and I feel like quitting SWGOH entirely. Seriously, CG, this is ridiculously terrible. What is wrong with you?

No. Don't misunderstand me. I am thinking not about giving up going for Aphra. I am thinking about selling my mods and uninstalling the game. This is literally the worst designed thing I've ever seen in SWGOH. I am not interested in flipping a coin until it comes up heads 12 times in a row. It's not fun, it's not entertaining, it's not an intellectual challenge. This isn't about theory crafting or intelligence or skill. It's not even a real time game where it's about how fast I can hit the buttons. CG has deliberately created an event where I am irrelevant and yet they expect me to somehow be motivated to spend my time on their game anyway. This is nothing but trash. If I'd encountered this event in my first year of the game, I would never have continued. There is no criticism too harsh for this event.

@CG_Tusken_Meathead Because complaining without constructive criticism is of little use, here's what I came up with. Although I object to events structured so as to depend on RNG, even if I accept for the purposes of the argument that the right design choice is to pin player success or failure to something beyond the player ability to control or even mod (evasion in this case), the event need not be frustrating AND the event need not be entirely out of control of the pleyers' hands. In this case where you just feel absolutely compelled as a design team to force the player to rely on RNG and multiple attempts, you add a buff -- call it Luck of the Pirate King, or The Will of the Force, or just Plot Armour (since that's what it is). Then make the bonus from this buff something that directly counters the frustration of the RNG. In this case, it gives a boost to evasion. Set the baseline amount at something reasonable, and then allow the bonus to increase in an arithmetic progression with something that the player controls, but which also encourages that player to spend resources (and thus will encourage at least some players to spend money). Here it's fairly simple: Luck of the Pirate King: +1% evasion, arithmetically increasing, per relic level of the character. For those who don't understand the mathematical statement here, that's +1% at r1, +3% at r2, +6% at r3, etc. Since Hondo doesn't qualify for the event until r5, this grants a minimum of +15% evasion. Since Hondo's dodge in this event is 27%, this grants a substantial buff and thus can be expected to reduce the total number of attempts, but without ever changing the fundamental nature of the event which requires dodges otherwise outside the player's control to complete. And yet! It is RNG. People can still get frustrated. But of course they can r6 their Hondo for a 48% dodge chance, or r7 for 55% up to r9 for 72% dodge chance. At al levels there is a meaningful chance to dodge and a meaningful chance to be struck, but at r9 the chance to be struck is 28% -- very much the inverse of the chance to dodge we currently have without this hypo ethical buff. in other words, you still depend on luck, but the player has meaningful choices available that can tilt the odds in the player's favour (and even when not taking them, the odds of mission success are not quite as bad as they were originally). And yet some of those choices depend on giving cash to you, the game developer, for quick access to high relic tiers. Why is this better? It does not change the fundamental nature of the event: you want an event that depends on dodges and you still have it. It reduces the number of attempts for players, decreasing frustration. It returns a sense of control back to the players allowing them to make a conscious choice between More attempts while saving relic materials or spending relic materials and expecting success in fewer average attempts. Even though no matter what you do you are required to get some level of RNG, attempts vs relic tiers is now a strategic player choice, giving the player the sense that they are beating the level. It increases CG's income by encouraging spending resources and thus ultimately cash on improving a specific, required toon. There have been many events that are heavily RNG dependent in the past. While most of them have the option of minimizing RNG through raising your gear/relics to overpowering levels (as bad as many people believe GAS to have been you always had the option of taking your full squad to r7 since r7 existed at the time, and the damage and survivability of r7 did in fact make a meaningful difference in your chances of success), this event which requires multiple dodges to succeed will never feel satisfying to the player. It's a bad design choice. But you can make it better. And if you feel the need to design RNG-heavy events in the future, an arithmetically scaling buff can be crafted to those events as well. Personally, I prefer more direct control. You could, for example, grant the enemies much lower offence but much higher crit damage. With enough enemies on the field, you can keep their crit chance low (no higher than 45%) but still come close to guaranteeing a critical hit for every turn the hero takes. Only now a Criit Avoid arrow reduces the chances of a critical hit to 0% to 9%. At this point you're testing the player's knowledge of the game and investment in their mods rather than pure RNG. That said, even here you have a similar option: Insanely high crit damage with moderate offence can be combined with a CritChance of, say, 80%. With a critical avoid arrow you still get smashed. Drop in the Plot Armour event buff, using the same progression as above and you still get absolutely smashed unless you combine it with a CA arrow. Combined the CC% of the enemy falls to 29% as your CA has reached 51%. now add in the encouragement to arithmetic progression and you see that an r6 toon has only a 23% chance of being critically hit, an r7% has a 16% chance, an r8 an 8% chance, and an r9 will be immune to the critical hits of the enemy. But even with r9, if you don't have that CA arrow your chance of being critically hit would be 35%, which might be frusttatingly high and cause a player to require a number of restarts. In short: you've designed a really poor event, but you can do better. it's not even that hard.

