"Mvnson;786793" wrote:
I mentioned that there is a thread somewhere on the SWGOH subreddit where a developer makes a series of posts admitting that he does not realize how disproportionate the gear distribution is. It is must reading and Benacrow should edit into his original post. I can't find that thread anymore, but maybe someone else can, the internet community is great at that.
In the meantime we have a second piece of media that is a must for everyone that +1's this thread to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrT92tngmuI
Please listen/watch to the first 10 minutes of that video. Its an interview with John Salera, the executive producer of this game and another developer. What you hear will blow your mind. You will learn that there is no plan to fix the gear problems because they don't even acknowledge one exists. He actually says they introduced Galactic Gear Packs and that should solve everyones stun cuff problems. If this isn't your first day reading the forums, how many thousands of times have you heard someone say "please put all lower tier rewards into the higher tier challenges". When that question is asked, the answer is" "We haven't thought about that or discussed it". SERIOUSLY?!? This interview is only 2 weeks old mind you.
The gear progression has some major fundamental design flaws. The developers in the video claim that some gear is "rare". I totally agree that a game like this requires "rare" drop items. Stun cuffs and stun cuffs are the rarest drops in the entire game. However, 50 Stun cuffs are required 185 times, meaning 10,000 cuffs are needed (so far) in the game. Basic common sense and game design dictates that you don't make your rarest gear also your most commonly required one. Compare that to Omega mats. This is a "rare" item, with a "rare" drop rate but has been gated properly. First of all, napkin math (feel free to do the computation with actual numbers, I'm too agitated to look them up). We have about 100 toons in this game (so far) and they have an average of about 4 abilities. Each omega ability requires 5 mats (several only need three). So, the game needs about 2,000 omega mats. Thats 1/5 of the stun cuffs needed if you are keeping score. How do we obtain these omega mats? 1 free per day. Omega battles relatively frequently. Rewards from tournaments and other events. Gifts. Achievements. We can pull 12 a week from challenges (your lucky if its 3 but thats still awesome). Can farm them on cantina nodes (theoretically)... I'm forgetting more, but the point is, every single week I feel like I am making progress with my omega abilities. When I need a new one, it can be done in 5 days maximum, without spending a single resource. Stun cuffs, I feel like Im going backwards with. I simmed the same node hundreds if not a thousand times this week. 50 crystal refresh, 12 pulls, 1 cuff, repeat... Im not able to do anything else with my energy and its boring. I used to enjoy the decision making, resource management and planning that was part of the game. Now I have no choice but to be a zombie pushing sim on 7D over an over again, day in and out. Now we have this tank raid that the developers have admitted "may not be tuned properly". But we know Jawas are very good in this raid. Have you looked at the stun cuff requirements for a Jawa team?? Good God Almighty I think it takes over 1,000 stun cuffs just to gear up those little look-a-likes. If this is really "WAI" then that is one sick, nefarious conspiracy to extort the player base. But I dont believe that is the intention. It honestly believe its ignorance and poor game design on part of the developers. I dont want to even get into the fact that characters are requiring high level gear that they have no ability to use. It is nonsensical.... There are many many solutions to this problem and most of them can be coded faster than it took me to write this manifesto. This has to be fixed in the very next update, it can't wait until August.
I agree completely with everything in this thread and I appreciate that you posted this interview. It explains a lot even tho I did not like what they had to say. Telling f2p players that they came out with a crystal pack to solve the gear problem is a slap in the face. I'm also thinking it's partly from ignorance because when the interviewer asked about adding more gear to the guild shop one of them thought it was already in there. I also think it's partly a cash grab, they are a business after all and want to make money.
I really wish they would fix this and make the lower gear easier to obtain. In the video we are told it's about resource management blah blah. You can resource manage all you want but when you need 3k mk 3 stun cuffs no amount of managing can help that. The gear isn't just needed at lower levels either, it's needed higher and higher. Like the mk3 droid callers, it's a blue gear so they might assume it's not something we would need a lot of at a higher level. To make a design tech which is raid gear, you need 40 mk3 droid callers. Tell me how this makes any sense?
