Poll on New Updates
Hi everyone! I’ve been a Galaxy of Heroes player for almost two years now, playing consistently every day. I’m a grind account—typically not caring how long it takes me to grow, generally being very...
Forum Discussion
So much confusion in this thread - so many people that haven't actually looked at the rewards and what they're getting now for doing less. I spent most of the day yesterday watching the same thing happen in the SWGoH Events discord and trying to explain how this is actually a better system for F2P players - I'm not going to repeat that effort because people just don't want to hear it. Contrary to popular opinion, CG actually DOESN'T pay me and as it happens, people that want to be mad will do so even in the face of irrefutable evidence that their grievance in fact doesn't exist. Everyone has gone full emotions on this and people don't seem to want to calm down and actually LOOK at what they've been presented with. For the record - your rewards haven't been paywalled - you can still get what you were getting before, or in the worst case scenarios, roughly equal value. I'm not going to show you the math - go find it - there are TONS of posts all over the place that prove it.
But it does make one consider that the real problem might be the fact that this new system REQUIRES so much explanation. CG has done a poor job of demonstrating the benefits gained here for all players and put disproportionate focus on the paid elements of this update. Maybe we need Crumb and Meathead to do a live Q&A about this so they can answer some of these concerns directly and help everyone understand just how this is better than what we had before. Maybe on a twitch stream?
As for the OP... I'll play along.
- Do you think this update is good overall, bad overall, or a blend?
-- I think overall it's good. There are some visual issues that could be cleaned up, but for the most part I like it. - For you, what aspects are good and what aspects are bad?
-- I like the new episode pass and I think it delivers great value relative to other purchases in the game - I'll be buying it (though the plus pass is laughable).
-- I like the new UI elements - aside from some layering irregularities and occasional text scaling issues, it feels good to interact with and it's a nice update to what was a tired layout.
-- The character quests requiring a specific shard count aren't great - I don't think this is going to motivate people to buy shards who weren't doing it already, but I'm not a marketing guy so maybe I'm wrong about that. What I can say for sure is that it doesn't move the needle for me - and I'm a spender. Lots of people seem bothered by them but they're still pretty easy to ignore, so that's what I'll continue to do.
-- The quantities in the Episode Shipments should be addressed - in a store that refreshes once a week, you'd hope to find more than just 2 of the item you need.
-- I love that I can buy CCBs and BWs at reasonable prices with episode currency. - Are you considering leaving this game due to this update?
-- No. - Why or why not?
-- The one thing most likely to make me leave the game would be the frustrating fleet arena mess that I apparently paid a lot of money to get in on. The Tie Dagger changes make the game play experience objectively and demonstrably worse on a daily basis but that likely won't get any more air time because of this update. My guess here is that the dagger problem is going to fester because all the focus is now on player outrage about paywalls that don't actually remove any rewards that they were getting before. Just weeks before this update CG made getting rewards from fleet arena significantly more frustrating - that's way more likely to be the last straw for players like me than anything that came in this update. - Any additional thoughts or comparisons with previous updates?
By most objective measures, this update is a good thing. Subjectively on the other hand, it's apparent that some of the UI changes, and in particular the changes to GCs are making players feel negatively about their game experience. For myself, I have no problem ignoring the things that don't apply to me - character quests and character feats in particular - I really don't care. It's not keeping me from anything and it's not convincing me of anything - so it's a nothing burger to me. It does seem to be bothering people though and I think CG would be wise to address that in some form or fashion.
A few parting thoughts:
The rewards track does one thing that I haven't seen anyone mention and I think it deserves a call-out. Collecting new rewards from the episode reward track almost daily gives a sense of progression. It's superficial - confectionary even - but in the land of lost investments (assault battles, datacrons, Sith Assassin, Post-Naboo Luminara) a sense of progression is an element that is becoming more and more rare. I don't think it's a crazy idea that CG could potentially see a resurgence of former players coming back to the game if they tracked back towards progression as a design philosophy, rather than the treadmill they seem determined to put us on.
For the folks so happy about being able to sim all the new things - I'm happy about that too, but in keeping with the general mood of this post, I'm sorry to have to rain all over your parade - the new sims are not in this update - we've got some time to wait for that feature still.
