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CG_Cyanides
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Hello Holotable Heroes,
With the release of Gear XII Finishers, I wanted to talk about how we plan on increasing the rate at which players will be able to earn Gear XII and how we want to increase the agency around Gear XII.
Gear XII Sources
We added some Gear XII Salvage to Light and Dark Side Nodes and the Shard Store so that players can have better choice around which Gear XII Salvage they wanted to farm. One thing we understand is that there is currently no real agency around how players can acquire Gear XII+ though. Right now, players try to finish in the top 10 in the Sith Raid, and that’s really it. We want to allow players to have more agency on how they acquire Gear XII+ and here are some of the ways that we are going to be doing it with the release of Grand Arena Championships and the Geonosis Territory Battle.
There are more changes we are going to make about agency around Gear XII, and we will be announcing these changes in the coming weeks. While we can’t talk about what those things are right now, they all live in the space of giving you opportunities to get the gear from choices you make, such as where to farm or how to use your currencies.
Pre-Gear XII Sources
Whenever we release a new gear tier, the objective is to try to ease prior gear tier as well. When we originally launched Gear XII, we released the Light Side Hoth Territory Battles. Hoth Territory Battles rewarded non-Gear XII as well as non-Gear XII being available for Guild Event Tokens.
Even though we did increase the inflow of pre-Gear XII (below is a graph with some data on this using Mk 3 Carbanti salvage), we did this in a manner that we consider “passive.” When we use passive it means that players acquire these pieces from sources that don’t cost energy. This can be things like the Territory Battles Prize Box, Raid Rewards, Challenges, Shipments, etc.
(I know it’s Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Salvage, but that is just way too long to type each time)
Some of the variation comes from us running different events or doing things like double drops that we just recently did. I’d love to put the real numbers on here, but for many reasons, I can’t.
I know that this is becoming a bit of a diatribe, but bear with me. My personal thought is that for players (including myself) it doesn’t feel like we actually increased the amount of Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage earned because we did this all passively. I tend to just open up my inbox message and press claim for my rewards, so I am guilty of not paying full attention to these passive sources, but I for sure am paying attention when I am spending 120 energy on Dark Side 6-G Normal to farm Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage. If I get bad luck spending that 120 energy, that doesn’t feel good even though I may have just received 10 Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage from the Sith Raid rewards I just claimed.
Since we don’t change drop rates (even though players won’t believe me; I see you r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes), I don’t think we solved the “feel” of the day-to-day gear grind. We did this mathematically (which is all I do), but the feel is a different story.
Ok, so what do we do about this. Spending energy to farm gear is core to SWGOH, and we don’t have any plans on changing that. However, what we would like to do is look at adding more deterministic ways of acquiring gear. This is why we tend to lean on new currencies and shipments when releasing new features because players can purchase the specific gear they need at a predetermined quantity (rather than the randomness from spending energy). Hence the ever increasing store UI, which we are also looking into addressing the order of operations for but couldn’t get the tech finalized for this release.
Get to the Point Cyanides
With all of my rambling done, we are adding more of this type of gear to the Championship Store with the launch of Grand Arena Championships which will increase the amount of gear players earn each week.
As I mentioned before, we are also adding more agency-based inflows for Gear 12+ which we will announce when we can give you more details. Before we roll out these additional inflows, we are addressing one of the biggest “feel” based changes we can make which is to change the zeta drops from the Ship Ability Materials Challenge rewards from 0-2 to a guaranteed 1 (IE removing the 0 or 2 option). We've heard you loud and clear that it feels bad to get 0 zetas as a reward. We're removing the 0 and 2 cases to ensure a better player experience.
And now back to the spreadsheets…
-CG_Cyanides
With the release of Gear XII Finishers, I wanted to talk about how we plan on increasing the rate at which players will be able to earn Gear XII and how we want to increase the agency around Gear XII.
