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!
EA Staff (Retired)
