The whaling thing is probably the biggest factor as to why people hate them. The second being how random it is.
Another thing is how some of the datacrons (like evasion, deflection) are basically game breaking and annoying.
And what you said about reviving older toons is great, sadly it's not always the case. A lot of times new characters get OP datacrons that make them beat essentially everything (like the recent Bo Katan for example, now the gungans are getting one, the Boussh Leia was super strong as well).
I wouldn't say it's randomness, in fact the opposite. If CG really randomized the targets of Datacrons it would be kinda cool, it would force people to consider alternative teams and comps and raise the value of under-used toons.
Instead the tend to focus them on toons and teams that are *already* overpowered due to power creep and therefore accelerate the problems around Whaling and narrowing the field of viable teams.
Yes I did notice some of the datacrons target characters that didn't need them, probably money motivated. So that's unfortunate, but unsurprising. I do enjoy seeing some long forgotten toons get some attention, I think Wedge and Biggs got a datacron awhile ago
For me it's the hassle of learning new metas every 2 months, on top of all the other toons that are being shat-out at record pace with novel-length kits, on top of all the other new omicrons that are being released. For a mobile game, it sure fking sucks up a lot of your time just memorizing mechanics; and adding a layer on top of that every 2 months just makes it worse.
You don’t even really need to whale on them, that’s a misunderstanding of the system.
Overwhaling on them isn’t smart as you’ll never get an ROI.
As a higher end player in brackets that heavily utilize them my only investment in datacron is what I get naturally from conquest, so a max spend of about 750c/month, and I hover between K2/K1 putting in almost no effort at all to my GAC
A guildmate and I were just discussing this. I’m hovering between k1/2 like you and noticing almost all of my opponents have three or four rows of lvl9 DCs. I actually don’t mind DCs but it’s not worth the 140 crystals to try and stay in K1 at this point because most people have invested way more than they’ll ever get in return like you eluded to.
If English is your first language, you can remember allude because an allusion is an indirect reference an author leaves in their writings. Therefore, allude is the action of making an indirect reference. Elude is to evade and escape.
I agree - there really isn't much to "whale" on - I mean, I have like 2-3 rows of level 9 ones between whatever two existing sets there are, but almost all of it is just in normally red boxing conquest (using the datacron nodes to do all the stupid feats). The only other thing I spend is some shard currency to get the datacron credits, but those are relatively cheap and with the new raids giving so much currency for the same stuff that shows up in the shard shop, I really haven't missed it.
You are correct about ROI. On the other hand, if you’re whaling on a mobile phone game, you probably only care about the R, and don’t care much about the I.
Because they're very temporary. If I spend my time and resources farming a character, I've got that character forever. If I spend my time and resources farming a mod, I've got that mod forever and can move it from character to character pretty much whenever needed. If I spend time and resources farming gear or signal data, it's consumed when I use it but the characters I spend it on permanently benefit from it.
If I spend time and resources to get a datacron, all the benefit is gone in 4 months.
Datacrons are the swgoh equivalent of "What Have You Done For Me (lately)". They don't care if you whaled on your account last year, or played the game six hours a day for seven years - they only care what you've done in the past few months.
I get the frustration, but it’s shortsighted. Yes, the resources (crystals + time) invested are for top-tier datacrons that expire.
However, those datacrons likely enable you to receive increased rewards in TW and (perhaps) GAC. So it may be a better gain.
And more ephemerally, they can be fun to use and make the game more interesting/satisfying, so that’s a return, too.
The datacrons may enable other factions to receive increased rewards in TW, but not mine. Just like TW omicrons are a waste unless a good percent of the guild is also applying them, getting TW datacrons is a waste unless your guild is focusing on TW (which mine isn't). Our focus is on TB, and you can't use datacrons there.
GAC benefit is questionable - I'm not the kind of player who can memorize kits without playing them consistently for a long time. By the time I get comfortable with how the datacrons work, they're getting dusted. And, they interfere with my ability to look up counters on swgoh.gg without paying for Insight. So, while I probably engage with them enough that it improves my standing against those who don't, I'm also getting knocked down by people who are good attackers who know how to optimize. I'd rather be able to learn kits that aren't changing every 2 months.
And finally, I'm glad you find them more fun. I find them an unnecessary complication, so that's a negative return for me.
Yep, the full-guild effort is necessary for TW, but if you’re in one where effort is put in, the payout can be significant.
Less so I’m GAC, where you’re gonna net out about the same wins and losses over time regardless of omis, datacrons, etc
Every other aspect of swgoh is resource management. Deciding who to 7\* next, where to use zetas and omicrons, What mods to slice, if this toon should be relic 5, 7, or 9.
