The Whale is Facing Extinction

I think whales don't realize the other advantages they have. For a f2p it takes AGES to get and gear characters. I got to the top using siths and I still only have a 6* assassin, 4* ST, 4* DN. They took a lot of effort to gear and I can't even use them on raids. In fact my f2p guild just now is starting to do the hAAT so none of us have GK. Now the meta changed to rex/rebels so I have to start over. Slowly starring baze from his single node and so on. And all the while I have to work on my raid teams, clones and so on.

Guys, you don't have to grind! That's fantastic! Try starting a new account without spending any money and see how you like it.

There're also games that aren't ptw and stil do alright like CS:GO. Rich dudes can have those fancy skins and I can still shoot them in the face in perfect equality :smiley: In any case I do think that another raid or game mode that uses a big roster would be welcome.

And in any case I'm sure that the devs have a close eye on the amount of money they get and how that money gets in (few whles, lot of dolphins, whatever).

I wonder how well the people with all the awnsers in this thread will fare if they were actually running a freemium game.

ATF is somewhat along the lines of DN. remember when he came out? Everyone thought he would be like drennic but hey after a week or so triple cleanse came out

I'm kind of curious what exactly the whales in general and OP specifically think they need or deserve. It seems like it shouldn't be hard for them to get first at payout since they have the ideal meta squads and the best mods. And they don't even really need to finish first for the crystals since, by definition, they buy tons of crystals...so is it just to stroke their egos?

Is it frustration that they don't always hold top 5 for 23 hours until next payout? I doubt real whales are dropping much past 20, so it's NBD to fight back to #1 without a refresh. Even buying an arena refresh should be fine because, again...whales, crystals, etc. So is it the lack of unassailable dominance that they loathe?

Isn't the game primarily more about collecting than really strategizing or having superior battle tactical skill? AI defense is too poor to make strategy THAT important, in the absence of live pvp.

Also, I've always thought of crystals more as a way to save TIME than a direct way to win. You get characters faster/sooner, you can buy gear faster, you can buy ships faster to get zetas faster, you can sim more times for gear to get to g11 faster, you have more characters so you can react to meta shifts faster or do new raids faster (to get raid characters/gear faster).

The new release cadence is nice for f2p and light spenders, admittedly, and it seems weird to think that it could make more money than the old chromium/aurodium model. But maybe they burned whales too many times with G-spy, Zam, Wedge...mediocre characters in between the gems like Rex, Sun Fac, B2 and others I'm probably forgetting.

TL;DR, if it's their primary goal, real whales should be able to take #1 in arena no matter what, so what's the big deal?

I'm not sure if it's been said already in this thread, but I think what would help the whales without having to increase the exclusivity period is to stop making the toons (this started with Baze/Chirrut) so ungodly powerful that you don't need to star them up to be useful/meaningful.

When a 3-star toon is powerful enough to use in arena without consequence, the only incentive for starring them up is for use in an already aged raid, in which they mostly provide only a minimal (if that) benefit.

Make Star-Level meaningful again.

The main problem for me is that so many toons require the same gear (and lots of it at times). Couple that with lousy farming drops and the gear rarely showing up even if I did want to buy it with crystals makes it a very frustrating experience. Gear that does drop regularly is all pieces many of us don't even. If that's the case, at least give us SOMETHING to earn some ally points or other credits with via trade in.

On a similar note, we have received multiple new characters but after the event to earn their initial shards, you can't farm or purchase them either. Same for some of the ships.

I shudder to even think what it is going to be like once ship hardware and G12+ is thrown in the mix.

This sort of frustration has definitely caused me to happily spend my cash elsewhere.

It's fun for new player.. for old player it's all about grinding, farming, and stuff. No fun anymore.

"Publica_Persona;c-1113288" wrote:

"leef;c-1113243" wrote:
I wonder how well the people with all the awnsers in this thread will fare if they were actually running a freemium game.

How do you know some of them aren't or have in the past?!

i don't know, but i'd still like to know the same thing even if they did in the past or are running one currently.