Gear XII Sources
We added some Gear XII Salvage to Light and Dark Side Nodes and the Shard Store so that players can have better choice around which Gear XII Salvage they wanted to farm. One thing we understand is that there is currently no real agency around how players can acquire Gear XII+ though. Right now, players try to finish in the top 10 in the Sith Raid, and that’s really it. We want to allow players to have more agency on how they acquire Gear XII+ and here are some of the ways that we are going to be doing it with the release of Grand Arena Championships and the Geonosis Territory Battle.
- (Grand Arena) Championship Store - Gear XII+ will be purchasable in the new Championship Store using the new Championship Tokens.
- Geonosian Territory Battles Prize Box - The Geonosian Territory Battles Mystery Box will reward (along with other items) both current Gear XII+ and the new Gear XII Finisher Prototypes.
- Geonosian Territory Battles Mk II Guild Event Tokens - Gear XII+ will be available with the new Mk II Guild Event Tokens earned from Geonosian Territory Battles.
- Gear XII Finisher Prototypes will be farmable - We will be adding the new Gear XII Finisher Prototypes to existing PvE Nodes with the release of the Geonosian Territory Battle. These prototypes are part of the recipes needed to complete the Gear XII Finisher piece.
There are more changes we are going to make about agency around Gear XII, and we will be announcing these changes in the coming weeks. While we can’t talk about what those things are right now, they all live in the space of giving you opportunities to get the gear from choices you make, such as where to farm or how to use your currencies.
Pre-Gear XII Sources
Whenever we release a new gear tier, the objective is to try to ease prior gear tier as well. When we originally launched Gear XII, we released the Light Side Hoth Territory Battles. Hoth Territory Battles rewarded non-Gear XII as well as non-Gear XII being available for Guild Event Tokens.
Even though we did increase the inflow of pre-Gear XII (below is a graph with some data on this using Mk 3 Carbanti salvage), we did this in a manner that we consider “passive.” When we use passive it means that players acquire these pieces from sources that don’t cost energy. This can be things like the Territory Battles Prize Box, Raid Rewards, Challenges, Shipments, etc.
(I know it’s Mk 3 Carbanti Sensor Array Salvage, but that is just way too long to type each time)
Some of the variation comes from us running different events or doing things like double drops that we just recently did. I’d love to put the real numbers on here, but for many reasons, I can’t.
I know that this is becoming a bit of a diatribe, but bear with me. My personal thought is that for players (including myself) it doesn’t feel like we actually increased the amount of Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage earned because we did this all passively. I tend to just open up my inbox message and press claim for my rewards, so I am guilty of not paying full attention to these passive sources, but I for sure am paying attention when I am spending 120 energy on Dark Side 6-G Normal to farm Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage. If I get bad luck spending that 120 energy, that doesn’t feel good even though I may have just received 10 Mk 3 Carbanti Salvage from the Sith Raid rewards I just claimed.
Since we don’t change drop rates (even though players won’t believe me; I see you r/SWGalaxyOfHeroes), I don’t think we solved the “feel” of the day-to-day gear grind. We did this mathematically (which is all I do), but the feel is a different story.
Ok, so what do we do about this. Spending energy to farm gear is core to SWGOH, and we don’t have any plans on changing that. However, what we would like to do is look at adding more deterministic ways of acquiring gear. This is why we tend to lean on new currencies and shipments when releasing new features because players can purchase the specific gear they need at a predetermined quantity (rather than the randomness from spending energy). Hence the ever increasing store UI, which we are also looking into addressing the order of operations for but couldn’t get the tech finalized for this release.
Get to the Point Cyanides
With all of my rambling done, we are adding more of this type of gear to the Championship Store with the launch of Grand Arena Championships which will increase the amount of gear players earn each week.
As I mentioned before, we are also adding more agency-based inflows for Gear 12+ which we will announce when we can give you more details. Before we roll out these additional inflows, we are addressing one of the biggest “feel” based changes we can make which is to change the zeta drops from the Ship Ability Materials Challenge rewards from 0-2 to a guaranteed 1 (IE removing the 0 or 2 option). We've heard you loud and clear that it feels bad to get 0 zetas as a reward. We're removing the 0 and 2 cases to ensure a better player experience.
And now back to the spreadsheets…
-CG_Cyanides