SWGOH: Q&A w/Producers - 3/17/18

Is TW on the verge of going away?
If it is staying for the long haul, are you open to player input about the match making and rewards structure?

Territory Wars are not on the verge of going away, Territory Battles and Territory Wars were two modes that were intended to satisfy different player types. Battles is where people with collections can show off and Wars is where people who are particularly good at PVP can show off. That's a real simplification of all the intention, but they are meant to be hand in hand in that way.

The ties solution had the objective to be granular enough to really address ties. Some suggestions we pulled from our beta team had different solutions but weren't granular enough to knock them out completely. Ties, btw, are basically gone at this point - but we expect them to come back as players get better and better.

That being said, we are open to player feedback for sure, and part of our communication strategy is going to be about how we can better create two-way dialogue on topics like these.

Are 7 dot mods and level cap increase coming? We have several people dedicating a lot of resources and time into upgrading the already existing content, I believe it is a warranted question to ask to know if this is going to cripple us in the long run.

Both the mod system and level system are designed to accommodate future increases in levels. We are not planning to change either in the very near term, but eventually they will be.

Will we start getting a new beta testing process in place? We know only specific players are given access to the beta gameplay however those same folks are utilizing that time to “test the game” to prepare their own rosters to exploit bugs while they last, not report the bugs the correct ways to your teams, and then reap the benefits until your team fixes it. This is not only an unfair practice to everyday players but also creates an even wider gap between your core player base and the elites that are given this special access. I hope you can understand why this is important to your core player base.

We're constantly looking for more ways to engage with players about upcoming/unrevealed content. There's a balancing act here that's tricky for us, insofar that we have to get enough players engaged so that the results are relevant and we can make useful changes, but also do our best to protect against leaks and other information getting into the general wild before we are ready to deploy. We have recently deployed an unrestricted beta that anyone could sign up for with Territory Wars and deployed a modified "obscured" beta for the Sith Triumvirate. This is an indicator of our desire to find a way that the beta can fit everyone (including us).

Can we please get a constant flow of professional communication? There are various times when we can’t get an answer to important community questions and issues for months. Even if we could just know it’s getting worked on or receive an update once a week on things being addressed/worked on we would all be extremely grateful

Improving the cadence and quality of our communication is a strong desire of the team. What you're seeing tonight is an effort in that direction. In the coming weeks, I will publish an updated plan for how we plan to keep the communication flowing.

what is the point of boosting "galactic hero" potency by 30% when the raid boss stacks 50% each turn? Doesn't this make the bonus a total waste? Why not just make all the bosses immune to tmr like sion. That would open up raid strategies for many more squads as well.

As we recently detailed in one of my posts, Raids are time capsules. As the game changes, teams and squads that were once relevant in the beginning may drop out in favor of squads that have recently become relevant. The Galactic Hero tag may not seem relevant now, but may become relevant later. Regarding why not make all the Raid Bosses immune to TMR, the simple answer is that we intended some to be immune to TMR and others not. Again as the game changes, some strategies that couldn't be executed may become available later.

Here is what I would like to know about:
Any plan for gear that we have THOUSANDS of piled up? Sell back? Trade up? Something?

The game used to have a way to sell gear and other items. We removed it early on for two reasons: 1) Based on the economy, each item sold yielded very little in terms of Credits; 2) Players would sometimes sell valuable items accidentally which wasn't a great experience. With the addition of Territory Battles and somewhat to a lesser extent Territory Wars, there are more reasons to gear up and otherwise progress all of your characters. Given that, were we to allow players to "burn off" some of the lower-tier items and then bring out a feature that incentivized or even required the progression of other characters, that would also lead to a bad experience. Bottom line, we currently have no plans to convert these overages, and the above explains why we currently don't allow conversion. Hope that makes sense.

Any MOD management plans in the future?

We know that Mod Management is one of the hottest topics in the community (along with raid tickets which we fixed, and multi-bronzium purchase, which we have not). It's a much bigger solve than something we can do in a Quality of Life update, but know that it is top of mind. We are talking about what we need to do to improve the clarity of the system, make it easier to use, and make it more balanced across all the different mod types.


Cadence of Legendary Events?....everyone was tracking a later date on BB/JTR based on previous ones and got a 2 day warning and were totally unprepared, why does this have to be so random and so last minute

: We absolutely want to clarify the cadence. After we post our communication strategy, we will systematically answer a number of questions that the community has. One of those topics will be the cadence of Legendary events.

Character Release cadence?...it was established at one point and then broken multiple times and now it's just non-existant, especially with a previous road ahead post standing farming for Talzin, Wicket, Nightsister Spirit etc....and still nothing

: Similar to the above, we actually have forthcoming communication coming about the Character Release Cadence. We're not ready to unveil it yet, but I can tell you that we are looking to reaffirm it very soon and better articulate the timings, placements, and why we changed some in the past. This is an important topic to us and we're going to bringing this to the players soon. Regarding Talzin and company, we tried something new with the Heroic Event series and it didn't work the way we intended. We'll have a disposition on them soon.

