[Heroic Space Missions]

I use the analog "stick" on the g13 to steer while doing these missions.  For me, it helps a LOT.  Unfortunately, they're old, logitech doesn't make them, or anything like it (with an analog stick) anymore and buying these used can be very expensive.

WASD, for steering, does help, but if you have them bound to other commands, you're stuck with just the mouse.  Doing the heroic missions with ONLY the mouse doesn't seem all that feasible.

 

Also, as I recently discovered on the SV server, your connection (PING) matter on these.   The lag time from when you click buttons to when the game sees the command needs to be as short as possible.  it's probably as important for these missions as it is for PVP.
 

[Which Datacrons need multiple People to collect?]

On 4/23/2024 at 12:34 AM, AFadedMemory said:

 

You can actually solo fleet. Imp side with  a lv 65+ Sith Marauder if I remember correctly. It’s been a few months since I did it. Couldn’t find a group.

Balmoria has a non stat datacron that needs two peeps

Quesh has one that was designed for a group but can be soloed.

 

9 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

Truthfully, I enjoyed claiming it solo. It is difficult, but I think the hardest part is the jump at the very start. There are definitely other datacrons that are a bigger pain to deal with.

 

Pub side I knew could be done with 2 players, or two toons, if you knew how.

Imp side?

How?   There's a bridge with 3 clickies that you have to use to cross over, and that's even before any platforming you have to do.  That means a minimum of 4 people.

[The role of GSF in Seasons.]

26 minutes ago, Toraak said:

That depends on the server your on. SF, and DM it pops consistently.

Currently, a few weeks into a GS?

or "always" even when there are no GS participants queueing for GSF?

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

So, one last post about this.  After doing the first week after the change.  Between JUST my two Private/Vanity guilds on SV, I got around 4 million CQ points.   PLUS another 600k, at least, for my 6 toons in "other" guilds (I'm ONE planet away from the galaxy conqueror title there).    Somehow I even got 4th place (I know how...VERY SMALL Population server)

 

So while I've been able to do this in the past, I suspect I'll be able to do it every week now, if I wanted.   That consistency wasn't possible before.

 

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

5 hours ago, Jdast said:

Traceguy,

Not trying to start a flame war, and I appreciate the work that you and others (e.g., @Samcuu and @Darev) have put in detailing the fastest routes via Heroics to achieve similar CQP amounts prior to 7.1.4c. That's honestly not sarcasm.

But -- and it's a big ole Hutt Butt...

By your own admission, you were already doing many of these Heroics before the Reputation CQP nerf. The point that I and others are making is that if you love doing very simple and easy Heroics then you are set. In fact, you can almost certainly fare better, particularly on weeks like this one with Heroic Pinnacle.

But I want to balance content I find engaging / enjoyable with the acquisition of CQP to obtain Tech Fragments. I don't want to do Toxic Bombs on Balmorra every day, much less on multiple characters. I understand there will always be some 'chore-like work' in MMORPGs, but other games (in my case ESO) afford me the opportunity to engage in a wide-range of activities while still progressing my Alts.

If I did the Heroic loop you are suggesting even several days / week -- I would get deathly bored, unsub to just play Preferred and take my time advancing my Alts through the story, and spend the majority of time in ESO.

Oh wait, I've aleady done that. 

Dasty

 

Dasty,

I hope this doesn't come across as argumentative.  I'm honestly not trying do to that.  However, even in real life lately (at work) I've meant to say one thing only to have a couple people take it the complete opposite way after a conference call.  Luckily it was a relatively minor thing easily cleared up in person.

 

Doing nothing but Heroics for conquest can get repetitive and boring.  I wasn't doing them for multiple toons per server each day prior to this week's patch.  It wouldn't have worked out anywhere near as well as it does after the patch.  Now that it does I'll be doing it more often.

Part of why I'm able to do it is I do it two accounts at a time, which speeds everything up to a point where my boredom is suddenly worth it because it saves time, overall.

