MODS: MYTHS and FACTS
I am one of the lucky ones who had saved Cantina Energy and Credits and was able to outfit 3 squads with t5 mods. After having played ~ 20-25 battles against others who have t5 in arena and GW, I feel I can give more input than those who were sadly unable to mod up.
For reference later:
My Arena Squad - Max Gear/Stars Dooku, RG, STH, Rey, QGJ
My Arena Squad in waiting - G9 Akbar, G9 Leia, G8 Poe, G8 Poggle, Max RG
FACT 1: EA Botched this Roll-out Badly.
No Denying it. EA themselves has to be admitting it in closed door sessions. Did we as a community expect anything different though? There has been a consistent pattern of poor communication leading up to and after patches.
A patch of this magnitude needed much more up front communication to let the players really understand what was coming and get their buy in. They needed to act as change agents, identify key points of resistance, and address those points. In hindsight, they probably also should have released the t1/t2 tables for about a month prior to the challenge tables. People could have gotten their feet wet.
Patch 2 was also laughable and should be rolled back. They dug the knife into an already irate community by lowering drop rates and tripling prices.
Going forward, I highly suggest EA adopt a release schedule that many other IT vendors utilize. Namely alternate bug and enhancement releases each month. Also, release Enhancement full patch notes the month prior to dropping an Enhancement. Two or Three weeks out drop video examples of the content. Get User input and adjust as necessary.
MYTH 1: Mods invalidate all the work we have done on gear, stars, and abilities.
This is untrue. All that we have done to this point is still the base layer. If the base layer is not good, then the mod is not good. Case in point, my Arena squad could consistently beat all but 1 team (B2/JE Droid Team) on my shard before mods. After Mods (and the droid team modded as well), the same is true. Additionally, my secondary arena team which is not highly geared, still cannot beat other highly geared teams that are also modded. Gear is still king.
FACT 2: GW is Impossible for those unable to mod quickly.
I normally never play my arena squad in GW. I usually play with different combos for fun. I had to break out my arena team for the final nodes. If you did not have an opportunity to hop on the t5 band wagon early, you are now screwed. Fact of the matter is an unmodded team cannot beat a modded team. If you need credits to level mods and you can't beat GW, how are you supposed to advance? Mods needed to dramatically impact arena power and GW matching, and they did not.
MYTH 2: We can turn DPS into tanks and Tanks into DPS! Characters are losing their uniqueness.
No Sorry. While it is true you can give a pure DPS more health or tanks more offense, they are still what they were. More Health on a DPS means surviving one more turn. More Offense on a Tank means the ability to finish off a low health DPS that's in the red instead of tickling it. At the end of the day they are what they are.
MYTH 3/FACT 3: Using Cantina Energy for Mods forces me to choose between farming toons and farming mods.
Under the original patch this was a myth, as this situation would have only been temporary. Once you had a few days to get basic mods, you could go back to farming toons until you could unlock additional tables.
Unfortunately, with the reduced drop rate, this is now FACT.
FACT 4: It is hard to quickly tell how exactly someone is modded.
This is a big issue for me. We can quickly tell set bonus by glancing at the character creation screen, but then you have to dig deeper into each individual mod to see the actual impact to character. Taking Rey as an example, is she speed modded, health modded, or offense modded? I'd like to quickly know this so I know what order I am targeting her in. If she is health modded, I'm hitting dispelers before her. If she is one of the other 2 she becomes my primary target.
I feel like there needs to be some basic color coding of mods to somehow quickly display this info.
Also, perhaps a legend that shows turn order of the 10 toons?
MYTH 4: Mods are too powerful.
Ok. Modded Teams destroy unmodded Teams. Guess what? Geared Teams destroy ungeared teams. Once everyone is the same level, it all evens out. Plus everyone loves offense. Who doesn't want to watch a high scoring football or baseball game? Big numbers are quite simply more fun than smaller numbers. Remember how slow everything when protection was first released prior to the tweaking? That is the opposite of this. In the meantime, go 3 star any pve content you havent touched yet.. it will have to be eventually updated.
FACT 5: There is too much math involved with mods.
Do I want to use 12367 Protection or do I want to use 94% Protection? Seriously? I don't want to have to break out my calculator to determine if Mod A is better than Mod B. I want to know by looking.
Let's change all mods to be consistent. Either use raw numbers or use %. Don't use both for the love of Pete!
FACT 6: Credit Crunch is much worse now.
Prior to Patch 2, a worse credit crunch would only have been a temporary consideration. The initial costs to level t5 was reasonable.
However, with the updated costs, outfitting one character with t5 costs an additional 3M!!! Unacceptable. Greedy. Disheartening. We didn't have enough credits PRIOR to this update. Exacerbating the costs are the inability for many to complete GW or the scoundrel event. This is a huge, huge issue.
I'm sure there are more, but I should probably go do some work...