Sith Raid? Even with the nerf JTR does over 2x more dmg than any other team on any phase basically so without your entire guild having JTR it's just pointless....what is the point of this, our guild won't be able to progress to next tier until next JTR release now since this one was much faster than others, 3-4-5-6 months who knows?

We recently posted about our intentionality around RJT, Expose and the Sith Raid's difficulty. I would say that's the clearest answer to our reasoning around RJT and would refer you to that.

With the changes that have occured with online loot boxes/crates on Apple and others is there going to ever be more transparency on odds of rewards when purchasing a box with a certain amount in it. How about the challenges, it says it's possible to get 7 of an item but I don't think it is possible as noone ever has, isn't this false advertising?

Regarding the Apple policy regarding drop rates, we are aware of this policy and are working with Apple on what that means for our game. We don't have specifics at this time.

Carrie, Eric and Nick,
Thank you for this unprecedented opportunity to ask questions concerning the game. My name is Maegor, and I am an admin on a discord server for guild leaders, named Make SWGoH Great Again, that guild leaders and officers of just shy of 1,000 guilds, ranging from the very top guilds to new guilds.
We have formally written and forwarded three letters to your design team in the past. I guess my first question is have those letters been seen by you and other “higher ups” within CG? And if so, we would appreciate any honest feedback about the content of the letters. Are they helpful to your team and would you like us to continue to send them when there is a consensus of a problem among guild leaders?

Hi Maegor, I'm sorry but I don't know precisely which letters you're referring to. We receive a lot of input and communication from people on our team who work in the forums, with beta testers, influencers, Customer Support, QA, etc. So sometimes we don't know where feedback came from always, but I would need more info to say for sure. The best way to get feedback to our design team is through one of those channels (beta testers, influencers, forums, Customer Support).

Moving on to the sith raid, I feel that currently there is an issue with the amount of health in the T6 and below tiers of the new raid. Please know that my guild is currently running heroic, so this issue does not directly affect me. But many guild leaders are discussing player ennui with the new raid because there is constantly one active. The issue is that as soon as you can defeat a T6 in the amount of time that you can actually deplete your raid tickets, you are ready for heroic. Right now, the rule of thumb is that if you can do t6 in under two resets, you are ready for heroic. I think if t6 and below had a 25-35% cut in health across the board, you would see less frustration with the new raid from guilds that cannot complete heroic.

RE: Sith Raid Health: I appreciate the feedback on the health of the raid. We tried some new things with the Sith Triumvirate regarding mechanics. We want players to engage with these mechanics deeply. In our testing, maximizing the mechanics tends to result in higher performance. This is intentional on our part.
However, we are constantly evaluating the player's experience with the raids through a combination of data we collect on our side and player sentiment through the forums to see if there is drift from our expectations. At present, we're happy with the health of the raid and how players are making their way through it. If we begin to see something that causes major concern, we'll address as soon as reasonably possible.

On this post:
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/155669/content-update-1-25-2018#latest
you mentioned that Wicket and the NS would be coming to the table as farmable toons in the future. Would it be possible to get an update on when this will be happening?

Above Nick answered a question about the character cadence and that we plan to release more info about that in the coming weeks. We will make sure this specifically is answered then.

Hello,
First I would like to say thank you for taking the time out of your weekend to answer player questions and concerns.
My question pertains to mods, more specifically, why saved mod sets have not been implemented.

Thanks Amish. Mod sets has an answer above, but thank you for taking the time to suggest some ideas, I've logged it for our discussions. We will definitely be asking the community for more input when it is getting closer to the implementation date.

Between the two CG members who engage with the community most often, there is a severe lack of proffesionalism, and this worries me more than anything else in the game right now...

First off, thanks for taking the time to participate in this Q&A. You raise a good topic, and it's something we've worked on really since the launch of the game. There is a lot of passion on both sides of the conversation (from the players and from the team) and this can sometimes lead to elevated levels of emotion. At times, this can be positive, of course. But I also know it can turn toxic. That is something we would really like to fix -- and it's going to take effort from both sides. We're hoping that this Q&A tonight is a good next step in getting to a better level of communication. As tonight progresses and as we keep things moving over the coming days and week, we're hoping that we will be able to achieve a more regular cadence of clear messaging from our side, along with a reduction of angst / anger / toxicity across the board.

Greetings,
I have a couple of DS TB issues that I have posted over at answers and never have gotten a response on.
Issue 1: Dark Side Territory Phase 5 has improper distribution of TB Points required.
Issue 2: Dark Side Squads and Platoons have incorrect point bonuses when compared to light side configurations.