Plus...I tend to not like group stuff.   I do the world boss kills for conquest points, but even on SF, if you don't get it done Tues/Wed/Thu you're lucky to find, or make, a group to do it at all.  For OPS most of what I see is the two OPS combo for tech frag farming.  This week is was "MUST KNOW PUZZLE" for KP vet mode.   Seriously?    You can't take 5 minutes to explain how that works on the 1% chance someone doesn't know, or remember, how to do it?

I can barely stand doing flashpoints in a group.

I saw a post mentioning that, now, OPS should match Heroics at the 100k CQ per hour that we now see is possible doing Heroics.  I'm all for that.  Same with Flashpoints.   Some flashpoints are frustratingly long and you don't get anything MORE out of them than doing Hammer Station on repeat.   Even though much of the content in the game is 12 years old, some of it is very intricate as far as story, but just takes TOO LONG (for my taste).

GSF and WZ have such high points pretty much because it can take FOREVER for people who aren't doing pre-mades to get a group pop.  I've seen people post those points should be nerfed.  I can't disagree enough.  I'll never do GSF, and WZs are a "really nothing else I want to do but I don't want to stop playing" type of thing but waiting 30 minutes for a WZ to pop during a weekday night...if that's what someone likes to do when they're in game then let them do it.  The rarity of the pop is what warrants the big CQ payoff.

Different people are going to find different things "fun and engaging" and in a perfect world, content would be balanced across all playstyles.  While the devs are mostly the same now at BroadSword (I absolutely HATE the abbreviation of BS...I have to learn not to associate the other abbreviation of BS that I've historically used now) they are working under a different studio that's just getting it's feet wet with this game.  It may take some time for them to hit a stride with whatever their long term vision for this game is.

 

But...Dev and Studio type people...a great first step would be to have people put patch notes under a microscope.  I'd rather see all the INTENDED changes listed than miss out on something because someone thought we wouldn't care/notice...or accidentally left out.    If you make a slider that lets the grass grow to twice the length, that's important.   If you choose to just make the grass twice as long, that's also important...to some people (not me).   But don't leave it out.  This is one case where, in my opinion, a wall of text is preferred to brevity at the cost of clarity.

This turned into a longer post than I originally planned, more of a rant based on some of the posts in this thread that I've tried to stay out of, for the most part, since my pre-patch and day of patch posts.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

39 minutes ago, PlasmaJohn said:

One of the SW:TOR devs did a launch post-mortem at (IIRC) a GDC a year or two after the fact and they pretty much pointed at a bad assumption by the dev team.  The devs expected the players to play most or all of the class stories before dipping into endgame.  What happened was that a large chunk did one story and then went "Where's the beef?".  That wasn't the rush-to-endgame crowd either.

Yep, I remember that too.

And adding to that, they were expecting that even before the game launched.  At Star Wars celebration V (in 2010) there was an official (and the only one so far) panel for this game.  They flat out said this game was "essentially" KOTOR 3, 4, 5, 6 - 10....a "sequel" or rather "continuation" for each of the 8 class stories.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

23 minutes ago, AFadedMemory said:

I know. They need to roll back on some of the rewards or they’ll go out of business. 😂 12,000 cartel coin (1,800 more if your subscribed for the season) and 5,000cc worth of cartel packs For $45 or $39 (if you’ve been Saving credits for ten years you can obtain it by paying $15 or $13)

Bet that wasn’t possible at launch, but hey it’s the devs fault. that’s not enough.

My opinion on the debacle of what happened at launch - which really has nothing to do with the topic but I love commenting on it - is that they sold (and pre-sold) all these copies of the game to both "random" people, and kids, and fans of KOTOR 1 & 2 and not all of them realized it was an MMO and you had to pay monthly.   And this was at Christmas too, so the game sat uninstalled for a couple weeks in many cases.

the 10 year old kid crowd got this cool game that was at least $50 but their parents said "no" to the monthly fee when they found out about it.   My suspicion is THAT, more than anything, caused the numbers to drop after the first 30-60 days (depending on when those potential Christmas boxes were opened / installed).

