Forum Discussion

2 years ago

Total time spent daily

The time you need to spend on the game daily to keep up with everything has gone up significantly over the last year.

A few points on where this is coming from:
Top 10 TW competitive guild
We did a survey for our members and there is a strong correllation between people who "only" spend 3+ hours daily on the game and those that struggle to keep up with new metas and the ever repeating daily chores that TB and Conquest are.

Compared to a year ago the total time spent on the game has gone up dramatically.

Sure playing TW competitive has always been a time sink (members voted to spend anywhere from 2 to 5+ hrs), especially for officers. But nowadays you can't just spend half an hour and auto-pilot your daily missions.

If you're somewhat focussed, this is roughly how much time you spend aside of TW:
TB: 1-2 hrs per phase
GAC 5v5: 1 hour per attack phase
GAC 3v3: 1.5 hrs per attack phase
Conquest with 3x50 refreshes: 1 hr
Conquest with 3x100 refreshes: 1.5 - 2 hrs (if you are lucky and get Deadly Catalyst, you can get down further)
Raids: 15-20 min for HSITH, 15 min for CPit (many here choose to not spend time on this)
Daily effords - mod farming, character farming, events, fleet arena climb: 30min to 1 hr

Remodding for meta changes: 4+ hrs

On top of that comes the time you need to spend to sort of keep up with whats going on.

Most annoying of it all: Conquest.
It is not just the completely stupid feats like "40 battles without having a leader in the leader slot", but it does not stop there. To be TW competitive you at least have to do 3x50 refreshes that after a few days land on value nodes.
People in the top 5 pay others to do their conquest.
It just does not feel rewarding to do the same shit over and over again.

The solution to that is also not to change enemies or introduce new data discs.

Example:
3x50 conquest energy = 18 battles + 12 that you get from daily energy = 30 battles
3x100 = 48 battles daily
Beating Sector 4 Tuskens

But to not only complain here a few suggestions on how to reduce the time sink:
Conquest:
No bullshit feats => fights without a leader, 50x Masters Training, ...
Make only feats like:
40 battles with Sith are fine (factions that have more than one team)
20 battles with factions that have one team
And if you force characters in feats, then use combinations that make sense.

After reaching Red Crate - make all value nodes simmable.
Yes Stamina is hard to implement into a simmable thing, but isn't stamina really there to force you into a strategy for Red box? After you reached red box, just sim and burn whatever energy you want into value nodes.

TB:
Rework difficulty. First planets are some of the hardest, while some later planets feel like "if you bring a team you won"
TB right now is another big time sink, but it would be a lot less upsetting if you're not watching SEE shock Nightsisters for 10 minutes straight on Dathomir.

GAC:
With the game overwhelming players right now, 3v3 GAC is bad. You have to learn a whole new set of counters and the knowledge is barely transferable. Having just 5v5 GAC would help people get along better with competitive 5v5 fights. Trying to also digg into 3v3 at the same time spreads players even thinner.

Datacrons:
The biggest struggle are the meta changes. Some people know counters by knowing all involved kits and the interactions. Though for most - its experience with the same or similar counters and performing them over and over again. Why that? You made character kits super complex.

Now if you introduce mechanics and stats that change the 30-40 non-trivial counters every 2 months and force those that are no TW Officers to know every detail of all kits involved in these counters, then that is overwhelming.
The way it is now there are a dozen new counters just being viable because have ridiculous stats like 400% defense / armor.

Datacrons were moving in the right direction of not having completely ridiculous mechanics that are gated behind rigged RNG (Rey - Heir to the Jedi DC).
The mechanics of Set 6 & 7 are pretty fine. No broken TM loop side team that suddenly kills all GLs etc.
Thanks for 2 Sets of good mechanics!

The stats on the other hand are pretty overpowered still. Just half the impact they have now will still engage players enough.

feedback

26 Replies

Gifford_Alex
2 years ago
How much time people spend playing is somewhat down to the individual. I personally don't spend anything like the sort of time set out above.

Don't have the time, or the inclination.
Scruminator
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
4 hours for remodding? I mean if that’s how you play the game, but man that sounds like one heckuva time sink. You could just save that time by having modsets or just keeping mods on characters?
Persimius
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
According to screen time, during the first week of Conquest, my average screen time is 2 hours. Cuts in half during the 2nd week. Much of that time is spent just scrolling around, not actually playing.
templarphoenix
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
Even i am the comander i spent like 1hr at most a day (on tw and gac attack phase). Usually just get up, check everything and then close the app.
zaljko_petrescu
New Spectator
2 years ago
Will agree that when conquest, TB, TW are all going on at once, the amount of time needed to be in game (at least, if you're competitive in any sense) is getting ridiculous.

As a way to solve the problem, I'd be more than happy to see conquest go away :)

Then again, CG knows the vast majority of the player base despises conquest, so they're just going to keep doubling down on the game mode while introducing ever more expensive packs so that people just pay to skip the nonsense ..
Uhdea
Seasoned Veteran
2 years ago
"DarjeloSalas;c-2414383" wrote:
"zaljko_petrescu;c-2414377" wrote:
Will agree that when conquest, TB, TW are all going on at once, the amount of time needed to be in game (at least, if you're competitive in any sense) is getting ridiculous.