1. RE: TB Point Distribution: As we work with our feature systems, we regularly try new things with new content. What you're pointing to is something we intentionally changed for the DSTB (similar to the number of waves, faction requirements, etc.) and how we reward collection size.
2. RE: Incorrect Point Bonuses: I'd need to see some specifics, but I'm not aware of any bugs with the DSTB Squads and Platoons. We do have QA file bugs that are posted on Answers HQ, so please start there and we will look into it.
We regularly review our larger pieces of content. At some point, LSTB and DSTB will come up and we'll determine if there's any changes we need to make. There are things we like about each and we also like that they're different - later content is intentionally more challenging to match increased power levels, but we don't want it to be prohibitively difficult.

There are a few bugs and AI issues that have been present, both in the past and currently, which I believe should be addressed.

So Q:
What exactly is the timeline in how an AI issue is evaluated and approached? From the time a bug or AI issue is posted on Answers HQ or here, what would be the expected turnaround time for the issue to be fixed?

1. RE: Bugs/AI: I just personally wrote these down and will make sure they're logged in our JIRA (bug tracking database). I don't have an answer for you right now, but I'll look into it.
2. RE: AI Evaluation Generally: It varies, honestly. Length of time depends on if we have a big piece of content we're working on in the background (like the Sith Triumvirate) and whether it is an issue from a design intent perspective and a system capability perspective. So the answer is ultimately it depends, but we largely treat them alot like other bugs. How many people are affected? Is it outside our design? Etc. I can tell you that the design team and I regularly talk about AI priorities and issues on a weekly basis, so it's not something we ignore.

Hello!! Can you provide any clarity on why a more complex TW pairing method is superior to simply matching closely on GP of participating members? Shouldn't GP capture additional factors like # of G12, rosters, etc...?

GP while intended to reflect the overall power of characters doesn't always capture the nuance of good synergies and so while it can be a benchmark for overall power - it is actually not sufficient for something as intricate as matchmaking. Nightsisters are good example of where the GP doesn't reflect the power of the squad.

If we can only get one question, I’d like to talk through raids. Questions in order of priority for me if you can grab more.
1) What is the plan to address raids going forwards, and the time commitment required? As we continue to stack more raids onto our plates, all of which as still have much needed rewards, they become harder to schedule and more time consuming to deal with. An eventual 4th raid and onwards would be even more difficult.

Hi medetec - One way in which time should be reduced for Raids is that Guilds should "level up" as they progress in the overall game and thus the Rancor Raid Heroic can go on farm mode while the Guild is still challenged by the AAT Raid. And, then once the AAT Heroic goes on farm mode, the Guild can tackle the Sith Triumvirate Raid. This is something I've taken from many years in MMO games.
Beyond that, we are talking about other ways to make Raids easier to manage for the guild leaders and the guild members. We've just posed a question to our beta testers about an idea we have for raid management auto-join and auto-start. This doesn't mean that work is imminent, but usually when we feel good about something we want to do, the next step is to ask for feedback from our beta group and influencers, and then we go about figuring out when it's going to be in the game.
Also we are reviewing Raid rewards, but are not ready to share any changes there.

QUESTION: AaronBurrSir] Is there a technical reason in why we can't do Bronzium multipulls?

The technical answer is that handling a massive number of drops is not currently supported in the game. That said, it would be possible (with work) to enable that. We have been talking about what to do with the Bronzium packs and system overall, and haven't yet landed on where we think this aspect of the game should go yet. All that currency was introduced with the tournament system and was intended to be used for that. We weren't prepared for it to be used only for bronzium packs, so it will be more challenging than simply enabling that functionality.


Hey CG,
What precautions will you put in place to protect players, especially minors, from the gambling aspects of the game...particularly anything where the odds aren't clear and money is involved...crystal drops for characters, etc?

This is obviously a very touchy subject. Aspects of chance and random outcomes have existed in games and collection activities throughout the ages. Consider baseball card packs, or collectible card games like Magic: The Gathering, or even rolling dice in D&D or other table top games. A fundamental theme to these types of games -- both in the collection of characters and items as well as in the combat or gameplay -- is randomness and chance. Our game is a hybrid RPG / CCG (Role Playing Game / Collectible Card Game). And, like its predecessors, we likewise have random outcomes woven throughout the experience.

QUESTION: Rak_Frondar] Can you guys talk about your plans for ships?

The short answer is not at this time. The reason we don't answer direct questions about things we are planning on working on sometime in the future is because after we start implementation, we can cause missed expectations if we need to change plans. However, we are presently evaluating/re-evaluating the whole feature and should have something to share in the coming months.

You gave us only 3 days before the actual date of the JTR heroic journey. Can you give at least 1 month to announce the actual start of heroic journey events? if not one month, at least a lot more than 3 days.

Character cadence information and clarity is coming above. We can't necessarily promise a month, but we are hoping to at least get this to be a little more predictable, for sure.

Okay, mine is kinda simple, but do you think you could give us a “What’s Ahead”?

Yes, I'll be posting a road ahead early in April.

I feel like many of the new challenges are tuned with both ridiculously high health pools and wildly out of control tenacity. Shouldn't it be one or the other and not both?

