State of the Game for F2P Players (balance/meta)

First of all there are plenty of people in the top of my arena shard that are using characters that are not behind paywalls. Me included (August 2016 shard).

People who are free to play have to remember that they are playing for free, and this game is not developed and supported for free.

With that said though, it is a very tricky formula where they want to please the spenders without alienating the free to play players too much. Overall, I think they have done a pretty good job with this. However, the panic farming with very late notices on when events are coming back (8hours for Commander Luke and R2 just last week), and the inability to maintain their cadence makes it very frustrating, and screws up people's planning. This has been one of my bigger gripes. I am a planner, and that doesn't mesh too well with this game as they throw so many curveballs. While I have spent a fair bit of money it makes it difficult to do so as I don't like panic spending, and I don't spend this way. I feel like the game has gradually been getting worse in this department.

Fleet, I have some concerns. My main concern is my fleet battles are too much of a coin flip as RNG plays too much of a role. Yesterday, lost to someone with a weaker fleet without killing a ship due to bad RNG, and then I beat him right after without losing a ship myself. Just too much variance with this in ships right now due to heavy reliance on crit (particularly under Thrawn), dodges, and target locks. Also, every single person in my top 50 runs Thrawn, and everyone has the same fleet composition minus 1 or 2 ships at most, which makes it kind of dull. Free to play players still do well in fleet as none of the ships are locked behind paywalls right now though, and almost all the ships in the meta have been there a very long time so everyone has had a chance to farm the ships in their pilots for quite some time.

Their design philosophy is to gradually rework older and weaker characters as they add new ones. I would like this more if they did a lot more than just rework 1 or 2 every couple months. There are many, many characters in this game that need a rework. Currently too many characters are just not viable for anything other than territory wars, and they have been pushing players to use their entire rosters with territory wars now.

I have heard from one of the gamechanger videos is that they want to give us more options now instead of limiting the meta so much to 1 or 2 teams like they have done in the past. I feel like they are slowly achieving this goal as there is more variety in my shard again, a level that hasn't been seen since before Commander Luke joined the game, and perhaps even since my shard was very young.

Speed should be capped at 220 for all PC toons and including the AI NPCs in all content including TB and your mythics. The speed game is antiquated and it’s just downright boring.

In squad arena there are currently at least 5 teams that can compete at the top: Titans, JTR, EP, Nightsisters, and Rex. All of these teams are obtainable F2P. The only P2P characters in any of these lineups are Sion, Zombie, and Talzin... all of which are viable at low stars.

In ships you're right the choices are slim, but Chimaera is viable at 5/6* so again, easily doable F2P.

Thanks for the responses guys. I must warn you that this is long, but I realized, after reading your responses, that I didn't articulate my thoughts on a solution very well. Allow me to rectify -

First off, I am aware that this game is
funded by whales; they pay so we can play and I accept that. The cost of that is that it shuts those who don't pay out of the top tier.

As for the meta, I didn't mean I don't have the teams, I just wish that I didn't have to use them because it gets old. I don't find much entertainment from fighting a clone team. I could easily switch to one of, (no Jedi Rey, but I can field the rest. Right now, I just don't see much value in pursuing arena because I have all the characters. I guess what I'm trying to convey is that it's stale. I'm running a painstakingly grinder sith team (zaul zader zEmp Zavagr and SA), that places me in 100-200, but no higher despite the absurd stats.

I also realized I didn't make clear exactly what I wanted. I don't expect mods to change, (though I wish they had more strategic value than they appear), and I just wish they would adjust a few values here and there on the characters to bring them to better parity. The new ones keep getting better and the old are slowly relegated to fossils.

As for what I think would help things along for the f2p is to have them appear in a node sooner after launch. That's what I meant. It would be nice if we could close the gap between the free and pay a bit so that f2p can actually get a character to 7 g12 before it's already been outclassed by another. They did this with unmasked kylo and that was awesome.

I have most of the characters to 7 that you can farm, due to missing like 2 days since launch :-) That of course includes night sisters but their gear level is hilariously low. I am hoping that my first order team will be able to eclipse the sith team soon.

Perhaps it's just my shard, but it's got 80% Jedi Rey, 5-10% CLS, and 10% others (emp, nightsisters, etc). Outside of the top 100 almost every team is CLS lead, rHan, R2 etc...

Honestly, it's just something that's been going around the guild. We love the cooperative part of the game and simply wish for an Arena mode that was challenging, but fair. I think the best way to do this is to repeat what they did with unmasked kylo.

That said, my chief complaint is that fleet is starting to turn into arena. Where there were once 3 viable fleet commanders, there is now one. As with Arena, I can field the meta, I just choose that wasny the only option. I still use Akbar :-).

The meta part of my post was more general assessment of how monotonous things are getting and a desire to make the game more interesting in pvp.

The characters part is purely F2P. The first year of this game f2p could work their way to the top with patience and grinding, but that went out the window with the inslaught of super powered toons we have no way of acquiring without money.

It's really frustrating to grind for half a year on a team just to have it steamrolled a month later by the advent of a new character with a move set you need 2+ older characters to match or counter.

