QOL Suggestion: Add character biographies for each character.

Please don’t confuse me thinking your suggestion is an unnecessary waste of the devs resources and time with me not understanding your words. 

Phamen wrote:

"Only you want this",  and "Why would we do this instead of doing something else?" Is not valuable criticism

Actually, those can be valuable criticism. A critical portion of any proposal evaluation process is cost-benefit analysis, where "how many users actually want this?" and "is there anything else we would be better off investing resources in?" are two typical questions to asks.

I browse about swgoh on the forums and reddit on a daily basis, for the past several years. I have never seen any request to include character biographies in the game until your post. Of course it's only one data point, but "only you want this" is true as far as I'm concerned.

And from the requests/complaints other players did bring up, and the frequency of some of those being brought up, I think it's safe to say that both CG and us would be better off with those implemented instead of your proposal.

I don't think it's a bad idea - it would be an interesting thing that doesn't actually affect game play but adds a little bit of extra mental or emotional investment in the characters. I'm not sure how that translates into money for CG - which is primarily what drives their development resources (understandably). 

But I also can't say that it's something I'd rather have in place of several other frequently requested features that do affect game play.

DarjeloSalas isn't wrong though. What you're suggesting is not in fact a QoL update - it's an added feature that doesn't really affect much at all. I think it would be neat - but it would not change anything about the game that would make anything easier for anyone. 

And so you know - the only reason more people don't swap mods for particular events is because it's so time consuming and inconvenient to do it UNLESS you're paying extra money to a third party for an interface that makes it easy. It's not just the hyper competitive folks that do that - it's anyone that's looking for an ideal outcome for a given encounter in the game. MOST of the people that play this game compete at some aspect of this game - either GAC, TW, TB, Raiding, or whatever. The idea that only a small portion of players are competitive is either uninformed or willfully blind to the game at large and the community that plays it. 

Again, to be clear - I don't think your idea is a bad one - but it's not a QoL feature. Regardless, there's no need to be snarky about it - it's fine if people disagree.

Hey sorry if I come off as snarky but you'd have to read the other replies DarjeloSalas made in order to understand why. I'm not claiming this is better than any other suggestion or that it needs to be put ahead of other suggestions that affect gameplay. I've repeated several times that this could be a fun suggestion. It's fair to have the gameplay suggestions over this one, but the problem I had was that DarjeloSalas was ruling out the suggestion altogether instead of allowing both gameplay and QoL suggestions to co-exist. Instead simply stating that it isn't needed when it could be entertained as an idea. I also categorize it as QoL because I consider the PC Client's high framerate and the portrait update as QoL changes too. They don't change gameplay, but what else would we call them? 

I also never claimed players aren't competitive, I claimed that the number of players that use mod 'load-outs' is minimal. There are plenty of competitive players, I myself am one! The thing is most people simply don't use mod loadouts. I've only ever used them in order to beat journey guide events without zetas. And if you're using them for mods and such, chances are you are higher up in the game than many others. 

Also, the reason I brought up HotUtils was because DarjeloSalas claimed that comprehensive in-game chats weren't needed because we had Discord, but my point was that it was inconvenient to download a third-party app in order to do something you should be able to do in-game. Then he claimed that HotUtils wasn't convenient because it was a paid service. Then I replied that's hypocritical because he told others to download Discord even if it was inconvenient for them but was not willing to download HotUtils, and drew the line at what was inconvenient for him. Then he claimed it wasn't about the money and it was because it actually affected gameplay. Then I argued it would still apply because it was a third party tool that could be used as a substitute for an in-game feature. I wasn't claiming features that HotUtils shares with the suggestions he made be ruled out, I only used it as a means to point out the hypocrisy. 

And from the requests/complaints other players did bring up, and the frequency of some of those being brought up, I think it's safe to say that both CG and us would be better off with those implemented instead of your proposal.

This is from one of my recent responses:

"If you haven't read the title yet it's a suggestion not a mandate. The devs don't need to implement it in the next few months or even years. It's a suggestion. They can improve all the gameplay of the game whenever they please. If they decide to try something new, this suggestion will always be here."

I fear nobody understands my responses. 

A lot of the players that play this game simply don't use Reddit or forums. Like I've been writing, nobody seems to see the casual player's side of things. It's only players that care enough about the game to dig into forums, reddit, etc. But the casual player only ever boots up the game. I've been in many guilds and I have the opportunity to see how the casual players go about the game. I was always surprised when they weren't aware of data mines as soon as they came out, applied questionable omicrons, disregarded modding, applied terrible zetas, and built up questionable characters. These people go unnoticed because they enjoy the simplicity of the game. In my guild especially, our discord's general chat blew up with a bunch of people, those who rarely talked, sending pictures of the new portraits. The Revans, Darth Vader, Clones, etc. A decent bit of the player base was upset because of how similar some portraits looked and how difficult it was to recognize them, and then there were the casual players who thought they were cool. Unfortunately, those players don't run to the forums to express this and they don't go on Reddit to post the pictures. They just silently applaud.