As we recently discussed in a post around the raid design philosophy, the design decisions around the Sith Triumvirate raid are intentional (health and tenacity). This raid is intended to compel new strategies and test the best performing synergies that exist in the game (and hopefully challenge players to find new ones). Part of this design intent is around maximizing the mechanics in each phase (which our testing shows increases damage dealt by quite a bit).

When are the gw store and arena store going to be updated?

We have no intention to update GW Store and Arena store at this time. Our intention is that these are to be a source of Shard Shop currency for players that have exhausted their offerings.

Is the daily crystal booster ever going to be brought back or replaced? If so, when? And if it will be replaced, what will replace it?

As we had said at the time the 21 day crystal offer needed to be suspended, we had hoped to be able to keep it in the game but were not able to due to factors beyond our control. Those factors remain beyond our control. I know it's frustrating when we can't provide more details, but we do not ever want to point the finger at a party or parties other than ourselves. That said, we are working on options which might bring back something similar. No guarantee that we will be able to do so at this time.

Why are you doing this with only one hour notice and when it is 11:30pm in the eastern US and early morning hours in Europe. I imagine the eastern US and Europe represent a large player base and the fact that you announce and host this during the middle of the night for those regions continues to give you the perception of unwillingness to communicate and hide from your community.

Good point, tsprink. We thought it was important to open up the conversation quickly, but understand that the timing isn't convenient for everyone. Hopefully we can do more sessions like this in the future, and with those we will provide advance notice. It's not a particularly convenient time for us either.

What’s the philosphy on characters being harder to farm than others? For example, shoretrooper is much harder to farm than most characters. He’s been in the game over a year. Is there a cadence at work here or is he so good that he will stay hard to get? That’s one example of many (nihilus, baze, etc.).

Characters serve a lot of different functions in the game. Some are key for Legendary events, others for PvE events (raids, TB, etc). And some are just good in PvP. In addition to the "where you use them" conversation is how powerful they are. We do our best to evaluate each time we release a character to the board, where all they are used, what's our intent around player use, and how powerful the character is. Some characters are intended to be chase characters and difficult to get because they are powerful.
However, as the game changes, power levels change and desirability can change. It's difficult for us to update locations of nodes because a variety of players may be actively farming a location and then be upset if we change the rules around it. It's something we'd like to tackle though and are actively thinking about it. I don't have a schedule yet, but we're looking into it.

Why does it still take 20 minutes of refreshing the screen in order to make the jump from 19 to 13 in Fleet or Character Arena? This has got to be one of the most annoying parts of the game. Why can’t we just simply scroll over to the opponent we want in a couple of seconds?

We are working on a fix for this right now. We can actually do this without making major changes to the client by making sure the highest possible opponent is always served up to you to start. Normally I wouldn’t promise this before the code work is done because it’s possible we could encounter an issue in implementation, but on the scale of all the variable things that are in progress this is at the top of the list. And because we think we can do it with a server fix, we should be able to release it before our next update.

If the Tank Takedown and Pit raids are "old content", could you please provide some of the rationale for adjusting the Expose mechanics in those raids instead of only adjusting Expose in the Sith Triumvirate Raid?

Our philosophy is that creating an exception for Expose in the Sith Triumvirate felt unsatisfying. At that point, we'd end up in a pattern of crafting bespoke rules for our core effects mechanics in all raids which would be confusing for the players and us.

Why didn't you bring back the Veteran smuggler packs this time?

In this case we had provided a benefit to early adopters that we didn't want to diminish. However, we don't always do that, so it's something we are constantly evaluating and reconsidering.

Would you consider revising the Raid reward tables to be worth the amount of time we put into the raid?

As noted above, we are reviewing the Raid rewards in general. Unfortunately, we aren't ready to share any changes at this time.

what happened to @CG_Kozispoon

CG_Kozispoon is still with us, but she recently moved away from Sacramento. We are still discussing with her what the long-term plan is. In the meantime, we have opened a Community Manager position here in Sacramento. If you (or anyone you know) would like to come work on a Star Wars game with a bunch of nerds like us, please see the job listing here: https://career4.successfactors.com/career?career_ns=job_listing&company=EA&career_job_req_id=118311

Was the goal of the new Sith raid aimed only to appease ultra whale guilds? Because at anything less than heroic tier 7 the raid is pretty much unfun and not worth any guild wanting to finish especially because of the junk rewards. *Why not release new gear levels or mods whatever at the same time in order for us to actually have a chance at this?*

When we build a raid, we have to satisfy a number of different player subpopulations at the same time. There are those players that have large rosters and those with rising rosters. For the former, we are attempting to build a challenging puzzle. For the latter, we are attempting to build something that is aspiring both from a collection perspective and mechanical mastery perspective. Part of the path to Heroic is tackling and mastering lower tiers. We regularly evaluate rewards. The next time we evaluate the Sith Triumvirate we'll look at the raid rewards. And we decided to not release new mods or gear at this time, because we wanted to build something that tested players rosters, gear, mods, etc at this point in time in the game's life.

Will cross-platform branch out to Windows?