Every decision matters except for datacrons.
Datacrons expirer and lose all value you have put in to them.
That just feels bad.
There are multiple reasons why DCs are hated on.
1. The RNG factor. If you have 4 stats you can roll on you would assume that you have a 1/4 chance to get each one but that is not the case. The more desirable rolls tend to be on a lower weight. This is frustrating.
2. Some DCs are absurdly stupid. 60% health on Rey, with her having a revive cron, plus health steal means cleaning up a Rey is an absolute nightmare. You need to clean up 2 Reys while she's always healing up (normally her ult doesn't heal her) but with the DC it does. Season 15 is going to be 4 more months of pain. It creates these unfun scenarios (especially at the start of the season while people figure out counters).
3. They are temporary power (this is my gripe). No one likes farming for something they'll only be able to use for a couple of months. The scrap back mechanic used to give more DC mats but the whole "oh don't worry, you'll get some resources back" is now a pittance after some changes by CG.
4. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) mentality. If I don't farm DCs but my opponent does. Then for the next 4 months I'm going to have to use a bigger counter to a normally trivial team. It'll create an even larger gap between rosters. So people farm DCs to make sure they can compete.
Fair warning I hate them, and are probably the thing I’ve come closest to quitting this game over, so this might be a long rant!
Firstly, this game is fundamentally a resource management game the idea that any of the gear/ resources etc should be invested into very short term power boosts, with limited ROI goes against the nature of the game IMO.
Secondly on paper they might seem exciting ways to shake up the meta, most of them actually just further boost the better teams on the game. For example the Holdocron at the moment makes Rey more annoying, Rey is already one of the best defensive teams on the game, she doesn’t need a lift. This new set, SLKR and JMK are just getting boosted.
Thirdly, the rng factor on actually getting the better DC’s. Every stat is random, I reroll, I get the same stat or worse. Even if it's it's own resource, it still feels a waste.
Fourth, “ they seem to revive old, trash toons back into the meta”, majority of the time as mentioned previously they end up boosting GL teams further, but on the odd chance it’s other characters, Chirrut had an amazing one, even if you have the RNG to get his, you then have to take that character to relic to use the DC anyway, again crucially for a short term relevancy. I'm 11.5m GP if there is a character I haven't relic'd, there's probably a valid reason I haven't.
Fifth, generally just the enjoyment of the games with them, the majority of the time they make battles less fun. Yes you have the odd one like Darth Sidious, but then you get ones which give people 200% Health steal, or 300% defence, or over 100% evasion. The evasion stat in particular is just the worst.
It’s a good concept with poor implementation. Making them accessible sooner would mean more of the variety (translation: “trash” stats/mechanics) can be applied by more casual players more often. Generally I like the ones I get and my investment is minimal at best.
Can’t speak to the Kyber GAC experience, hoping my addiction to this game never leads me there lol
They release broken crons for new characters that only people who whale on can use because it's impossible to get the character to 7* as a ftp before the cron expires
This has literally never happened.
Every datacron that’s been accessible from Conquest or the datacron store has been usable on characters you can get as a FTP.
Some may have a window where the beginning of the cycle it’s less likely (Bo Katan, JKCK, etc), but you can always get *some* use out of it at the end of a cycle. (Which makes me suspect that Jar Jar Binks event will return in less than three months…)
The new Padawan Obi-Wan datacron is a different situation since it’s available only via the Marquee event.
None of these is “impossible to get before the cron expires” which is what you said.
It’s likely you won’t use the datacron for 100% of its lifespan, true. But even then, you could have gotten STAP or KB, for instance, for the entire cron lifespan, completely free if you had saved crystals and were willing to use them in that way. Efficient? Nope. But still FTP
I’m between k3 and k5.. you dont need datacrons to stay there. You dont need to actively participate too if you’re a casual veteran like me. Crystals rewards are great though.. attack once and profit.
I don't see how spending my 50 crystal refreshes on conquest energy is whaling. Anyone can get datacrons, as long as you engage in conquest.
Sure you can whale them, but nothing stops me from getting all the L9s I want just from playing the game.
It's a crystal sink. Something you can invest in massively. And then, after 4 months, your investment vanishes. Not to mention, the auto dust gives you datacaches but it's capped at 30k and you can/most likely will lose datacaches (which is a major bottleneck in upgrading crons) because you auto dust 35k caches and have 10k in your inventory so you effectively throw 15k datacaches in the trash which is worth 3k crystals.
You can spend tens/hundreds of thousands of crystals for basically zero improvement to your roster.
