Another suggestion: 5. The winner should get the achievement. Sometimes the larger guilds neglects a large yield planret and open up an opportunity for smaller guilds to compete. However, it seems as you do not actually conquer the planet even if you are on top of the list if you do not at the same time fulfil the conquest point target for that planet. There is no reason to have such a restriction (it is hard enough as it is to win a planet). Please remove this requirement and let the winner get the achievement regardless of how many points they have collected.

This week we saw the second total galactic war since 5.8 and it was a happy surprise to see that Bioware had listened to the players and added more planets to this event, giving a lot of other guilds (besides the usual megaguilds who have been taking turns on winning planets in the new system) a chance to compete for titles. With this kind of simple modifications it is possible to turn the new conquest system into something that is fun to play without the downsides of the old system. Some of the objectives that Bioware has stated have already been achieved: the interface does indeed look better, the rewards bug seems to be fixed, etc. Other objectives are only partially fulfilled: there is more variation in the objectives, but it would be nice if there was even more variation (personally I find the rampage objectives extremely boring and would prefer if they only appeared during some special events), and it has become easier for small guilds to earn flagship plans, but it is still very hard for smaller guilds to win planets and even harder to earn The Galaxy Conqueror achievement. Thus, it would be great if the dev team could spends some more time on fine-tuning the new system. I would suggest the following: 1. The reset bug of daily conquest objectives needs to be fixed. It is not good for the system when some players can use this bug (regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional) and earn many thousands extra conquest points. Preferably, these objectives could be changed to once per toon instead of once per legacy at the same time, as players have argued in several other threads. 2. The output of a single, dedicated player should be increased during certain weeks, for example by reintroducing proper crafting weeks. I played a lot every day during this total galactic war (as I happen to be on vacation) and earned in total around 140k (which could have been improved with some optimisation, but I have mostly been playing objectives I actually enjoy doing), i.e., around 10 times the personal conquest goal. This should be compared to the old crafting weeks, where a well prepared player could earn many millions conquest points, corresponding to several hundred personal conquest gaols (25k or 50k at that time). This meant that during a few weeks it was possible for a small guild with a few dedicated players to challenge much large guilds that had around the same number of decicated players. The old conquest points for crafting might have been too generous, but I do not see why a player who makes a large effort and spends a long time collecting materials for conquest crafting should not be able to generate as many conquest points as several dozens of casual players. Titans of Industry and The Trade Emporium seem to be obvious conquest events for crafting. 3. More planets needs to be up for conquest. Maybe there should be at least two planets per level of yield during normal events and three or more planets during some special events (in addition to total galactic war) - why not Titans of Industry and The Trade Emporium again? 4. The yield of each planet should be rotated. Although megaguilds do not care much about the rewards when choosing invasion targets, there was a trend during the last total galactic war that larger guilds went for larger planets (at least at Darth Malgus where I mostly play). If small guilds only will have a reasonable chance on small yield planets, when every planet will need to have small yield once in a while if members of small guilds be able to get the The Galaxy Conqueror achievement. Some of the resent changes to the game has been spot on from start (I am primarily thinking of the improvements to galactic star fighter last year) , whereas other changes have been rightfully criticised, but it is at least great to see that the dev team is taking feedback from players seriously and that they also seem to be willing to use the public test server to get feedback before new changes. Thanks for that!

Well, they have apparently made one change at least: Total Galactic War is once again Total Galactic War! Thanks devs, much appreciated!

There are a few one-time objectives that are varying each week. Besides that, it is mostly once per day rampage objectives on different planets. I cannot think of anything more boring and repetitive than killing a lot of trash over and over again.