We have no plans to do so at this time. However, the game uses the Unity engine which can run on a wide variety of platforms. There would be work to get the game to run on a new platform, and then an on-going need to maintain and update it on that new platform. It's not one of those "push a button and it works" situation, 'cause those never exist.

Dark Side Territory Battles' platoons are challenging when so many Platoons require Empire units and there is an Empire combat mission in that Territory. *Why is Empire not treated the same as Phoenix and Rogue One in Light Side Territory Battles?* Also, why no combat or special mission for Night Sisters?

I mentioned this in an earlier question, but we try new things with each of our new content releases with our feature systems. There were things we liked about the way Phoenix and Rogue One were treated in LSTB and things we didn't like. We tried something new with DSTB. At some point, we'll evaluate both Hoth Territory Battles and determine if there's adjustments we need to make to the underlying experience. There are no combat or special Nightsister nodes for thematic reasons. Hoth is a battle between the Empire and the Rebels.

Specific issue

I'm going to look into your case.

QUESTION: redshadow203] Are more Jedi and Bounty hunters planned?

We plan out the roadmap far in advance. However, we don't make them public until we are certain there will be no changes. Given how pervasive both those factions are in the Star Wars universe, it's safe to say there will be some more, just who and when will be revealed in due time.

After playing this game for 2.5 years, can I have a new daily challenge instead of this arena?

Daily Activities are constantly being reevaluated. It is our goal to make sure you have something to do every day, but we balance that with trying to reduce overall time spent in the game. That being said, we do want to incentivize certain aspects of the game, like the arena.

Why can we not change/edit/move Defense squads in TW during the setup phase?

Matchmaking is done after setup to ensure your guild is accurately matched up against another guild. If you can change your defensive squads after moving into the offense phase, then it would be optimal to pull all your mods off characters and not level characters up and only do it after the attack phase has started. That encourages a different type of play, one based around faking out your opponent, and while we certainly want to offer different game experiences, it is not the intent of Territory Wars at this time.

When you create big, end game content, like the TB and especially the new raids, are you designing them for guilds to be able to complete in the far off future, or relatively soon after some theory crafting?

Check out our response to Cstone812. I think that scratches at this question.

*When is ship hardware coming?* It's said "Hardware abilities coming soon!" for over a year now

This is one of the things that makes us gunshy about promising/announcing things too early. We had hardware abilities, we were ready to put them in the game, and then testing revealed they weren't working the way we wanted them to. Sometimes we can't help it because we want to tell you guys things that we are working on and are excited about. Moving forward we will be much more cautious with language like this. There was an earlier answer on Ships to Rak_Frondar, so I'd refer your actual answer to that question.

I’m not sure how you are responding to the overwhelming responses? I have yet to see anyone answer a question or are these answers coming in the form of a private message?

Our answers are up here! Right here!

Also are you guys done with the new Star Wars movies, what I mean by that is are we going to get more First Order/Resistance Characters in the game (Ex: Snoke, Husk, etc.)?
just putting it out there that with the show Rebels ending, we're missing main/recurring characters such as Kallus, Azadi, Hondo, Old Man Rex, Pryce, and others I can't think of off the top of my head. We're also missing key TLJ characters such as Hux, Paige Tico with her bomber, Snoke, his guards, the Finalizer, and DJ. When can we expect some of them to come to the game? Or will they be a surprise like the vets were?

We aren't done with the ongoing trilogy. We schedule characters to satisfy a lot of different Star Wars fans; original trilogy, prequels, Clone Wars, etc. We hold off on often asked for content so that we can revisit the era again later and refresh factions from that period. As for when all the above are coming, we don't reveal our full content roadmap for a variety of reasons, but primarily it's because it can change and we don't want to miss player expectations if a fan favorite character needs to moved for some reason.

Can I ask about the interaction with Nihilus Lead with massive damage attacks such as Nihilus's Annihilate and Savage Opress's Overpower? It doesn't seem to apply lifesteal, if this is WAI, what is the reason behind this?

I don't have the specific answer to this specific interaction right now (I keep a lot of things on top of head, but this isn't one of them). I've written it down on my list of things to look into for Monday and I'll figure out if it's something that needs to be addressed.

Why was there an increase in the number of teams required for TW?

We found at the top level of TW play, the competition was so heavy and the rosters were so deep that having fewer squads didn't challenge that play enough, and was part of the reason that there were more ties. With more rosters, it requires these highly competitive guilds to dig deeper and to encourage play with some characters that aren't in as high rotation, which is part of the fun. :)

Are you planning on having more people test content before it comes out?

We are continually looking for ways to better prevent "escape defects" (e.g. bugs) from making it into the game. Part of that is in improving our processes, part of that is running retrospectives and root cause analyses, and part of that is captured by our team of testers. While we're on the subject, we are hiring a Senior QA Analyst for the team right here: https://career4.successfactors.com/career?career_ns=job_listing&company=EA&career_job_req_id=117194

Currently there are so many characters that grant bonus turn meter that it creates an insane amount of "coin flips" to decide who goes next due to multiple characters being at 100% turn meter. Has there been any thought put into finding a solution for this? Perhaps if multiple characters are at 100% turn meter, the fastest character goes next?