FTP here and it always amazes how deluded whales must be to try to justify such a ridiculous pov. I'm willing to bet 99% of FTP dropped like a rock when Chaze first came out. P2W has had a huge advantage for months and now that they're finally attainable for FTP you complain? You can't be serious. As far as "whales facing extinction", this game is doing great financially. It's either ignorance or intentional misinformation on your part.

I guess you can call me a whale/kraken whatever - but here's my 2 cents on the game since I started back in late Dec (really early Jan was when I started putting in more real time in SWGOH).

Disposable income variance aside, I personally agree that in the beginning it was fun to simply try and figure out the mechanics of the game, who are the best toons to go with each other and work my way up the arena ladder. One of the advantages of being a whale is simply having the ability to pivot and adapt more quickly than my FTP peers. Case in point, I always rode on the back of dark side characters for the first few months, but in the last month I was able to quickly change direction to max out Chaze, Cassian, Jyn, Wiggs etc - and that's always a nice advantage. It's great to be able to get DN, SA, ST quickly. It was fun to be able to get Ashoka maxed out of the gate. But I have to agree that there are only so many advantages of being a whale. A few months ago it was great to have the shiny new toy and run DN + my sith toons to the top of arena. Being able to acquire great mods without extensive farming is also nice. But that advantage goes away over time. Now DN is everywhere and that advantage is gone. As a whale, it's easy to say, oh Zaul is done, now let's just max out Rex quickly and vice versa - but there are still limitations like the omega/zeta ability mat bottleneck that keep whales from going all out when there are so many characters to mix up in the universe.

What I think EA/CG needs to do is if they want to continue to make the game worthwhile for whales or long time FTP players - this game simply needs more to do. Sure, they can pull a doozy and just raise the level caps or mods levels so it lures more whales to buy that competitive advantage, but I frankly think it's just punting over the real issue and that there needs to be more variety and additional game modes to give the whales and long time FTP players more reason to use their toons (and in turn, go and chase or buy whatever to fill their completionist desires).

From my perspective, fleet is getting old. It's taking forever to get the newer ships into the fleet store and into circulation. I invest in my ships just because I want zeta materials. It's not particularly fun for me to be honest, but that's just me.

As for arena, sure it was fun to be untouchable for 4 months on a young shard, but at 85 and after a couple more months after that, it's clear my shard has evolved into a place where most good players (whale or not) can win on offense. The only "whale" thing to do at this point is to either buy more/better mods or maybe gear up some other interesting toons. However, the limited amount of toons that are truly viable in the arena sense kind of makes that moot. Even though I have $ to spend, there's not reason to spend it on a whole new faction (which most whales have anyway) if the end result is the same. Like yesterday a guy ran a full Empire faction for the first time in my top 5 and did quite well. I can see him beating my various arena setups, but at the same time it was easy to beat him back. So there's really no point in me trying to emulate his team (even though I have the same toons leveled up the same way, but with way better mods). There's really no point to spend more if as a whale I already have the stable of meta toons and at the endgame there's no point in buying stuff wholesale if the outcome isn't going to be impacted by defense.

So my feeling is, I agree that this game isn't driven by the whale community (however big or small they are). It's a collective of big, medium and little fish that keep the game funding. 1000 people who spend $5 a day still add up big time and I'd be just as cognizant about making the game relevant for those people as people like me who don't care about dropping more money. That's why I can see why there's probably a reluctance to raise level caps etc. But my belief is if we're going to be in this business quagmire, at the very least take an active role in creating more modes for people to play with.

I'd love to see things like a horde mode when you take a squad as far as you can and get some daily or weekly rewards for it.

It'd be great to have some form of guild arena wars.

Would be nice to maybe have some 3 v 3 modes, because that would mix things up and change the dynamics of those battles.

Or having a different setup where how you position your arena toons will impact how much damage they take. Etc.

I think that'd be a better way to keep the community happy, the cash flowing and allow for the game to continue evolving before things get too stagnant ... and not making the toons that don't make a fundamental change to the way the game plays (since DN) feel like a wash.