I love this game I just wish they would balance these new characters or make them farmable sooner. For starters, there should always be at least two individual characters capable of independently hard countering any given character. Concordantly, it should never require you to field 2+ characters to counter a singular opponent. If they ensured this was the case, viable Arena teams would increase exponentially.

While I doubt serious balancing in Arena is a realistic expectation at this point, they could easily adjust thrawns kit to make him more in line with the other 3 commanders and this save it from the same fate. There is real strategy in fleet, but that's being threatened by the thrawn epidemic. He's just too powerful right now, which severely undermines what makes this mode so fun.

"Roopehun;c-1503896" wrote:
I disagree. The meta has never been as f2p friendly as now.
Arena, Anyone can get ep vader and 3 sith/empire.
Fleet, anyone can get Chimaera, its f2p completely.

Pre-mod era....

Currently F2p can still place high in fleet with sniping and refreshes, provided you have the chimaera and you don't mind fighting the same team ad nauseum and don't pull your hair out from the RNG. You can lose to someone one round and shut them out the next.

I will say that while I strongly disagree on the notion that this game is more f2p than ever, I do applaud this game for being more f2p friendly than most. Prior to mods, it was 100% f2p friendly, but that status has dropped immensely with the advent of incredibly powerful toons locked behind pay walls for too long. Back in those days I could finish inside 10 consistently.

If they would give us one farmable nose for the new characters at launch or within a month or so it would go a long way towards making things a bit less skewed.

I understand they need the money, but I don't see how a single node could hurt given how long it will take to get a character to viability from 1.

I'm just trying to express some of my concerns and possible remedies. I'm worried that as the gap between free and paying players rises, the game will drift into pay to win territory and will drive people away. Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

You lost my support at "choose the F2P route". It's not meant to be a route. F2P is meant to either spend a couple of bucks after they see they like it, go p2p eventually, or be punching bags for the pleasure od whales. It's not to anyones liking, but this game is 1st business, then pleasure.
That said, f2p does remarkably well. I took rank 2 yday without spending a dime. Taking top 3 in fleet consistently. Started dec 2017 without reading any guides or any preparation.
As for diversity, it is in this game. In my sgard top 50 is Emp with 10 diferent setups ( sith emp, empire emp, tie pilot emp, shore emp, protect nihilus emp etc. Mine is KRU emp) there are NS, first CLS popped up, some chaze, some wiggs still. Plenty of diversity for me. The reasom why you dont see any droid squads or clones is that there will always be a team that is slightly better than the rest. And everyone will go for what is easiest. So your problem lies in human mechanics, not game mechanics.

Good topic, a lot of the game is dictated by your levels and acquisition choices . Farming is a grind, and there are 3 main farms... shards of characters and ships, gear and mods.

Moving topic to feedback for continued conversation.

"BowBeforeMe;d-164086" wrote:
I love this game, but there are a few maddening aspects driving those of us who choose the F2P route. I worry that the road this game is going down may soon cause an exodus; nobody wants that this, but a few particularly frustrating elements may just be enough for some.

For the sake of length I'm going to focus on Arena/Fleet as they are the largest issue.

First off there's the meta. All that needs to be said about this is that it makes the game boring, always features characters only whales can acquire initially, renders strategy/team composition largely irrelevant, and is the end nothing more than a battle of speed mods.

I know arena is a joke for F2P above 100...at least in my shard. I ignore it now except for daily challenge and just accept that 100-200 is my residence.

Not that it would matter even if I was a whale. The only hope you have is to play the meta of the month if you want to place at the top. I hate metas; they're boring and they are nothing more than speed mid battles regardless. All I'm asking for are some tweaks here and there so you could actually use more than 1 or 2 teams and be competitive.

For the longest time, fleet was far less affected by this cancer. Mods are better handed there and there was plenty of variety in the team composition. Not anymore. All but 3 people, (including myself), in the top 50 are 7* chimaera lead. I haven't seen a Mace in months..

It's the same team over and over again and for anyone not using thrawns ship, an utter dependence on good RNG, which happens once in a blue moon.

Fortunately, I liked fleet and farmed early, so I can still place between 30-50. This is a far cry from 1-5 pre-Thrawn cancer and the struggle to stay there becomes a boring, frustrating, slog.

It all boils down to balance; if you're not going to adjust the power level of new units could you at least make the older ones a bit stronger.

I love this game and I've been playing since the week it came out. I'm the leader of a guild. But, to be honest with you, I'm having trouble staying invested the game. If not for the people I've played with for years, I doubt I'd still be here.

As an F2p player, I appreciate that this game isn't a flat out pay to win, but this gap between the haves and the have nots grows daily. This can be fixed with minimal effort...please act before it's too late.

Rex counters speed mods. And Rex is viable for ranking #1 in any shard out there.

Congratulations for the moment. That is 3 months though and if stay FTP it won't stay there. My alt is no.1 in fleet almost every day. I have no intention of spending any money on it and it only exists to get guild raid tickets though I do play it daily. I fully expect it to plummet once PTP players of same period get it together (similar time as yours).