So this is something that we're aware of and thinking through how to tackle. There are a few hairs in the soup with this one on how we ultimately resolve it. I don't have a timeline for the fix unfortunately given some of the potential needs for the fix and some competing priorities. It is not lost on us though and we are thinking about it.

As a person who has literally invested thousands of real dollars into this game, I would like to know how many folks there are actually invested in this game with their own money and I mean thousands not just a few hundred.. do they play and devote the time and grind to fully understand the player frustrations? One of those frustrations is having not enough separation between the P2P and F2P player in the game.. So when will there be a cap increase?

Thank you so much for supporting the game. In terms of keeping a balance between various players' spending (and non-spending) behaviors, this is extraordinarily difficult. A healthy, long-lived free-to-play game needs all types of players. If we lean too far to one extreme or another, we risk alienating players on the other end of the spectrum. If the balance is lost, the game can spin out of control and crater. To the specific question about how many players of various spend levels exist in the game... that's confidential info and so it's not a question we can answer in a public forum. As noted above, there is no immediate plan to increase the level cap.
Speaking personally, of the five people in the room right now pulling questions and answering them, one is an intentional free to play player, and the other four of us have spent thousands of dollars of our own personal money.

Erik Larsen as the Player Lifecycle Producer, *can you give us some insight to where we are in the life cycle?* It seems to me we are in the declining stage as many players are feeling burnout from too much content being

My role is to help think about and manage how players experience the game throughout their lifecycle from a new install all the way up to the elder game. So, it's a bit different than what you're asking. But, to answer your question anyway, from looking at any performance metric, the game has never been stronger. We have now been out for over 840 days (!) and due to the overwhelmingly positive response from players, we continue to not just sustain -- we continue to grow. That said, we know there are things we need to do better, we know the game isn't perfect, and we are committed to working hard to deliver the best possible game experience to you and the rest of the players around the world. The amount of time players spend in the game is something we keep our eye on. With the recent Quality of Life release, there were a number of features added to the game with the sole intent of reducing the amount of time players need to spend engaging in certain activities. We will continue to monitor the data and your feedback and make adjustments as needed. Hope that helps!

*Can you add crystal payouts to the fleet arena for all ranks, instead of just the top 20?* The squad arena has this in place since the beginning and I feel that should be mirrored in the fleet arena.

We added crystal payouts to the top 20 as a first step in updating and improving the Fleet Arena. We've been satisfied with the results so far and are reviewing if any further expansion is needed. I'll point you up to Rak_Frondar as that we are currently looking at the feature largely.

*When will we have access to farmable Ship Omega Ability Mats?* Abilities that require them have been in the game forever, but there has never been a way for f2p players to aquire them?

At the risk of sounding canned, I'll point you to our Rak_Frondar response above. Hopefully that gives you a sense of our larger agenda around ships.

Can we please have a practice mode for PVP?

At the moment we have no plans to build a practice mode for PvP. There are two reasons for this:
1. There are other features that, we feel, are higher impact/priority to the playerbase. We know this is a common request, but we think there are some more "fun" things that we can produce instead. If we ultimately find that we have room and nothing competing in priority, we'd consider picking it up.
2. A practice mode (at least what we see commonly requested for) would be unbounded in its time commitment (meaning you could play it all the time and unlimitedly). We are aware of the current time the game requests of player, we are hesitant to add more to it at this time.
3. Having added Simming to Galactic War, we are looking at how much people play through it voluntarily, as it is a leading indicator of how much people want to play something like a Practice Mode.

*Why does it take so long to get any information or traction on bugs for old characters?* The new "non-free" characters seem to have bugs fixed right away however if a bug shows up on an older character it just seems to get ignored and linger. As a player I just want my characters to work as advertised be it they are 1 day old or 2 years old.

We hear that perception in the posts from time to time, but if you look at the release notes over time, you'll see there have been a wide variety of bug fixes for characters across the spectrum of newer characters to older characters. If there are still outstanding bugs for existing characters, please log them in the Answers HQ and we'll do our best to get them fixed as soon as we can.
NOTE: Sorry scuba, we see that you posted links to Answers HQ, which we didn't catch when we copied the questions over to be answered. We will follow up on those tickets, thank you for writing them.

Why has grievous not been reworked/is he going to be getting one in the near future?

Grievous hasn't been reworked yet because we haven't tackled the Separatists yet. If we get a chance to rework the Separatists, we'll likely rework Grievous at that time.

Why does the ship ability mat challenge have zero zeta mats as an option? Is there a possibility of any change on that front for a guaranteed minimum other than zero?

When we initially created ships and had zetas be a part of it, we carefully modeled how quickly we expected players would accrue zeta materials. Having the floor was a part of that modeled experience and at initial release we were happy with it. At this moment, I think we're still happy with current drop rates, but there's always a chance we'll review it in the future.