Although this suggestion is not of great importance or a great asset to the game. It is still a suggestion that can be made if CG ever decides to do it. There should be a space for open discussions of different suggestions and ideas instead of being blasted with a "Why would we add this instead of this?". This isn't a king of the hill game, one suggestion doesn't trump all the others. They can all share the same space and be worked upon. 

I also doubt that CG hasn't seen all the other QoL suggestions that have been made in the game. Some of which have yet to be implemented. People bring them up all the time. Why not add an innovative suggestion? Why not try and rework broken aspects of the game or, in my case, add something new to the game? New game mode. New ideas. New suggestions.

And from the requests/complaints other players did bring up, and the frequency of some of those being brought up, I think it's safe to say that both CG and us would be better off with those implemented instead of your proposal.

Why shoot down a new idea in favor of other implementations? Why can't these other implementations be favored and my proposal still be in the backlog for later? That's the problem I have when making suggestions, people just shoot down new ideas without giving any reasonable criticism. "I'd rather have this suggestion than that one" Why not have both? 

Yes, I agree this update isn't a necessity. I also understand it doesn't drive sales but neither did the portrait update. Which updated a bunch of portraits of older characters. It was just something they did. Once CG smooths out a lot of the gameplay suggestions that others have written, I don't see the harm in adding new content that isn't a new character. 

"But I also can't say that it's something I'd rather have in place of several other frequently requested features that do affect game play."

I'll respond with a snippet from one of my other responses:

"...The devs don't need to implement it in the next few months or even years. It's a suggestion. They can improve all the gameplay of the game whenever they please. If they decide to try something new, this suggestion will always be here."

It's also nice to just have a new suggestion for a change. I've seen too many people suggesting the same thing and wanted to add something new. Innovative suggestions tend to get shot down because people are too focused on what the next update should be. As if my suggestion was going to cut the front of the line and rob them of better QoL updates. That's not the case nor do I want it to be. It's here in case CG wants new ideas. 

The suggestion could also be built upon too. What if the characters' biographies are unlocked when you 7* them? Might make 7* a character a bit more rewarding. There are a bunch of collectors in this game, maybe that could be a way to get more people to whale on new characters?

You are correct about this being embarrassing. Suggesting that someone struggles to read just because they haven’t lapped up your suggestion is embarrassing. 

I’ve given you my criticism:

-this sounds memory intensive. The game already has performance issues on some devices. 
- this is not a QOL feature, as it would have no impact on gameplay. 
- the information this feature would offer is already comprehensively available elsewhere, should players want it. 

You seem to think you’ve shot down all of these criticisms. I disagree.

You keep bringing up the portrait update - so CG has an art department who periodically refresh the way some of the game looks. These are not QOL updates when they happen. You also brought up the existence of the PC version. Isn’t  it much more likely that CG have developed this to widen their potential player market? It has improved the QOL of some players, for sure, but I doubt that was the sole purpose of creating it. 

You keep suggesting hypocrisy on the in-game chat / Discord, mod loadout / HotUtils issue, but there’s no hypocrisy. These forums, Reddit, every Discord server I am a member of all want the mod snapshot feature incorporated into the game. Hundreds of players have said they would make regular and repeated use of that QOL feature if it were available in game for free. I’m not sure why you can’t draw the distinction between something being freely available to all users and something that’s only available to people that pay for it. To take this further, I personally consult swgoh.gg for GAC counters dozens of times throughout a GAC season. Do I want that data to be directly available in-game? No - because it’s freely available elsewhere. 

You may well not read any of this, as you stated you weren’t interested in me “salvaging what’s left of my ego”, but here’s some advice you can take on board or ignore… 

This is an open forum. You posted a suggestion, and every single person using this forum is entitled to post their views on your suggestion without you taking offence and resorting to personal attacks when they think differently to you.

My thinking your suggestion is not something that should be pursued is just an opinion, and from my experience on the previous forum, that opinion is unlikely to have any bearing on whether or not your suggestion is taken on board by the devs. Given the apparent limited capacity for the devs to work on anything at all, I would be disappointed if in-game character biographies took priority over other, gameplay-related, QOL features that have been requested dozens of times. That’s all. 

Now, time to work on my reading. 

The suggestion could also be built upon too. What if the characters' biographies are unlocked when you 7* them? Might make 7* a character a bit more rewarding. There are a bunch of collectors in this game, maybe that could be a way to get more people to whale on new characters?

Sure - that could work - or have more and more of the character bio exposed as you add stars. I don't think people necessarily need that as an incentive, but you're right - it could make the process a little more rewarding. 

Added features are a bit of a 0 sum game - not everything can be added. But it never hurts to throw in your two cents. If it feels like people are trying to shoot down your ideas, remember that they're just throwing in their own two cents. No one knows what CG will grab on to and say, "yeah, we can do that," but we all probably have strong opinions on what would make the game better.