TLDR: while the setting and general design are awesome, the difficulty is way too high, Nihilus sucks all the fun out of it, needing certain very hard to get characters to succeed is unreasonable, and the rewards are poor for the time and effort involved
* What tier or tiers did you play?
We started out at 4, and finished a few of those before attempting 5. We spent eight days in Phase 1 before we decided to abandon the raid, and we're back to tier 4.
* What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
66 million
* What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Me, personally:
Resistance (zFinn, Poe, Scav Rey, Pilot, Trooper, all g12, Rey and Trooper g12+1); I've also tried subbing R2 or Barriss for Pilot.
Sith/Empire (g10 zPalpatine, g11 Vader & Maul, g9 Sith Trooper & TFP)
Jedi/Healer (Barriss, JKA, GM Yoda, Ahsoka, Visas Marr, all g11; I just Zeta'd and g12'd Barriss this morning)
Rebels (g9 Wiggs and Chirrut, g10 zHan, g11 zR2D2 )
Imperial Troopers (6* g10 Veers, 7* g10 Starck and g9 Storm, Snow & Magma)
Second String Jedi (g10 IGD and Luminara, g11 Mace, and g9 Consular and Plo Koon)
I've been playing for a year now, and I still don't have CLS, Thrawn, or GK, let alone JTR. I am 90% F2P. I know my teams except Resistance are not full strength, but all are well modded. As for the rest of my guild, we have many members with maxed out CLS, Thrawn, and GK teams, and several with JTR, not to mention a large plurality with other rare and powerful characters like Palpatine, Raid Han, and R2.
* What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Credits and guild tokens will always motivate me.
Phases 1 and 4 are very demotivating. Even my Resistance team can barely scratch Nihilus, whose severely overpowered and unpredictable Annihilate combined with unbeatable tenacity and an unreliable Unbreakable Will makes these phases frustrating and stressful instead of a fun challenge. Of my teams, only the Jedi/Healer one can routinely make it to enrage vs. Nihilus. In fact, none of my teams, in any combination, can do more than about 500k damage vs. Nihilus, and most of them do half that or less.
Phases 2 and 3 are more fun because I can actually do decent damage against Sion and Traya, and it feels like I'm actually contributing instead of just doing the minimum.
* What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I enjoy the rewards when we finally get them, but see below. I love Sith, and I'm a huge fan of KotOR 2, so I think the setting and the theme are awesome. I especially liked the pairing of Sith Marauders and Assassins with the three bosses.
As for dislikes, the difficulty level is way too high for guilds like mine. I know it's supposed to be challenging and difficult, but the talk about "any size guild can participate!" turned out to be misleading, in my opinion. It really means "any size whale-loaded guild with 100 mil+ GP and at least 20 maxed out JTR teams, unless you only do the lowest tiers." Mine is a casual guild, with members of different levels and commitment to the game, yet we still beat HAAT and Heroic Pit on a weekly basis. It takes us at least a week to beat tier 4 STR, and the rewards are paltry for the effort involved.
Also, the stacking tenacity pretty much erases the strength of many of my teams, which rely on debuffs. The nerf to Expose was especially aggravating because it made my best team even less effective against Nihilus than it was at the beginning.
Like someone else said above, it's more of a chore than a challenge, especially in p1 and 4; with HAAT and Heroic Pit, there are many different ways with many different teams to beat the various phases, and the same seems mostly true of STR p2 and 3. Part of the fun is trying out new teams and new characters. In p1 and 4, however, you can only do decent damage against Nihilus with certain rare characters, which most of my guild (and I'm guessing most of the player base, including those who've played for a year or more) do not have.
And sure, it can be seen as motivation to get those characters, but getting JTR means first farming FO characters to 7*, getting BB8, and then farming Finn, Scav Rey, and the Veteran Smugglers to 7*. That is a huge investment in time and effort (and credits, and crystals, and gear), and even if you do all that, you have to wait for the next Rey's Hero's Journey. If every single player in my guild focused exclusively on that, maybe we'd be able to beat higher tiers and in less time, but as I said, we're a casual guild, and everyone (myself included) has different goals and focuses. For F2P players, it feels like STR was made specifically for hardcore players with money to burn.
We had to do a lot of preparation to be able to do HAAT raids, but in the end (and with the help and guidance of our awesome Alliance-mates in WWL) it's been very well worth it. Prepping for HAAT didn't involve anywhere near the singular focus that STR requires.
Anyway, I'm getting long-winded here, so I'll stop. Thank you guys for running the BEST mobile game in the world, and especially for seeking feedback from the community. It's greatly appreciated.
Capital Games Team
