Fix raid rewards

@Nothingface

I'm more concerned with the reward discrepancies in the first place. Sith raid reward tiers drop massively. It's supposed to be cooperative yet the rewards system pit you against your allies far more than the raid itself.

Yeah, this.

I remember going through squad management, test runs, being forbidden to run anything other than the single recommended team per phase, starting Chex Mix over and over and over, all so that the guild could figure out what we had and make sure we were going to conquer the thing before we went fully heroic/ffa.

There was **so much work** to coordinate and to work as a team towards a single goal ... and then no matter how even or stratified our damage, the rewards acted like it was no team effort.

I think that's sad, and, frankly, it leads me to playing less in raids. If the rewards were more even, if it wasn't so much about competition against your guildmates but cooperation with your guildmates, I'd probably do more in STR. As it is, it's no longer cooperative. So I'm not motivated to cooperate. We always win, it's not sitting out the raid is going to cause the STR to time out, so I go in, hit once, usually on auto, and what I get I get.

Sure, I'm glad to have the rewards, but I'd be even more happy to have more cooperative play. Right now only TB seems to serve this purpose. (TW gives out identical rewards, but it doesn't require or encourage much actual cooperation.) That's too bad.

"MasterSeedy;c-1735874" wrote:
@Nothingface

I'm more concerned with the reward discrepancies in the first place. Sith raid reward tiers drop massively. It's supposed to be cooperative yet the rewards system pit you against your allies far more than the raid itself.

Yeah, this.

I remember going through squad management, test runs, being forbidden to run anything other than the single recommended team per phase, starting Chex Mix over and over and over, all so that the guild could figure out what we had and make sure we were going to conquer the thing before we went fully heroic/ffa.

There was **so much work** to coordinate and to work as a team towards a single goal ... and then no matter how even or stratified our damage, the rewards acted like it was no team effort.

I think that's sad, and, frankly, it leads me to playing less in raids. If the rewards were more even, if it wasn't so much about competition against your guildmates but cooperation with your guildmates, I'd probably do more in STR. As it is, it's no longer cooperative. So I'm not motivated to cooperate. We always win, it's not sitting out the raid is going to cause the STR to time out, so I go in, hit once, usually on auto, and what I get I get.

Sure, I'm glad to have the rewards, but I'd be even more happy to have more cooperative play. Right now only TB seems to serve this purpose. (TW gives out identical rewards, but it doesn't require or encourage much actual cooperation.) That's too bad.

There is some cooperation needed to be a new raid. But the fact that if you don't make it everyone gets nothing is enough to booster this cooperation enough to beat the raid.

And those who build better teams put more effort or money into it deserve better rewards.

And once the raid is on farm, then it's mostly competitive to see who can get the highest. And once it's on easy farm, it's a race to see who can solo it fastest. So I'd say they're more competitive than cooperative anyway. Some will spend hours even after the raid is on farm running 5 teams to get a top 10 score. Why should the guy that hits the join button and does nothing else get the same reward?

I believe raids are designed to be both cooperative and competitive at the same time. You have to cooperate to beat it but if you want top scores you compete.

That way people keep building teams to do better even after it's on farm. If rewards were the same or similar enough no matter how you did, there's no incentive to continue building raid teams after it's on farm. But under the current system, you have to keep improving to keep or to get the top rewards.

I didn't say the same rewards, just a less drastic difference. Rank 3 compared to rank 4 is massive though the amount of money spent between the two is probably very little. Rank 10 v rank 11 is typically RNG.
And there are already plenty of competitive game modes that encourage roster development.

@DarkHelmet1138

You're kinda missing the point of my post.

I understand everything you're telling me - none of that's new. What I'm saying is that there are rewards other than salvage, token, and credits. The game is supposed to be **fun**. We have lots of ways of competing, of enjoying sticking the dagger in someone else. We can sneak in a Rank 1 arena win, and HAAT is obviously super-competitive.

I'm saying that the other rewards - the rewards that come from cooperating with your friends and not competing against them - are also important to me. What I'm saying is that the current reward structure allows me to skip participating and no one in my guild cares. For several of them it's just an easier cruise to the top 10 (even with effort I'd never be top3). For the rest of them, they're not trying either.

I play this game not to swim in my gear salvage vault like Scrooge McDuck. I play to have fun, and for me cooperative elements of the game are much more fun than the competitive elements. I recognize that that's me - I'm not trying to speak for everyone. But this game is big enough, with enough different play modes that we could have more cooperative elements.

Imagine if everyone in the raid got the same rewards, but the rewards got better the quicker you killed it. Imagine another raid where - like HAAT - soloing a phase is possible but very very difficult for most players. Instead of creating competition one guild mate against the other, imagine all guild members get the same reward, but the each player gets only one attempt per phase and rewards vary with total guild damage? Those are the kinds of things that unifies guilds, gets people communicating with each other and, yes, rooting for each other. I can solo p3/4 of HAAT, but I have to do it on manual. I can solo p1 in several attempts easily with ClS, but even with a perfect run I usually can't get more than 40% on one attempt with CLS. With some jiggling of mods and a couple attempts, I could probably solo all of p2. So I can do an entire HAAT by myself - and I don't have Threepio, Revan or a 7* Chewie yet - but nothing motivates me to actually do it.

You say

there's no incentive to continue building raid teams after it's on farm. But under the current system, you have to keep improving to keep or to get the top rewards.

But there's no reason that the current system needs to be the system.

The raids are there, the development work has been done. I'm not going to ask them to change HSTR or HAAT or anything. But I believe that currently competition is encouraged more than cooperation. I'm not anti-competition, I just feel we have a lot already. So I'm arguing for more cooperation-encouraging elements.

The possibilities are real, and definitely creative. Imagine a Grand Arena that partners you with a random guildmate, then during the 24-hour join/pre-view period if you join up you can swap up to 5 characters for purposes of the GA only. You put your five on a slate, your guild mate puts characters on a slate, and if the guild mate puts fewer than you, only the first X number of toons of yours get transferred. Now you're talking to your guild mate, comparing rosters, figuring out how you can best help each other. I have 4 great jedi - but only 4, and I like to run GK with non-jedi. Should I give the 3 to my guild mate and let them run a 5 x Awesome squad? Or have them donate 2 to me, since with Bastila, GMY, and Hoda I have the foundations of a great Jedi squad and only need 2? Does it depend on which of us needs defense, since Bastila is better there?

That kind of cooperation would be cool to see, and limiting it to guildmates further encourages ongoing relationships, since if you were paired with someone outside your guild you might never talk to them again.

With combined-damage-scaling Raid Rewards, or time-to-finish raid rewards, or GA collaboration we can see an increase in the kinds of rewards that float my boat without rocking anyone else's.

That's what I'd like in the new year.

"MasterSeedy;c-1736023" wrote:
@DarkHelmet1138

You're kinda missing the point of my post.

I understand everything you're telling me - none of that's new. What I'm saying is that there are rewards other than salvage, token, and credits. The game is supposed to be **fun**. We have lots of ways of competing, of enjoying sticking the dagger in someone else. We can sneak in a Rank 1 arena win, and HAAT is obviously super-competitive.

I'm saying that the other rewards - the rewards that come from cooperating with your friends and not competing against them - are also important to me. What I'm saying is that the current reward structure allows me to skip participating and no one in my guild cares. For several of them it's just an easier cruise to the top 10 (even with effort I'd never be top3). For the rest of them, they're not trying either.

I play this game not to swim in my gear salvage vault like Scrooge McDuck. I play to have fun, and for me cooperative elements of the game are much more fun than the competitive elements. I recognize that that's me - I'm not trying to speak for everyone. But this game is big enough, with enough different play modes that we could have more cooperative elements.

Imagine if everyone in the raid got the same rewards, but the rewards got better the quicker you killed it. Imagine another raid where - like HAAT - soloing a phase is possible but very very difficult for most players. Instead of creating competition one guild mate against the other, imagine all guild members get the same reward, but the each player gets only one attempt per phase and rewards vary with total guild damage? Those are the kinds of things that unifies guilds, gets people communicating with each other and, yes, rooting for each other. I can solo p3/4 of HAAT, but I have to do it on manual. I can solo p1 in several attempts easily with ClS, but even with a perfect run I usually can't get more than 40% on one attempt with CLS. With some jiggling of mods and a couple attempts, I could probably solo all of p2. So I can do an entire HAAT by myself - and I don't have Threepio, Revan or a 7* Chewie yet - but nothing motivates me to actually do it.

You say

there's no incentive to continue building raid teams after it's on farm. But under the current system, you have to keep improving to keep or to get the top rewards.

But there's no reason that the current system needs to be the system.

