If they would let guilds choose those every week, it would instantly fix the whole Rep Conquest issue, too. As of now, you can only choose them once every 5 weeks or thereabouts.

I find this unclear. Can you state for the record, Socialite now requires random FP, or this is a bug and we should be able to get credit for Socialite while having some FP's filtered?

See, here's the thing, though. They now no longer GET my money, or that of most of my friends. They won't be getting your money either. A lot of other people have also said they are unsubbing. What I don't understand is how this was supposed to somehow improve their numbers as opposed to send them through the floor. Where is the income stream that this change will create that will offset the loss of subs it causes? Because personally, I am not seeing it.

For me, the entire point of the game was to be able to play 8 alts and hit conquest on all of them playing 4-6 hours a week. I and my friends were ideal users. We consistently paid month after month, demanded little in terms of resources, and spent additional money buying coins so our alts could have cool weapon tunings, or mounts, etc. We made lesser alts to play with other friends we recruited, and again, spent coins to make sure even the lowbies had some style. It makes absolutely no sense that BS would come after what seems to me a huge subsection of players who are reliable customers. I can't understand what benefit they imagine they will get that will offset the loss of that steady income. That's what I would really like to hear explained.

So basically, nothing? We still have to play much longer now to meet the same conquest numbers than before the nerf? Seriously, that's the plan? I can only speak for myself, but I play(ed) SWTOR specifically because I don't want to play That Other Game with the all the grind and 'balancing' against casual players. I logged in every day and paid you hundreds of dollars a year both in sub and buying cartel coins, and so did my friends. Now we don't log in at all because you've made the game a huge drag. Why on earth do you guys think people will pay you when you have severely degraded the value of your product to the point that is is no longer worth our time? I need two hands to count the number of subs you've lost just amongst the people I know, and I doubt we are special snowflakes. I think this is a colossal blunder, but hey, it's not my problem anymore.

Seriously? I am blown away at this pointless and infuriating change.

Wow, so even broadsword conceded Stradlin was wrong.... It's a hopeful post, but I remain skeptical. I totally sense the thesis-antithesis-synthesis play coming, but who knows. I only know I won't resub unless they return the balance so you can complete conquest on 2 characters in about an hour, maybe a little more, and I have multiple friends who feel the same. Most of them already moved on to ESO, so they may not come back even if BS fixes this. Time will, as you say, tell.

Oh, I don't see refusing to pay for an unacceptable product as 'bowing out', and neither do you. You just needed something clever to say and that was all you could come up with. I'll still be gaming (and developing games, too). I just won't be paying people to play a game I no longer enjoy because they made changes that ruin my enjoyment. That's not losing. That's WINNING. LOSERS pay for things they don't actually want. You, on the other hand, came in here posing as some god's gift to game design, casting aspersions on others who disagreed, only to finally confess you have little knowledge of or interest in the endgame. Somehow, once we drilled down and I confronted you on specific issues, your 'balance' comments had nothing to do with the stage of the game that 90% of players are involved in, gearing and endgame progression. Instead, you were referring to some esoteric other 'game that could be', is that about right? Offer what excuses you will, but given that you have confessed to no interest in the game the vast majority of players are playing, it seems obvious your hot take on how it should be balanced is...uncompelling. What I don't really understand is, given your stated lack of concern (and knowledge, it would seem), why you are so adamant that people who object to the changes are somehow 'bad' and 'wrong', or at a minimum, sadly ignorant. Why would you be involved in the discussion for multiple pages over something that is meaningless to you? You just enjoy taunting people who are upset? Or is it something deeper? I wonder, is there another layer to your stance that you don't want people to know about? Or maybe you're just a guy who was rude and arrogant in his superiority, got called out for it, and now wants to bow out with a measure of dignity? Very well. I'll allow it. I am confident who is correct here. I don't need you to concede, and neither does anyone else who was following the discussion. It would have been for YOUR benefit to show some class and admit you were wrong, but then, I don't think anyone confused you with the sort of person who would. You may have the last word.

So the entire endgame is unimportant to you, eh? And likewise, you don't care about how MMO players tastes have changed since the days of Ultima Online and EQ, and how those games' designs are losing strategies to modern games? Despite your strongly advocating for thirty year old design theory? Smart move bowing out. I'll take that as a concession.