I don't think repeatable heroics would make that much difference. The chance we had in the old system were crafting weeks with more than three planets up for conquest (in particular Total Galactic War), where we could push out millions of conquest points on a planet without too heavy competition. I have already suggested several ways to fix this problem in the thread I was referring to above, but maybe I should simply repeat them here: Return of the crafting week. Some people might not have liked crafting weeks, but I don't see what is wrong that dedicated players gather crafting materials fpr a long time and then generate a huge amount of conquest points in one particular conquest week (which does not need to recur that often). Total war means total war. Pre 5.8 total war meant that all planets in the conquest system (currently 19 planets) were up, which means that a lot of guilds got the chance to win. Conquerors are busy after conquering a planet. Another way of opening up for other guilds to win would be to block the winner of a planet from participating in the competition of other planets until their planet is up for conquest again. These guilds should still get guild rewareds if they reach the guild target during the following weeks, but they should not be included in the top ten list. Fight for honor. Competition is pointless if one team has a huge advantage, whereas fighting against an opponent on your own level can be---dare I use this word?---exciting. The difference between large and small yield is obviously too small to motivate large guilds to compete with other large guilds. Increase the difference, for example by adding more rewards to large yield and drastically reduce the rewards for small yield---or maybe even introduce an honorary yield where the only reward the guild get is the achievement if they win a planet. Small groups of heroes that make a difference. The placing in the top-ten list does not need to depend on the total conquest points for a guild. Another option would be to use the average number of conquest points for the 5 best players in the guild (small yield), 20 best players (medium yield) or 100 best players (large yield). This would allow small groups of heros to fight a much more numerous opposition (in true Star Wars spirit) on low yield planets. Force persuade. A more drastic measure to make guilds of similar size compete is to add a maximum guild size (for example counted as active accounts) for a guild to invade planets with lower yield. Some of the suggestions above obviously require that the yield of the planets are rotated between conqeust weeks, so that for example Alderaan is not forever a large yield planet.

Most of my guildies have lost the interest for conquest because we do not have any chance of winning planets any longer. What is the point of grinding objectives for rewards that you can easily buy from the GTN? What made conquest interesting was competing for the honour of conquering a planet (or sometimes just the struggle for a spot on the top ten list), but these days the same large guilds take turns on choosing planets to win (except on the smaller servers where there is slightly more variation---check out the statistics I have added to this thread). It seems as if the devs had completely misunderstood what the driving force for conqeust participation was when they changed the system. Thanks for the new interface and fixing the rewards bug, althoug neither has much value when the interest to participate is killed.

Shouldn't be that hard to implement considering that they already have the system for ground pvp. However, depending on the interest, it might be necessary to create 4v4 maps for ranked gsf, which would of course require some dev time.

That only a few really large guilds can win planets is the worst problem with the current conquest system. I have already suggested possible changes in this thread, where you can also find statistics about the conquest winners on all servers since 5.8. There is a little bit more diversity on servers with smaller populations, whereas the larger servers (i.e., Darth Malgus and Star Forge) are totally dominated by just a couple of guilds. Sad, because competing against other guilds used to be so much fun.

It would really be great if the devs could simply explain what they wanted to do with the new conquest. You are probably right about that they wanted to limit the rewards a single player could earn, but I just do not get how they think that is good for the game. And was it intentional to make it more or less impossible for most guilds to sometimes win a planet (check out the statistics that I posted in this thread) or was that a sideeffect of limiting rewards for individual players? What is so sad is that competing with other guilds used to be a fun part of the game and now that is gone. And it is not like there is a lot of new content being added to replace it. This is my favorite MMO all times, and the devs clearly can change parts of the game to the better (the GSF changes in 5.5 were really good and they seem to really listen to players' opinions concerning the upcoming PvP changes), but it is like there is always one step forward and two steps backwards.

The list above of conquerors since 5.8 has now been updated to include all servers. Clearly only a few guilds have the capacity to win planets. It also seems as large guilds will prefer to invade small yield planets rather than compete with other large guilds for the large rewards. I can understand that the developers are busy with other parts of the game right now, but it would really be appreciated if they could comment if this is what they wanted with conquest.