Why did you take down the Game Update Status thread? (That was a very helpful one.)

Don't have an answer right now, but I took a note and am looking into it.

Why do I have so much bad rng in this game? I know how to play it (3.2 million gp) but I constantly have REALLY bad luck when it comes to for *e.g. in raids I Solo the Pit and end up way down the bottom of the payout list (worst prizes) every time.* Can’t seem to get good stats on mods either just to name a few. I contacted EA about this and they said they’re aware of this and gave me 200 crystals (which I never received) I don’t care about the crystals, I do care about this problem though. Please can something be done.

That sounds pretty crappy. And I get how it can feel like the game is punishing you, even though we have no system in place to pursue or punish players and give them bad drop rates. RNG is a fickle mistress which can make us feel targeted even though it's purely probability sticking it to us. All I can offer is to stick with it. Results tend towards the mean.

It's not really a question, but more of a beef. I hate the way drop rates change on needed characters for events. Pretty greedy, guys.

We do not adjust drop rates based on when / whether characters are required for events, or otherwise adjust them dynamically based on player experience. See our answer to Rubberb0y for some more details on our philosophy around how RNG & probability can make players feel sometimes.

Are you all ever going to open the forums back up so they dont seem like a desolate wasteland where the only comments and feedback allowed is how everything in the game is sunshine and roses?* Continuing this censorship is what drives the community other venues like discord, line and reddit where they can speak freely.
Edit: Also, please address the back channel communication. It's part of what caused this mess in the first place. Those you are currently communicating with via the back channels don't represent the playerbase at large and look down on all they see as not worth their time. The same attitude was reflected in the recent forum responses, that this QA is in obvious response to. When people like myself coordiante with nearly 1000 guilds to provide constructive feedback to devs and get shut down because of all the back channel communication going on, it makes us feel disrespected and ignored. Please do a better job and stop ignoring the community.

I skipped ahead to take this one as the session is wrapping up (we're 30 min over) and I want to make sure we address it. The people who work in the forums (and Customer Support and other player-facing groups) are working within parameters that have been set out for them by me. Sometimes intent can translate into something that in practice may come across as too draconian, which is why we wanted to show our commitment to improving this immediately tonight.
I don't know specifically what you mean by back channel communication but we leverage players of many different types for all kinds of input, from feedback sessions to closed betas and open betas. But we also look at player sentiment reports (which come in-game in the form of a Customer Satisfaction Survey), forum threads, and many other points of input. We don't just talk to one group of players. That being said, if you would like to be leveraged for beta tests or feedback, we will be happy to take your name to consider for the future.

And with that, we've gone about 40 minutes over. There are many more questions and we appreciate everyone taking the time to ask them. We apologize for the short notice, however we felt it was important to address this now, which obviously is not terribly convenient for you or us, but given how many questions came with so little prep time, it's clear that communication like this is needed more in the future.

As I stated up top, we will be releasing a more thorough communication plan, which will include more of these in the next couple of weeks

Thanks again to all for your time and good night.
-Carrie, Erik, Nick

Hello CG team,

First and foremost thank you for the extra hours and dedication to improving our experience and communication, as someone who’s very passionate about this game and community I can honestly say that this kind of initiative goes a long way with those of us that are rational about feedback.

That being said I have 3 questions I hope you can answer to honor the integrity of our community.

1. Are 7 dot mods and level cap increase coming? We have several people dedicating a lot of resources and time into upgrading the already existing content, I believe it is a warranted question to ask to know if this is going to cripple us in the long run.
2. Will we start getting a new beta testing process in place? We know only specific players are given access to the beta gameplay however those same folks are utilizing that time to “test the game” to prepare their own rosters to exploit bugs while they last, not report the bugs the correct ways to your teams, and then reap the benefits until your team fixes it. This is not only an unfair practice to everyday players but also creates an even wider gap between your core player base and the elites that are given this special access. I hope you can understand why this is important to your core player base.
3. Can we please get a constant flow of professional communication? There are various times when we can’t get an answer to important community questions and issues for months. Even if we could just know it’s getting worked on or receive an update once a week on things being addressed/worked on we would all be extremely grateful.

I hope these questions aren’t too demanding or seem malicious at all, that is not the intent. I just want what’s best for this community whole heartedly and love the success your team has found with the franchise so close to our hearts, I just want it to be the least greedy experience possible without affecting the revenue of the CG team. I hope we as a community can continue to work with you to better this relationship and game.

-zakore

what is the point of boosting "galactic hero" potency by 30% when the raid boss stacks 50% tenacity each turn? Doesn't this make the bonus a total waste? Why not just make all the bosses immune to tmr like sion. That would open up raid strategies for many more squads as well.