This is all very well and good, but it is still just what YOU personally think conquest SHOULD be. That doesn't really interest anyone except...well, you. I pointed out what it IS, a source of tech frags and conquest commendations for people who don't play ops or pvp. The fact that you think endgame conquest should be all things to all people is, IMO, just some weird desire you have that doesn't square with reality. You think that a game that actively encourages alt play shouldn't cater to alts? That doesn't make sense to me. People who want to focus on a single character can do so, and they have multiple alternatives. But if they choose to focus on conquest, the system is pretty obviously built for an entire legacy, not a single character. Legacies are major features of the game, and it's nonsense to suggest they should not be a focus. So I really don't understand your assertions here. I pointed out that conquest serves as a third leg for endgame advancement. Multiple, comparable paths that support varying levels of difficulty and varying styles of play having comparable results is precisely what you would want for a healthy game. I get it that you don't think so. I sense the strong whiff of "MMO elitist" coming on now, where your entire concept is based around locking out solo and small group players from progression. And yes, I do believe that's the entire motivation for this change, which is EXACTLY why I unsubbed, and exactly why I think everyone else who is annoyed about this should do the same. It seems clear to me that the wrong people have gotten control of the game are are dead set on making it more like "The Other MMO" (which I left to play this game). You totally ignored the main thrust of my post, btw, and I think, as noted above, I can see why. Address why 4k tech frags and 1600 concoms is too much for conquest focused players, and needed to be nerfed. More to the point, address why you think it's too much for solo and small group players, which is your real argument here, isn't it? I'd wager that you object to there actually being progression for those players at all. Would you care to also comment on why MMO's in general are dying out, and how it relates to the desires both of younger gamers who don't want to grind forever to get to the fun part, and older gamers who have actual life responsibilities and are unwilling to prioritize being a sweaty try hard over things like work and family? And finally, could you address what is likely to happen to a game these days that forces interaction with the ever more toxic randos in groupfinder? You note above how you want the design to do just that. Not me, man. I won't pay to be abused by jerks in a groupfinder. I play with friends only. I won't pay for a game that demands I do otherwise to advance.

You brought a much better discussion to the table here, and you raise valid points. Here, then, is the heart of our disagreement: I have no interest in playing a single character, and I strongly suspect a HUGE segment of the player base feels the same. I could play some other game if that was what I wanted. I specifically chose this game because it was alt friendly. Most everyone I know has at least one of each class on both sides, and at a minimum wants to be able to meet conquest on all of their characters in a reasonable amount of time per week. The game strongly incentivizes having those 8 characters, because of the huge focus on story, achievements, etc. And conquest on all 8 characters gives them rewards in parity with ops players or PVP'ers in a similar amount of time, perhaps a bit less. Up to now, the conquest rewards were aligned with that, and there were truly options for all play choices. A player who wanted to focus on a single character could PVP or do ops to get plenty of tech frags playing about an hour, maybe a little more, per day, AND get conquest to boot. But for people who don't or can't do ops, conquest on multiple alts was a viable alternative. You come in and get conquest on one, maybe 2 characters a day, it's not a huge time sink, and you can somewhat keep up on tech frags. (I won't bother to address the 30-40 characters, that doesn't have anything really to do with the discussion. the rep bonus was good for 300k a week, which accounts for 3 characters. That's a big chunk for our hypothetical 8 character players (37%), but not so much for people spending the time to do 30 characters a week (10%). Now, you can argue about the intent of conquest, but it's not really relevant. The reality was that, intended or not, players who don't want or are unable to do ops had an alternate path for progression. You can't get quite as good gear top end, but you can get close. And as with the other paths, you get out of it what you put into it. Daily play for a reasonable period of time, an hour or a little more, gets you reasonable rewards per week: for 8 characters, that was 4k tech frags and 1600 commendations. That is not in any way out of line. That's weeks of playing to max a single implant. Only now even that modest goal is no longer possible, and that's why conquest players are angry and unsubbing. (Yes, I unsubbed, and wouldn't even be posting save for the fact they pulled this crap 2 days after my sub renewed, so I might as well post my displeasure before my sub closes.) This new change pretty much halves tech frag and commendation gathering for people who focus on conquest as opposed to pvp or ops. They can no longer keep up playing for a similar amount of time, because the conquest rewards were not sufficient without the rep bonus. As you note, many sources of conquest were no longer available to the most veteran of players. No conquest for level ups, none for legacy advance, etc. The rep bonus acted as a balancing weight. By popping it off, the wheel is now unbalanced. People object not because they are greedy or lazy or selfish: again, lets note, our typical 8 alt player gets 1600 comms and 4k tech frags per week. An ops player gets 2k for a single completed SM op. Now, with this change, for their 1 hour or a little more per day, conquest players get only 1000 comms and 2500 tech frags per week, barely enough for a single upgrade on an implant even at reduced prices, longer if you haven't hit that milestone yet. Now, such a character might also get tech frags for guild conquest, but then, so might a pvp/op player, so it's a wash. And then, the op/pvp player will ALSO likely hit his conquest reward as well. How is 4k tech frags and 1600 concoms 'too much' and overpowered, such that it should be nerfed to half that, or require over 2 hours a day in playtime instead of one? Because that's the actual result of the rep increase bonus. As I said, actual balancing requires us to look at the whole system, not just one discrete value.

