Recommendation for Reintroducing Galactic Challenges

OVERVIEW

When the Colosseum was introduced, I was so excited to have a new venue to be able to use the characters that I’d lovingly developed in pursuit of the new development system for characters.  At the time, I had almost no concern about losing galactic challenges because I’d initially thought that it would just be essentially a daily version of a galactic challenge – which was great!  So I was a little disappointed when I found out that my sole way of testing out new teams or just having a way to play with new or old characters that I’d developed had been vanquished.

For me, the beauty of Galactic Challenges was that it was just a way to play with my roster, and much less about sowing the rewards from the event.  To me, there is nothing more depressing than unlocking a character like The Stranger, and having to look at it sit idle in my roster until I’m lucky enough to use him one time in TW or GAC. Shoot, sometimes I just want to be able to sit and play Galaxy of Heroes because I just want to have fun, but all there is to do is listen to the sounds of the Cantina – which is not, in fact, fun.

I would like to see a reintroduction of Galactic Challenges, and I have a couple of recommendations for how you might be able to go about it that take into consideration the new direction of the game – like eras, relic delta, or potentially datacrons.  To preface, I’m NOT asking for a mechanism of generating a plethora of rewards, my primary goal is to have a way to just sit and play with my characters in a way that is not just playing R2-D2s journey guide on repeat.

FORMAT

Functionally, I think that GC can stay the same as when it was nixed.  A game mode with multiple tiers of scaling difficulty (7-10 tiers), with or without modifiers.  I think this would be a fun opportunity to potentially include a level of difficulty that goes beyond a player's accessible power level (a nightmare mode of sorts) like relic 15, to truly push and challenge players or test the limits of how far a hard counter to a team just might go in the face of a high relic delta. 

I also see the opportunity to introduce compositions of teams (as AI opponents) that are made up of the new era characters in tow.  While the player base doesn’t necessarily have access to them, it would be a fun opportunity to at least see the characters in action as an opponent, or maybe as an adversary worth committing some additional resources into to include in their own roster, while keeping the spirit of the era alive.

Including datacrons in the new GC format could also be a way of encouraging engagement and investment into them.  It would give players a reason that don’t engage with PvP content a reason to try and build out a variety of datacron sets. I don’t really have a dog in the fight one way or the other, but I think including them could be a fun way to see what seasonal power they bring.

Ultimately, even if there is a completely broken interaction with a composition of teams or modifiers, it really doesn’t matter to me (and I would guess for many of the playerbase) so long as the mode isn’t the sole way to generate a resource like episode points, as it could rotate out every few days.  I think it should primarily be a way to use teams that you’ve invested time (and maybe money) into, and secondarily to encourage players to build up teams to take on higher levels of the event.  Nothing pries my hoarded resources from my sweaty hands like a challenge that I can’t beat.

REWARDS

As I mentioned earlier, what I want, isn’t necessarily rewards – it’s fun. But I think it is a worthwhile consideration that could generate both revenue and investment into playing the game.  Some of the potential rewards I could see slotting very well are: episode currency, data chaches (or re-roll materials/other datacron materials – thereby easing the strain with upcoming datacron updates), signal data (this one’s the long shot from me – please!), era level currency.  Episode currency would also be fantastic and players would love it, but I would understand the view that it pulls away from the incentive to invest in the current era leveling system.

Here are a couple thoughts of why each of those rewards might fit the bill.

Episode currency: With the current reward structure of episode currency, there isn’t really much in the reward store that detracts from a player spending money (with the exception of omicrons, which I’m sure is the most popular grab), and a few extra hundred, or even thousand, currency wouldn’t break the system.

Data Caches/Datacron materials: I think re-roll materials and datacaches would be the BIG add here.  There is such a limited way of generating them organically, and with the introduction of a new datacron rhythm it would ease the strain of building out fun sets without disincentivizing spending.  If anything, with more engagement, players that would otherwise NOT spend might be inclined to sprinkle a few crystals on that one extra reroll.  With data caches, players that have developed a full inventory see most of their materials roll back anyways, and it would be a simple way to give another outlet to players to engage with datacrons.  Shoot, throw a free undeveloped datacron in there to tease the imagination.

Signal Data:  This would be a huge plus to engage with the content and to REALLY get players invested into developing their top end teams to achieve a higher relic delta and take on the upper echelons on the challenge.  You might consider gating it behind the highest level of the event to pry those relic 10 materials from my hands. Also, what even is signal data?  I think you could throw in some lore that signal data is generated from this event or rebrand the event into a “signals transmission” sort of thing where we as a playerbase are attempting to take down a team in order to make a cantina signal link.

Era Level Currency:  With the most recent changes to the end of episode track reward box that increased the amount of currency for players, I feel that this one doesn’t quite hit the mark.  I’m not sure how strapped whales are for the currency, but if it ends up being a bottleneck it might be a good way of introducing another way of generating the currency.

WRAP-UP

Ultimately, this isn’t a request for more rewards or a replacement for existing progression systems, but for a space where players can actually use and enjoy the rosters they’ve invested in. A reintroduced or refreshed Galactic Challenges mode would provide a low-risk, flexible way to encourage experimentation, engagement with newer systems like eras and datacrons, and simple, repeatable fun. Giving players a reason to log in and play, without tying the mode to mandatory progression, helps reinforce long-term retention and reminds us why we build characters in the first place. Even in a limited or rotating form, I believe this would be a net positive for both the player experience and the overall health of the game.

Thanks!