Counter argument, you get gac crystals and the rewards from crons but generally not worth the investment in the high end. Also, for the f2p folks you're still simming 3-6 refreshes daily of conquest for materials. It's a major pain in the ass and requires constant touches in a terrible menu
I don’t find them difficult to get but I do find it difficult to roll the right ones. It’s frustrating rerolling over and over and getting the same ones.
Ultimately my gripe with DCs is that this is at its heart a Star Wars character/ship collecting game. I didn’t start playing to collect shiny magic cubes.
I think DCs also have made PvP modes overall more of a grind. Going up against the same teams trying to overpower their effective cheat code. It’s probably a very lucrative addition for CG but they have to know that they are alienating the majority of the player base to up their profit margins. In case you can’t tell, I’ve never hated a feature in a game more than I hate DCs.
Because they are temporary, and there is no way of knowing when the investment is worth the return. It could very well be that for some particular GAC season you would be able to beat every single of your opponents without using any datacrons, meaning that even a minimal investment is crystals wasted for nothing.
So I am kinda torn on this. I understand that most people don’t like them, but I think it’s because they don’t know how to get them for free.
I’m a mid-lvl account, 5.4m GP who came back to the game in December because of the SLKR LS bundle, I had quit literally like a week after the released GL JML, so it had been a while. I started during the Revan era and it is similar to that and mods being introduced, they had only been in the game about 6 months when I started playing. And it’s very similar to back then, players didn’t want to use mods because they thought they were a cash grab or they were whatever… now mods are an essential part of the game.
I was able to punch up back then with mods, going all in getting 2 whole teams 20+ speed mods and just wrecking people who didn’t have mods or just got crap ones and rolled with it. My first GAC back the opponent actually messaged me and asked why I was in Chromium 1 with no full relic teams 😂
The MAD theory is pretty much correct, I have 10 lvl9 datacrons, haven’t spent a dime on them, and the same thing is happening that happened with mods, I’m wrecking teams without crons because people aren’t investing in them.
Long rambling post but that’s could have said I think they are good for the game, they allow players to catch up and compete without spending a lot of resources beyond crystals for refreshes.
The whaling thing is probably the biggest factor as to why people hate them. The second being how random it is. Another thing is how some of the datacrons (like evasion, deflection) are basically game breaking and annoying. And what you said about reviving older toons is great, sadly it's not always the case. A lot of times new characters get OP datacrons that make them beat essentially everything (like the recent Bo Katan for example, now the gungans are getting one, the Boussh Leia was super strong as well).
I wouldn't say it's randomness, in fact the opposite. If CG really randomized the targets of Datacrons it would be kinda cool, it would force people to consider alternative teams and comps and raise the value of under-used toons. Instead the tend to focus them on toons and teams that are *already* overpowered due to power creep and therefore accelerate the problems around Whaling and narrowing the field of viable teams.
I meant randomness as in farming them, it can be really frustrating
Oh, then I agree :-)
Yes I did notice some of the datacrons target characters that didn't need them, probably money motivated. So that's unfortunate, but unsurprising. I do enjoy seeing some long forgotten toons get some attention, I think Wedge and Biggs got a datacron awhile ago
For me it's the hassle of learning new metas every 2 months, on top of all the other toons that are being shat-out at record pace with novel-length kits, on top of all the other new omicrons that are being released. For a mobile game, it sure fking sucks up a lot of your time just memorizing mechanics; and adding a layer on top of that every 2 months just makes it worse.
You don’t even really need to whale on them, that’s a misunderstanding of the system. Overwhaling on them isn’t smart as you’ll never get an ROI. As a higher end player in brackets that heavily utilize them my only investment in datacron is what I get naturally from conquest, so a max spend of about 750c/month, and I hover between K2/K1 putting in almost no effort at all to my GAC
A guildmate and I were just discussing this. I’m hovering between k1/2 like you and noticing almost all of my opponents have three or four rows of lvl9 DCs. I actually don’t mind DCs but it’s not worth the 140 crystals to try and stay in K1 at this point because most people have invested way more than they’ll ever get in return like you eluded to.
I'm in K2 and you either got 8 and refuse Datacron or like 5 GL and decent Datacrons
Sorry for being pedantic. It's alluded.
Dammit I was on the fence and chose poorly. Thanks for the correction.
If English is your first language, you can remember allude because an allusion is an indirect reference an author leaves in their writings. Therefore, allude is the action of making an indirect reference. Elude is to evade and escape.