One last thing - you really only have to tag Meathead once. If he doesn't reply to that, several more tags isn't going to change anything. All the same, good luck OP. I hope this thread gets some attention from the powers that be.
Well said Zhedd
This has been the most detailed defense I’ve seen about this update—yet it also touches upon several of the aspects that I find frustrating as well. I appreciate how thorough you’ve been—and I intend to come back to this post when I have more time to explore it in greater depth. Two main things caught my attention:
- I admit that this is a difficult update to parse through, and at first glance, it absolutely feels like F2P players are getting shafted. But the idea that possibly the worst thing about this update is that it’s too convoluted and just requires too much explanation gives me hope that you’re right and that, overall, this is better for F2P player.
- You mentioned a Discord thread where you attempted to educate people mathematically why this was a good update overall—would you mind linking me to that so that when I return I can explore it? I’d be interested in hard numbers.
I appreciate the tagging advice—this is my first time on this (or any) forum, and I just wanted to ensure that they were informed of the most condemning frustrations as well the solutions that I felt were pretty solid. (Apologies if this was deeply frustrating for you, Meathead)Again—thank you—I appreciate your detailed response, and I’ll come back to mull it over properly when I have the chance.
I was referring to the SWGoH Events discord - I'm sure that there's an link on swgohevents.com or somewhere thereabouts, but sifting through the dumpster fire of posts on that server from yesterday is a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. There were several people trying to lay out how the math shows that the FTP rewards path would result in people getting roughly equal value to what they were getting before. Sometimes maybe more, sometimes maybe less, but generally equal value. There's tons of posts on reddit about this if you look for them and several content creators have done videos explaining it. In particular look for a post from Fatal on Reddit where he lays it out plainly and simply - it's really difficult to make it more simple than he did.
I keep saying 'roughly equal' because this update has introduced a degree of player agency in choosing rewards that was not present in the old system and it's hard to put a value on that (this was a wildly popular shift when they revamped raid rewards similarly) - so in some scenarios people may see less overall and in other cases people would see more - we're all just ignoring that everyone's roster is different and the requirements of any given GC is going to impact different players differently. That being the case it's very hard to say, "everything is the same" - because it won't be - but the expected VALUE of what you end up getting is going to be better, in particular for people that weren't getting 4 or more red boxes per month in GCs (for example, all the smaller F2P accounts that weren't doing that well in GCs to start with are going to come out way ahead here).
There's also a pervasive assumption that the GCs are the primary source of these rewards when that's no longer the case. The fact is you'll get most of your episode points (and as a result, most of your rewards that used to come from GCs) from doing dailies and other activities outside of GCs. So again - people that were not able to complete higher levels of the old GCs are going to end up coming out ahead here. It's actually much less impactful now to run up on a GC that your roster isn't equipped for - but that doesn't play well with the current narrative that CG is just doing a big cash grab and the sky is falling.
I'm not always a fan of the choices CG makes - as I made clear in my initial reply - but I really do feel like with a few tweaks, this update could be one of the best updates to the game in years. The knee **bleep** reactions aren't unexpected, but have come with such ferocity this time around that even as an 8 year veteran of the game, I'm a bit surprised.
I'm also a bit sad that the community is rejecting the transparency that comes with a flat out ask for spending as opposed to the historical norm of making the player guess where their money would be best spent. When CG adds significant value for our in-game dollar, we should be encouraging that instead of excoriating them for having the audacity to market their paid product to those that are engaging for free. At the end of the day, they should be paid for their work and I don't think they're out of line to make it known that that's their goal. As a paying customer (and former free to play player), I'm 100% fine with this and I hope they make a boat load of money from the new pass - not just because I like the game and want it to remain healthy, but because it's a GENUINELY good value when compared to 95% of their other offers in the game and I'd like to see even more of that in the future - but instead we're going to scream at CG about how it makes us feel to see that we can't complete some feats if we don't actually pay them to play the game.
To be clear, I think that constructive criticism is a very good thing and suggesting tweaks to improve the player experience is something that the community SHOULD do - but what's happening on these forums is far beyond that. And if you made it this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for your effort to corral all this feedback in a somewhat organized format.This is all awesome—thanks so much!
I’m hunting down the math now!