To back up some of my statemetnts above, I have some statistics about winners since 5.8: DARTH MALGUS Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield 20/3...........Wardens of the Republic .............Stroke my Wookie......................Untempered dread 27/3...........Nova Squadron ®.......................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm ..................Stroke my Wookie (i) 3/4 ............Stroke my Wookie........................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm 10/4...........Wardens of the Republic ® ........Dantooine Enclave ®................Stroke my Wookie ..................Darkstorm (i)................................Cult of the Dread Masters (i) 17/4...........Wardens of the Republic..............Stroke my Wookie .....................Darkstorm 24/4...........Darkstorm...................................Wardens of the Republic ...........Stroke my Wookie 1/5.............Stroke my Wookie........................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm 8/5.............Wardens of the Republic..............Stroke my Wookie .....................Darkstorm 15/5...........Stroke my Wookie........................Stroke my Wookie......................Wardens of the Republic 22/5...........Stroke my Wookie........................Stroke my Wookie......................Wardens of the Republic 29/5...........Stroke my Wookie.........................Rapid Serenity ®......................Wardens of the Republic ......................................................................Darkstorm (i) 5/6.............Stroke my Wookie.........................Darkstorm.................................Honour 12/6...........Stroke my Wookie.........................Honour......................................Stroke my Wookie SATELE SHAN Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield 20/3...........Galaxy Knights..............................Crimson Order...........................Blitzkrieg 27/3...........Galaxy Knights ®.........................Rebellion..................................Dark Galaxy Knights ..................The Steel Court (i) 3/4 ............Galaxy Knights..............................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Far Far away 10/4...........Galaxy Knights ®.........................Crimson Order ®.......................Blue Moon ..................The Steel Court (i)........................Harbringers of Valhalla (i) 17/4...........The Steel Court ...........................Galaxy Knights............................Harbringers of Valhalla 24/4...........Galaxy Knights.............................Harbringers of Valhalla................Blitzkrieg 1/5.............The Steel Court............................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Dark Galaxy Knights 8/5.............Harbringers of Valhalla.................Galaxy Knights...........................Dark Galaxy Knights 15/5...........Harbringers of Valhalla.................Blue Moon..................................Shadowed Republic 22/5...........The Steel Court ...........................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Dark Galaxy Knights 29//5..........The Steel Court...........................The Eternal Order ® .................Galaxy Knights .....................................................................The Guild Next Door (i) 5/6.............Galaxy Knights.............................The Steel Court...........................Crimson Order 12/6...........The Steel Court...........................The Eternal Order.......................The Eternal Ordér STAR FORGE Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield 20/3...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous 27/3...........The Sanctuary ®.........................The Courageous.......................You Aint Sith ..................Unchained Wrath (i) 3/4 ............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous 10/4...........The Sanctuary ®.........................Je'daii Reborn............................You Aint Sith ..................Unchained Wrath (i).....................The Courageous 17/4...........The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath......................The Courageous 24/4...........The Courageous.........................The Sanctuary............................Unchained Wrath 1/5.............The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath......................The Courageous 8/5.............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous 15/5...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous 22/5...........The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath.......................The Courageous 29/5...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary ®.......................The Veritas Brotherhood .....................................................................The Courageous (i) 5/6.............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous 12/6...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous THE LEVIATHAN Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield 20/3...........Les wookies mal rases.................La Brigade..................................Quo non Ascendet 27/3...........Les merchømbres ®...................TDM...........................................Les wookies mal rases ..................SPARTE (i) 3/4 ............SPARTE......................................Les wookies mal rases...............The Knight Shadow 10/4...........Les wookies mal rases ®............Les merchømbres ®..................Légion Jedi ..................SPARTE (i)...................................Black Soul (i) 17/4...........La Brigade....................................Les wookies mal rases..............SPARTE 24/4...........SPARTE......................................TDM..........................................Les wookies mal rases 1/5.............SPARTE.......................................Les wookies mal rases..............Abbadon 8/5.............Les wookies mal rases..................SPARTE....................................Légion Jedi 15/5...........SPARTE.......................................Les wookies mal rases..............Les Aventuriers Stellaires 22/5...........The Knight Shadow.......................Les wookies mal rases..............SPARTE (S) 29/5...........Les wookies mal rases..................Quo non Ascendet ®................TDM ......................................................................SPARTE (i) 5/6..............SPARTE......................................The Républic Défender..............Les wookies mal rases 12/6............Les wookies mal rases.................The Knight Shadow....................Family Burger TULAK HORD Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield 20/3...........Koosai.........................................Abgesandte der Macht..............Glücksbärchi GmbH 27/3...........The Conqueror Fleet ®...............The Big Jedi Theory..................Glücksbärchi GmbH ..................Koosai (i) 3/4 ............Koosai ..........................................Glücksbärchi GmbH................Abgesandte der Macht 10/4...........Glücksbärchi GmbH ®.................The Conqueror Fleet ®...........Toxic Dragon ..................Koosai (i).......................................Ultio Extorrium (i) 17/4...........The Conqueror Fleet....................Koosai.....................................Glücksbärchi GmbH 24/4...........The Conqueror Fleet....................Abgesandte der Macht.............Koosai 1/5.............The Conqueror Fleet....................Glücksbärchi GmbH..................Koosai 8/5.............Koosai .........................................The Conqueror Fleet................Masters of the Universe 15/5...........Koosai.........................................Endless Power..........................The Conqueror Fleet 22/5...........The Big Jedi Theory.....................Glücksbärchi GmbH..................Koosai 29/5...........Koosai.........................................Treek goes Mekka ® ..............The Conqueror Fleet ......................................................................alles (i) 5/6.............Koosai.........................................Treek goes Mekka....................Endless Power 12/6...........Koosai..........................................Incredible-Kings.......................The Conqueror Fleet

