Forum Discussion

MasterSeedy's avatar
MasterSeedy
Rising Veteran
19 days ago

Structuring the next raid

There have been a lot of posts about the current raid, mostly harshly critical. I've tried to be helpful and upbeat, encouraging other players. And I don't regret that. Most of the posts have focussed on calling the raid trash which lets out feelings, but doesn't actually help anyone.

I want this thread to help. 

For that reason, I'm not going to focus on Naboo. It's too late for this raid. Even if they wanted to tweak it, by the time they do, it will be more than 1/2 over. Instead, I want to focus on what makes a reasonably good raid, and therefore how CG can improve on past efforts when crafting the next one.

I have some basic expectations for raids.

  1. If I take toons to the max tier to get the max score, I also want it to be easy. This is a Quality of Life reward for investment in the raid. I like interesting strategies as much as the next person. There was no bigger fan of the original (pre-Omicron) KAM mission than me. But the game simply has too much to do. Restarting raid attempts over and over creates frustration in the player base. While that might be fine for Tier0 where you're deliberately making things hard to encourage investment, any r8 or r9 tier should be an easy max with vanishingly few restarts. Requiring correct modding and strategy to make it work is also fine, but not RNG. Whatever RNG exists at lower tiers should be overwhelmed by your faction bonus when you hit tiers where the minimum eligibility is r8.
  2. Omicrons should provide a major quality of life benefit. If raids teams are going to be capable of max scores at r7 plus, then Omicrons can't make a major difference in score. Instead they should make a major difference in whether you can quickly, easily, or even on auto reach that same score. If I had a choice between getting 3.6M with my Queen Amidala team playing manually or 90% of that (3.24M) on auto, I would take the auto every time. The Omicrons should be a short cut to the easy quality of life benefits that I mentioned in p1 should be available (without Omicron) at r8+. Easily maxing the raid at r5, a very attainable relic tier, should be the measure of whether or not your Omicron is tuned appropriately. 
  3. More raid Omicrons. Some teams will be taken to r9 and thus not need Omis. But if Omicrons are a quality of life mechanic, then they have to be available for more squads. Pick an elite team that you know will easily max the raid at r8 or r9 -- usually that will be a GL squad, but it could also be the equivalent of Naboo's Gungans or QA squad. That one squad gets no Omicrons. The point is to encourage people to slap insane relics on it. All the other squads should get an Omi that makes the team an easy max at r5. No one is going to spend that many mats, of course. The point is that not everyone will have every eligible team fully relic'd. By providing an Omi for every squad, you make sure that if a player has even one mid-relic squad, there is an Omi available for them. Thus you're not withholding these quality of life improvements from players who don't have the new shiny team. Quality of life should be available to all. 
  4. All the new shinies should be available easily on day 1. Not available if you're a whale, easily available. The one, limited exception should be a Journey Guide character who must have their second event -- not first, but second -- on or before the 28th day of a new raid. This doesn't guarantee that players have enough materials to relic the necessary prerequisites for any particular toon (especially a GL), but the raid is there for players to participate in it. The definition of "easily" should be "average RNG with 15 attempts per day on a hard node will take this toon to 7 stars with 5-7 days to spare." Some toons will be released earlier and thus hit 7 stars much earlier, but EVERY toon should be available with that basic farming regimen. For those toons derived from events, they simply need to have their events finished by then, with prerequisites available on that time frame -- again, with a single exception of a single toon that's in the Journey Guide and whose second event happens with 28days of raid start. Let us have the characters necessary to play the raid. 
  5. Below g12, gear tiers should matter. A straight g11 squad should do better than a straight g10 squad. 
  6. Above g12, relic tiers should matter for those squads that are not gaining max score. This rewards players for taking part of a squad up to the next tier before they have all the toons at the same relic so as to qualify jumping up. This can be as simple as giving any toon that has greater than the minimum qualifying relic Damage Immunity for 1 or 2 turns the first time they fall below yellow health. This type of mechanic reduces RNG, reduces restarts, and yet won't make a team suddenly capable of insane scores. Other bonuses for above-minimum toons are also possible, but this strikes me as a particularly elegant one. 
  7. Characters and resources available should make it possible for guild-wide income to remain steady with the release of a new raid, or, if guild income falls, it returns to what guilds were earning at the end of the last raid within a month of the release of a new raid. In the past income always increased with the release of a new raid because old raids did not go away. Being forced to spend to go nowhere isn't fun. Your players want to make progress. Maybe increases in income are slow to accumulate. After all, raids are now released on a quicker time frame than in the past. But instead of that giant leap in income every couple years, there should be slow gains in income. What I see in my own guild and others is no progress at all: the first half of a raid's lifetime we see one reward box, the second we see a better, but when a new raid drops we are back to the lesser box and we don't have a reasonable chance to improve beyond the best that we did the raid prior. Some of that may be individual guilds and motivation, I can't say. But you have the data to show whether Mk3 token income is down or up and by how much. Please make sure that to the extent average Mk3 income (across the game) falls, it never falls for long, and the general income trend is upward, not flat. 
  8. Provide a setting to disable moving backgrounds. 

