On the 28th of February, SW:GoH received a large Quality of Life update. Now we’ve had a chance to see these changes in game, and try them out, here’s a breakdown of what these changes are, and my general thoughts on them.

 

More Things to Sim

I’m lumping a few of smaller changes/additions together in this section, because they all serve the same purpose; lowering the daily time/tap investment through making more things simmable.

These changes are:

• Galactic War being simmable
• Being able to multi-sim Ship Challenges
• Being able to sim the Credit Heist and Training Droids events

Each of these will reduce the time these basic actions require. This is especially important now we have three raids, two guild events, arena, fleet arena, and frequent events. Anything that helps reduce the daily time commitment is a good thing in my opinion, especially if it’s saving time in the more tedious areas, like GW.

 

Text Filters and Pre-Battle Filters

There are two main parts to this change; the ability to filter characters when choosing a team before starting a battle, and the ability to search for a unit through text.

Possibly the best part of the QoL update, having a way to filter and/or search for units when entering a battle is massive. For anyone with a large roster, this will end up making a huge time difference, since you can do a quick search for whatever character you’re looking for. Even for smaller rosters, being able to filter by tag makes it much easier to throw a synergistic team together quickly.

The text search is great here, since the limited space means it still takes quite a bit of scrolling to look through a larger tag for a specific character. It also makes it easier to find a specific character if they’re visually similar to others, like Hoth Rebel Soldier and Scout, since names aren’t shown.

Personally, I don’t see being able to text search from the character screen being very useful. It’s possible to find characters like Wampa and Ugnaught, who don’t have tags faster than before. We can search for Han, or Leia to find every iteration of that character. Multiple tag searches can’t be done at once, like searching Light Side and Healers together to find all characters with both tags. For the most part, it seems like CG has added this functionality to the character for the sake of it, not because it’s useful.

 

Improved Favorites

The changes made to the favourite characters system are, in my opinion, a mixed bag, some good, some not so good.

The changes are;

• Locked characters can be set as favourite
• Favourite characters are shown first on the character screen
• Favourite characters are shown first on the gear needed lists
• Favourite characters are shown first on the pre-battle screen

Being able to set inactive characters as favorites is nice. It removes the need to remember you’re trying to unlock a character, since you can put it in your favorites list, with your other projects.

Showing favorites first in the inventory screen has taken some time to get used to, but I’ve accepted it. I do however, find it annoying that I now need to scroll down to find my highest geared characters, where previously, I didn’t. 

Favorites being shown first when looking at what characters need a piece of gear is great. If I’m working on a character (and as such, care if they need something), they’ll be tagged as a favorite, so this change really streamlines things when I’m deciding whether to buy a piece of gear or salvage.

Not so good however, is favorites being sorted to the top in the pre-battle screen. My favorites list has always been reserved for characters I’m working on at the time, so putting them at the top of the character select screen just clutters it, and makes it harder to find combat-ready toons. The obvious solution to this is to add your powerful toons to your favorites, but doing so would reduce the usefulness of the favorites system.

Inbox Message Delete Button

This change added a delete button to inbox messages which send you to the guild screen.

Real talk guys – how many times have you bounced between the inbox and guild screen two or three times to clear messages? It’s annoying, and not helpful. It’s also no longer an issue. If you want to jump straight to the guild screen, you still can, but you’re not forced to do it for each message. This is removing a tedious, half pointless feature as much as it’s time saving, and I love it.

Zeta Purchase Confirmation

As the title suggest, a confirmation screen has been added when you apply a zeta.

This is the only QoL improvement that actually increases the taps required to do something. But, as anyone that’s ever accidentally zeta’d an ability by mistake will tell you – it’s a good change. The rarity of zeta materials makes it a costly mistake, and realistically, there should have been a confirmation pop-up from the beginning.

Shipment Improvements

I have a love/hate relationship with this change. On the one hand, it’s nice being able to see which character’s still need shards, and which gear/salvage you have a shortage of. The downside here, it makes the stores look VERY cluttered, and it still feels like I’m being overloaded with information everytime I scroll through a store. As well as this, unless you know precisely what gear you need for any character’s you’re currently gearing, you still need to tap the gear/salvage to see who can use it, making this change feel at least partially pointless.

 

SIM Tickets in Fleet Arena Rewards

Every reward tier in the Fleet Arena now includes 150 SIM tickets. This change wasn’t documented anywhere, but hasn’t been changed yet, so I assume it’s intended.

For a long time, players have been questioning the continued existence of SIM tickets, because how many an individual players has generally comes down to the energy cost of the nodes they farm. Someone who regularly sims high energy nodes will quickly accrue a large stockpile, while someone who regularly sims low energy nodes will find they constantly run short, and have to manually fight, or at least, auto some of their battles. This was really highlighted when challenges became simmable, since the disparity in SIM tickets meant a change specifically designed to save time didn’t benefit a all players. Adding SIM tickets to fleet arena rewards has solved this issue for higher level players, while ensuring new players still need to manage their tickets.

 

Character Upgrades Announced in Guild Chat

Not so much a QoL improvement as a re-implemented feature. Character rarity and gear level increases are being shown in chat again, after being disabled a number of months ago.

I missed this, and I’m glad it’s back. There’s a certain sense of pride when you see someone’s farming efforts pay off. It helps remind you that every goal is reachable, and makes it easier to stay motivated when you see “… just promoted Lobot to 7-Star” or “… has increased Gear Level for Mob Enforcer to Tier VIII”.

Not only this, but the biggest sense of pride and accomplishment I’ve ever gotten from SW:GoH was my guilds Kenobi Day. Seeing almost every member of the guild unlock General Kenobi, a character we had all worked together to obtain, one after the other was amazing. Seeing the result of months of hard work like that, was a truly unique experience.

I’m so glad other guilds will be able to experience this again, whether it’s with Han, Kenobi, or even Traya. It just makes it seem like a bigger achievement.

 

Units Arranged by Size

This change was meant to automatically arrange units by size in battles, but it wasn’t working correctly and has been disabled.

If this feature worked, it would be one of the best parts of this release. Not being able to target a character because a large character is blocking them is beyond annoying. But it doesn’t work. It’s broken enough that it’s been disabled even. Once it’s back in the game and working as intended, I’m sure it will be great, but until then, it’s not worth dwelling on.

 

Territory Wars and Other Changes

A number of changes were made to Territory Wars as well, which will be covered at a later date, since we haven’t had a chance to see them in action yet.

Another major addition is allowing iOS and Android accounts to be linked and used cross platform, which will be covered by a separate article.

Overall, the QoL patch brought positive changes to the game, despite falling flat in places. There are definitely some important QoL improvements missing, but with the release of the Sith Triumvirate Raid so soon after, I’m hoping more changes were planned but not completed in time. Either way, I’m happy with this patch, and look forward to the next one.