Live Q&A w/Dev Team - 4/6/18

KvotheQGBQG2: With the impending arrival of a new Han Solo and a new Chewie it would indicate that an event is forthcoming that will need both of them. Is this an accurate assumption, and if so, can you share any other information in those regards?
Regarding Solo content, please keep an eye out for news in the coming weeks.

xNickx: Recently it feels that the character release has been rewarding PTP players, and I understand they are the ones keeping the game running; however, can FTP players expect any major character(s)?
I would say that the nature of the Character Release Cadence is to make all characters eventually available to all players. To specifically answer your question, we have no intention of releasing any characters outside of Marquees, Legendary Events, or Raid Rewards in the near future.

gordonjones: Why can’t players change their time zone settings?
We talked about this a bit with the Game Changer Halfface01 - but the short of it is finding a balance between allowing people flexibility and safe-guarding against people colluding and potential exploits. Now we would like to allow people to infrequently change their time zone due to moves or extraordinary circumstances but we haven't prioritized the tech yet.

Bobsburgers: Will EA ever recognize what has probably been the biggest resource for serious SWGOH players outside of the game, specifically, all of the hard work that those people over at www.swgoh.gg do to mine the data of the game so that we can switch around mods, theory characters, and the like?
What may not be apparent to players is we have been working with the great folks who run the SWGOH.GG site. This has included giving them early heads-up about significant changes early enough that they can better prepare their site, as well as enabling them to have more direct access to the data so that they may better provide the helpful services they do. We are actively talking to them now about additional integrations.

mallen87: Are there any plans to give Mods their own energy since everything else will have it's own energy including the new PvE Ship Tables?
We have been slowly widening the range of options for farming mods, and are still monitoring the long-term impact of the mod store's change to credits and ship building materials. We knew many players would spend down large balances of currency on high-quality mods now that they are more visible in-game, but we are still waiting to see if buying mods becomes a long-term part of players' daily routines, before we take the next step. We do have lots of plans to continue this "widening", but right now a dedicated energy system for mods is not currently in those plans - but this may change in the future.

WookieeBelch: Is there a way we could see who is adding zetas in the in game guild chat?
: The answer is yes, but not yet. We're reviewing the "chat announcment" tech in general, but we don't have any updates to it in the near future. But it's something we'd like to come back to at some point and better refine.

lester68: Where is Padme?
We can't speak to when she'll be arriving.

Jammax: When can we expect to see information about Bossk? Abilities, etc?
We'll reveal more information as we get closer to his release date. However, I want to especially point out that with our communication increasing, that you may have to recalibrate to the distance of time between a communication and the release of something. We are trying to be more transparent, which means some info is coming much earlier than it used to.

Prudkoan: Do you plan to renew the graphics engine in the future? Or is it will be only in the Galaxy of heroes 2?
We have not immediate plans for a major graphical overhaul. We intentionally keep the asset size small to reduce the overall footprint on players' devices and to ensure the game performs well on a variety of device profiles. That said, we certainly could come back around and update the look of the game. It's more a question of priority and player feedback.

CaptainRex: Can we get an update on Clone Helmets?
Hi Captain Rex! I've seen your requests in here for awhile. So the answer is, when we do a rework to the Clones, we'll likely put their helmets on then, but there's a chance we don't. As to when we do the Clones rework, that's something that may come but we have no current timeline.
Additional note from me, I brought up the the Clone Helmets in a meeting and Nick said "You've been reading comments from Captain Rex, haven't you?" Point is - you (and your guild) have gotten through, we just can't speak to when due to all the other content we are building.

Gawejn: Did You ever play or do You play this game as a free to play? If Yes what is your lvl, gp and how many months You play or played?
I personally have played to the level cap three different times: once during soft launch, once at world wide launch, and finally once again starting in Feb 2016. The first two times, I was playing at different spend cadences. The third time -- and the current account I use actively -- has been 100% free to play. My GP is ~1.4M. I play fairly actively, but there are also times when we as a team have to step away from the live version of the game so we can dive into the version of the game that's in development. As part of my play style, I try to avoid copying what everyone else is doing because that experience is well understood. In pursuit of that goal, my current arena squad is all 7* Ewoks and my next goal is to (finally) get Wicket to G12.