If that isn't a clear concession that lots of people are unsubbing, I don't know what is.

It's not the first account I have seen that is days old and telling people how wrong they are. Imagine that, only playing for three days yet already grinding conquest and knowing exactly how it should feel to veterans. Not sus at all....

Nobody hated conquest until the devs tried to force it to have double grind time. Try again.

Design by spreadsheet mentality on full display here. Everything is discrete values, not systematic. Things that stick out must get nailed down. Player experience as a whole is meaningless, right? YOUR personal interpretation is that it was 'out of balance', something that is 100% subjective in the first place, and hardly the simple issue you make it out to be. Ever balance a tire? It isn't done according to aesthetics or symmetry in applying weights. It is done using proper measuring tools and evaluation of the system as a whole. An honest assessment here is that conquest as a whole seemed to be working for everyone. The tire was balanced and turned well. If you remove one of the weights from the tire because it LOOKS asymmetrical, you actually UNBALANCE it. You can't just view this issue in isolation. If you think this particular award was 'too high for too little effort', what about the awards that are clearly too low? What about the fact that they doubled the amount of conquest players needed previously, which is the real reason people counted on a large daily reward to begin with? You're confining the discussion of an entire system to a single component that was removed. I assure you, as an engineer and a game dev for >30 years, I know this for a fact: removing or modifying a single part from a complex system OFTEN causes said system to blow up and utterly fail, just as it has in this case. Would you prefer a game dev 'best practices' discussion instead of a tire analogy? Very well. As I mentioned, I've been a game dev for some years, so I will speak as such. You want to modify a working, complex system, like a live game? You identify the problem areas, consider how your changes will affect interacting components, then make a plan to adjust them ALL. You include several of your peers in a discussion about possible unintended consequences of your plan, in the hopes of finding areas you may have been blind to, unexpected interactions outside the scope of your expertise (like, oh, I dunno, breaking logins, breaking the economy, or blowing up conquest, thus pissing off your entire customer base, say?) Once you have thoroughly considered those changes, you work on the system OUTSIDE the production environment, adjust ALL of the pieces, and personally TEST it to make sure the system as a whole seems to be working as you expected. THEN you have an approval process where people who actually understand how those systems interact (someone like, oh, a test team that plays the game for a living) call out problems. And finally, you have a person who assumes responsibility make the final call as to whether those changes should actually go live. Only then do you merge it into the product and put it into the production release. Anything else is asking for an epic disaster, as any professional in this industry would know. Please don't treat those who disagree with you as if we are ignorant peasants or selfish children who can't possibly understand your superior perspective. We are looking at the whole tire, while you choose to focus on the fact that the weights are not evenly distributed about the center of the wheel. Your personal opinion that the rep reward was too high is meaningless, given that you discuss NOTHING else about the conquest system and how this component interacted. You also seem to have no understanding of why players valued the daily rep reward to begin with, and why it was important to the system as a whole. (Hint, it had them logging in EVERY DAY, and now a lot of them are cancelling their subs). If you're the expert you would have us believe, let's review your full analysis of the system and how the change you support will interact with the rest of the components. What runoff or unintended effects have you missed? Start by explaining why players valued this feature and why they are upset at its removal without implying said players are stupid, lazy, etc. Changing complex systems requires you go beyond first order thinking or risk serious problems. Don't remove or modify things unless you understand why they exist. That's another basic law of engineering and leadership . It even has a name: "Chesterton’s Fence".

