SWGOH Game Update for Today - Guilds, Raids, Bug Fixes and more!

EA_Jesse just posted about the 4/24/16 Updates to Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes!  See what he had to say:

GENERAL NOTES ABOUT THE UPDATE
The team at Capital Games is very excited to be bringing you our next major release which features Guilds, Guild Chat, Raids, and more!
This release will start to go live in the evening of Sunday, April 24th, Pacific time.

Note that when it is first released, it will be an optional update. You may go to your device’s app store and manually download the update. During the time period when it is an optional update, not all of the features and content described below will be available in order to ensure the whole player base is able to access key features and content at the same time.

In the morning of Monday, April 25th, Pacific time, we will be making this update mandatory. Players will need to restart their games when the release happens. At that time, the full set of features and content described below will be available.

We have sought to make these Release Notes comprehensive and complete. However, if anything is missed, we will update these notes as needed.
We hope you enjoy this release! It has been a labor of love by the team, and we have worked hard to bring you the best possible experience.
Thank you, and we look forward to your feedback!

GUILDS & GUILD CHAT
Players can now play and chat with their friends by creating and joining Guilds!

General Guild Info

• Being in a Guild gives you access to the new Guild Chat system, the new Raids activity, new Guild Shipments, and the new Guild Daily Activities.
• Guilds may be found on the far left of the Cantina, behind the red curtains.
• Guilds unlock at Player Level 22.
• Guilds can have up to 50 players.
• A leaderboard of all Guild members allows members to be sorted by a variety of criteria ranging from Power to contribution.
• Players cannot enter more than two Guilds in a 24 hour period.
• A player's Guild name and icon is displayed on the Squad Arena leaderboard.
• Within the Guild Home screen, by tapping Manage a Guild Member can compare stats against other Guild members including: Guild Bank Coins Earned (Weekly/Lifetime), Guild Currency Earned (Weekly/Lifetime), Squad Arena Power, Last Login, Player Level, and Guild Rank (Leader, Officer, Member).
• The Guild Home screen has a monitor that displays the top positions on the Raid Leaderboards and many helpful hints.
• Note that the Guild Shipments will not contain any items until after the mandatory update on Monday, April 24th, Pacific time.

Guild Creation
Players who want to create their own Guild may do so starting at level 22.

• Creating a new Guild costs 300,000 Credits.
• The person who creates the Guild starts as the Leader.
• The Guild Time Zone is based on the Leader’s Time Zone. Guild Time Zone is used only for Guild-related activities, and is handled separately from your personal Time Zone used for things like the current Daily Activities.
• When creating a Guild, a variety of customizations are available to make a Guild feel unique including choosing a unique Guild name, customizing the Guild’s icon from a pre-determined set of styles and colors, and customizing an outward-facing Guild message to help other players know more about your Guild.
• Guilds can have membership requirements including requiring approval to join and minimum Player Level.

Joining a Guild
Players can join a Guild in a variety of ways including:

• By tapping on the Guilds table on the far left of the Cantina, the player will see a menu which shows options to Join a Guild, see which Guild their Allies are in, or Create a Guild (see above).
• On the Join menu, the player will see three suggested Guilds based on their Player Level and personal Time Zone.
• If the player would like to see other suggested Guilds to join, they may tap on the circular arrows in the upper left.
• The player may also look at the Guilds their Allies are in, and request to join those Guilds
• The player may also receive a Guild Invite in their Inbox from Allies or other players who would like them to join their Guild.
• Guild invitations may only be sent by the Guild Leader and the Guild Officers.
• The Guild Leader and Guild Officers are also the only ones who can accept or reject join requests from other players.

Guild Roles
There are 3 roles in a Guild: the Leader, Officer, and Member.