BellamyNao: When rework jedi, when shaak ti ?
We can't speak to when she'll be arriving.

Dr_Alan_Grant: Is there any thought about having a players highest rank throughout the day count for their payout?
The answer is no. This sort of system ultimately doesn't reward the play pattern we believe drives competition, which is players should battle for the top spot at a specific payout time. This also likely facilitates collusion behavior that we think is detrimental to the game.

Neo2551: Why are the gear requirements so unbalanced? Mk3 Carbanti, Mk5 stun guns, mk3 cuffs, mk8 biotech balls, mk4 comlink? Are there any plans to relief the burden in the short future?
We've substantially improved gear income for most players piece by piece over the last several months, but we know that there is more work to do here. Our next step for adjusting gear income is going to come out of looking at the impact of the raid rewards changes. Specifically, while most top-end gear will get a little easier to acquire as a result of these changes, we suspect a few pieces will still need some additional loosening, and we will have more to share on this once we get initial feedback and data.

Hepatox: Do you have plans to change the way that raids are started and/or the base participation requirement on players so that the current "24-hour 0-damage" requirement that guild leaders have to enforce to prevent members missing raid rewards will no longer be required?
Yes, we will be diving into the details soon with one of our Game Changer partner videos, but we plan to make the whole Posting a 0 and having to chase down guildmates much easier on Guild Officers.

TheChode: With the upcoming changes to raid rewards is there any possibility of fixing the ties?
We made a change about a year ago where ties in the raid are resolved by randomizing the rank received for all tied players. We still believe in this solution and have no current plans to change it.
We have explored a number of different solutions but they were all exploitable and/or encouraged behavior that doesn't work for everybody or all playstyles.

Farrson: Is there a chance you guys tackle the clone wars era in the near future, like rework grevious and add more clones like wolffe, gregor and republic commando or rework separatists (give them a synergy add droideka battledroids etc)?
We recently discussed General Grievous with the GameChanger AhnaldT101. Check out his latest video to hear what we said about Grievous and the Separatists.

Sdtbarbarossa: Is it Possible to "swap" arena shards once per month?
We recently discussed our disposition on arena shards and payout times with Halfface01. Check out his latest video to hear what we said about moving and changing shards.

varkesh: You have confirmed that another solo and chewie will be coming, can you say if orginal movies (4-6) milienium falcon will be coming and if not can you at least say if you are planning to relase it.
We can't speak to when they will be arriving.

Korrin: do you plan in the near future to allow the players to select their arena payout times?
See our response to Sdtbarbaroosa.

Animefangod1: I was wondering if it was possible and if you guys ever would add a feature where you could watch your battles with other players so you could see where you are having trouble in things like arena and TW?
We had battle replays and consequently being able to watch other allies battle in the scope for Territory Wars, but unfortunately they had to come out of our update in order for us to get it done in time. There is significant tech work required for synchronous gameplay events which we just don't have at the moment but would really love to do in the future.

MonYolo: With the upcoming in-game chat changes, are you going to allow officers to create and change the gold banner/title?
JS: Yes. With the upcoming chat changes, players will be able to create up to 20 chat channels. The owner / creator of the channel will be able to change the banner at the top. By the way, that 20 can be made up from 5 guild channels and 15 custom channels which can contain anywhere from 2 to 500 players.

DoomAkaStarkiller: Is Porkins coming to the tables?
NR: No.