Other people might have other expectations, and if I agree strongly with them, I might even edit this post to include them. 

As for comments, please provide actual suggestions and good information about what you want to see in the raid. Liking or hating a raid is not enough (on its own) to provide that sort of feedback. If you just want to hate on one of the raids, there are plenty of other threads where you can do that. 

  • CaptainAhen's avatar
    CaptainAhen
    Seasoned Traveler

    I've said it in other threads and will repeat it here: more areas of the game need to include SIM capability. There's no reason these new raids can't be simulated, and it would save an abundance of time and headaches for many players. My thoughts on how this would look are (completed = submitted all available attempts):

    • If the player has not completed the raid at least once, they must complete it and obtain a score before they are allowed to sim.
    • If the player has completed the raid at least once, let them SIM the entire raid if they choose, providing them the exact same score as the last time they played or simmed. 
    • If the player chooses to try and obtain a better score, or plays a single battle manually, they opt out of the simulation and must complete all battles manually for this run of the raid

    I disagree about having more raid omicrons, unless the raids remove character restrictions. Omicrons with GAC, TW, and TB/RotE allow characters to be utilized with those abilities for regularly events. It's unlikely most guilds are going to continue running the same raid every week, as opposed to trying the new ones as they continue releasing every 6 months or so. This means raid omicrons have a lifespan of until the new raid releases in comparison to omicrons for other areas of the game, which are lifelong. Then again, applying omicrons are up to the player, but it feels like they will be ignored by many players. 

    I agree with what I read on another thread, that the raids were more interesting when they were in phases and the whole guild worked toward the goal of completing it. Working toward a guild prize box in a raid without phases is very boring. When my attempts are maxed, and I see a conclusion to the battle, I want to feel like I earned a big prize. So for me seeing the completion cutscene should mean the guild as a whole finished the raid, not just me and my one of X attempts. 

    Cutscenes should be skippable. If I don't win the attempt it just adds that much more frustration that i have to sit through a cutscene to continue rather than just "get on with it" and try again. Cutscenes should also be viewable in a Settings menu. In past raids the only person who saw them was the one finishing the phase, it would be a neat option to view them depending on how far the guild gets in the raid (i.e. not seeing the final one if we haven't completed the final phase).

    • MasterSeedy's avatar
      MasterSeedy
      Rising Veteran

      Obviously I'm well aware of the lifespan problems with raid Omicrons. My question is, why are you against them being added? Omicrons being added doesn't mean you have to apply them. Save your mats if that's your choice. 

      What my proposal says is that if every team (except one or perhaps two that CG wants to force you to max upgrade) has an Omicron, that allows easy, stress-free access to max score (for that one squad) then this provides a way for players to prioritize QoL. Other players can choose to save those mats for other areas of the game, and that's fine, but what is wrong with giving players the option? Rather than making a case against CG adding raid Omis, you've made a case that players shouldn't spend mats on raid Omis. Do you have an argument against CG adding more raid Omis and thus giving players the option? 

      • CaptainAhen's avatar
        CaptainAhen
        Seasoned Traveler

        I'm not against them being added, I'm just not in favor of them being added due to lifespan and how niche they would be. Which I specified in my response as unless the raids remove character restrictions. I also said in my response applying omicrons are up to the player.  I would very likely save my omicron materials, and I believe that many (not all) players would feel the same way. And yes, that's their choice. In order for me to consider them I would need to have CG remove the limitations on them (lifespan, character only used in one raid not all). 

  • Expressing the extent of anger at how horrible the raid is absolutely helps because it shows just how fed up people are with CG and its awful **bleep** mechanics.  If people were polite about this **bleep** CG would just shove more BS down players throats because they couldn't give two **bleep** about the players.  They are money-grubbing **bleep**.