Relic Delta: A Running List of Unintended Consequences
So far, CG's responses suggest that they may not fully grasp all the ways that Relic Delta is going to negatively impact the game.
I doubt if we can change their minds at this point, but maybe CG_Meathead can take a look and see if anything is worth passing upward.
So let's make a list of the likely knock-on effects of Relic Delta. I'll go first:
As they stated, at a Relic Delta of -3, you're at a huge disadvantage, and -at 4 or more you should outright lose.
- R9/10 becomes the only thing that matters, and anything below R7 loses any viability (for at least the mid-game and onward).
- This encourages tall, narrow rosters, which the game had been moving away from for a long time.
- Like the old days of squad arena, players' main focus will be to get one or two teams to full R9/R10.
- New characters become nearly useless. Unless you can get them R7 right away, there's no point in messing with them.
- RD will discourage developing new teams or working on fun teams. The opportunity costs will be too high compared to simply taking existing teams up to R9.
- Galactic Legends' opportunity costs rise exponentially. Getting required characters up to R3-R5 will just eat up resources and and leave you with even more useless, nonviable reliced characters. Even the R7s reqs will lose value.
- Galactic Legends will lose any "out of the box" usability. They ought to do something fun after all the work and investment they take to unlock. They'll fall to garbage teams with higher relics.
- GAC and TW will turn into gear checks.
- Putting a full R9 team on the front wall of GAC will win most rounds. A much, much smaller part of the opponent's roster will be able to touch it.
- R9 walls in TW will be decisive. Far fewer teams will be able to wear down R9s with multiple attempts.
- If the devs were worried about R5 Ewoks beating meta teams, wait till they see what R9 CUP does. R9 CUP will solo many R3-R5 teams. A full R9 team of random characters with no synergy will walk over almost any R5 meta team.
- The role of strategy will be greatly reduced. GAC will feel futile for smaller players and boring or bigger players.
- Conquest feats will be harder to get.
- We can currently use a low-gear character to get certain feats (e.g., under JML with Wat). Under RD, they won't have enough survivability anymore for that to work.
- If R5 becomes the enemy ceiling in Hard under RD, using high-relic teams may simply kill the enemy too fast to get feats.
- Newer players with fewer relics are going to struggle even more to progress in Medium and Hard. Far fewer teams will be viable.
- Guilds will get torn apart.
- For mid-game players, any guild not getting aeros and droid brains in TW will become useless. Sticking with familiar but semi-casual guilds means losing most PvP viability. (No, adding droid brains to the scavenger will not help. The exchange for R6+ pieces is terrible.)
What other consequences can you think of to add to the list?
