Greevious was a failure of “Why” not “What”
The greevious rework is a failure of "why". The "what", or the guts of the re-work is creative, innovative and unique.
Why people play this game is a question with many answers, but at the core of it, we play because we enjoy recreating the magic of Star Wars everyday. The battles, the characters the cinematics, they are all captured in this game to varying degrees of success. We live the grind, and we crave the payoff. That little hit of dopamine (the bodies way of rewarding us) when we accomplish something, the end of the long farm, that first day at #1 in arena, the final victory in Grand Arena. Each success fires off that hit of success with the brain's way of rewarding us. The game is built on dopamine delivering events with various gateways that challenge us, frustrate us, and entice us to spend. Go ahead, jump ahead with a small purchase, you'll enjoy the result. Chocolate, gambling, sports all can reward us in similar ways, we crave the triumph the completion of the goal. It is hard wired into our biology as much as breathing, eating and sleeping.
Hopefully I haven't lost you yet with all the biology, but it helps to understand my point. Let's look at some of the other re-works in the game. Bounty Hunters, the rework brought us several new characters, contracts and great cinematics. They were billed as a non-meta team, with a couple cool twists. More importantly pursuing Bounty Hunters offers several dopamine hits, Galactic Bounties, Rebel roundup, a legendary character, territory battle missions, lots of different ways that owning Bounty Hunters pays off. Nightsisters, since their re-work have flirted with arena success (the truly dedicated can do well with them), but there are also monthly events tailored to night sisters that reward zeta mats, they have a role in raids, galactic arena and others. Owning Nightsisters triggers those dopamine hits every time you finish an event with them.
Then we have the separatist droid re-work, it comes at a perilous time, when the arena meta is stale, raids are less engaging than they once were and the player base is searching desperately for the "next big thing" the next hit of dopamine. The footage supplied fed perfectly into this need, battle after battle of Revan getting smashed, the expectation of the dopamine hits was building. Even though CG never specifically said, "General Greevious" is the new arena meta, we assumed it had to be, after all there aren't any Separatist droid events, there's no payoff in territory battles for having them, there's nothing else it could have been. So expectations built around the assumed why, own Greevious to break up the Revan dominance of Arena. He isn't going to deliver on that why, and he probably wasn't designed to do so.
The failure here is that CG built a beautiful group of kits, gave them great synergy, and set forth to build demand for their product in the marketplace, but they forgot to build the "why". There's no stated in game reason to own them, short of the desire to simply own everything. The backlash doesn't come from the failure of the re-work, it comes from something deeper inside us, our bodies crave the dopamine hit from the success of overcoming the challenge and fulfilling the purpose of the units. In its absence all we are left with is craving and regret. CG failed to deliver on why, and that is driving the response of the community in its absence.
Why people play this game is a question with many answers, but at the core of it, we play because we enjoy recreating the magic of Star Wars everyday. The battles, the characters the cinematics, they are all captured in this game to varying degrees of success. We live the grind, and we crave the payoff. That little hit of dopamine (the bodies way of rewarding us) when we accomplish something, the end of the long farm, that first day at #1 in arena, the final victory in Grand Arena. Each success fires off that hit of success with the brain's way of rewarding us. The game is built on dopamine delivering events with various gateways that challenge us, frustrate us, and entice us to spend. Go ahead, jump ahead with a small purchase, you'll enjoy the result. Chocolate, gambling, sports all can reward us in similar ways, we crave the triumph the completion of the goal. It is hard wired into our biology as much as breathing, eating and sleeping.
Hopefully I haven't lost you yet with all the biology, but it helps to understand my point. Let's look at some of the other re-works in the game. Bounty Hunters, the rework brought us several new characters, contracts and great cinematics. They were billed as a non-meta team, with a couple cool twists. More importantly pursuing Bounty Hunters offers several dopamine hits, Galactic Bounties, Rebel roundup, a legendary character, territory battle missions, lots of different ways that owning Bounty Hunters pays off. Nightsisters, since their re-work have flirted with arena success (the truly dedicated can do well with them), but there are also monthly events tailored to night sisters that reward zeta mats, they have a role in raids, galactic arena and others. Owning Nightsisters triggers those dopamine hits every time you finish an event with them.
Then we have the separatist droid re-work, it comes at a perilous time, when the arena meta is stale, raids are less engaging than they once were and the player base is searching desperately for the "next big thing" the next hit of dopamine. The footage supplied fed perfectly into this need, battle after battle of Revan getting smashed, the expectation of the dopamine hits was building. Even though CG never specifically said, "General Greevious" is the new arena meta, we assumed it had to be, after all there aren't any Separatist droid events, there's no payoff in territory battles for having them, there's nothing else it could have been. So expectations built around the assumed why, own Greevious to break up the Revan dominance of Arena. He isn't going to deliver on that why, and he probably wasn't designed to do so.
The failure here is that CG built a beautiful group of kits, gave them great synergy, and set forth to build demand for their product in the marketplace, but they forgot to build the "why". There's no stated in game reason to own them, short of the desire to simply own everything. The backlash doesn't come from the failure of the re-work, it comes from something deeper inside us, our bodies crave the dopamine hit from the success of overcoming the challenge and fulfilling the purpose of the units. In its absence all we are left with is craving and regret. CG failed to deliver on why, and that is driving the response of the community in its absence.