People assumed that boxes sold = subscription revenue and it jus wasn't the case and it caught them off guard.

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

1 hour ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Thanks for doing the comparison & posting results for the community. 

But also remember this will be different next week when the weekly CQ isn’t focused on heroics. 

It would be good to then compare this week to next week or the one after, that isn’t focused on heroics. 

I took that out of the equation with the 2nd test.   The Heroic objective that grants the 85k CQ points was done on a different toon, then I switched back.   The results shouldn't be all that different (minor differences with number of mobs killed).

[Not every mission is a mission?]

I found out Flashpoints count.

They count as 5 missions each.

At least these do:

Boarding Party

Cademimu

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

On 3/31/2024 at 3:44 PM, Darev said:

With the various threads that have been going on, I wanted to see before and after changes.  Current values (before) and once the next patch is deployed, run the same heroics and see what the change is.

The thing I like about the upcoming change granting 5k CQ per heroic (max'd out SH bonus) is that it's also infinite.

This is, mainly, just for me, but if anyone else is curious, please feel free to contribute their own numbers and observations.
I did these on Imp side, with a sniper.  Doing some of these on a stealth toon would be faster. I've also rounded up for the time it took.
I'm not listing the bonuses for them, some have them, some don't.   I did them for this.  Spring Thaw, for example, there was already two people there and since we have shared tagging, killing the extra/bonus mobs went very fast. 
I listed "Glitch" because I like that it has two bonuses...xp and credits.

After the patch hits I'm going to do the same thing and see how many more points it actually creates.  But honestly, the true benefit is more for the people who do 2 or more toons per server per day.

 

Alderaan	Spring Thaw		3 minutes
Balmorra	Toxic Bombs		3 minutes
Balmorra	Settling Debts		4 minutes
Balmorra	A Question of Motivation		6 minutes
Belsavis	Breakthrough - no bonus		6 minutes
Corellia	Explosive Assault		5 minutes
Corellia	Cor Sec Crackdown
Dromund Kaas	Possessed Hunter		2 minutes
Dromund Kaas	Personal Challenge		2 minutes
Dromund Kaas	Saving Face		3 minutes
Hoth	Deconstruction Efforts +25 Hoth kills		4 minutes
Hoth	Pirated Lockbox		4 minutes
Hoth	Taking the Heat		4 minutes
Hutta	Man with the Steel Voice		1 minute
Makeb	Sharing the Blame + rep token		4 minutes
Nar Shaddaa	Botched Interrogation		4 minutes
Nar Shaddaa	Glitch (two bonus missions)		10 minutes
Taris	Fathers of Taris		4 minutes
			1 hour 10 minutes
			~120k conquest points

Yeah, I'm quoting my own post.

 

Ran these exact same heroics again, on Tulak Hord (because I can still get Makeb rep there)
Heroics 1-9 got me to 100k.
Heroic 10 was on a different toon so I didn't pop the 85k on the test toon.
Switched back to finish it out.
17 heroics - 1 hour 2 minutes.  195k conquest

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

2 hours ago, Darev said:

I will post more in depth when I get back.

But...level 80 pub side Ord Mantell

4 mins   (as fast as I've ever done those 3)      The 5k for each heroic seems to be working just fine.

 

2nd toon, same server:

 

Toon 3 would be 8.3k less since the Defeat Enemies objectives are both complete.   But still, not bad for the 5 minutes or so you're doing them.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

I will post more in depth when I get back.

But...level 80 pub side Ord Mantell

4 mins   (as fast as I've ever done those 3)      The 5k for each heroic seems to be working just fine.

 

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

2 hours ago, MerlockVonBaron said:

You ate missing the 50 kill count objective there per planet

You don't want to stick around and get those the first time through.   If you can get the 25 kill count on the first toon, and are going to do multiple toons, don't waste the extra time and pick the points up for the next set of kills on the next toon, or the 3rd.

