Goodbye PvP...?

First of all, let me acknowledge the effort put into a lot of effort made by the CG team. I truly believe you are passionate about the Star Wars franchise and its lore, and a lot of your work has indeed improved the game over the years. I'm a 13m GP player in top Kyber/bottom Kyber 1, a returning player from around 2015/2016 after a couple of years break from the game. 

However. 

As the game currently stands, in my mind, CG just deleted their own business model. What do I mean by this? Let's start with the unbearable lag introduced in the latest update. Not only was it a part of an update launched right before a GAC round, making the consequences of bugs much worse than if they launched the changes during an interim. Any bugs, such as the unbearable lag, has the potential to completely ruin the player experience during what's been the pinnacle of the game, namely GAC. The current leg of this season is not even worth putting myself through the horror of the lag just to see if my lag is slightly less impacting than my opponent's lag.

And that's not even considering relic delta. This has been a huge debate for a long time, so I'm not going to go too deep into it, other than that I'll say my view on how it's impacting PvP. As far as GAC goes, my worst fears seem to have been made reality. GAC is nowhere near the strategic game mode it was, it's now more of a power contest where people compare you know whats, and the biggest one wins, disregarding said lag. 

What do these two things combined mean for GAC? Well, until the lag is fixed, it's an ordeal, not even bordering on fun. It's a rigged chore, with some lag frustration sprinkled on top. Will this improve when the lag issue is fixed? I hope so. Do I believe it will? Unfortunately no.

While I agree that the relic issue needed attention, the current way to address it isn't working for the majority of players. 

Moving on to territory wars. Same issues as mentioned above, but made even worse by the sandbagging guilds. Having matchmaking based on signed up GP alone makes no sense. In my mind, simply adding the number of signed up players to the equation is a day's work of coding, and would greatly improve a largely ignored game mode, even if it wouldn't be perfect, it would be better. The result of these things? I'm not even signing up for TW, because the rewards doesn't even remotely make up for the frustration it entails.

Which brings me to rewards. Why do we play PvP modes? For me, two reasons. One is because it's fun and challenging. Neither of which still stands in the game's current state, for the reasons I just described. The second reason is the rewards. But why do we want these rewards? Obviously, to improve our roster so we do even better in PvP. It's interesting how this circle is increasingly being enclosed within itself. You play PvP to get rewards mainly aimed at PvP. So what happens if you don't really care that much about PvP? Well, nothing, not really. Sure, you get less crystals, gearing/levelling up characters take more time, but if you don't bother with PvP, does that really matter? I'm having a hard time saying yes to that.

So where does that leave swgoh if you consider TW and GAC? To me, it seems like CG doesn't want me to play the game by being good at it, but rather just pay to boost my relics. Now, I fully support CG making money, I'm a whale myself, so no issues there. But all but removing the aspect of strategy and skill? No, that's not for me.

So let's move to the last bit of PvP, or rather, PvEvP. Coliseum. Is it entertaining? Not really. Does it feel rewarding ? Not even a little, as the rewards aren't even in the vicinity of making it worth the required investment. Does it bring variation? On the contrary, to me, it adds just another mundane thing to hit auto on. Why not work to reach the top of the leaderboard ? Well, because, similar to the reasoning for GAC/TW, the (best) rewards are for relic 10. But, aside from future requirements for unlocks, isn't relic 10 really only beneficial in PvP? 

And let's not forget the marquee system. Which in itself didn't change, which is good, I quite like that system. But spending that much time and crystals/money on levelling up a character doesn't even come close to making sense when you look at what you get. Personally, my Stormtrooper Luke is around level 15, and what does that get me? A gear 4 Luke. Not relic, but gear. Now, if I didn't even touch Coliseum for even a second, it'd take me about 10 seconds to get him to gear 4 after he's released. My conclusion ? Ignore it completely, slow farm relic 10 materials, and the character level is completely irrelevant. Yes, you save some kyrotech, but that's it. Gearing up characters is really not that big of a deal, and having this tedious game mode to save me some time and gear isn't even something I'll participate in. I'll take my X stars level 1 character, and be happy about it. And then only use relic 10 materials for requirement characters, so no need for that many of those materials. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I love PvP. Or, I used to. It's what swgoh is about, to its core. Now, though ? With all these issues, and the intensifying, never ending circle of bugs, frustration, power creep, rewards? Sadly, to me, swgoh is dangerously close to being reduced to a simple farming, character collector game, with a lot of game modes you just simply ignore, because it just isn't worth it, be it time, money or frustration. The PvP modes are increasingly being isolated from everything else, for better and for worse. 

On one hand, I'm glad this is the case. It means the footprint of the game is significantly reduced, I don't need to care about it as much. On the other hand, it's saddening. I love this game, and have for a long time. Now, unless some rebalancing is done, I'll just silently collect and gear characters for completionism reasons rather than actually using them for content and entertainment, for as long as that feels fun and rewarding.