You're twisting their words. What people actually said is that the activities they enjoy do not provide enough conquest points and/or aren't repeatable, so they had to grind away at activities they don't like in order to complete conquest on their characters. That's not at all the same as what you are trying to put forth. No one objects to conquest. They object to the massive curtailing of the points awarded that this change has created.

He's exactly the sort I mentioned earlier, the Modern Game Designer. He has his spreadsheet and his mind reading capabilities on full display so we recognize his bona fides. Huh, I guess having to grind harder for the same thing is fun and I am just too dumb to understand.

This is pretty much the shape of it. I've been a game dev for >30 years, and this reeks of what I call 'design by spread sheet' or "Communist theory of game design". Some 'designers' are convinced that they have to force people into doing EVERYTHING, no matter if the player enjoys that thing or not. You MUST eat your vegetables AND dessert. If you just eat dessert because vegetables don't interest you, they will put salt in the dessert to make vegetables more desirable by comparison. Maybe that works for exciting, new games, where players are subject to FOMO, but older games with older players? Yeah, no. I don't pay for things that I find unpleasant.

So did you guys realize the changes would cut tech frags and conquest comms in half for conquest players, or was that just an accident?

This right here is the heart of the problem. Dramatically increasing the time to hit conquest for alts results in dramatically reducing the number of tech frags small group/solo players can get, both from personal conquest and from guild conquest goals. Honestly, it seems to me they didn't even understand (and maybe still don't) that they have effectively cut off a large number of players from progression. And I agree, it seems change in the near future is very unlikely.

Not a fix. Lots of people are capped or close to capped, and this will simply make the rep fill faster and leave them with no options. In addition, there was no rep provided with this GS. This is VERY simple to fix. They need to boost the conquest awards for non-pvp activities, especially for solo or small group stuff.

They could easily solve it by leaving the various pinnacle awards, boosting the various awards for FP's and Ops, even leaving the Flashpoint Rally guild abilities up all the time instead of 3 out of 5 weeks. But if they don't replace this with something supporting normal play so people aren't grinding conquest instead of playing in FP's/ops/heroics, it's just not going to work for me, and I would guess, it won't work for a lot of others as well.

Same here. Wife and I are both out. We already had FP1 conversion nerfs, now conquest as well, yeah, at some point I have to put a value on my time. This was the limit for me.

Now check the math: after socialite 1 plus the others, how many points do you need? More than half again as much, BUT it's exactly enough to be covered by a rep advancement. This is why people are ticked off.

I think people do want to play, but the things they want to do award crappy conquest points. For me, I have 8 characters, one for each class, something we are strongly encouraged to do. And I want to hit my 100k with all of them without spending my whole life at the game. An hour a day, maybe a little more depending on my schedule, should be enough to do that, but with the nerf, it no longer is. When I play, I want to do a few flashpoints with friends, or maybe a SM op, a group activity of some sort that gets me FP1's or OP1's, something to advance my character, if only a little bit. I would wrap up with some gear management/upgrades if possible. Ideally, this happens in about an hour. But if I spend an hour running three flashpoints or a single op, I still haven't completed conquest for even one character. I am not even close, and therein lies the rub: people use the 'easy' conquest rewards to supplement the miserly awards for the activities they actually enjoy, the ones that allow them to advance their characters and play with friends. The rewards for the primary activities in the game are too low. It's just that simple, IMO. The reason people are reacting so strongly about this nerf is because it now prevents them from being able to enjoy the game, and requires them to do the chores you mention above. And many, myself included, don't see that as something worth paying for.