*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
EA Staff (Retired)