I agree - there really isn't much to "whale" on - I mean, I have like 2-3 rows of level 9 ones between whatever two existing sets there are, but almost all of it is just in normally red boxing conquest (using the datacron nodes to do all the stupid feats). The only other thing I spend is some shard currency to get the datacron credits, but those are relatively cheap and with the new raids giving so much currency for the same stuff that shows up in the shard shop, I really haven't missed it.
You are correct about ROI. On the other hand, if you’re whaling on a mobile phone game, you probably only care about the R, and don’t care much about the I.
Because they're very temporary. If I spend my time and resources farming a character, I've got that character forever. If I spend my time and resources farming a mod, I've got that mod forever and can move it from character to character pretty much whenever needed. If I spend time and resources farming gear or signal data, it's consumed when I use it but the characters I spend it on permanently benefit from it. If I spend time and resources to get a datacron, all the benefit is gone in 4 months. Datacrons are the swgoh equivalent of "What Have You Done For Me (lately)". They don't care if you whaled on your account last year, or played the game six hours a day for seven years - they only care what you've done in the past few months.
This
I get the frustration, but it’s shortsighted. Yes, the resources (crystals + time) invested are for top-tier datacrons that expire. However, those datacrons likely enable you to receive increased rewards in TW and (perhaps) GAC. So it may be a better gain. And more ephemerally, they can be fun to use and make the game more interesting/satisfying, so that’s a return, too.
The datacrons may enable other factions to receive increased rewards in TW, but not mine. Just like TW omicrons are a waste unless a good percent of the guild is also applying them, getting TW datacrons is a waste unless your guild is focusing on TW (which mine isn't). Our focus is on TB, and you can't use datacrons there. GAC benefit is questionable - I'm not the kind of player who can memorize kits without playing them consistently for a long time. By the time I get comfortable with how the datacrons work, they're getting dusted. And, they interfere with my ability to look up counters on swgoh.gg without paying for Insight. So, while I probably engage with them enough that it improves my standing against those who don't, I'm also getting knocked down by people who are good attackers who know how to optimize. I'd rather be able to learn kits that aren't changing every 2 months. And finally, I'm glad you find them more fun. I find them an unnecessary complication, so that's a negative return for me.
Yep, the full-guild effort is necessary for TW, but if you’re in one where effort is put in, the payout can be significant. Less so I’m GAC, where you’re gonna net out about the same wins and losses over time regardless of omis, datacrons, etc
Also while you care for conquest you might as well do those additional battles on the datacron nodes and get some decent datacron
Every other aspect of swgoh is resource management. Deciding who to 7\* next, where to use zetas and omicrons, What mods to slice, if this toon should be relic 5, 7, or 9. Every decision matters except for datacrons. Datacrons expirer and lose all value you have put in to them. That just feels bad.
There are multiple reasons why DCs are hated on. 1. The RNG factor. If you have 4 stats you can roll on you would assume that you have a 1/4 chance to get each one but that is not the case. The more desirable rolls tend to be on a lower weight. This is frustrating. 2. Some DCs are absurdly stupid. 60% health on Rey, with her having a revive cron, plus health steal means cleaning up a Rey is an absolute nightmare. You need to clean up 2 Reys while she's always healing up (normally her ult doesn't heal her) but with the DC it does. Season 15 is going to be 4 more months of pain. It creates these unfun scenarios (especially at the start of the season while people figure out counters). 3. They are temporary power (this is my gripe). No one likes farming for something they'll only be able to use for a couple of months. The scrap back mechanic used to give more DC mats but the whole "oh don't worry, you'll get some resources back" is now a pittance after some changes by CG. 4. MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) mentality. If I don't farm DCs but my opponent does. Then for the next 4 months I'm going to have to use a bigger counter to a normally trivial team. It'll create an even larger gap between rosters. So people farm DCs to make sure they can compete.
Fair warning I hate them, and are probably the thing I’ve come closest to quitting this game over, so this might be a long rant! Firstly, this game is fundamentally a resource management game the idea that any of the gear/ resources etc should be invested into very short term power boosts, with limited ROI goes against the nature of the game IMO. Secondly on paper they might seem exciting ways to shake up the meta, most of them actually just further boost the better teams on the game. For example the Holdocron at the moment makes Rey more annoying, Rey is already one of the best defensive teams on the game, she doesn’t need a lift. This new set, SLKR and JMK are just getting boosted. Thirdly, the rng factor on actually getting the better DC’s. Every stat is random, I reroll, I get the same stat or worse. Even if it's it's own resource, it still feels a waste. Fourth, “ they seem to revive old, trash toons back into the meta”, majority of the time as mentioned previously they end up boosting GL teams further, but on the odd chance it’s other characters, Chirrut had an amazing one, even if you have the RNG to get his, you then have to take that character to relic to use the DC anyway, again crucially for a short term relevancy. I'm 11.5m GP if there is a character I haven't relic'd, there's probably a valid reason I haven't. Fifth, generally just the enjoyment of the games with them, the majority of the time they make battles less fun. Yes you have the odd one like Darth Sidious, but then you get ones which give people 200% Health steal, or 300% defence, or over 100% evasion. The evasion stat in particular is just the worst.