I didn't ask for advice. I know how to mod. I did remod. I did not try with weak mods. The point is that you must dodge to win, and dodging is out of your control. There is no way that I can "git gud" and suddenly have more dodges. It is not the number of attempts. It is not that I'm incompetent or won't grind (I have been playing for 7 years). The event is literally designed to make my skill irrelevant by forcing you to wait for the right combination of dodges. This is a terrible design choice, and I do not trust designers who would make this choice. I'm not saying it's a horrible event b/c I didn't get the right RNG or because my mods aren't good enough I'm saying it's a horrible event b/c it's designed to be dependent on something out of player control. That's why it only took 5 attempts to make this post. Lord knows I've spent more time on that getting zero shards on Reva just writing up theory crafting for the community, going through opening scenario after opening scenario and testing different mod combinations. Time consumption on its own does not deter me. So don't give me advice. Give CG's developers advice. This tier of this event is the worst designed I've yet seen, and I've played through a lot of bad choices by them. It makes me question whether I want to play any future content from them because it's bad design. So thank you for your reply, but you can give your patronizing mod advice to someone else. The problem isn't me. The problem is CG.

You’ve done only 5 attempts and are already prepared to give up? Wow…

Just wait until you get to the third part...I hear you, and I know that people have had problems with that as well, but I don't mind multiple attempts if I'm learning more about the puzzle during those attempts and I have a chance to get better at the event, leading to eventual victory through my own choices. it's requiring dodge when Hondo doesn't have dodge in his mastery, there are no mods that boost dodge, etc. There's simply nothing to do except wait for the right RNG, and as a player I fundamentally resent having my success taken out of my hands. I will not attempt this mission again soon. I can't say when I will attempt it again. Maybe this is all a rush of anger that subsides tomorrow, though I do not think so. But if I ever do attempt the event again, and if I get to Tier3, I won't mind multiple attempts so long as my skill matters. Of course, given how terrible their design choices are in T1, maybe skill doesn't matter at all in T3 either.

Only 5 Attempts at Aphra 1/Hondo | EA Forums

27 Replies

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Krjst0ff
Seasoned Newcomer
2 years ago
Nothing we didn't already see with GAS, Thrawn, ...

... or the initial run of the chewie event ...
templarphoenix
New Spectator
2 years ago
Easier than GAS, so what the problem?
ccmoose
Rising Novice
2 years ago
"MasterSeedy;c-2408906" wrote:
Skill doesn't matter in tier 3 either. You need to land the right stagger at the beginning, then get some lucky dodges.

Thank you for the warning.

Meh... I found Tier 3 much easier. Granted, I'm a very small sample :P But in that fight, I found I was able to influence the outcome much more with my mod strategy than I was in Tier 1.

For Tier 1, I do wonder if there is a speed/turn order sweet spot to ensure that you have Foresight on Greedo's turns. Disclaimer, I don't remember the event super clearly. But when I did finally get lucky enough to win, I often/always seemed to have Foresight on Greedo's turns. Could have been blind luck, though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Joebo720
2 years ago
First tier is about getting lucky with dodges. While mildly annoying it wasn't that big of a deal. Didn't spend countless hours on it like i did for Chewie or GAS.
MasterSeedy
Rising Ace
2 years ago
For Tier 1, I do wonder if there is a speed/turn order sweet spot

This would be interesting to know, though I think in that case it would be useful if one of the enemies was Light Side so you had a strategic choice to make about gaining TM on your basic or not.

The point being what you said about Tier 3:

in that fight, I found I was able to influence the outcome much more with my mod strategy than I was in Tier 1.

The point is to return more control over the outcome to the player.

in the hypothetical above where they could introduce an event buff for stacking Evasion (in this event) or Crit Avoid (in an event where the enemy offence is much more modest, but they have +150% or +200% Crit Damage) you would still have to pile on relic levels to influence the battle's RNG -- but you would know you're making a conscious choice about balancing spending your in-game resources or spending your time.

Literally the same would be true if Hondo had evasion in his mastery ... but he does not.

The reason I quit after so few attempts wasn't because I'm unwilling to grind, but because I loathe on principle an event which gives so little influence to the player.

It feels like you get it (unlike some people here) so thank you for your words.
NotRealUltra
Seasoned Newcomer
2 years ago
"Salatious_Scrum;c-2408848" wrote:
You’ve done only 5 attempts and are already prepared to give up? Wow…

i remember spending hours watching the cutscene just to unlock chewbacca using Bounty Hunters without Bossk
GoldenPakari
2 years ago
"Ultra;c-2409050" wrote:
"Salatious_Scrum;c-2408848" wrote:
You’ve done only 5 attempts and are already prepared to give up? Wow…

i remember spending hours watching the cutscene just to unlock chewbacca using Bounty Hunters without Bossk

I feel like the difficulty spiked from Tier 4 to Tier 5 by a massive margin...
DarthJobbie
Rising Adventurer
2 years ago
I cant even see whats being faced
DarthJobbie
Rising Adventurer
2 years ago
And im sure you have said bye bye to people. Harsh life.
perfidius44
Rising Newcomer
2 years ago
"yolkywareagle;c-2409230" wrote:
the prerequisite of relic 5 toons does not mean that they are ideal

I used a R7 Hondo and still had to try a bunch of times.

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Only 5 Attempts at Aphra 1/Hondo

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