Since 5.9 conquest is almost in the same state as before (which means that it is possible to reach the personal target on a couple toons without a ridiculous effort---although this is partially due to a bug which resets daily conquest targets in an irregular pattern) with the additional bonus that it has a nicer interface and we seem to get our rewards as we should. There is one huge problem though and that is that only a few large guilds on each server can win a planet. Consequently, what you need to do to get the conqueror achievements is 1) Join a large guild. 2) Do a small amount of grinding to reach your personal target. This should be compared to the sitaution pre 5.8 where a lot of guilds every now and when had opportunities to win a planet. So, my question to the dev team is simply: Is this what you want conquest to be? Should it be a grind to earn the guild rewards or should it be a competition between guilds to fight for conquering planets or at least make it to top-ten? Of course, I hope that the answer is no, and that competition between all kinds of guilds is brought back into the conquest system. Fortunately, there are plenty of things that could be done within the new conquest system: Return of the crafting week. Some people might not have liked crafting weeks, but I don't see what is wrong that dedicated players gather crafting materials fpr a long time and then generate a huge amount of conquest points in one particular conquest week (which does not need to recur that often). Total war means total war. Pre 5.8 total war meant that all planets in the conquest system (currently 19 planets) were up, which means that a lot of guilds got the chance to win. Conquerors are busy after conquering a planet. Another way of opening up for other guilds to win would be to block the winner of a planet from participating in the competition of other planets until their planet is up for conquest again. These guilds should still get guild rewareds if they reach the guild target during the following weeks, but they should not be included in the top ten list. Fight for honor. Competition is pointless if one team has a huge advantage, whereas fighting against an opponent on your own level can be---dare I use this word?---exciting. The difference between large and small yield is obviously too small to motivate large guilds to compete with other large guilds. Increase the difference, for example by adding more rewards to large yield and drastically reduce the rewards for small yield---or maybe even introduce an honorary yield where the only reward the guild get is the achievement if they win a planet. Small groups of heroes that make a difference. The placing in the top-ten list does not need to depend on the total conquest points for a guild. Another option would be to use the average number of conquest points for the 5 best players in the guild (small yield), 20 best players (medium yield) or 100 best players (large yield). This would allow small groups of heros to fight a much more numerous opposition (in true Star Wars spirit) on low yield planets. Force persuade. A more drastic measure to make guilds of similar size compete is to add a maximum guild size (for example counted as active accounts) for a guild to invade planets with lower yield. Some of the suggestions above obviously require that the yield of the planets are rotated between conqeust weeks, so that for example Alderaan is not forever a large yield planet. What do you say fellow players? Do you care about winning planets? Do you have other suggestions how to bring back competition in the conquest system?