• There can only be one Leader at a time.
• There can be up to 49 Officers, though typically there are only a small number of Members promoted to Officer by the Leader.
• Leader: The Leader can edit the Guilds information including external message, icon, minimum player level, and recruitment requirements (invite only vs open). The Leader can also promote/demote Officers, transfer leadership, disband the Guild, and all Officer actions.
• Officer: The Officers can send invites to Allies, accept/reject join requests, remove members, spend Guild Bank Coins to start a Raid, and all Member actions.
• Member: A Member can contribute to Guild Activities, Personal Guild Contribution, and Raids. Members can purchase Guild Shipments, view a leaderboard comparing Guild Members (in Manage), participate in Guild Chat, and leave a Guild.

Guild Chat
People in a Guild can talk amongst themselves to strategize and socialize with the brand new Guild Chat system.

• Chat is currently only available amongst members of a Guild.
• Players must be an adult to participate in Guild Chat.
• Tapping on a player’s name in Guild Chat will let you see their Player Profile (more below).
• Guild Chat is currently available in the Guild home screen and the Cantina screen. We expect to make it accessible elsewhere in the game in a future release.

Guild Currencies

With the introduction of Guilds we are adding two new currencies.

• Guild Bank Coins: A currency that is earned by all players through the Personal Guild Contribution Daily Activity. It can be spent by the Leader and Officers to activate Raids.
• Individual Guild Currency: A currency earned through contributing to shared Guild Activities and completing Raids. It is spent in Guild Shipments to earn rare shards and gear including shards for 2 brand new characters: the Gamorrean Guard and the Jawa Engineer (more below).

Guild Daily Activities

Guilds can participate in Shared Guild Activities that award both overall Guild contribution as well as Individual contribution.

• Guild members will need to work together to complete these activities, with each activity having multiple tiers of difficulty with increasing rewards.
• Note that the “day” used in Guild Activities is based on the Time Zone of the Leader.
• At the completion of the day, if the Guild has completed at least Tier 1 of that day’s Guild Activity requirement, all members will get Individual Guild currency with the highest rewards going to the highest contributors.
• There is one activity available each day to keep them fresh. Examples of Shared Guild Activities include participation in Dark Side Battles, Light Side Battles, Hard Battles, Cantina Battles, Galactic War, Squad Arena, and Challenges.
• For activities which require Energy or Cantina Energy, the amount of those currencies expended is used as a proxy for how many separate battles have been completed. This is so that players which have unlocked later Stages are not forced to play the lower Stages in pursuit of the Guild Activity.
• Every day, players earn Guild Bank Coins for their Guild through contribution to the personal Daily Activity called "Personal Guild Contribution". This activity is completed through spending energy anywhere in the game (including Cantina Energy) and unlike other activities, it rewards partial completion. Through the “Personal Guild Contribution” activity, each player can earn up to 600 Guild Bank Coins per day, which are used by the Guild Leader to start a Raid. In this way, players who are actively engaging in the rest of the game, will allow your Guild to summon Raids more often.

Player Profile

We are introducing a player profile that will allow not only the player to see his/her stats, but will also allow seeing details about others.

• The profiles of other players can be accessed through the Allies screen, clicking a player's name in chat, and the leaderboards found in Manage and PvP.
• Your personal profile can be accessed by tapping on Player level in the Home screen.
• Players can now change their name. The first change is free. However, there is a Crystal cost for subsequent name changes. This approach is designed to minimize abuse of the feature.
• Currently six different stats can be viewed: Total Squad Arena Attacks Won, Total Normal Battles Won, Total hard Battles Won, Total Galactic War Battles Won, Total Guild Raids Won, and Total Guild Bank Coins Earned.
• Player can view details on any character owned by another player, similar to Squad Arena, but for the entire inventory. This will allow players to show off their character roster and give Guild leaders/officers insight into the value a potential member can provide.
• Players can now view the Ally code of a Guild members and easily send an Ally request or Guild Invite to a player (if Leader/Officer). Note: Ally Codes/Ally Requests are not shown on the PvP leaderboard to prevent spam for our top players.

