Message from the EP

It's early days with the new update, so I'm still playing through battles, challenges, GW, and arena to experience all the changes. A few items I've seen so far:

I don't see the need for protection. Mechanically, it's a just a pile of hit points that attackers have to get through before actually causing damage. OK - I like the idea of a "force field." But as-is, protection plays as a ham-fisted and arbitrary way to handle the "problem" of fast attackers wiping out Toons before they had a chance to strike back. Why not just increase health, improve armour, or decrease damage and have done with it? At the very least, if it's going to be a permanent thing, it should kick-in straight away (i.e., not wait to Gear VII) and there should be a way to replenish it. Otherwise, it's just more hit points.

Advantage now seems broken to me (and I thought it was fine before). All it is now is a way to guarantee a critical hit on the next attack (yawn). Since the Advantage buff disappears after the next attack, the update breaks First Order squad synergy. It also seems to unbalance Toons who use AoE attacks with advantage - an IG-88 or HK-47 with advantage is now guaranteed 1 critical hit against every target (which has ripple effects with HK-47 as a squad leading other droids). Finally, this depreciates the value of high-crit Toons (like IG-86). I'd lobby hard to revert Advantage to its original state - criticals by themselves are boring, but Advantage synergies (like with First Order squads) provide more strategic options.

GW and Arena battles definitely last longer - several recent battles have just been slug-fests of hit point attrition. Definitely not as intense or satisfying.

Challenges do seem harder, but that's probably what is meant by "challenge." ;) I've had to drop a tier for a few of them, but not a big deal.

Love the new events - this is what I've like to see more of, especially as a way to earn cool stuff like ability mats or high-end gear.


Just my two pence. As with any major update, change takes time to get used to, so I'm trying to keep an open mind.

"Wolverine;308516" wrote:

"ModeratusImperialis;301233" wrote:
Going to try to be as constructive as possible. Holding out for final verdict because it really is far too early for that. First let me preface the rest of this by just telling you about me and my gaming in Galaxy of Heroes to better understand my perspective and what influences it.

I’ve been playing since early January. Have invested a fair bit of money into the game. Currently level 74 but next reset will be 75. I have 7 characters that I would characterize as being as close to optimized for play in the Galactic War and arena sections and 11 more that are acceptable to use in Galactic War. Since I got the hang of Galactic War and the bench to go with it I haven’t missed a day as far as I remember. That’s around two months of straight clears. I’ve been placing at least top 20 in Arena pretty much since I unlocked the feature and for the past month I’ve been top of the pile 90% of the time. I know how to play the game but more importantly I have had the relevant (speed meta) toons to do it.

About the Ewok event. Fun little thing. Every piece of content helps and whilst not something big it IS enjoyable none the less to see something new. I must say it has been very frustrating to see different geographical placements and phone types dictate what events and offers you’ve got to receive. Especially as an iPhone user in Europe. Don’t need to tell you what decisions and events you have made because you know them but overall it has felt like European iPhone users haven’t been valued. It’s not that there are perhaps that much in the way of rewards but when you’re playing as a min-maxer trying to play as effectively as possible every single thing adds up. The Ewok event as such makes up a bit for the gap you yourselves have created. But then again there will be people that are peeved about this. That monster is your own creation. When you play against others you want the basic premise to be equal.

About the Omega-event. Again it is fun to see something new. And it’s not really that hard. Rewards are great and must feel like a godsend for those severely lacking credits and ability materials. A good move in this period of time where resources are spread thin because of level increase and rebalancing. I’m not overly impressed with the option to refresh though. Once more into the pockets. But it is what it is. This does move us towards a more spending favourable game though. Thinking specifically of the Omega-material.

About the broad rebalancing of damage. It’s hard to see how this pans out. We’ve simply not had enough time with the update yet. Overall it is my general feeling that there is probably not a lot to complain about here but it’s really early. One thing is for sure and that is that this was not, I think, what the community expected. I think we as a community were expecting more drastic measures based solely on speed. As is it seems like a fine tuning. If this is good or bad, well still it feels too early to say so. Reduction in damage by itself is no problem but potential problems arise when couple with the protection stat.

About the protection stat in general. I’m not sure now that it has arrived that it was such a glorious idea. Some increases in levels of health might have sufficed to do the trick of allowing characters to get a round in. But we’ve got protection now and it is here to stay. With that in mind I think it has some problems associated with it. Tying it to gear level instead of number of gear pieces equipped means, for now, that precrafters (of which I am one) will have an easy to obtain substantial advantage. But precrafting in and of itself was such a bad move to allow in the first place. Also are we entirely sure we wanted to grant some characters as much protection as they got?

About the protection stat in Galactic War. Galactic War just got real. Having just played the one GW and cleared it is clear there is a difference. I know it is a small sample size and I was perhaps slightly careless whilst facing a more challenging set of opponents even by the previous standards but it was definitely harder. I lost somewhere in the region of 10-15 characters where I will normally lose one or two. The fact that protection doesn’t really replenish between fights makes for a significantly harder GW. With GW being the main source of income for most players making it that much harder has consequences. Again this makes it a move towards spenders being prioritized.

About protection in Arena. Well fights definitely last longer. Sometimes perhaps even too long. 5 minutes have the potential to be too little to be able to win a fight. I know I’ve had at least one fight where time became a very real problem. Maybe this will pan out come higher levels but I’d run tests on this with different set-ups to see if the time hasn’t come to look at either increasing the timer or doing something else. While lots of tactics should be viable lets agree that we should perhaps not be too keen on seeing teams aimed at and very capable of drawing out the time in Arena (and I don’t know if it is at this point). Then again that is perhaps just me?