The raids are there, the development work has been done. I'm not going to ask them to change HSTR or HAAT or anything. But I believe that currently competition is encouraged more than cooperation. I'm not anti-competition, I just feel we have a lot already. So I'm arguing for more cooperation-encouraging elements.

The possibilities are real, and definitely creative. Imagine a Grand Arena that partners you with a random guildmate, then during the 24-hour join/pre-view period if you join up you can swap up to 5 characters for purposes of the GA only. You put your five on a slate, your guild mate puts characters on a slate, and if the guild mate puts fewer than you, only the first X number of toons of yours get transferred. Now you're talking to your guild mate, comparing rosters, figuring out how you can best help each other. I have 4 great jedi - but only 4, and I like to run GK with non-jedi. Should I give the 3 to my guild mate and let them run a 5 x Awesome squad? Or have them donate 2 to me, since with Bastila, GMY, and Hoda I have the foundations of a great Jedi squad and only need 2? Does it depend on which of us needs defense, since Bastila is better there?

That kind of cooperation would be cool to see, and limiting it to guildmates further encourages ongoing relationships, since if you were paired with someone outside your guild you might never talk to them again.

With combined-damage-scaling Raid Rewards, or time-to-finish raid rewards, or GA collaboration we can see an increase in the kinds of rewards that float my boat without rocking anyone else's.

That's what I'd like in the new year.

New game modes that are cooperative would be fine. But care must be taken to ensure that people are encouraged to pull their weight.

Tb and tw have this to an extent eith better rewards for more stars or winning but still fail a bit with booting non participants being the only real way to get some to participate.

The raids as designed have nothing to encourage active participation once it is on farm other than competitive rewards. My rewards are not better because everyone put up 10 mil rather than posting 0. Flattening the rewards just encourages people to post a zero with the current raids.

Now a host of ideas could be done with a new game mode but this post is about rewards for the raids as they exist now not a new game mode.

My only point is that it doesn't need to be such a sharp drop off. After rank 3 on sith raid is a MASSIVE drop off. After 10 there is another huge drop off.
I didn't say flatten the reward system. I'm simply saying don't make it such a massively drop that it encourages people to jump to an easier guild.

I was thinking about this and I have the solution.

If you manage to solo the raid then you get the top reward. Otherwise it’s done on where you place score wise chronlogicially. E.g 5 people solo it all come first then the next player would be 6th.

This stops the problem of 1 person soloing the raid then everyone else posting 0 scores and getting second.

I really feel this would be such an improvement

"Obi1_son;c-1722372" wrote:

"GhostTruckin;c-1722310" wrote:
Nope, it is fine as is, this has been gone over many times, the devs are not going to increase reward payouts just cuz x people solo the raid,

Either tag and forget or post an auto run, Or, An auto solo. And call it a day, and be glad you are at the point. Where rancor is trivial now,.

Actually they promised to fix this starting with the south raid rewards back in April

https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/165064/dev-blog-sith-triumvirate-raid-rewards-4-2-18

"After monitoring how guilds are progressing through the challenging Sith Triumvirate Raid, we've significantly revamped the rewards across all Raid tiers. After monitoring early results & player feedback, we will do a similar pass on AAT & Pit Raid rewards in the coming weeks." From @CG_Carrie

But they messed up the Sith raid implementation and we have not heard a thing on it since.

The quoted text and the (non-) issue discussed here are two completely different things. CG never promised to 'fix' what is being discussed here.

"Javick_Starage;c-1722423" wrote:
It just seems so pointless. If you can solo a raid you deserve top tier rewards.

Otherwise what’s the point?

Did you consider the effects of increasing the rewards like you suggested? Imagine a guild with 50 members soloing Rancor raids (it's not unusual). If they all received 1st place rewards, that guild would win 47 additional reward crates, crates of the highest quality, and more tokens, shards etc. They would win it even if they didn't accomplish anything else than a guild with not a single player soloing: They killed the Rancor. Why should one guild earn more rewards than the other?

"Javick_Starage;c-1736829" wrote:
I was thinking about this and I have the solution.

If you manage to solo the raid then you get the top reward. Otherwise it’s done on where you place score wise chronlogicially. E.g 5 people solo it all come first then the next player would be 6th.

This stops the problem of 1 person soloing the raid then everyone else posting 0 scores and getting second.

I really feel this would be such an improvement

The problem of 50 people soloing, which would give the guild far more rewards combined for the exact same result of a guild with no solos at all. A rancor kill is a rancor kill and nothing more - disregarding how many players soloed it.