I have played three GSF matches tonight and I got the "Dominate the Stars" conquest objective each time (although it is listed as daily repeatable) and it still shows as incomplete in the list.

These changes might solve the problem of the hopeless grind for achieving personal target on alts, but they do no adress the issue of the possibility for other guilds than the largest on each server to win planets (which I have discussed in this thred). Is it the intention of the devs that planets should be conquered by the same large guilds on each server, week after week? If not, when do you plan adress this?

The ideal system would be that there is enough variation in conquest objectives, rewards and number of planets to invade that all kind of guilds should every now and then have a chance to conquer a planet. Of course, most weeks it will just be a competition between the largest guilds on each server. However, with the current system, there will ALWAYS be a competition between the large guilds and what is then the point for the rest of us? The bottom line is that conquest will be dead for a lot of players and urgent actions are necessary to keep it alive!

I am not requesting that small guilds should easily beat large guilds, but they should have a possibility to sometimes compete for a win.

This will be a long post, so let me start by summarising the main message: SWTOR is a fantastic game, with a lot of great content. However, it needs high-quality repeatable content, such as for example the conquest system. The main motivation for participation in conquest is TO WIN A PLANET---the rewards have a very small value. Unfortunately, the recent changes to the conquest system have killed the fun for many players, in particular from small and medium-sized guilds. The main problem is that it will be almost impossible for small guilds to win planets. This needs to be fixed immediately, before too many players loose interest for the conquest system and an important group activity dies. There are some straightforward changes which would restore the fun without completely abandoning the new system: The conquest points must be adjusted so that players can collect the personal target on at least one toon per week by playing their favorite part of the game a few days a week. There must be enough incentives for large guilds to compete against other large guilds and stay out from planets that are possible targets for small guilds. More than three planets must be up for conquest some weeks, otherwise the same old large guilds will win every week. Crafting costs and rewards must be adjusted (preferably back to the old system) in order to help small guilds produce large amounts of conquest points during dedicated weeks. BACKGROUND First of all, I would like to thank Bioware for creating SWTOR. I have played computer games since the early 80s and this is without competition the game which I have played the most. The game has the Star Wars setting, exciting story content and a lot of unique game qualities (gsf being my personal favorite). I have been a subscriber since start and I have played almost every part of the game and it has been a lot of fun, but let us face facts: It is not worth keeping a subscription for the small amount of content that is added every now and when. What keeps players here is the repeatable content and the possibility to play with friends. Thus, repeatable group content (ops, flashpoints, pvp, gsf and conquest) is a key to keeping players in the game. This is why galactic command was such a disaster; it required players who actually just wanted to play fun stuff with their friends to first do an insane amount of grinding in order to obtain decent gear. There was a point last year when I started looking for other games and was about to cancel my subscription, but then you fortunately finally realised that galactic command did not work and gave us back the possibility to quickly gear a toon by playing group content. You also made other improvements to group content for example by merging servers and updating the ship balance in gsf. I thought that the game was back on track. But then came this "update" of the conquest system... CONSEQUENCES OF THE NEW CONQUEST SYSTEM What you do not seem to understand is that the main reason for playing contest is not the rewards (which have little value) but the possibility to win a planet (or at least to compete about a spot on the top ten list). Thus, to keep conquest attractive to as many players as possible, it must be possible for small and medium-sized guilds to win a planet. That was possible in the old system, but seems impossible with the new system as there are only three planets up for conqeust each week. The result is that the three largest guilds on each server will take one planet each, because the difference in rewards between small yield and large yield simply is not enough compared to the glory of winning a planet. Moreover, the big nerf on crafting has eliminated the possibility for a small guild with hard-working crafters to compete with a larger---but less dedicated---guild during crafting weeks. WAY FORWARD Since you do not have enough resources to add a lot of new group content to the game, it is vital that you at least maintain the group content that we already have. Although there are some good ideas in the new conquest system (in particular that we do not have to fill our strongholds with junk to get the conquest bonus), the net impact is that conquest is a lot less fun than before. This means that many guilds will loose an important group activity, which has been a large motivation to keep playing the game. Fortunately, it should be straightforward to deal with the problems, but this needs to be done quickly! As I see it, the following changes are necessary: The conquest points awarded for different activities must be adjusted so that the effort to reach the personal target on a toon is reasonable. For example, with the old system it usually took me less than 20 starfighter matches to achieve my personal target on each starfighter toon. With the current system, I get 7500 conquest point for the weekly quest on one toon and then need to play more than 35 matches to get to my personal. For the next toon, I need to play more than 70 matches! The difference in rewards must be much larger if there should be any chance that large guilds prefer to compete with other large guilds about the large yield planets. Small yield planets should be more or less about the honour. The guild targets should be set by the number of toons in a guild that are capable of reaching the personal target. An idea for rewards could be something like this: Small yield: 15 toons * 15k = 225k guild target. Rewards: 50k credits + 1 jawa junk Medium yield: 30 toons * 15k = 450k guild target. Rewards: 50k credits + 5 jawa junk + 1 gathering lockbox Large yield: 60 toons * 15k = 900k guild target. Rewards: 100k credits + 10 jawa junk + 1 gathering lockbox + resource matrix + one encryption Very large yield: 120 toons * 15k = 1.8M guild targret. Rewards: 150k credits + 20 jawa junk + 2 gathering lockbox + 4 resoruce matrix + one encryption Besides, guilds should always be rewarded if they are on the top ten list, regardless if they have achieved the guild target or not. This would give small guilds a possibility to compete for the large yield planets in case it is impossible to win the small yield planet because they have been invaded by larger guilds. [*]There must also be weeks when more than three planets are up for invasion. Lower rewards for small yield planets is probably not sufficient to keep large guilds from competing with smaller guilds. Therefore, there must be weeks when there are more planets up for invasion than the number of large guilds on the server. Total galactic war was the main opportunity for small guilds to win a planet in the old system and we would plan in weeks before how to coordinate our efforts. [*] [*]There must be crafting weeks, where crafting provides enough conquest points that players who have made a real effort to collect materials can have a great impact on the top ten list.