Example - Jungle Fight - Pub Side belsavis.

Kill 5 outside the cave, kill 20 inside the cave, on toon 1 get the kill count CQ.

Repeat on toon 2, no bonus, but 1/2 way to the 50 kill count on toon 3

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

6 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

This depends on what you are doing with the rewards and credits you make (and even then you’re still impacting things by using them at all) If you work the system long enough you don’t need to spend much money on it. Massed farmed free cartel coins and credits that don’t leave the system are quite impactful to BS, EA, and the longevity of swtor. Therefore it does impact everyone. The credit that sellers farm go to the customer then back to them when customers  buy the items farmer sell on the gtn (buy low, sell high, spend free cartel coins) they influence in no small amount what the prices are. (causing inflation and buying things up with there accumulated wealth.) High price and inflation create greater need/willingness to buy credits since it’s cheaper than CC. Thus creating a cycle. The developer start to lose players and profits. When this gets to a certain point the game is retired.

Now you complain that other routes  can generate similar or better results.   1. PvP games per hour is not constant or the same on every server. so no, it can’t consistently do that. Also, we both agree, it’s a garbage mode most player don’t play. You need players for it to be consistent. 2. Heroics where nerfed in the past because it was being exploited 😂 and now it going back because the time it takes is a “huge” deterrent 😂 truthfully BS will mostly have to nerf it again lol because it will be exploited. 

Why don’t they get rid of free cc and exchangeable credits. Those are the oil for the machine my guy.

If they got rid of the free CC from GS, I'd stop doing it.

Flat out, point blank, they're the only reason i bother.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

1 hour ago, Traceguy said:

 I noticed that. They seem to have coincidentally arrived on the same week they're making heroics more enticing. I would normally knock out  the Heroic Eternal objectives always before this nerf. So it's not going to make much of a difference to me. But I hope others keep that Eternal in mind when comparing points come Monday.

 

Probably trying to fool their bosses too. "Look at our statistics! we've solved the offset!"

 

Yeah, I'm going to need to do the heroic eternal on planets I don't normally do so it doesn't mess up the kill count points when I update numbers in my other thread.

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

19 minutes ago, VilianSW said:

You mistook my sarcasm for actual concern. Being there couple of times a week I'm aware it's a single area and it had increased number of mobs some time ago.

Wow...no.   didn't mistake it.   Completely missed it...and it's right there.

[Tracking Time for Heroics / vs CQ point payout]

43 minutes ago, VilianSW said:

Coruscant heroics area will sure become crowded. Can mob respawn keep up? Find out in another episode of "Stealth changes saga"!
(yes, sarcasm. a lot of it.)

The Face Merchants mob spawn rate has been greatly increased from...what...just a year ago?   If people would just hit 1 of the original mob groups, and then kill the "new" mobs for the "kill count" there won't be a problem.    The rest of the heroics there are all instanced, so it won't matter.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

16 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

You're certainly free to view it however you want. At the same time respectfully, words have meaning and you're using the wrong words here because free denotes it a being handed to you. if you're not doing that specific content you're not going to see those tokens. So those tokens are a result of the content you're doing. Which is why it's a bad idea to describe them as free. You still have to do work for them. 

I'm glad you recognize people play the game differently. Problem is some people can't accept that even if it doesn't effect them. They demand how myself and others play be nerfed because they don't like it. 

If you're ever bored, go through my post history.  There are MANY posts where I tell people "When you pay my subscription fee is when you get to tell me how to play."

it's as true for you as it is for me.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

8 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

This tells me that you believe rep tokens magically spawn in one's inventory and that's not how it works. Typically most of my rep tokens came from flashpoints and picking up things like Dark Spores as just one example, or other content with them. So by no means is it "free". Assuming I popped a 43k rep token each day that's a total of 301k points, or 3 toons I could've completed with that. In order to even pop those tokens to start with I had to farm the token out. So long as people aren't using exploits or cheating somehow to get their toons to conquest, it's really none of your business what I do. So those "free" encryptions are not actually free. 

