To CG_SBCrumb and all other members of the dev team,
I am writing this as an open letter to the developers who have shown an interest in hearing from the community. In this I will express the opinions of myself and my fellow guild members regarding the new sith raid. I will also explore the impact the release of this raid has had on our guild overall. Finally, I will talk about the individual mechanics in the raid that we have issues with and any suggestions for change or improvement we could think of.
The third raid released for SWGOH on 28/2/18. It was a highly anticipated event for our guild as most members were looking for something new to renew interest within the game. Many players within our guild actively follow CG’s ‘Game Changers’ and had been following the releases they had leading up to the raid coming out as well. Safe to say I personally had never seen the guild be so excited. Then the day finally came were the raid dropped and we jumped straight into a T5 thinking that would be a reasonable starting point given the relative strength of our guild. This was the start of a string of problems that we are still dealing with to this day.
As a guild we dived straight into the new raid. Beginning the process of learning the new mechanics, teams that work well and riding the waves of joy and frustrations anything new brings. Things were great at first. The excitement had us overlook the flaws and we eventually finished out first raid. For context this took us well over a week. While we had been progressing through this raid the first heroics were being completed by the top tier guilds. After seeing screenshots of the rewards that had multiple full drops of g12 pieces we were looking forward to our first look at what we could expect for the next few months. Boy was our guild disappointed by the rewards that dropped. Especially those who had put in big numbers to pull us through the entire thing. This alone had us pause on starting a new raid even though we had maxed our tickets as we took a few days to discuss what we should do. Eventually we agreed to running a T4 for two reasons. The rewards for T5 weren’t worth the effort of the time it required, and the hope was multiple T4s would end on par. Thankfully information had started to filter down from the top tier guilds about important teams and exploits to use. A quick decision was reached to run a T6 to allow us to run heroics in the future before the exploits had been removed. A good decision by us because CG removed the exploits and took it two steps further.
It was at this point that people in the guild were already struggling to remain interested in the raid. The rewards weren’t worth the effort it took to complete and the early exploits that the community had found were the only thing keeping the clear times down. This is when CG stepped in and removed the exploits that hadn’t been found through questionable play testing before release. This step alone would have been fine if this was where it ended. Before long guilds had found that applying expose was the next best solution to bringing down these raid bosses. Again, CG removed this as an option and went a step further to make most parts all but immune to debuffs. This was the first time we actively lost people participating in the raid. They had made a raid that was already difficult and raised it to an eleven. We had a fair amount of people swap from actively hitting the raid to posting autos and we started having people dropping off from hitting it altogether. Meanwhile the mood within the guild chat was terrible. Almost everyone was angry at the raid mechanics. Nobody was enjoying the raid. There also was no sense of progression in time taken to complete or roster development. It quickly became a chore to post our five hits or to even hit the raid at all. This was the first time I had seen a lack of participation in any portion of the game from the guild.
Fast forward three months and the guild is still facing the same issues. We have lost members from the game because this raid had sapped the fun out of the game for them. We have multiple members that have stayed only because of their monetary investment in the game. We alternate running T4 and T5 just so we aren’t wasting tickets but there is no sense of progression. The rewards in place have gotten us no closer to another tier/heroic. It has made the guild refocus their efforts in getting ready for the RJT event as that is the main team that sees any repeatable success by this point. Animosity to the raid has only grown worse and we regularly miss participation from members even on the T4. The main reason things haven’t improved is the lack of suitable rewards for the difficulty of the raid and the mechanics themselves which are at the best of times punishing or otherwise game ruining.
This brings us to the individual mechanics in the raid. The opinions here are mostly my own after reflecting on what guild members have had to say about each part. There are two major problems I see with the raid in its entirety. Darth Nihilus and his annihilate ability and Darth Traya and her isolate ability. I also have ideas on other aspects of the raid that I will go into also.
P1 – Darth Nihilus
· Annihilate should not be random. When it is available it should be used. We are given a single use buff to counter this ability. More often than not DH does not use his ability and it is wasted. This leads to runs being cut short because of RNG
· The protection gains he has. Thematically this ability is fine. However, the absurd health pool behind it is an issue. If the health pool was reduced and the protection side of this ability was doubled down upon it would make players consider teams more carefully than just dps to outpace the gain. It would also lead to a healthier interaction in p4 where players can choose between giving DH significant protection on autos or sink them into Sion and risk stacks and taunt.
P2 – Darth Sion
· Overall the guild and I agree that this is actually the most reasonable phase out of the four. It is the closest we have to a well-balanced fight and the mechanics fit the theme of the character.
P3 – Darth Traya
· Isolate. It is by far the worst mechanic in this entire raid. By design it at best hinders a team comp and more than likely flat out ruins them. Again this leads to people bringing a high dps team to the fight and looking to sink damage as opposed to bringing a team with synergy and trying to play around the mechanics to maximise damage outputs.
· Traya already has an iconic ability you could have drawn from. Her force bond. I believe this would be an excellent alternative to the isolate debuff. When this is placed on a toon all buffs and debuffs could be shared between traya and the victim and a percentage of the healing and damage can be shared also. Still keep in cleansable in the same fashion as isolate but easier to reapply given the difference in absolute power. Trayas stacking tenacity will keep most debuffs off her while only gaining the positives and the damage returned will force it to be removed with just as much haste and isolate currently has.
· The buffs the lightsabers spawn with are also too determinate on the outcome of the run. Either the spawns could be set to a particular combination of buffs or use the class of character that took her into solo combat (support, damage or tank). The difference these buffs provide to the outcome of the run is staggering.
To summarise everything here quickly is simple. The raid is too difficult. The rewards based on that difficulty are not nearly rewarding enough. The mechanics are overbearing as they currently are. Every time we as a community find something that works you are just as quick to take it away from us. Progression is non-existent without the next wave of guild members getting event toons. The gear sink that every player finds themselves in hasn’t been alleviated at all. Morale of guilds is down because of these things. Players enjoyment of the game overall has been sullied by this raid. A lack of communication from your end hasn’t helped this process at all and it's only now you are openly looking for feedback from the downtrodden.
Sincerely Jettyy, a member of GYST.
Capital Games Team