Goodgil: Between events, TB, TW, two arenas, and 3 raids, the amount of time needed to play this game to always be increasing. What are your plans on this subject?
We have a history of a doing things to lower the amount of time that players spend in game as the develop mastery over our different areas. We most recently added simmable Galactic War and will continue to do things to ease the time burden. I can't speak to specifics right now, but we hope that our development history demonstrates that we are constantly addressing it and making changes.

LaksonVell: there was a mention in the ships department for new content. Can we expect that before the Solo release or is that reserved for after it?
We're still finalizing work on the content. We can't speak to when it will land purely because we don't want to set expectations and then potentially miss them. What I can say is that the content is indeed coming and will be here soon.

Nauros: What is your policy concerning Legends/Expanded universe characters? Obviously, KOTOR is an acceptable source of new content, but what about the older novels and all the other stuff that is outside the official canon?
The policy is that all characters and content is evaluated on a cases by case basis. We partner closely with Lucas to find the characters and content that best make sense for the game. At the moment I can't speak to characters coming from sources other than what we presently have in the game.

dogwelder79: Are there any plans to alleviate the gear crunch problem?
I believe the answer to Neo2551's question covers our next steps for the gear economy. We have lots of plans and will always be working on this.

BrtStlnd: Have you guys thought about rotating bonuses for the TW table?
Why... yes, we have. :-) The TW feature is a robust system that will allow for a wide variety of interesting game options. We have only just started to explore the full potential of this feature's potential.

Yarrg: Is there a plan in the works to "sunset" the older raids for veteran players to reduce time spent?
This is related to Nick's answer to Goodgil on overall time spent in game. We are always looking at how much time people spend and reevaluating how much time it takes them to get things done. One thing that's interesting to note is that when we put in significant time savers, players offer reallocate that time spent to puttering around elsewhere in the game. But it is always top of mind when we put out new content and will continue to be.

Can you please release a public API so that we can build other community tools around the game?
I'll talk to our engineering about what we can reliably make public and not. The more likely thing is that we will partner with people (like swgoh.gg) that we can have a relationship with and make sure that there is a two-way street in case there are any issues. For example, some player-created scanning tools have been responsible for two of our outages in recent months, so this is something we need to guard closely.

legitimationcrisis: What happens when there is an odd number of guilds participating in TW?
The guild with the lowest participant GP, while still meeting the 25 member requirement will be considered the "odd man out" and will receive an Inbox message stating that we couldn't find them an opponent and 1st place rewards for their bracket (which likely is the lowest bracket).

catharsis478: Are there any plans to add a review period to Territory Battles?
We would definitely consider it. We are evaluating the frequency of both TB and TWs as it relates to player time and guild management expense though.

Immorta1lynx: With the way that the sith raid is as of right now it is no fun to play. Particularly p1 and p4. The stacking tinacity and protection regenerating elements are by far the most frustrating.If those where done away with it would be more fun.My question is, how does the development team feel about this and have they even played their own game to know what we are talking about?
The raid was designed to be very challenging for even our oldest and most established players. As to if we engage with the raid, the answer is daily. The guild I'm in is currently going through a T6 and trying to finish out Phase 3. The rest of the development team are in a variety of guilds taking on different tiers. We recently discussed with AhnaldT101 about how we are finding the community's progress in the Sith Triumvirate.

GoldieJames: can CG do something positive in regard to secondaries of speed being made decent and having an increased chance to roll?
We have no plans to make adjustments to Speed secondaries as it is right now. However, as discussed in the recent Q&A video with Halfface01 we are discussing ways to improve the overall Mod feature and that would include developing a richer array of strategic options beyond what we currently see in Mods.

Adobo_Hutt: With the rework of the Bounty Hunter faction can we expect more Bounty Hunters from canon and legends?
We can't speak to when any other Bounty Hunters are coming.

Valdrin: Do you guys have plans to take anymore inspiration from SWTOR?
I have a long history with people on that team and the game itself, I think SWTOR is awesome and I bring up Khem Val in nearly every planning meeting. However, despite my love of Khem Val, we aren't planning to do anything at the moment.