You need to understand something, you and I doing 20+ toons a week are the exception and not the rule. The average player is going to do this. Right now I do/did it because my time permits currently. While as I said above it's none of your business how I conquest my toons out so long as it's legitimately done, I will answer for the sake of discussion. 

Generally I would pop a rep token and a couple neutral objectives such as expanding a stronghold (at least until I ran out of expansions), maybe a companion influence objective or a couple of others I could knock out. From there I would start my flashpoint circuit to do Socialite 1 and Socialite 2, which would award around 8k points per flashpoint and maybe pop some other objectives if they were available. I would mix in the Makeb patrol for toons capable of doing it. From there I would supplement with the "do a heroic on (planet)" quest for 5k, along with Defeat foes Grade 1 and 2 for 15.5k on a couple of planets. If I needed commendations I was always free do do additional heroics. Between grinding some flashpoints, hitting a few neutral objectives, and a select few planets I was averaging about 4 to 5 toons a day. Sometimes it took me 5 days to conquest out if I was going at it as hard as I could, sometimes it was all the way up to reset. 

Note those are just the daily objectives and does not count things like weeklies for nuking world bosses or similar. As to where I get the resources to do some of those things, I'm a founder that's been here since beta, trust me I have resources I can use. 

If you're able to do that and that's what you want to do with your time, then by all means you do you. 

The thing I take issue with is that you and I are both farming our points legitimately. I'm not trying to say you shouldn't be allowed to do whatever it is you do to get there. However I'm being told by certain elements that because they don't like how I farm my points that I'm doing it wrong and my play should be nerfed because they have decided they don't like it, even though it has literally ZERO effect on them. THAT is part of my issue. I don't care if someone farms 5m+ points in pure pvp in a week or pve so long as it was done legitimately. Different folks play the game differently and there's nothing wrong with that. 

What I DO however mind is when people try to demand my gameplay be nerfed and act like they should be given twice the points or more as me for the same amount of work. 

I'm just going to comment on the 1 point I put in italics.

If I play content running PH4-LNX as a healer, I will, occasionally, get the drops to turn in for the rep.  Now I look at this as "free" because of two reasons.   1)   I'm going to do the content anyway so I'm not doing anything different... and 2) it doesn't matter, to me, which companion I use so I'll pick one I'm going to get these drops from.

You may not look at it the same way, but that's where I'm coming at.    Plus, I have lots of tokens left over from the previous Galactic Seasons on top of what I "earn" when using those companions.

 

As for the rest.   We apparently just play the game differently.    This particular Nerf, out of all of the Nerfs I've argued against in the past, and there've been many, is just not that high on my priority list.

It is for you.  So be it.

[The Death of Small Guilds]

6 minutes ago, Ominovin said:

You are confusing 'most guilds' with 'solo guild set up specifically to allow the owner to invite someone into guild temporarily and use the guild vault to exchange a valuable item for a massive deposit to / withdrawal from the guild funds, all without incurring any fees or taxes...'

It's not 'a thing' because the 30 day delay on guild vault access was implemented at the same time as the developers starting ramping up the trading fees to pull some credits out of the economy...

Well, yeah, if people were doing that, then the 30 day thing makes sense.  They're going to want to make it difficult to break the rules that they're implementing.

The 30 day thing is annoying, and it slowed down guilds from getting bonuses by opening rooms on SV when it launched...but that first month was also about saving credits as well, so honestly, I didn't see it as that big of a deal.

Aside from the "skirting the new rules" aspect.

[Starter Planet Heroics + Other "weekly" heroics - change to daily instead of weekly]

This is a weird one for me OP.

On one hand, I see your point and I agree.

However, I also agree that it would dramatically increase the activity on the starter planets and people just leveling new toons would have "more" competition.