It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many that play GSF on a regular basis (let us say at least once per week). I am currently flying only on Darth Malgus, and besides the regular aces and veterans I see a couple of dozen unfamiliar names every evening. How many active players could do you think that could translate into? A hundred? A couple of hundreds? And what about the other servers? Since I see guild recruiting in French and German on Darth Malgus, I assume that those servers are not in a very healthy state for group content, so I would guess their GSF playerbases are small. How are the American servers? Do you have a good GSF population on both, or just one?

I was the 9th player in a 9 vs 7 game yesterday evening.

All these bugs are well-known and have been so for a long time in a galaxy right under our noses.

Yes, and one more thing: 3. The old back-filling the wrong team bug.

If they should fix two things then it should be 1. The component deselection bug. 2. The disappearing mousepointer if spawning then a game ends.

Whether or not account/legacy wide rating is feasible is not the crucial part of the matchmaking. (I guess most pilots have more or less the same stats on all characters anyway.) As I see it, the main issues are that the matchmaker needs to use an appropriate skill measure and that it should not start a game as soon as there are 16 players in the queue if there are other ongoing matches on the server - in that case it is bettter to wait until that game has ended and try to balance the teams from a pool of 32 players.

So what should the matchamker look at then? I would suggest two main attributes: Accountwide (or at least legacywide) kill/death ratio - Reasonable measure of player skill level. Could also include assists in order not to punish players who go for support ships. This ratio will also be self-adjusting---if you are put in too tough matches your kill/death ratio will slowly decrease and eventually the matchmaker will match you against less deadly opponents. Requisition on your top three ships - If two equally skilled players are playing against each other, but one has a new character with ships straight out of the hanger and the other has fully mastered ships then the latter player will have a definite advantage. This could be compensated by multiplying your kill/death ratio by a factor depending on how much requisition you have on your best ships. For example, if you have zero requisition you could get a 50% reduction of the kill/death ratio VALUE considered by the matchmaker.

And yes, 4v4 matches with a counterpart to the ground game grouped rank would probably help as it would give the best players a queue of their own.