GUILD RAIDS
With this release we are introducing Guild Raids! The first Raid pits the Guild against a mighty Rancor! Woot!

General Raid Info

• In Raids, each player in a Guild can participate in the Raid. Every point of damage brings the Guild closer to victory.
• Raids can have multiple stages. Completing all stages is required to defeat the Raid and earn the rewards.
• Health of the enemies in the Raid is persistent and shared across the Guild.
• The health and ability cooldowns of all characters are persistent.
• There will be a Leaderboard ranking the Guild members by the amount of damage they’ve done during the active Raid. The higher you are on that Leaderboard, the bigger and better the rewards you earn will be.
• Raid rewards are based on a combination of the Tier of the Raid and the contribution of players in the instance of the Raid. The more damage a player inflicts the higher his/her leaderboard position and the better the rewards.
• Rewards include rare Equipment, Guild Currency, Credits, and possibly more!
• Guilds can measure their success in Raids by viewing the Raid Leaderboard. Guilds will be ranked by number of points earned per Raid defeated. Each Tier awards an exponentially increasing amount of points at completion.
• The Raid Leaderboard will reset at the beginning of every month.
• Raids can be summoned only by the Guild Leader and Guild Officers using Guild Bank Coins.
• Raids can be abandoned only by the Guild Leader or Officers.

The Rancor Raid

The first Raid features three Gamorreans and a Rancor.

• There are 7 Tiers of the Rancor Raid, each scaling with character requirements, difficulty and of course rewards! For example, Tier 1 is recommended for players at level 30, allows all characters to participate, and provides blue gear. Contrast that with Tier 6, which is recommended for players at level 80, requires 6 star characters, and provides rare purple gear and many other rewards. The 7th Tier is called Heroic and has special rules and special rewards.
• Each player has 5 attempts to attack the Rancor per day and character health is persistent similar to Galactic War.
• Tier 1 through 6 have no time requirements and refresh the health/abilities of characters each day to allow Guilds of any size to beat the Raid given enough time.
• The Heroic Tier, is a special timed challenge where player have 48 hours to beat the Rancor and must do so without any Character refreshes.
• Each Rancor fight is broken up into 4 phases.
• Phase 1: Pig-like brutes known as Gamorreans stand as the first line of defense toward the inner sanctum of The Pit. Their captain, heavily guarded by his seemingly-endless waves of reinforcements, must be defeated to breach the sanctum door.
• Phase 2: The terror residing within the inner sanctum has been unleashed. Riled from the sound of battle, the Rancor's enduring defenses are nearly impenetrable. Beware of its insatiable appetite!
• Phase 3: Taking on a more aggressive nature, the Rancor is more susceptible to damage. Sometimes, however, the best defense is a strong, debilitating offense.
• Phase 4: Wounded but not tiring, the Rancor's rage during its final stand is unquestionable."

New Raid Mechanics

The Rancor Raid features several new mechanics to add interest, excitement, and strategic depth.

• Phase 2 and 3 allow the player to periodically target a door in the Rancor Pit that will temporarily disable the Rancor
• "Escape", has been introduced in Raids. Escape allows one character to spend a turn attempting to leave combat. The chance of a character fleeing is reduced base on the Raid Tier, and a cooldown occurs if the Flee is not successful.
• "Devour" is one of several of the Rancor's abilities. When this occurs, the Rancor eats one of the players characters with no chance to Revive.
• "Enraged": If any single encounter lasts beyond a certain number of turns, the Gamorrean Captain/Rancor will go into an Enraged state where it becomes extremely aggressive.
• For more details on abilities see the Details tab within a Raid

Shipments

We have improved the Shipments feature to allow us to sell items that are more relevant to the player, such as high value gear.

• Refresh times will now refresh at pre-set times each day (instead of 6 hours since the last refresh).
• The pricing of materials in Shipments have been retuned.
• Shipments now support a wider variety of items to be sold.
• Ability Material III is now available in Arena Shipments.
• An additional slot has been added for Shipments.

