Fun/Challenging/Poor Event Design? (General Skywalker)
TL;DR The event design for General Skywalker disappointed me by being a step back from the quality of design in the Malak event and really disappointing return to a simple choice between over gearing or putting up with hours of RNG. While I will likely spend some time replaying the Malak event this week I highly doubt 4 months in the future me will replay this event.
To preface this, I am not salty because I unlocked General Skywalker fine and while I do have a negative view on the use of GEC for tent pole characters which sours the feeling of reward on completing the event, I accept responsibility for not hoarding it since it was pretty obvious after Malak it would happen again.
Primarily the experience of playing this event for me wasn't enjoyable at all. Here's why for me, with some suggestions off the top of my head how it could have been different.
Phase 1: As with ship PvE in general this was no challenge at all on auto well below the recommended power levels (I did it with level 1 abilities on endurance although I do have an R7 Anakin). The forced taunt from GG's ship removed almost all player choice from the battle. The only way to inject a semblance of a strategy decision into this stage was by trying to time an Umbaran reinforcement to give you multiple target locks giving you the chance to use an AOE with the Umbaran and Mace. But surviving and doing single target damage one ship at a time was all that was needed.
It would have been nice to have some more strategy decisions. For example, imagine if the vulture droids spawned indefinitely at a certain rate while GG was alive but you could only target GG once you had spread a target lock onto all the active vulture droids. That way you could choose between blasting them dead as quickly as possible and targeting GG until a new one came out, or spreading target locks and leaving them alive while killing GG.
Phase 2: Admittedly the best designed stage by a mile with some definite strategy involved, but again, no player choice and no need to problem solve beyond reading the abilities on magnaguard to find out you needed to kill one to damage droideka. The kill order was predefined by the fact you couldn't progress if B2 removed your buffs so obviously he had to die first and you had to leave GG until last because he marks someone below 100% health. Again, no player choice on how to play. For contrast see the light side Malak event where you could purposefully choose to give Malak some buffs (the crit avoidance and/or tenacity buffs) as a trade off for not getting fear when you attacked him.
Phase 3: A glorified cut scene. Honestly what was the point. I've heard you could get stun locked and loose it which amazes me, but special, basic, counter attack, win was my experience and not exactly fun. One of the enjoyable parts of the clone wars cartoon lightsaber duels were the quips between Anakin, GK, Asajj and GG; this stage could have incorporated that by rebalancing to extend the battle and providing some dialogue between Anakin and Asajj at various HP thresholds. Also some progression through different backgrounds could have taken us from the hallway to the outside landing pad for the last battle. Or some of Anakin's kit could be better explored by giving the event Asajj some extra immunities unless you used the Anakins abilities in a certain order.
Phase 4: See all complaints about Chewi, C3P0 and Padme (pre rework) events. You had 2 strategies in this phase. 1) over gear or 2) play until the RNG fell in your favor. There has been plenty of discussion about what modding is best and how much speed you should use to get droideka to go before or after echo and if you should use AOE's to get turn meter or if you should avoid them because of counter attacks. But since people have done it with both slow and fast droideka, both using and avoiding AOEs, with and without droideka's assist zeta which for some people helped in their winning run and some people who had it in their winning run but it didn't help at all because droideka died or was stunned or damage immunity was dispelled. Sometimes Rex would use his basic, sometimes his TM gain special, sometimes that was good as it gave droideka lots of charge, sometimes it was bad because it killed you or let Anakin advance again to early to kill Fives. Sometime echo would use his AOE and maybe or maybe not stun some droids etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, point is lots of gear or lots of RNG is lazy and un-fun event design in my opinion. I have no suggestions for this phase as it's just so far away from being something deserving of epic confrontation event design in my opinion.
All of the above is just my subjective opinion obviously. I'm interested to here what others thought though, maybe I'm being overly critical.
To preface this, I am not salty because I unlocked General Skywalker fine and while I do have a negative view on the use of GEC for tent pole characters which sours the feeling of reward on completing the event, I accept responsibility for not hoarding it since it was pretty obvious after Malak it would happen again.
Primarily the experience of playing this event for me wasn't enjoyable at all. Here's why for me, with some suggestions off the top of my head how it could have been different.
Phase 1: As with ship PvE in general this was no challenge at all on auto well below the recommended power levels (I did it with level 1 abilities on endurance although I do have an R7 Anakin). The forced taunt from GG's ship removed almost all player choice from the battle. The only way to inject a semblance of a strategy decision into this stage was by trying to time an Umbaran reinforcement to give you multiple target locks giving you the chance to use an AOE with the Umbaran and Mace. But surviving and doing single target damage one ship at a time was all that was needed.
It would have been nice to have some more strategy decisions. For example, imagine if the vulture droids spawned indefinitely at a certain rate while GG was alive but you could only target GG once you had spread a target lock onto all the active vulture droids. That way you could choose between blasting them dead as quickly as possible and targeting GG until a new one came out, or spreading target locks and leaving them alive while killing GG.
Phase 2: Admittedly the best designed stage by a mile with some definite strategy involved, but again, no player choice and no need to problem solve beyond reading the abilities on magnaguard to find out you needed to kill one to damage droideka. The kill order was predefined by the fact you couldn't progress if B2 removed your buffs so obviously he had to die first and you had to leave GG until last because he marks someone below 100% health. Again, no player choice on how to play. For contrast see the light side Malak event where you could purposefully choose to give Malak some buffs (the crit avoidance and/or tenacity buffs) as a trade off for not getting fear when you attacked him.
Phase 3: A glorified cut scene. Honestly what was the point. I've heard you could get stun locked and loose it which amazes me, but special, basic, counter attack, win was my experience and not exactly fun. One of the enjoyable parts of the clone wars cartoon lightsaber duels were the quips between Anakin, GK, Asajj and GG; this stage could have incorporated that by rebalancing to extend the battle and providing some dialogue between Anakin and Asajj at various HP thresholds. Also some progression through different backgrounds could have taken us from the hallway to the outside landing pad for the last battle. Or some of Anakin's kit could be better explored by giving the event Asajj some extra immunities unless you used the Anakins abilities in a certain order.
Phase 4: See all complaints about Chewi, C3P0 and Padme (pre rework) events. You had 2 strategies in this phase. 1) over gear or 2) play until the RNG fell in your favor. There has been plenty of discussion about what modding is best and how much speed you should use to get droideka to go before or after echo and if you should use AOE's to get turn meter or if you should avoid them because of counter attacks. But since people have done it with both slow and fast droideka, both using and avoiding AOEs, with and without droideka's assist zeta which for some people helped in their winning run and some people who had it in their winning run but it didn't help at all because droideka died or was stunned or damage immunity was dispelled. Sometimes Rex would use his basic, sometimes his TM gain special, sometimes that was good as it gave droideka lots of charge, sometimes it was bad because it killed you or let Anakin advance again to early to kill Fives. Sometime echo would use his AOE and maybe or maybe not stun some droids etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, point is lots of gear or lots of RNG is lazy and un-fun event design in my opinion. I have no suggestions for this phase as it's just so far away from being something deserving of epic confrontation event design in my opinion.
All of the above is just my subjective opinion obviously. I'm interested to here what others thought though, maybe I'm being overly critical.