However, you also have shared credit with kills now, so that makes it easier, but you have to hit them faster because the mobs die so fast.

 

There are solid arguments either way.

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

2 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

If you like doing heroics this is a step in the right direction. Thing is though not everyone likes doing heroics. If you honestly think people are going to do 72 (imp) or 70 (republic) heroics per day you've lost your mind. "Just do heroics" is not an answer. As another has already said, why am I going to pay to do more work when it was never an issue for years with me doing 43k per day for a rep token? They had YEARS to fix it if they wanted to. They could've made it 43k once a week but they didn't, they could've nerfed it years ago, but they didn't. It only became an "issue" when they decided everyone needs to grind more because of whatever reason for their metrics. 

No one is going to grind heroics for multiple hours per day on multiple toons just to break even with what they had before, nor should they have to. There was no valid reason to nerf it at all as it hurt no one. Also we've just seen 2 things at the time of this post since we don't have full patch notes. I was already completing 25 toons in a week as it was. Why am I going to play multiple hours longer per week just for the same results when for years it wasn't an issue? 

This on its own does NOT close the 1.2m point gap between pvp and pve, not by a long shot. 

Let me ask you this, and maybe it's just an issue of quantity.

Are you doing this to get 3-4 "free" encryptions each week?  And by "free" I mean regarding time spent in game.  Toon 1 (days 1 & 2) 2x rep token / companion boost (you can do this 3 times each week) and then a 4th doing some of the left over?

if that's what you're referring to, then absolutely, the change to heroics isn't going to do anything for you.

That's not what I do, at least not on the servers I'm focusing on trying to unlock private guild ship rooms.

I'm meeting conquest objectives on multiple toons each day.   The rep token granting 45k CQ helps speed it up.  But that's good for one toon each day.  When I'm doing 2-3 toons, each day, the 3rd toon is generally more difficult.  If I try to stretch it out to 4 toons per day, which I've been able to do, it's only on weeks where there have been high value solo friendly points.

I have been able to, with only two accounts, make the 5 million cq in a week.   It is something I can do only during certain invasions, but I've done it a few times.

With this change, and I'm going to test it soon, I should be able to do it each and every week. 

 

So...yeah...we may be debating apples and oranges.

[The Death of Small Guilds]

On 3/30/2024 at 2:48 PM, SteveTheCynic said:

Not just the GM, but any pair of members, including if one or both of them just joined for the purposes of using the bank for fee-free exchanges.

Is this even a thing?

I thought that change was to prevent people from joining to steal from "unsecured" guild banks.

Don't most guilds, by now, have a "free trade" or "free for all" tab anyway, where players can dump stuff for other people to use/sell on the GTN?

I did that 3-4 years ago in my private guilds when I would occasionally invite other people in.   Usually it was me putting stuff in there, and them taking it out...but if it's stuff I can't be bothered to even list on the GTN, what do I even care what they do with it?

[Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1]

6 hours ago, lingburger said:

Everyone needs to read my post here https://forums.swtor.com/topic/934421-the-death-of-small-guilds/#comment-9807918

As I pointed out in that post, the Reputation CQ reduction is the final nail in the coffin.

Anyone that has a personal guild (I do because I have multiple accounts and play several at once) or a small guild that caters for a group of friends is going to struggle getting the Perks unlocked.

Its that simple..

DEVS DO NOT LISTEN NOR DO THEY CARE WHAT WE SAY.

Are you kidding?

It will take more in game time, but this makes it easier, MUCH easier, just with the infinite 5k for heroics alone.

Yeah, it's a grind, and tedious, and boring...but as many alts as you want to make / have time for can complete conquest each and every single week.   20 toons = 20 flagship encryptions each week.     Before this change, how it is right now (last day before update) you couldn't possibly get as much as you should be able to starting tomorrow.

[4-2-24 isn't the cut off for the free transfers to SV is it?]

If they stick to 30 days, it will be the 10th.