres just no way to give every single GAC player a fair matchup. Maybe they could reserve the "5" leagues (like chromium 5)for lazy players to stay in  instead of demoting them. But quite frankly a lot of these players should be where they're at. I guess if they had fairer matchups but the same win record its a less frustrating game experience but if your rewards are the same.... Hate to be mean but youve taken a lot of breaks and dont even have mods on a lot of characters,  why SHOULD you be in a higher league?

I feel the OP post shows a little ignorance in the system as a whole.  ATMtheWookie wrote a good post.  The last thing in the world we want to do is to go back to GP matchmaking.  1.  Winners win, losers lose.  That's not the case now with even-ish win/loss rates.  2.  Players will min-max their rosters, which is the last thing we want to deal with in a collection game.  It would also mean starting new accounts maybe more viable to keep a leaned out the roster.  3.  GP is a poor measurement for actual GAC power.

As for matchmaking with GLs.....that's never going to happen.  You're basically asking for f2p match ups and p2w match ups.  CG are never going to do that, you're requesting them to favour f2p over p2w.

I also think there are very few players deliberately losing to get easy match ups.  Those that are, probably aren't very smart (from my perspective anyway).

I'm repeating myself here but.........................there will be few I think, that will disagree that the larger accounts in the lower leagues is very wrong.  I like you, feel that this does need to be dealt with.  Something like  "Players' accounts a certain percentage over the division's average are pooled together into their own groups".   Would be far better, and would deal with the problem much better than total GP match making.

"...Sure maybe you'd still have lost, but it at least would have given you a chance..."

I swear you have difficulty reading. I personally don't even care about GAC that much anymore. They could delete the event from the game and I'd actually be more inclined to enjoy it at this point. Maybe spend less time worrying about me, and spend more time reading what I wrote objectively and with an open mind. 

(See my images included on each post)

As I stated in my opening post, this isn't a ME problem. This is a problem that has a negative impact on all 43 members of my guild, so thinking logically this is clearly something that affects hundreds (maybe even thousands) of players. You have your nice cushy spot in Kyber, and I assume every GL, and at a bare minimum 12M GP. Maybe you should create an alternate account from scratch, spend absolutely 0 money on it and then tell me what you think. At least then you'll see it from the perspective of the majority, and not the minority sitting at the top. 

"But CG will care that lazy people can get basically the same rewards without effort or upgrading your roster"

ATM, the solution to that is absurdly easy. You know how in TW you have to place an absolute bare minimum of 3 squads just to get rewards right? (Yeah, I think that's pathetic too, but moving on) All you have to do is increase the minimum required score for GAC from the ridiculous 10 points. On top of that, make GAC participation a requirement for daily crystals (since that is based on your GAC rank anyway). If you don't participate in GAC, you're not getting your daily crystals from your rank until the next season. Force players to at least try to beat 3 squads in total and the problem is solved. No more people just hitting 1 team and slowly dropping rank because they'll forfeit their crystal income from GAC entirely. 

"Someone is going to get screwed and have bad matchups and then complain. And how does your system handle inactive players?"

You are absolutely correct. But instead of that happening 75% of the time, it'll be closer to maybe 10% of the time.  Still one heck of an improvement to me. 

"Also, having different rules for carb/bronz/chrom is going to make it extremely hard to get above that because everyone is going to then have differently built rosters matched by different criteria."

"But CG will care that lazy people can get basically the same rewards without effort or upgrading your roster"

"Well, how are they now going to break into Aurodium when theres a wall of lazy 10+mil accounts in front of them?"

Please tell me you see the direct contradiction. On one hand you say protecting lower tiers of GAC means there's no incentive to build your roster, and then you later say that making it to the next rank won't be possible because the accounts sitting there are all too big. 

Can you remind me how you increase GP? Oh yeah... building your roster. But that means... if you build your roster and match bigger accounts, oh my gosh..! You'll actually have a fair match against people with similar rosters. 

Wasn't that... no, can't be... didn't I suggest that from the very freaking beginning? eye roll

"but theres probably such a wide variance of both gp and roster composition its going to be hard to come up with X number of fairly matched 8 person brackets."

You don't seriously believe it's a manual process do you? It's an automatic process based on the parameters set for filtering. Odds are it follows the typical coding of "If x, then y. If y, then z". That being the case [if, then is literally a thing in code, and I'm not making that up - used to do a bit of programming back in the day] it should be extremely easy to ADD filter options. Then the system will match those parameters the best that it can. 

For Example:

GP first.  So, say you match everyone within 1M of GP from each other. GL second - Now let's look at EVERYONE between 8M to 9M and say no more than +2 GL. So if you have 6 GL, your weakest opponent will have 4. THIRD - Gear 13+ units. The final criteria would match people who strictly farm GL requirements (usually secondary accounts) together in theory. Why? Because their relic units are doing to be strictly the units needed for their perspective GL that were already matched to begin with. 