Here are some of my questions:

Mod Management when? We are all having to use an external site to keep track of mods on up to 870 mods not counting the ones that aren't equipped it's just crazy

Cadence of Legendary Events?....everyone was tracking a later date on BB/JTR based on previous ones and got a 2 day warning and were totally unprepared, why does this have to be so random and so last minute

Character Release cadence?...it was established at one point and then broken multiple times and now it's just non-existant, especially with a previous road ahead post standing farming for Talzin, Wicket, Nightsister Spirit etc....and still nothing

Sith Raid? Even with the nerf JTR does over 2x more dmg than any other team on any phase basically so without your entire guild having JTR it's just pointless....what is the point of this, our guild won't be able to progress to next tier until next JTR release now since this one was much faster than others, 3-4-5-6 months who knows?

With the changes that have occured with online loot boxes/crates on Apple and others is there going to ever be more transparency on odds of rewards when purchasing a box with a certain amount in it. How about the challenges, it says it's possible to get 7 of an item but I don't think it is possible as noone ever has, isn't this false advertising?

Carrie, Eric and Nick,

Thank you for this unprecedented opportunity to ask questions concerning the game. My name is Maegor, and I am an admin on a discord server for guild leaders, named Make SWGoH Great Again, that has guild leaders and officers of just shy of 1,000 guilds, ranging from the very top guilds to new guilds.

We have formally written and forwarded three letters to your design team in the past. I guess my first question is have those letters been seen by you and other “higher ups” within CG? And if so, we would appreciate any honest feedback about the content of the letters. Are they helpful to your team and would you like us to continue to send them when there is a consensus of a problem among guild leaders?

Moving on to the sith raid, I feel that currently there is an issue with the amount of health in the T6 and below tiers of the new raid. Please know that my guild is currently running heroic, so this issue does not directly affect me. But many guild leaders are discussing player ennui with the new raid because there is constantly one active. The issue is that as soon as you can defeat a T6 in the amount of time that you can actually deplete your raid tickets, you are ready for heroic. Right now, the rule of thumb is that if you can do t6 in under two resets, you are ready for heroic. I think if t6 and below had a 25-35% cut in health across the board, you would see less frustration with the new raid from guilds that cannot complete heroic.

Also, speaking for my own guild of 150 members, and I assume many here, mod management is currently an issue. Moving mods for all of the different game modes is tedious and time consuming. There are two ways to spend time in this game: 1) by playing content and having fun, and 2) the managerial work on your account, which is currently dominated by moving mods, which a heavy majority of players do not find fun. Are there plans to address mod management, and is there a timeframe to implement those plans?

My final question would be for our theory crafting community. Would it be possible to either have a database for boss stats (health, armor, etc.) on the official site, or could you let the team at swgoh.gg “mine” these values so that we could have them on hand? I bring this up because recently there was a debate if armor shred was stacking correctly. For most raid bosses, it appears that armor is so low that multiple armor shreds do not matter, so testing this in game, made it appear that armor shred was not stacking. I think issues like this could be resolved if we had resources to check. To piggy back, formal damage equations would also help in this matter.

Thank you for your time and thank you so much for hosting this event.

Maegor

On this post:

https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/155669/content-update-1-25-2018#latest

you mentioned that Wicket and the NS would be coming to the table as farmable toons in the future. Would it be possible to get an update on when this will be happening?

Hello,

First I would like to say thank you for taking the time out of your weekend to answer player questions and concerns.

My question pertains to mods, more specifically, why saved mod sets have not been implemented.

With the release of the new Sith Raid, we are required to field more teams than ever in order to progress and complete it. However, since the introduction of mods, only more characters have been released, and thus, more mods needing to be assigned. Last Q.o.L. update you gave us saved squad sets. Please, for the love of this game, can you please consider giving us SAVED MOD SETS?!

I envision it functioning in a similar fashion of the saved squad builder. You build a mod set, save it, then it can be transferred easily to one character or another (for the appropriate in-game credit fee as usual). I do NOT think this would detract from players farming mods, as we are always on the look for that one great mod. If anything, this will encourage mod movement and mod farming to create more sets, and revive what I think is a stale feature of the game.

Thank you, and I hope you get to my question.

Between the two CG members who engage with the community most often, there is a severe lack of proffesionalism, and this worries me more than anything else in the game right now.

Speculation is met with image macros that add fuel to rumours and works the community into an excited frenzy, that swiftly turns into bitterness and outrage when reality doesn't live up to expectations.

Negative opinions are often met with derisive, antagonistic replies, whether warranted or not. Not to mention how easy it is to get banned for them.

Any mention of a bug gets moved to the Answers HQ, where many topics are simply ignored, and never adressed.

Basically, the forums as a whole are toxic at this stage. I don't post on here often, because of the aforementioned issues, combined with how jaded and bitter the community is, I don't see any point.

Look at it this way - this feedback, and these questions have been invited. I'm still apprehensive about posting it, because of the recent responses to negative opinions and feedback. This is not healthy for the game, or the community.

You have apoligised for this, and said you want to re-build the trust, but nothing has been said about adresing the core issues. So my question is - what steps are being/will be taken to adress these core isues with the forums?