About protection healing. It was hinted that one would be coming at some point and it does seem like the singular best idea to relieve a lot of problems with the Galactic War section. But given the currently problematic timers in Arena you need to be very careful about the implementation

It is still too early for me to see the long term effects of protection and damage reduction. Maybe come level 80 it will become clear that it is actually a lot better than we thought and the seemingly huge health and protection pools no longer seem as significant. Maybe we will have looked at the game as well in general and moved away from our previous speed meta-defined way of looking at it and realize that the game is actually more fun and more strategic now that we have longer lasting fights. For now though it feels sluggish and time consuming.

Even though I have spent a fair chunk of moolah on the game and I can see myself spending a bit more I must say that it has felt like free-to-play players haven’t been penalized too harshly. This update kind of feels like a bigger shift than ever towards prioritizing the spenders. Especially coupled with the, in my mind, atrocious gear update that saw the addition of much steeper gearing up requirements. I kind of liked the fact that spending, whilst definitely beneficial, wasn’t the hugest of advantages. Perhaps we have moved too far down the road of prioritizing spenders now?

PS. Finally one little pet peeve. Royal Guard. Of which I have one (albeit only 5* coming on 6*, coming on G9 and level 74) and which everyone will be able to get. He does feel a little on the overpowered side right now. Auto taunt with a huge health and protection pool. He is definitely a beast right now. But like before it is hard to say how things will pan out. But as a developer I would definitely have my team run tests with and against teams made up of him to see if we are certain we got this one right. I understand that he wasn’t really meant to be higher than gear level 8 at the moment so maybe that would balance it out once everyone can be on equal footing. High damage teams though with him in them could wreck many a players enjoyment of Galactic War long term. Some of us think we hate Sid and his healing debuff or Dooku. But we’re about to enter a whole new era of hatred.

Most objective and unbiased ratonal comments ever fielded in forum. Nicely done.

P.S.. .first time poster. .longest time lurker. .just had to do this one.

+1

People have spent a lot of time and money on this game. If you make the grind a little easier by continuing to offer things like the ewok and omega materials events you will go a long way to keeping us grinding. I suggest you increase the drop rates for gear and shards slightly as well. I need more time to adjust my gameplay and learn about the update before I comment about protection and all the balance changes. I couldn't finish GW yesterday, for the first time in 89 days. Not sure yet if that was my fault or not.

A it too much +1ing going on here. Yoda is "worthless". I bet 99% of the people saying this have not used him since the update. He's working fine for me. Please try everything out for yourself and be objective. Rolling the update back would be a bad thing. If the game remains with a handful of dominant toons that stay that way the game will stagnate. 3 days ago everyone was on here complaining about the lack of diversity. The devs are working to increase diversity and when they overstep in a way they have demonstrated the ability to quickly readjust. So let's not overreact and make judgements before trying the update out for a few days. Giving 1* in the store? Come on, relax a bit.

"strafeSS;309726" wrote:
A it too much +1ing going on here. Yoda is "worthless". I bet 99% of the people saying this have not used him since the update. He's working fine for me. Please try everything out for yourself and be objective. Rolling the update back would be a bad thing. If the game remains with a handful of dominant toons that stay that way the game will stagnate. 3 days ago everyone was on here complaining about the lack of diversity. The devs are working to increase diversity and when they overstep in a way they have demonstrated the ability to quickly readjust. So let's not overreact and make judgements before trying the update out for a few days. Giving 1* in the store? Come on, relax a bit.

Before update his masterstroke ability was doing around 1,6-1,7k damage not that spectacular just correct.
After update his padawanstroke ability does around 1 -1,1k damage.

Before update his unstoppable force ability was doing around 3,4 to 3,5k no it is doing around 2,5 to 2,7k.

Those figure may vary due to the enemy defense and level.

I watched yoyo yoda stream yesterday, he used a lvl 76 fully geared 7* Yoda in GW. So basically if i level my Yoda to lvl 76, promote him to 7* and gear him up, he will still be doing significantly less damage than my Yoda 5* before the update. That is just depressing.

He is still usefull thanks to his kit fortunately. I think that a more reasonable nerf would have been more acceptable. Especially for a character that requires that much effort and investment to get to 7*. Do not think that people are stupid and do not know how to use him. If someone makes the effort and investment to get him at 7*, i am pretty sure they know how to use him.
The point is that Yoda probably the strongest Jedi ever and of the most loved character of this franchise should not hit like a baby ewok.

Yoda tenacity + RG is pretty nasty. Turn meter reduction, stealing buffs, foresight, stuns, turn meter gain. One of the best kit of the game.
Of course he is still a good character but that big of a nerf was just not necessary.

Dude the AI should not be allowed protection in GW until y'all figure out a way to refresh my toons protection or heal it with my useless healers now because I can't even get pass the 7th node and that's sucks because all I can get now is 400 points a day 500 if I'm lucky! WTH please fix that, I can care less about everything else.

I'm glad they made the challenges more reasonable so at least I can continue my grinding and conquest of collecting gear to up players I will need now for GW and other battles. As for the GW my 1st team that I had can't even make it through half the GW as before but oh well have never completed the GW once anyway. I'll just keep grinding out and maybe find the combination that will eventually work. So all good keep a grinding for the slow gear drops and may the force be with you Lol

LOL! Just completed my first Arena battle today that would have put me from 516 to 450 ranking. Right as I won the battle it said "Client must be restarted." I restarted, and come to find out, it counted the battle but my ranking is still 516.

Great job guys. Not only does this update suck, but I'm getting ripped off for Arena battles now! About done with this game.

GW is still unplayable... You didn't do the first thing you said you would in the apology. What the hell?

Whining and more whining... Bunch of ungrateful cry babies.