P.S. I will reiterate that I was LUCKY. I got in and got t5 mods at the right time. Had I been unlucky, I would very likely be disheartened to the point where I would certainly close my wallet and seriously consider walking away. I totally understand everyone's anger.
@EA_Jesse
For reference later:
My Arena Squad - Max Gear/Stars Dooku, RG, STH, Rey, QGJ
My Arena Squad in waiting - G9 Akbar, G9 Leia, G8 Poe, G8 Poggle, Max RG
FACT 1: EA Botched this Roll-out Badly.
No Denying it. EA themselves has to be admitting it in closed door sessions. Did we as a community expect anything different though? There has been a consistent pattern of poor communication leading up to and after patches.
A patch of this magnitude needed much more up front communication to let the players really understand what was coming and get their buy in. They needed to act as change agents, identify key points of resistance, and address those points. In hindsight, they probably also should have released the t1/t2 tables for about a month prior to the challenge tables. People could have gotten their feet wet.
Patch 2 was also laughable and should be rolled back. They dug the knife into an already irate community by lowering drop rates and tripling prices.
Going forward, I highly suggest EA adopt a release schedule that many other IT vendors utilize. Namely alternate bug and enhancement releases each month. Also, release Enhancement full patch notes the month prior to dropping an Enhancement. Two or Three weeks out drop video examples of the content. Get User input and adjust as necessary.
MYTH 1: Mods invalidate all the work we have done on gear, stars, and abilities.
This is untrue. All that we have done to this point is still the base layer. If the base layer is not good, then the mod is not good. Case in point, my Arena squad could consistently beat all but 1 team (B2/JE Droid Team) on my shard before mods. After Mods (and the droid team modded as well), the same is true. Additionally, my secondary arena team which is not highly geared, still cannot beat other highly geared teams that are also modded. Gear is still king.
FACT 2: GW is Impossible for those unable to mod quickly.
I normally never play my arena squad in GW. I usually play with different combos for fun. I had to break out my arena team for the final nodes. If you did not have an opportunity to hop on the t5 band wagon early, you are now screwed. Fact of the matter is an unmodded team cannot beat a modded team. If you need credits to level mods and you can't beat GW, how are you supposed to advance? Mods needed to dramatically impact arena power and GW matching, and they did not.
MYTH 2: We can turn DPS into tanks and Tanks into DPS! Characters are losing their uniqueness.
No Sorry. While it is true you can give a pure DPS more health or tanks more offense, they are still what they were. More Health on a DPS means surviving one more turn. More Offense on a Tank means the ability to finish off a low health DPS that's in the red instead of tickling it. At the end of the day they are what they are.
MYTH 3/FACT 3: Using Cantina Energy for Mods forces me to choose between farming toons and farming mods.
Under the original patch this was a myth, as this situation would have only been temporary. Once you had a few days to get basic mods, you could go back to farming toons until you could unlock additional tables.
Unfortunately, with the reduced drop rate, this is now FACT.
FACT 4: It is hard to quickly tell how exactly someone is modded.
This is a big issue for me. We can quickly tell set bonus by glancing at the character creation screen, but then you have to dig deeper into each individual mod to see the actual impact to character. Taking Rey as an example, is she speed modded, health modded, or offense modded? I'd like to quickly know this so I know what order I am targeting her in. If she is health modded, I'm hitting dispelers before her. If she is one of the other 2 she becomes my primary target.
I feel like there needs to be some basic color coding of mods to somehow quickly display this info.
Also, perhaps a legend that shows turn order of the 10 toons?
MYTH 4: Mods are too powerful.
Ok. Modded Teams destroy unmodded Teams. Guess what? Geared Teams destroy ungeared teams. Once everyone is the same level, it all evens out. Plus everyone loves offense. Who doesn't want to watch a high scoring football or baseball game? Big numbers are quite simply more fun than smaller numbers. Remember how slow everything when protection was first released prior to the tweaking? That is the opposite of this. In the meantime, go 3 star any pve content you havent touched yet.. it will have to be eventually updated.
FACT 5: There is too much math involved with mods.
Do I want to use 12367 Protection or do I want to use 94% Protection? Seriously? I don't want to have to break out my calculator to determine if Mod A is better than Mod B. I want to know by looking.
Let's change all mods to be consistent. Either use raw numbers or use %. Don't use both for the love of Pete!
FACT 6: Credit Crunch is much worse now.
Prior to Patch 2, a worse credit crunch would only have been a temporary consideration. The initial costs to level t5 was reasonable.
However, with the updated costs, outfitting one character with t5 costs an additional 3M!!! Unacceptable. Greedy. Disheartening. We didn't have enough credits PRIOR to this update. Exacerbating the costs are the inability for many to complete GW or the scoundrel event. This is a huge, huge issue.
I'm sure there are more, but I should probably go do some work...
P.S. I will reiterate that I was LUCKY. I got in and got t5 mods at the right time. Had I been unlucky, I would very likely be disheartened to the point where I would certainly close my wallet and seriously consider walking away. I totally understand everyone's anger.
@EA_Jesse