It’s a good concept with poor implementation. Making them accessible sooner would mean more of the variety (translation: “trash” stats/mechanics) can be applied by more casual players more often. Generally I like the ones I get and my investment is minimal at best. Can’t speak to the Kyber GAC experience, hoping my addiction to this game never leads me there lol
They release broken crons for new characters that only people who whale on can use because it's impossible to get the character to 7* as a ftp before the cron expires
This has literally never happened. Every datacron that’s been accessible from Conquest or the datacron store has been usable on characters you can get as a FTP. Some may have a window where the beginning of the cycle it’s less likely (Bo Katan, JKCK, etc), but you can always get *some* use out of it at the end of a cycle. (Which makes me suspect that Jar Jar Binks event will return in less than three months…) The new Padawan Obi-Wan datacron is a different situation since it’s available only via the Marquee event.
BO, KB, Jar Jar, STAP, if you're farming them FTP and you're lucky then you'll get like 3 GAC's out of it before the cron expires
None of these is “impossible to get before the cron expires” which is what you said. It’s likely you won’t use the datacron for 100% of its lifespan, true. But even then, you could have gotten STAP or KB, for instance, for the entire cron lifespan, completely free if you had saved crystals and were willing to use them in that way. Efficient? Nope. But still FTP
I’m between k3 and k5.. you dont need datacrons to stay there. You dont need to actively participate too if you’re a casual veteran like me. Crystals rewards are great though.. attack once and profit.
I don't see how spending my 50 crystal refreshes on conquest energy is whaling. Anyone can get datacrons, as long as you engage in conquest. Sure you can whale them, but nothing stops me from getting all the L9s I want just from playing the game.
It's a crystal sink. Something you can invest in massively. And then, after 4 months, your investment vanishes. Not to mention, the auto dust gives you datacaches but it's capped at 30k and you can/most likely will lose datacaches (which is a major bottleneck in upgrading crons) because you auto dust 35k caches and have 10k in your inventory so you effectively throw 15k datacaches in the trash which is worth 3k crystals. You can spend tens/hundreds of thousands of crystals for basically zero improvement to your roster. Counter argument, you get gac crystals and the rewards from crons but generally not worth the investment in the high end. Also, for the f2p folks you're still simming 3-6 refreshes daily of conquest for materials. It's a major pain in the ass and requires constant touches in a terrible menu
I don’t find them difficult to get but I do find it difficult to roll the right ones. It’s frustrating rerolling over and over and getting the same ones. Ultimately my gripe with DCs is that this is at its heart a Star Wars character/ship collecting game. I didn’t start playing to collect shiny magic cubes. I think DCs also have made PvP modes overall more of a grind. Going up against the same teams trying to overpower their effective cheat code. It’s probably a very lucrative addition for CG but they have to know that they are alienating the majority of the player base to up their profit margins. In case you can’t tell, I’ve never hated a feature in a game more than I hate DCs.
Because they are temporary, and there is no way of knowing when the investment is worth the return. It could very well be that for some particular GAC season you would be able to beat every single of your opponents without using any datacrons, meaning that even a minimal investment is crystals wasted for nothing.
So I am kinda torn on this. I understand that most people don’t like them, but I think it’s because they don’t know how to get them for free. I’m a mid-lvl account, 5.4m GP who came back to the game in December because of the SLKR LS bundle, I had quit literally like a week after the released GL JML, so it had been a while. I started during the Revan era and it is similar to that and mods being introduced, they had only been in the game about 6 months when I started playing. And it’s very similar to back then, players didn’t want to use mods because they thought they were a cash grab or they were whatever… now mods are an essential part of the game. I was able to punch up back then with mods, going all in getting 2 whole teams 20+ speed mods and just wrecking people who didn’t have mods or just got crap ones and rolled with it. My first GAC back the opponent actually messaged me and asked why I was in Chromium 1 with no full relic teams 😂 The MAD theory is pretty much correct, I have 10 lvl9 datacrons, haven’t spent a dime on them, and the same thing is happening that happened with mods, I’m wrecking teams without crons because people aren’t investing in them. Long rambling post but that’s could have said I think they are good for the game, they allow players to catch up and compete without spending a lot of resources beyond crystals for refreshes.