Additional Items

• Rancor Raid Strategy Bundle is available at level 23.
• Rancor Raid Booster Packs are available at level 25.
• To minimize the inflation of energy we have set a maximum limit on the amount of Energy and Cantina energy that can be held and any point in time. Once players hit this limit they receive a message that prevents them from continuing to purchase Energy/Cantina Energy. The limit is 1999 for Energy, and 999 for Cantina Energy.

New Characters

There are four new characters available with this release:

• Han Solo
• Gammorean Guard
• Sun Fac
• Jawa Engineer

Han Solo

Shards of Han Solo as he appeared in “Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope” will be available as rewards for completing the Heroic Tier of the Rancor Raid.
Han Solo will be a Rebel, a Scoundrel, and an Attacker.
The full details of Han Solo’s kit will be released once the first player unlocks him.
The one detail known at this time is his “I Shoot First” ability. This ability allows Han to always shoot first one time at the start of battle.

Sun Fac

Sun Fac is a Geonosian Tank that punishes attackers with a variety of negative status effects. Sun Fac is available in Chromium Packs.

Abilities

• Browbeat: Deal Physical damage to target enemy and Dispel all positive status effects on them. Sun Fac recovers 10% of his Max Health if any effects were dispelled this way.
• Subjugate: Sun Fac Taunts for 2 turns and inflicts Offense Down on target enemy for 1 turn, with a 40% chance to also remove 20% Turn Meter.
• Spiteful Strike: Deal Physical damage to target enemy. Sun Fac recovers 15% of his Max Health if the target is suffering any negative status effects.
• Superiority: Sun Fac has +20% Counter Chance. In addition, whenever he attacks outside of his turn, he deals 10% more damage and inflicts Critical Chance Down for 2 turns.

Gamorrean Guard

Aggressive Tank that Taunts and Counters with multiple Damage Over Time effects. The Gamorrean Guard is available in the Guild Shipments.

Abilities

• Hack and Slash: Deal Physical damage to target enemy and inflict Damage Over Time effects for 3 turns, with a 70% chance to inflict an additional Damage Over Time effect.
• Muscle In: Gamorrean Guard Taunts and gains Retribution for 1 turn.
• Punch Through: Deal Physical damage to target enemy and Expose them for 2 turns.

Jawa Engineer

High-speed Jawa Healer with a Critical Chance buff and both Jawa and Droid synergy. The Jawa Engineer will be available in the Guild Shipments.

• Miniaturized Detonator: Apply a Detonator to target enemy that detonates after 1 turn, dealing damage.
• Patch Up: Jawa Engineer revives a random Droid ally at 1% Health, and then all allies recover 15% of their Max Health.
• Recalibrate: All allies gain Critical Chance Up for 2 turns. Jawa and Droid allies also gain 30% Turn Meter.
• Crunch Time: Jawa Engineer has +3 Speed for each Jawa or Droid ally.

Character Changes

Admiral Ackbar
Some of Admiral Ackbar's abilities have been remade.

• Tactical Genius: Ackbar grants each ally the Tactical Genius effect. The first ally to use a Special ability while they have this effect gains 100% Turn Meter and recovers 15% of their Max Health. Tactical Genius ends whenever any ally triggers this effect or at the end of Ackbar's next turn.
• Rebel Coordination: In addition to all its previous benefits, this ability now also has "Whenever an ally uses an ability that isn't an attack, they call a Rebel ally to Assist."

Dispel

• Damaging attacks that Dispel enemy buffs now dispel before dealing damage with that attack. The following existing characters are affected:
  • Qui-Gon Jinn
  • Mace Windu
  • Plo Koon
  • Teebo

A note on Dispels: there is currently a known bug that can cause buff effects to occasionally ignore Dispels. This has been fixed in many cases, but it is known to still occur in others; work on resolving this issue is ongoing and will complete in a future update.