NovaPrime: Are you aware of what many consider "Arena Mafias" that basically kill competition at the top 50 and people outside of those groups to be specifically targeted and excluded, forcing them to waste more crystals than they should due to their skill level just because a group of people want the easy way of getting those rewards?
We're aware that some players communicate and coordinate with other players in their respective Arena Leaderboards. As of now, we have no plans to intervene in that behavior. It's a fine line between malicious behavior and cheating, we have several cheating experts who monitor the community and their behavior, but we also don't want to go overboard.

Indominable_J: Now that GW can be simmed, is there any plan to either revert the difficulty, or to offer a "hard mode" for those who want the challenge back?
It's been discussed in the studio and we've done some preliminary ideating on it. It's a trickier design than you may think at first blush. Do we just draw from high GP squads again? Do we curate specific challenges? If we curate specific challenges how often do we change them? What are the rewards for participating? Do we expect everyone to partiicpate? This isn't to say we think it's too hard to figure out, but that it needs some time to be designed and it's a lower priority for us now. However, it could become an important feature in the future.

Barik_Edo: Any plans on slightly increasing the amount of Omegas that drop from the Omega Battles?
No plans to increase Omegas from current Omega Battles. Plans soon to reward more Omegas from other sources.

Abysmal_Void: You mentioned previously that you would not add "new" characters into the Galactic War, Cantina and Squad stores so it could serve a source of Shard store currency - truly appreciated - but would you perhaps consider refreshing farming spots for certain characters?
We know that some characters are not a good fit for the nodes that they are currently on. We would love to fix that immediately, but we also think there will be a lot of adverse effects from switching farming locations on players without advance warning, or without a long-term plan to communicate to players. We cannot share anything now but are currently considering options for tackling this.

Viserys: While I know there are a great many characters people want, I’m a big fan of some of the recent comics for Star Wars and wanted to know what the prospects for characters originating from the comics might be (Terex, Aphra, Sana, etc)?
I personally love Dr. Aphra, BT, and 000 and would love to see them in the game. However, we can't speak to if or when they may be coming into the game.

TheMegaSage: Are there any plans for more Last Jedi characters, and more specifically for "meta defining" First Order characters?
We can't speak to when anymore Last Jedi characters will be coming to the game.

Rab1s: With the BH rework down the pipeline, do you have any plans to show some other factions some love? (Jedi, Separatists, Clones?)
We can't speak to when any specific factions are coming or being reworked in the game.

TeshKarhann: It seems like a lot of your jobs overlap, like how is "Live Producer" different from "Lead Producer" and all the other titles? Do you all stick to your lanes at work, or do you all tend to have a culture of getting in each other's business to help out wherever you can? Can you share a story (just for funsies) of a recent argument about a new piece of content and how it got resolved?
We love this question, so much so that I bullied the others into letting me answer it, which is pretty par for the course in the dynamics of the Producers on this team.
In all seriousness, there are over 50 developers on this team, most of whom have practical skills like design, art, engineering, QA. Producers (and at EA we also have Development Directors) are responsible for the vision of the direction of the game and then ensuring the team is supported to get that execution done. It also means that sometimes we bump into each other because we all sincerely care about what we're doing and we want the game to be as good as possible. Each of the Producers that work for me own a space - from Feature to Live to Lifecycle, and then it's my responsibility to help support them and make them stronger, but to also roll my sleeves up and help where I can.
As for a recent disagreement - one of the biggest ones that ever happened on this team was the fight over TB having 12 hour or 24 hour phases. The initial intent of the feature was for it to happen over a weekend and be six phases that are 12 hours each. After testing with the beta group, it became very clear to me that we couldn't go under 24 hours per phase. Now, I will say that despite being happy with where we ended up, some of the original people in the 12 hour camp were fighting for TB/TW not to take up the whole week, so by making it 24 hours we are contending with them taking up more of your time and need to reflect on that.