But if you have more than that, then you'll be matched with other players who also have more relics and worked on other teams. 

@ jdjdjfkth

"there are many problems with GAC and have been for years. They will do nothing about it. In fact, you will get no response from CG from your post. So I will give you CG’s response : spend more."

Since I came back almost 5 years ago this is pretty much what it feels like. Wasn't any different before that either, except somehow they made it worse than ever before (aside from pure GP matchmaking) which I didn't think was possible. 

Either way, that response is a cop out. It solves nothing, and doesn't make this event any less frustrating for the NEW players who just see a horrible game forcing you to spend money if you want to just keep up, let alone grow. 

For everyone else:

So far I've put together that nearly everyone agrees this event is broken. I'm offering logical, thought through (possible) solutions to each and every problem. 

If you think this method isn't the right one, how about instead of giving CG a hundred reasons why it won't work... come up with a solution you think would work. 

 There is a huge fundamental difference between whining (like one of the people here who commented), sharing a dialog (like ATM), and trying to SOLVE a problem virtually everyone and their mothers is aware of. 

I'm not asking anyone to agree with me. Frankly, don't care if you do or not. As far as I'm concerned GAC is so beyond broken (and slowly getting worse) that just about any solution is better than no solution at all. 

they want to have a way to control your rewards. Just wait until you get promoted to Kyber and start getting squished.  They literally drop you simply for existing. You’re going to keep climbing and then they go and drop you out of your division. 

CG is trash. Everyone knows this game is only successful because it’s Star Wars.

there are many problems with GAC and have been for years. They will do nothing about it. In fact, you will get no response from CG from your post. So I will give you CG’s response : spend more.

But CG will care that lazy people can get basically the same rewards without effort or upgrading your roster (and hopefully spending money to do so). Trust me if you told me I could get 90+% of my gac rewards doing nothing instead of battling all the time in k1 id glad sign up. I just dont see it realistically happening. 

Your proposal suffers from the same issue the OP does. One, bigger accounts dropping down far dont make more crystals bullying noobs. For the most part youre better off crystal wise having a 50% win rate in like k4 then winning more matches in chromium. Second and more importantly, it just pushes the issue down a league. Let's say theres a bunch of 8mil players in chromium because they can't drop below that. Well, how are they now going to break into Aurodium when theres a wall of lazy 10+mil accounts in front of them? So everyone would be a little happier at first but by the end of the year be complaining because now theyre stuck in bronzium or chromium and can't get higher. 

I do agree CG could at least try to match GP a little better in carbonite but theres probably such a wide variance of both gp and roster composition its going to be hard to come up with X number of fairly matched 8 person brackets. Especially since someone has to win, and therefore advance.

If CG maybe let us sim the raid and/or early tb missions we've beaten dozens of times id bet GAC activity would increase and maybe help solve the problem. 

GAC hasn't been updated in over 3 years.  It's not a priority for them, they are only focused on releasing new shinies.  Their only concern with PVP is omicrons and datacrons for us to buy/rent.  

CG is trying to be like Raid Shadow Legends and get us up over 800 characters while ignoring the rest of the game.  "Oh but we gave you a new raid that we didn't put much effort into!"  "Oh but we did an assault battle that was broken on release, just like everything else!"  Yeah, sure.  It's a push to get us to relic up characters, so it's a FOMO tactic.

CG is releasing more bugs than they're fixing and can't keep up with the bugs, the old events, and player concerns.  So they just ignore or low priority everything else but new shinies.

I’m sorry but this was driving me nuts…it’s Aurodium.  Not Aurorium.  I thought it was a mistake at first but you repeated it several times.  I’m okay to comment because I’m in Aurodium not Aurorium lol.  Getting on topic, I agree with you that matchmaking is broken but I think you’re being wildly unrealistic with your proposed fixes.  CG isn’t going to invest that level of effort into fixing something they don’t perceive as broken and I shudder to think about the bugs that would crop up if they did.  One thing I do agree with is a hard cap limiting accounts going into lower brackets.  The parameters of that would have to be discussed but say 6m can’t fall below Bronzium, 8m can’t fall below Chromium and 10m can’t fall below Aurodium.  I know there will be people that say “No no no, then lazy people will be rewarded for not making an effort”…First off, who cares?  If people invest enough time and/or money to hit certain thresholds then they deserve some ROI.  Second, is it more important to regulate that or keep new players from getting discouraged and quitting?  Finally, the people that are dropping to make easy crystals bullying noobs are already making a killing with their increased prizes, this would just put more crystals into the hands of players who are getting screwed because they’re unable to win the lopsided matchups.