Message from the CM

First off, thanks for posting @EA_Jesse. I honestly think you care about the game and want to make people happy, despite what a lot of people here apparently seem to think. I think communication is key, especially when there is a massive update like Mods so keep it up!

I'm legitimately at a bit of a loss for what to do to fix this on a macro level. I think there are a few things regarding this update would certainly help to calm people, so I'll start with those. I also apologize for the long post, but I'm trying to be constructive and offer legitimate feedback.

• Credits. Credits are used for leveling, crafting gear, promoting characters, and now building and upgrading Mods. The recent slight increase to GW was something, but not nearly enough to make a dent in modding one character, let alone the 5 required for Arena. Adding more credits to Daily Activities, increasing the frequency of events (such as the current Scoundrel event or a modified Force Champion event), boosting the GW credits (there are still not much higher than they were when tuned for level 60), and slightly decreasing the cost to upgrade mods will certainly ease some concerns over the revitalized Credit Crunch.
  
• Galactic War. This has been a concern in the forums and in my Guild for the last few weeks and has really come to a head with this update. Having fully geared teams with Protection starting halfway through was rough enough, but now those teams are all Modded. The Credit payout per battle has only slightly increase (very recently) and the battles have gotten substantially more difficult. Adding a larger boost to Health/Protection regeneration after the battle, as well as allowing Protection to regenerate when your Health is maxed at the end of the battle, will make it much more bearable to complete. Also, I've always been a proponent of having your characters recharge Health/Protection and reduce Cooldowns while benched since, realistically, it makes complete sense - when you rest, you recharge. Finally, I totally understand that it's meant to be difficult, but it is very time consuming and boring to fight roughly the same teams on each node. I understand that major changes like this would take time, but just throwing a suggestion out there: decrease the amount of nodes and have each node be a different faction. This would break up the monotony of having all Meta teams and make it a bit more enjoyable. Echoing what I said above, increasing the Credit payout would also help.
  
• Cantina Energy. Prior to this update, Cantina Energy was a great way to farm new characters, which allowed for more experimentation and potentially new Arena comps and meta shifts. Requiring Mods to use that same energy, all while making Mods more powerful than even Gear, makes it virtually impossible to rationalize shard farming through Cantina over Mod farming. This also means that getting characters for the Mod Challenge Battles is near impossible for F2P and a pain for moderate spenders (see below). I really see two main ways to fix this: 1. Model Cantina Energy after normal Energy: Increase the refresh time to 6 minutes, give bonus Cantina Energy, and decrease the cost of Crystal refreshes; 2. Create a separate "Mod Energy" unique for farming Mods and leave Cantina energy as it is now. There are pros and cons to each, but I like option 2 as unlocking new characters is integral to the game and is what a majority of the players enjoy most.
  
• Mod Challenge Battles. Right now, only mega-whales will be able to complete all of these, thus creating an even greater divide between F2P/dolphins and whales. Optimizing the battles for a team of 3 characters (albeit leveled, geared, etc.) would make them more accessible for wider range of the player base, while still giving people a challenge and encouraging the development of more characters. The Omega battles were a great example of this, though I would imagine the Mod Battles would be a bit more difficult.
  
• Mod Balance. I love the ability to customize characters to try to cover their weaknesses or enhance their strengths, but there needs to either be a cap to how much a stat can be increased or have some sort of drawback to using a more powerful mod. Having characters like Rey with more Health/Protection than Royal Guard, plus more Speed and Strength than she had without mods doesn't make much sense.
  
• Mod Preview. I would love to get some insight on what the secondary stats may be for a mod before we pay to upgrade it. Dumping 400+ thousand credits into a mod, only to find that it's not great is extremely disheartening. I'm not even suggestion you display everything, but at least some sort of teaser of what stats may be affected.
  
• Daily Challenges. I think with the new and robust "grind" the we now have in Mods, decreasing some of the stress/frustration of farming gear would go a long way. Add a new tier to the Daily Challenges which slightly increases drop rates and includes all gear from previous tiers would be awesome. The AGI Challenge is a prime exmaple with the Mk3 Droid Callers and Mk 6 Syringes being locked to two different tiers, while both being required in large quantities for high level gear upgrades.
  

I know that was an extremely long list, but I think I offered constructive feedback with feasible solutions. There are a lot of things this update did right, including things the community has asked for. Using Sim tickets for Challenges, mass Sim battling, better Gear search-ability, and the overall UI modifications are all fantastic and show that you do listing to at least some feedback.

In all honesty, I'm strongly considering calling it quits. I love this game and have played since mid December, spending a moderate amount of money along the way. I've met great people in my guild and have enjoyed a lot of the features the game has; but at this point, I'm nervous that nearly everything I've worked towards over the last 7-8 months is rapidly being devalued by the Mods and frankly, I'm not really interested in a steep uphill grind for them. I know that I'm a mere forum poster and have no sway in this, but I hope you at least read some of my suggestions. I'm not throwing in the towel yet, but there are a lot of things this update has done to make this game far less enjoyable and I look forward to seeing what will be done to address our concerns.

Thanks to those who took the time to read this! :smile: