Next Content Update Preview - Part 1

I really don't understand this trail of thought at all. I paid big and I still get screwed over by free to play teams in the arena on a daily basis.

I've played a lot of other app games. This one is easily among the most generous to FTP players. And I have absolutely zero problems with that. I think that's cool.

Some random user making prophecies of doom and gloom otoh... Those I can do without.

"Llewella;68487" wrote:

"EA_Jesse;7844" wrote:
The Shard Shop will have multiple character shards rotated in and out, and may eventually have an exclusive character that has been highly requested by the community :)

Cannot believe no one has speculated on what EAJesse was talking about.

Did he elude to Yoda? Or what other character could he be referring to?

He didnt elude to yoda that i saw. Hopefully its general grievous tbh

"HavokTrigger;68824" wrote:

"Abyss;68811" wrote:

"Llewella;68487" wrote:

"EA_Jesse;7844" wrote:
The Shard Shop will have multiple character shards rotated in and out, and may eventually have an exclusive character that has been highly requested by the community :)

Cannot believe no one has speculated on what EAJesse was talking about.

Did he elude to Yoda? Or what other character could he be referring to?

He didnt elude to yoda that i saw. Hopefully its general grievous tbh

There aren't a lot of " Where's Grevious" threads. Most of them pertain to Jedi Luke and Yoda.

Perhaps not threads dedicated to GG but there is prob just as many "we want grievous" comments as any other toon thus far.

I think one of the frustrations/concerns of the community is the inconsistency of communication from the Community Managers regarding information/updates about the game. Based on what I've seen compared to other Community Managers in other games, it feels like the staff there is inexperienced and winging it. An example would be the communication regarding the last major update. I can't remember a recent instance of how a critical update (i.e. raising level cap) in a game with this kind of following was communicated so poorly to the player base. Many people expressed their frustrations with that and hopefully there is something in motion over on the community team's side to improve upon this.

The ultra hardcore are obviously going to want every bit of information to seize any advantage they can prior to a patch. The developers are going to have a level of comfort of how much information they are going to want to allow players to leverage. Regardless of where the developers land, I believe you guys can improve a ton on starting to set the expectations of the community as to how often we will hear from you with updates or discussion points about the game.

Right now, there isn't a clear system or structure in place to release information. This post from you was fine in and of itself, but people are wondering is this it? Is this the last we will hear from you before the update pops up again in our game client with an Inbox message saying the message was sent to us 11 hour ago? You might be able to temper some of the harsher reactions from people by simply setting the expectation with the community as to when and how often we will hear from you with what you are able to share.

Another mobile game that I play, Puzzle & Dragons, does a much better job with this. Granted it has and will have more players (and as a result a bigger staff) than this game will ever have, but they have multiple updates a week, Twitch streams with the Community Managers, and tastefully blend what is common knowledge of an upcoming release and hints about what could be to come.

The notion that you have to hide the majority of details of an upcoming patch to build maximum hype for an upcoming release is both absurd and outdated. Another game that I play, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn/Heavensward, holds multiple live conferences/streams several times a year with the Producer/Director and Development Team that can last a couple of hours. The results speak for themselves, letting their player base know of what's coming (they obviously still keep some surprises) doesn't kill hype for the update. You could make a strong argument that it actually builds more anticipating and excitement (unless you guys are about to drop a big turd on us).

I understand this is a new game and there isn't going to be as much to say compared to these other games. Can you at the very least start to develop some of sort of regular update system?

"EA_Jesse;68497" wrote:
@Naecabon it's a preview, just like anything else that gives a preview. When you watch a trailer for a movie do you just want to know everything about it right that second? Why is Rey crying in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer? They should tell me now before I even go to see it!

Also, reacting like this may make us hesitant to share information before a release, so....

Seeing a post like this from an EA Community Manager is discouraging and disappointing. Honestly, in other games it potentially would be grounds for the employee's termination or at the very least an infraction against them. This is a mobile game with a relatively small player base (even less who frequents the forums) and if you can't take the heat from people (responding with a threat to anyone who doesn't just sit and nod at your posts) EA should replace you with someone who can.

This is a huge part of your job responsibilities - listening to people bitch and complain. It's no different from any other game that people are passionate about. The only difference is that you have the luxury of having to deal with far less of it.

Can I have a tl;dr? I'm hungover.

EDIT: I may have a cold too. Not sure yet.

"EA_Jesse;7844" wrote:
Greetings Heroes,

Today we’d like to give you a preview on one of the big features we’re adding to our next major update in February, the Shard Shop.

This will be the place to trade in those extra shards for characters that you already have at 7 stars. The Shard Shop will have multiple character shards rotated in and out, and may eventually have an exclusive character that has been highly requested by the community :)

The Shard Shop is just one of the many new features that we’re adding to Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. As we get closer to the next major update we’ll continue to preview content that will be included. Stay tuned!

Cheers

That's nice. I also like that there's a new exclusive toon by this method, this will make it even more appealing both in short and long term, for all the player base, F2P, P2P and P2W.

I'll also speculate a little bit, most likely there'll be a new token, and a buy/sell system for shards, selling based on base * level of the character, and maybe those that are Chromium only being a bit more profitable too.

I'll keep an eye on this, and future updates, after all this is just part 1 of the preview. Thanks for keeping us posted!

Nice preview! When's part 2? Is it daily sneak peaks? Excited for the upcoming update :)

"Naecabon;68717" wrote:

"xxgozitaxx;68684" wrote:

"Naecabon;68647" wrote:

"secretvodka;68640" wrote:
There have to be some other things that we can exchage with excess shards as well such as Action Point or Gear. Otherwise, it is useless to those that already have maxed out the characters they use.

EA_Jess, please suggest it to the dev team.

Don't bother trying in this thread, it won't do you any good.

This is standard procedure in nearly every online game which delivers content regularly. How is this anything new to you?

Believe me, I've quickly realized I'm in the very small minority here and there's no point in arguing about it because the majority are not whales and the majority don't see our perspective, and we can't make comments that show any sort of disdain in the forums unless we're willing to endure the wrath of the whacists. If you disagree with something you're outed as a crazy person.

Winner winner chicken dinner. You're fighting an uphill battle with no support. The forums or reddit won't be your avenue as you are the very small minority. You're an "evil" whale...you're the 1%er...you're the guy that much of the forum wants to take down. Any post or suggestion you make will get looked at with a critical eye that you're looking out for whales and to smash the little guy.

Segmentation Problem
The fundamental problem I have with these games and I've seen it play out pretty much every time is there's no real customer segment that is targeted. Most businesses have a target segment right? They then build products / content to appease that customer. This type of game spans F2P to the top spender, which is probably you or close to it. They have to balance the game as a result to something in the middle to try to keep everyone happy. In this type of one-size-fits-all approach, the folks on the extremes get the shaft...and this comes down most hard on whales because they have an aggressive appetite to compete / advance / grow. They inevitably hit the whale wall and outspend the content too fast.

Past Example
CG has another game, Heroes of Dragon Age...they came out with this really awesome PVE content update called Nexus. They had 3/4 levels generally: med/hard/very hard/ insane. The difficulty scaled up considerably on insane, but the drop / loot rate was much better as well. Even if you were the whaliest of whales, the Insane level was a big challenge that you wouldn't beat at a high rate without the help of powerful booster runes. So, they tried to create a segment targeted piece of content. You should have seen the backlash and unbelievable wrath of destruction that CG had to deal with on their FB page and on the forums. The F2P / low spender base, which outnumbers the 1%ers by an incredible amount, absolutely flamed non-stop. I mean it made the early Barriss / Dooku threads here look tame. Many of them just couldn't even come close to competing in that content and weren't happy that all the good loot / drop rates were only available to whales. Massive, massive PR problem. The end result was CG had to nerf the difficulty of nexus overall, and in particular the insane mode...the evil whales lost their only source for challenging content and they also nerfed the value / appeal of the drops that were in Nexus as a result of the nerf to difficulty. This was necessary because the value to spend / cost ratio was then way out of whack and acquiring good stuff was then too easy and cheap. This was a sad event for me and others that enjoyed that content, but you just have to realize what you're getting in to.

Hope in the Battle
I will give you some hope in general though...once there is guild war content is in place that will give the whales something to be invigorated about as there will be a challenge in the form of facing other whales and the satisfaction of competing / winning. This game boils down to 2 objectives really: 1. Acquiring heroes 2. Winning / competing. Whales will always suffer from #1 because once you have all toons ... that part of the content is gone. #2 isn't there now because PVE content gets steamrolled by whales and PVP is likely pretty easy depending on the server and it's kind of repetitive after 2 months anyway so it's not all that exciting / fun even if you do get #1.

Shards not the Cure
I'd honestly have been more excited about guild content or expanding PVP somehow. Shard exchange, if you think about it won't really change the game for you. No matter what it could offer, essentially it's going to offer you just something that goes back in to #1 above...either more heroes or something to build a hero. At your rate of advancement you'll burn through that instantly and be right back in the same position. Sure you'll get to use some wasted resources that is a nuisance right now, but it's not materially changing your issue long-term. What we need is #2 above...competing / winning.

Old Man Advice Time
Just to be clear, my roster is definitely on the advanced side (as it was in HoDA) and I'd be bucketed on a spend scale with you generally. I have Jinn, Maul, FOTP, and Leia ..for example..all at 6* as a minimum. I'm not at level 70 like you, but I'll be at 68 today, which is among the higher levels relative to the general population. You're just going way too fast man. You're blowing through the content and the game will struggle to meet your pace, giving you little to look forward to day to day. I'll share my approach on toon acquisition that still provides me with excitement about content coming up. I've had Dooku at 6* for weeks now - don't recall how long. I stopped farming him at 6* because I figured I wanted to save him for later in a pack or if he had a better node. Same for Barriss. I also did that in part because I saw from farming JC / Sid early on that even after I had them 7*, shards just accumulate randomly over time through pack purchases of course, but even through GW shards or bronze packs. I'm now very much looking forward to hitting 69 and opening up the Cantina to finish those two characters. I have Maul at 7*, love him in PVE and just as a character in general, but I was also partly sad to have him at 7* already. I know now if they ever unveil him to farm or put as a prize - imagine how big of a deal that would be for most - that's content I'll miss out on because it will be of no value to me. I'd consider slowing down now and going forward to let the pace of content development catch up until we get guild wars or some other advanced level of PVP play. Till then we just have the Poe-roll coin flip going on :)

"EA_Jesse;68497" wrote:
@Naecabon it's a preview, just like anything else that gives a preview. When you watch a trailer for a movie do you just want to know everything about it right that second? Why is Rey crying in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer? They should tell me now before I even go to see it!

Also, reacting like this may make us hesitant to share information before a release, so....

Hey, a majority of us are cool :smile:! Don't mind the cribby fellows in every thread, they are the minority.

Seriously, guys, stop pretending this game is your life and stop belly aching about each and every step the devs take. If you really want to vent, do so regarding the delays in fixing long time bugs or major changes in the game without discussion or announcement, or about the excessive pricing etc.

Rofl at the guys posting 100 plus word essays on how this preview is wrecking the game and their lives! You guys rock! Makes me feel good that I'm not so depressed and negative!

@EA_Jesse Thanks for the update. Communication is always good and appreciated, especially about new content :) This game has a lot of promise, excited about the future.