Counterattacks

• Taunt will now intercept counterattacks for allies
• Units with Stealth will no longer trigger counterattacks
• Assists will no longer trigger counterattacks

Additional Character Changes

• Health Steal gear will no longer provide health when attacking if under the effect of Healing Immunity
• Characters will now be able to die from Damage Over Time (DOT’s) and Bombs.

Character Bug Fixes

• Obi-Wan Kenobi (Old Ben) has had his leader ability fixed so that it now gives Turn Meter to allies when they evade.
• Stunned characters will no longer be called for assists.
• Leia's Critical Chance Up now correctly expires at end of encounter.
• Fixed a bug with Aayla Secura's Jedi Valor ability that prevented allies other than Aayla from healing when they Resist.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Royal Guard to inflict Speed Down or Stun with his Basic ability even if it was Evaded.
• Fixed a bug that allowed Captain Phasma to inflict Speed Down with her Special ability even if it was Evaded.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Captain Phasma's Leader ability from refreshing Advantage on Assisting allies with Advantage.
• Magmatrooper’s Basic ability could previously hit the same target twice instead of dealing bonus damage to a secondary target. This ability now works as it is described.
• Debuff that appears on Savage Oppress in the Agility Challenge now correctly displays the proper description – "Susceptibility: Takes extra damage when attacked".