Sparrow: You mentioned battle replays are still a ways off, as a stop gap would it be possible/easier to let us see the team that attacked us in TW and its end state?
Would love to, but some of the tech required to preserve the history of the team that attacked you is needed as well. When we realized we couldn't get the battle replays in, we didn't want to ask the engineers to do the underlying tech first.

Timezone Changes. Why can’t players change their time zone settings? Is it a technical issue, balance issue, or a prioritization issue? It really is unfair to players who have to relocate their residence to a new timezone, it affects all players who live in Daylight-savings timezones, or for players who change shifts, work, or school schedules.

Where is Padme? :(

I know this was touched upon in the last Q&A, but I cant help feeling like your response to the question showed a lack of alignment between what players are asking for and what developers think we are asking for.

Players have asked for a Sandbox mode, at a minimum a place where we can battle our guild mates for nothing more than practice. The suggestion from Dev's has been that Galactic War is the place for this, but between Turn Meter loading and the completely random weird teams you face in GW it does not allow us to do what we really want, which is to practice for Arena and Territory Wars.

As an example a guild mate of mine DrShesith has maxed out Ewoks, and I have maxed out Phoenix, we would absolutely love to test those teams out and make them available for our guildmates to test against as well, but right now there is nothing we can do aside from put them in arena and get hammered because they are different.

I know as well that Dev's have stated they want to manage the time we spend int he game and dont want to give us more things to do that soak up time. but something like this would have no rewards and be completely for fun, to be honest an ability to play the game when i want to play the game is the biggest thing missing.

At this very moment id love to be playing but my energy is spent by refreshes are done TW is over raids are in registration, all i can do is shift mods around or something. Every aspect of this game is tied to a schedule not of the players choosing, either the guild or the Dev team has set that for us, please let us play some aspect on our own schedule.

Hello!

I would like to ask, do you plan in the near future to allow the players to select their arena payout times?
18:00 is conflicting with real life for a lot of players. If someone cannot play during his payout hour, he cannot be competative in top arena.
In my opinion fixed/locked time events are not player friendly in a mobile game.

Thank you.

"Sparrow;c-1514825" wrote:
I know this was touched upon in the last Q&A, but I cant help feeling like your response to the question showed a lack of alignment between what players are asking for and what developers think we are asking for.

Players have asked for a Sandbox mode, at a minimum a place where we can battle our guild mates for nothing more than practice. The suggestion from Dev's has been that Galactic War is the place for this, but between Turn Meter loading and the completely random weird teams you face in GW it does not allow us to do what we really want, which is to practice for Arena and Territory Wars.

As an example a guild mate of mine DrShesith has maxed out Ewoks, and I have maxed out Phoenix, we would absolutely love to test those teams out and make them available for our guildmates to test against as well, but right now there is nothing we can do aside from put them in arena and get hammered because they are different.

I know as well that Dev's have stated they want to manage the time we spend int he game and dont want to give us more things to do that soak up time. but something like this would have no rewards and be completely for fun, to be honest an ability to play the game when i want to play the game is the biggest thing missing.

At this very moment id love to be playing but my energy is spent by refreshes are done TW is over raids are in registration, all i can do is shift mods around or something. Every aspect of this game is tied to a schedule not of the players choosing, either the guild or the Dev team has set that for us, please let us play some aspect on our own schedule.

There's a lot here to talk about. Would you mind framing up a question for the team to answer?

Are there any plans to alleviate the gear crunch problem? I mean, make g8 and g9 easier to achieve, especially MK3 Carbantis and MK5 Stun Guns. G8 and G9 won't give people an advantage, and it won't leave people with nothing to farm because there still will be g10, 11 and 12 to get.

"WookieeBelch;c-1514848" wrote:
Can we get Rogue One as a sortable faction since they certain missions are restricted to them in light side TB?

This is currently a selectable option it was added in one of the last few content updates

What happens when there is an odd number of guilds participating in TW?