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Maybe some of you have seen Ahnaldt101's video about this topic, or have listen to the escape pod cast. Either way in the interview Ea_carrie mentions how having the drop rate of zeta mats at 0-2 is a bad idea. And she went on to talk about this issue like it had already been fixed. And as most of us know the drop rate for zeta mats in that challenge are horrible! I have been playing for a little over a year.

When it comes to zeta farming, I rely almost exclusively on buying them with ship tokens. After all this time I honestly consider any zeta mats gained through the ship challenge to be extra, as the drop rate can be abysmal. I have gone entire weeks's without a single zeta mat dropping. Literally I consider getting one zeta mat lucky, but getting 2 zeta mats extremely rare; like maybe once a month!

The way Ea_carrie talked about the zeta drop rate in the interview, made it sound like she had no idea that the drop rate is still set up like this. Are the devs unaware that this is the case? Does anybody else feel the drop rates are terrible? With the influx of so many new zeta abilities CG really has to come up with a way to handle this inflation. Not to mention they literally cut the Defense of Dathomir event in half!?

If the drop rates on this challenge were fixed so we could at least expect 1 zeta mat per sim, I think it would make a significant difference for most players trying to keep pace with the game.

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over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Thanks for posting this, because I was looking for an in to talk about it. In the third hour of rambling my head off, I said two things that were too close to "not necessarily true" for my comfort that I want to clarify. I usually try to give myself an out, like "I don't recall if that's live, but it should be" but I would totally understand why it seems that way. It's because I spend as much time playing internal builds and having discussions as I do playing the live build. Usually when I'm posting here, I run around and get clarity, but I didn't do that because we recorded over the weekend, and I should have fact checked the following day and asked for an edit but forgot.

So we started investigating where that ended up, we DID end up taking 0-2 off things that you never saw, so that doesn't get me any brownie points. And so I sincerely apologize for not being clear when I should have checked or at least followed up and requested we edit out my babbling nonsense. The reality is, I agree with the sentiment in this case VERY strongly, so we are going to make a change to that drop rate and probably fix it at 1. Caveat: Have not run all the numbers yet, so while this is still very much my desire and I think we can do it, we need to cross a few t's and dot a few i's. But unlike other caveats, if we do this, we'll do it as soon as humanly possible and post about it when we've confirmed.

The "other thing" btw is that I was talking about us reordering the shop tabs, and that was a task in TU16 polish which just ended, but I confirmed today it did not get in, because it causes a world of hurt for players leveling up without additional tech work. So the shops will still be in the bad order and we are looking to see what we can do to reduce friction for elder players without making new players' lives painful.

over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Originally posted by Gavstarr

With the way things are setup. It doesn't surprise me that the way Devs and player see data and drop rates is different.

Dev sees it from a total player pool perspective. They see 33% of the player base receiving zeta drops from a player base in the millions.

What they don't see is you, you who sees yourself as the individual player (being that 66%) that miss out, again, again, Again, AGain, AGAin, AGAIn, and AGAIN!!!!

This is a really good description of the tendencies we fall into in development. In many cases we walk through the player experience, either in mockup/wireframe or build where we sit there and simulate what it looks like, and this is where employees playing the game really helps (and the fact that we have many different player types - John Salera would not rest about the Ewoks until we beefed them up, because he's completely F2P and that's his main squad).

That's also why my brain shortcircuited in the meeting because you go "I definitely saw that somewhere, I remember we changed that, where did that change".

And also sometimes when we're rushed we skip the player perception step and rely on the math. And that's where we get our "Luck is probability taking personally" problems. We need to do better about touch and feel and experience... and yes, in some cases, drop rates too.

over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Perfectly described. Apologies for not making it more user friendly! TU16 is the (very) soon update.

over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Originally posted by CrashandCern

Mostly software/game development talk:

Internal build: The version of the game they are currently testing and debugging.

Live build: The version we play.

"crossing the t's and dotting the i's": Just an idiom meaning you need to check everything carefully

0-2: currently between 0 and 2 zetas drop (not sure what the other thing she referred to

shop tabs: She talked about reordering the shop tabs so the ones you go to more often are together

TU16 polish: I think TU16 means the 16th major release of the game (where you need to install an update). Polish meaning the last few bits before submitting the new version to the app store

reduce friction: stuff that makes the game slower and more obnoxious to play for no good reason (here scrolling between shop tabs all the time)

hope that helps

Perfectly described. Apologies for not making it more user friendly! TU16 is the (very) soon update.

over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Originally posted by DevilsTreasure

Let’s make this the most upvoted post to balance the hate CG crumb caught for his “compensation” post. This is much better news, and also feels much more genuine and not as much a last minute back peddle.

Ugh, I did not do that on purpose. Crumb was delivering the news that was the reality of how things are that you didn't like, but were 100% my fault, and then I get to come in here after we've discussed everyone's concerns and talk about all my hopes and dreams and change things willy nilly. He's constantly advocating for the community in meetings, so feel free to direct your hate at me still.

over 5 years ago - /u/EACarrie - Direct link

Originally posted by Raiderhater52

Carrie, is the GA/TW mod glitch being fixed in the upcoming title update as previously stated?

I've seen many times and have recorded instances where the speeds of toons are not working correctly and I believe it to be different than the glitch/exploit that's been previously brought up.

Yup, we have had this fix done for a couple months, TMoney from Operation Metaverse brought it to us so we could address it without it being out in the public, and for that I'm super grateful. Glad the fix is going live soon though. People will have to l2p. :)