Miscellaneous Notes

• Jawa is the daily login character for May.
• Grand Moff Tarkin is now available in the Arena Store.
• A timer has been added to Aurodium Packs to let players know when they are going away
• When entering Auto Battle, the target will remain on whichever enemy was targeted prior to going into Auto Battle.
• Reward screens now displays more quickly when using a Sim ticket and allows players to continue after the first item is displayed.
• In PVP matchmaking screen, the stat "Power" is more prominent to more easily locate it.
• More information is now shown in the opponent panel when targeting. This includes level, gear tier, and rarity in Squad Arena and level and gear tier in the Campaigns. (Opponents in the Campaigns do not have Rarity).
• An additional button has been added to the home screen HUD to better message when Limited Time Events are available.
• All the Leaderboards now have medals for ranks 1, 2, and 3.
• The post-battle reward screen has been modified to display much faster and allow closing prior to displaying all the rewards. This is especially useful when doing Sim Tickets as the sim process is much faster as a result.
• A confirmation screen has been added when a player attempts to purchase Shards for a character which they already have progressed to 7 stars. This is to minimize accidental purchase of shards that will be turned into Shard Shop currency.
• Rarity is now displayed on training droid icons in pack opening.
• When training a Character does not result in the Character leveling up, we no longer display the screen messaging stat increases as an increase has not occurred. Rather the XP bar for that character animates.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Fixed bug in tutorial that would sometimes block progress.
• Fixed a bug with scroll bars in the events panel.
• Fixed graphical issues that were sometimes displayed on Samsung Galaxy S4 devices.
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Barriss Offee’s heal to cause battles to hang
• Fixed audio bugs in Galactic War.
• Fixed a bug where the health bar displayed in upper right of the screen was not properly updating to show the target character’s current health.
• Fixed a bug where Jedi Knight Anakin was not properly centered on the character details screen
• When obtaining a piece of gear tapping on a character portrait will now take you to that character’s detail screen.
• Reverse lookup when searching for a piece of gear will no longer point players to a challenge that they are unable to participate in.
• Training Droids now show rarity stars in pack openings.
• Finishing the first battle in Galactic War would sometimes make the character health bars white, this has been fixed.
• Fixed a rare bug where leader characters were removed from the squad when adding another character.
• Fixed a rare bug where a player could attempt to craft a piece of gear when they did not have all of the required pieces, resulting in a crash.
• Incorrect Usage of the Word "affect" in Tips and Tricks has been fixed.
• The Omega Event had an issue where refresh could be done multiple times by changing from the Details screen to the Possible Rewards/Required Units screen.
• Tusken Raider name was written in lower case in Spanish language. No más!
• Fixed issue where characters with stealth were not having the semi-transparent effect applied to them.
• The description text and ability name for CT-7567 "Rex" was missing text
• In the settings menu "Help" was changed to "Tips and Tricks" and "Contact Us" was changed to "Help" to clarify their respective purposes.
• Buying Crystals from the Arena, Cantina, and Galactic War was sometimes causing the UI to overlap on home screen.
• Tapping Find Shards for General Grievous now displays the Shard Shop as a source for those Shards.
• A specific UI flow would result in equipment displaying that 50 pieces of gear were needed, when only 1 was needed.
• Progress bar for Shard collection would display incorrectly and inconsistently for 7* units after going through a specific UI flow
• Kit Fisto's "Lightsaber Mastery" and "Turn the Tide" ability icons were identical to the "Jedi Protector" ability icon.
• Before the opening animation of the first pack containing the Jedi Consular, a unit details window was appearing for a brief moment during loading screen.
• Some Android players were receiving an "Insufficient Memory" error when space was available.
• A loading screen was remaining displayed after the Shipments icon was tapped twice.
• Periodically UI buttons would visually appear clicked without triggering a click.
• The character details screen was sometimes overlapping the Home Screen after the player tapped on a character that needed an item.
• A badge was displayed near the character icon when there was no ability to upgrade.
• The Inventory button had no audio when tapped.
• The Ally request status was remaining unchanged even after it had expired.
• Reverse lookup was not showing the Shard Shop Locations.
• The application was entering a progression block when tapping on the back button from the Store to the Characters screen.
• When the player upgraded the gear tier the character abilities icons were flickering.
• The ability materials were transparent in the Pack Opening sequence of the Jedi Master and Apprentice bundle pack.
• There were instances where the Character Activation prompt was appearing even after activation.
• Credits were not spaced properly if the ability upgrade cost more than 4 digits in Russian.
• Barriss Offee's heal could cause battle to hang if all team members had healing immunity.
• Finishing the first battle from Galactic War was causing the character health bar to turn white for some characters.
• A crash was occurring where a player attempted to craft a gear item without meeting all the requirements.
• Ally units or enemy units with healing immunity debuffs were receiving health from health steal gear items when attacking.
• In Galactic War, the application was remaining in a progression block when tapping the home button before the reward crate pop-up appeared.
• On specific devices, the special ability button in combat was off screen.
• Inconsistently Count Dooku's Basic Attack had improper VFX.
• Talia's Special Ability 2 sometimes had improper VFX.
• When in Auto Battle, the currently-selected target was being deselected.
• Cooldowns of abilities that had cooldown reduction upgrades were sometimes calculating incorrectly.
• Target Reticle was remaining on screen after an opponent died and another opponent attacked.
• At times players were receiving an error message "Your battle has timed out" when having a draw in Squad Arena.
• An inaccurate pop-up was displayed when trying to start a Profit Mining / Training Droids Hunt battle, while lacking energy.
• Tapping on the battle button of a locked event changed the description of that event.
• When the player ran out of Sim Tickets the button still appeared opaque.
• Audio - Challenges - The song from Tatooine Cantina environment was playing when the Music was off.
• An error was occurring after training a Character from Squad Select Screen and then attempting to enter battle.
• The Battle button was not highlighted after the energy was refreshed.
• Stunned characters were being selected as assists.
• Characters with protection were receiving a full Protection after being revived.
• Characters were not performing the hit animation when taking damage if they had remaining Protection.
• Entering into Galactic War for the first time before the Protection tutorial hid the Protection bar for current party members.
• Units that had just revived were not considered alive for effect targeting.
• Soft-Lock was occurring due to Self-Reviving Units Dying on Their Turn.
• Triggering a Revive passive after being killed by a Damage over Time (DoT) was soft locking the game.
• Miscellaneous other bugs were also addressed.!