State of the Galaxy: Player Edition

CG_MeatheadI appreciate all this information in the latest community update. ( https://forums.ea.com/blog/swgoh-game-info-hub-en/community-update---eras-episodes-and-marquees-oh-my/5015049 ) .
I appreciate the work being done on the game. I can see that there's an effort here to ensure continued success of this game and that's encouraging. I like the change to raid tickets and I like the new simmable events. With that said, I have some questions and some concerns. I actually tried to compile a TLDR, but I honestly don't feel like that's appropriate, all things considered.

Questions:

CG_Meathead wrote:

One group in particular we wanted to focus on with these changes was our Free to Play players and how they will interact with the new Episode and Quests systems.

Can you (or Crumb, who the actual quote was from) detail how these changes put the free to play or low spending player on better footing than before the changes - or at least a net neutral footing? I'm not seeing anything in this system that's particularly beneficial to those players specifically - it was called out and there wasn't a follow up to support the callout. 

CG_Meathead wrote:

The rewards inside the Free Track are about equivalent in value to earning 4 Tier-10 boxes, (a.k.a. red boxes) and 4 Tier-9 boxes from our previous Galactic Challenges.

This seems to imply that players that were reliably getting tier 10 boxes are having their rewards reduced if they don't pay for the pass, or pay to get the marquee to 7*. Is that the intention? If this isn't accurate, could you please elaborate? I want to be wrong about that - help me be wrong. 

CG_Meathead wrote:

The cost of the Episode Pass will be $20 (USD) and will provide a significant amount of value.

The $20 Episode pass in addition to the $10 Conquest pass is $30 a month - is there any possibility of bundling both of these for $25? I know it's only $5 but that's a lot more palatable and closer to being in line with a monthly subscription to AAA live service game.

If a person were to get both of the plus passes that person is paying $70 - the price of a AAA title. Everyone will place a different valuation on the rewards for those two products, but I feel like you're pricing out most of your player base at that price point - wouldn't it be better to hit a ~$40 price point and increase buy in as opposed to leaning so heavily on the folks that are already paying most of the bills?

CG_Meathead wrote:

There will always be a new Marquee unit released to start each Episode, with most Episodes containing a second Marquee released midway through the Episode.

With episodes being 4 weeks, this is roughly one new unit every two weeks, not including legendaries, conquest units, and galactic legends. This roughly approximates the pace of releases that we've seen this year and it's been less than enjoyable trying to keep up - much less back-fill holes in my roster. Is there any talk of adding new sources of signal data to the game, or is the expectation that on top of all the new stuff you want us to buy, we'll also still be scrambling to buy signal data and relic materials?

Concerns:
Over the past several months we've seen the pressure to add relics to characters skyrocket and we've seen our previous investments devalued and in some cases completely invalidated. In a few months that's going to ratchet up even more with a new raid that we'll have to gear for, or lose rewards if we don't. As a result, it's getting harder and harder to justify opening my wallet for any character - the cost to benefit ratio is trending down hard these days. 

I've never heard so many of my friends express so much dismay with the game - and indeed, I don't recall ever feeling this pessimistic about where the game is headed, or my chances of continued engagement. After playing for nearly 8 years now, I'm sure you can see how alarming that is. It would be fantastic to one day get an update like this that isn't overshadowed by negative sentiment over things that CG refuses to engage with the community about. We have other problems and other concerns, and I get that your post was never supposed to be about those things, but there's no conversation happening anywhere about any of it - that being the case it should come as no surprise that what should be a cause for celebration is being dragged down by people posting negative comments and angry responses. It's not that we don't WANT to be happy about new things - it's just hard to be happy about things we didn't ask for when the elephants in the room are being ignored:

• The GAC squish has become oppressive - again. We're ALL being pushed farther and farther down - not just the folks in Kyber 1 - any movement there affects most of the players in some way or another. K1 is as small as it's ever been. Is this a concern? Is it intentional? Lots of players are feeling like they're being punished but we have no clue what we should even expect because no one will talk about it. Clearing the air on this would go a long way to settle some unrest. Is K1 supposed to be 500 people? If that's the goal then at least we know what to expect and can move on.
  
  
• People are waiting on the JarJar event and the expected window for its return has passed - is it really beneficial in any way at this point to keep people wondering about when it's coming back? Just give them a date so they'll stop asking. They're already mad about this - dropping the date isn't going to make that worse and would at least resolve that one sticking point.
  
  
• The changes to dagger have made fleet arena a miserable experience for many players who have heavily invested in the newest meta fleet. A lot of people are upset about this and we're getting no communication about it. This has made the experience objectively worse - I can count on one finger how many people I've talked to that feel like it's a positive change. Was the intention to make the mirror more frustrating? That's what has happened - is that the desired outcome? Surely it can't be. And I can't not mention all the high relic Sith Assassins out there that are now more or less completely useless in any context.
  
  
• Chimera has been pushed into obsolescence - I get that it was a "bug fix" - but the fact that it was done AFTER so many people had come to rely on this very expensive counter is not fair to players and it's very difficult to see how this was 'fixed' in good faith - the optics here are REALLY bad, so some clarity for people would go a long way. We all got used to a thing - and then the thing was taken away. I know there's more to the story - but that's how it landed.
  
  
• Assault Battle rotation - This is another instance of removing rewards and asking us to pay to replace them. This devalues investment in ALL assault battles and further monetizes a part of the economy that players have come to depend on - as with Leviathan and Chimera, you've changed the product after the sale.
  
  
• Player investments are being disregarded - At this point this is a pattern - even a theme. We keep getting rewards taken away from us that we invested resources or money to get. All of the above items are examples of this. We don't mind the chase. We enjoy the chase. We even need the chase to stay engaged. Keep giving us things to chase - that's great - but don't erase my progress. Don't invalidate the miles I've already run - or I'm very likely to stop running. 
  
  
• Increased pressure but no additional avenues for the required resources - Players are being asked for deeper and deeper buy-in to new characters and higher relic levels but there are no additional avenues to acquire what we need - and in fact it feels like CG is actively putting obstacles in the way in the form of the most expensive cantina farms in the game, removing signal data sources in the form of assault battles, and reducing crystal income with the GAC squish. It's really difficult to interpret any of this as a positive change.

Newer players probably don't feel these things and probably don't really care. Newer players are not the people that made this the most successful mobile star wars game of all time. That was us - that was the veteran players who are looking on and wondering what is going on over there. We are feeling somehow both targeted and unseen - and some of us are closing our wallets and questioning whether the next thing to go will be our willingness to log in to the game. 

Meathead, if you got this far, thank you for reading. Maybe you're not the guy that can address all these things - and that's ok - I really believe that you would if you could. But if that's the case, maybe it's time for someone to come talk to us that CAN talk about these things. 

To anyone replying to this post - please try to be respectful - I've done my very best to do that in this post, and I'd thank everyone to mimic that effort.