As a way to solve the problem, I'd be more than happy to see conquest go away :)

Then again, CG knows the vast majority of the player base despises conquest, so they're just going to keep doubling down on the game mode while introducing ever more expensive packs so that people just pay to skip the nonsense ..

I do agree that time spent in game can be a problem - but I can’t remember a time when TB, Conquest and TW were all going at once.

That first week of conquest clashing with TB is awful. I’d love to see TB knocked back a week.

I think he meant GAC
Persimius
Seasoned Ace
2 years ago
"KellinDrexel;c-2414400" wrote:
"Gawejn;c-2414399" wrote:
7 minutes takes to do dailies. I dont climb in arena fleet. I dont care about gac so my defense is always the same. If you spent like 5 h of playing means you dont know what to do with your life and you are addicted to game. Maybe therapy would give you right perspective..

Are you in a Top 10 competitive guild?

What a weird question.
Lucaefor
2 years ago
"Chores" was definitely the right word, it feels more like work playing swgoh these days and it isn't enjoyable for most. All guilds across the board are struggling with player retention, just this week we had another 9+ mill Gp player quit the game, his reasons for doing so were burnout from the grind (conquest) and he couldn't deal with it anymore.
It's ironic because the devs are just as much in a mousewheel as the players are. Newcomers to the game have everything to explore whereas older players constantly need a new injection of content to keep them invested.
The concept of absorbing the players time via grinding isn't new. It isn't that more of something means more fun, it's all about not having enough time to play another game and take their money with them.
So honestly the way the game has gone in the last year plus most likely isn't the developers fault, the executives on the financial side most likely decided it's direction.
But they do need to redress the situation because the vast majority of people who have played the game for a long time are burning out; what they are trying to do to retain their customer base isn't working.
tvsfrink
2 years ago
"BubbaFett;c-2414403" wrote:
"KellinDrexel;c-2414400" wrote:
"Gawejn;c-2414399" wrote:
7 minutes takes to do dailies. I dont climb in arena fleet. I dont care about gac so my defense is always the same. If you spent like 5 h of playing means you dont know what to do with your life and you are addicted to game. Maybe therapy would give you right perspective..

Are you in a Top 10 competitive guild?

As StarSon said above... weird question, and even if he was that is entirely by choice and encompasses less than 1% of the player base...

Assuming that you are inferring that these guilds make you spend the time outlined in OP's post, well then I still think it's exaggerated...

To be faaiiiiiiirrrrrrr it's not as weird as the statement that people who play the game a lot have nothing else to do and need therapy.
Bruellhusten1
2 years ago
"lucaefor;c-2414409" wrote:

The concept of absorbing the players time via grinding isn't new. It isn't that more of something means more fun, it's all about not having enough time to play another game and take their money with them.

Exactly. And a bit of a grind - lets say for red box in conquest - is fine, if its not all the way stupid.
Just the total time needed is too high right now. That one week where we have GAC, Conquest and TW is brutal.

"BubbaFett;c-2414303" wrote:
I have no idea where you get these numbers from.... 4 hours remodding?.... 2 hours per TB phase?

4 hrs for a big remod that happens with every bigger meta change. That may differ a lot for players. If you don't play competitively, you just don't care. But if 10 characters suddenly need different mods - like with a new DC chapter coming out, then you can remod half your roster.
With Hotutils auto remod stuff it is quicker for sure, but you also won't reach the same level of quality compared compared to a skilled player doing it by hand.

1-2 hrs per TB phase, roughly. Closer to 1 than to 2.

These numbers are taken from a survey we recently had. It did not cover all these times though, so some are my own or estimates.

"Salatious_Scrum;c-2414309" wrote:
4 hours for remodding? I mean if that’s how you play the game, but man that sounds like one heckuva time sink. You could just save that time by having modsets or just keeping mods on characters?

Thats the thing - highly competitive and keeping mods the same through meta changes just does not fly.
If your officers decide that LV with a 380 speed MG, 340 speed Thrawn and 320 Speed DV is what's allowing you to place LV w/o Maul on defense for the next 2 months, then you will make that mod change. And those speeds likely impact a lot of other characters.

If they identify 10 more of these changes.. like "L3 is going with Rey, mod her for max health", "GI needs to be faster than 7th, while 7th and 5th still stay above 350"
then that is a major timesink to make all that happen AND still keep the rest of your toons/teams modded properly.
This time efford has not been that high without DCs.

"Gawejn;c-2414399" wrote:
7 minutes takes to do dailies. I dont climb in arena fleet. I dont care about gac so my defense is always the same. If you spent like 5 h of playing means you dont know what to do with your life and you are addicted to game. Maybe therapy would give you right perspective..

Thats the proper description of a TW officer in a competitive guild nowadays :smile:
And it has not been that bad.

___

The point I try to make is: almost all changes in the last year have added on top of the time demand.
TB is now 15 battles instead of 5, Conquest takes twice as much time, because 3x50 conquest energy refreshes is what you need to properly play with DCs.

Not saying TB sucks, but give us a time relief. Conquest value node farming simmable would be that. And if you want to monetize it: Make it immediately simmable with your big pass and for the others after reaching red box.