First point is fair enough. Second is insane if anything guild max size should be increased! Many activities require 16 or more players. I think the average big guild has at the most 5% of member chars online at peak time. SMW seems to have about 80 people online at peak hour, wardens 25-30. Both guilds have around 900 chars in it... Now there is a reason these guilds are big and that to me does not seem to be conquest but especially for smw that they have a very active guild leadership that organizes a ton of events for guildies! I joined both guilds recently predominantly motivated by a. Curiosity b. Conquest and c. My current guild seeing attendance drop dramatically w conquest nerf and becoming a bit boring. Ie the only guild activities remaining were centered around conquest. Now I am still a very rookie member but I am amazed by the effort there guilds and especially smw makes/ for the guild and this goes far beyond conquest. There are tons of events organized ... Ie these guilds are big not because of conquest though it helps ofcourse but because they have a very dedicated and creative leadership that invests a ton of their free time in the guild.

Describes pretty much how I feel about it. There was some hope as before the 'bugfix' for one week we had an enjoyable conquest system again. That was taken away and brought it back to the pos level it was when implented in 5.8. The legacy system sucks. The one per day on many activities suck as well. I don't have time or inclination to play 7 days a week. I play maybe like two or three evenings per week for a few hours, Conclusion: there is no more place for me in conquest I guess.

The problem is the matchmaking much more than the entry barrier. And the matchmaking is bad because of inherent flaws in it which are made much worse by a small pool of players participating, As such measures to make the pool of players participating even smaller will not fix the problem. It will just turn it in a completely dead game aspect which solo ranked already is very close to imo.

Prior to 5.0 snipers like any class were ok in 8 vs 8. In arena's however they were complete trash. Ie always the first target together with mercs and globalled very, very easily. Nowadays I would say 2 snipers specs are pretty average, while engineering is still a very good spec (and annoying as **** on top:P)

Ok overall it is a huge step up from 5.8. Lingering issues I see: - it is very solo / small group oriented now. There is nothing wrong with being able to cap easily from solo and small group activities but it does seem to have a negative effect on guild play (eg Ops) as it is now far easier to just solo objectives or pug fp's or warzones vs guild play which would be mostly operations, They take relatively much more time and effort to set up for a relatively much lower reward. As others already stated there also seems very little link between difficulty of an objective and reward, (eg master FP's and veteran hammer station giving same reward) It is very early to tell and this is only one event but for guild play this seems a negative to me. I am in a conquest oriented guild and it was very hard to run even a single operation as most members found it much more efficient to just do some solo objectives and maybe a wz / fp to reach the cap. - crafting now seems completely dead to me as a conquest activity. It may here or there help push a character over the personal cap but not any more than that anymore as it's relative reward went further down.

If you take a small look outside of teh world of pvp where skanks rule (which is to become worse with the announced changes which will only make a skank relatively better to a pure tank in pvp) then I would say for most group pve activities pure tanks have become the bottleneck (much more than healers), Ie for ops or Master FP's usually the role most difficult to fill is Tank. Now with the proposed changes which will be a minor nerf to skanks but a major one to Tanks I think this will become even worse. Dunno how it will turn out but I do think pure tanks could be made a bit more attractive, both in pvp and pve

Ofcourse it is. I can so imagine him presenting a powerpoint to the board that participation went up! (ie number of toons with >0 conquest points). I have agreat tip for a new conquest objective; Upon logging in you get 1 conquest point! It will make the conquest 'participation' jump through the roof!

I am sorry but this seems like a lie, It is extremely difficult to believe more 'guilds' are getting rewards. Previously you had 30 guilds every time, more with total war and the events with split rep/empire planets. Now you have 1 on the large planet, a few on the medium and then an unknown number on the small yield. It is hard to believe there are dozens of guilds capping the small planet and even if the total number of characters getting a reward is for sure lower. Similar about participation. I suppose you mean with participation players that end up with a conquest score >0. That is possible but characters making the cap. ..get real it is completely unbelievable there are more than there were in 5.8.

If ranked was only for people who want elo and are really good it would be dead again in no time. The essence of the elo system is that you need below average (in terms of elo compared to the average player) people actively participating in order to be able to gain elo. Now I do agree that people who will not even try their best or are clueless about the game should not play ranked (unless they form a team of likeminded people and play teamranked) but you do need people in the pool that are below average compared to the average person participating for the system to work, which also means that they need an incentive to participate. (and I do think the mats pushed a lot of people in ranked, but I see this as overall a very good thing. Sure the average skill is probably down a lot, but if you are a good player this is only to your advantage. Face it: if you are good there are only 3 spots left on your team for potential bads. The other team can all be bads. Ie statistically your odds of this working in your favor are quite high. (and then obviously you also get much more pops). No low elo players in ranked = no way to gain elo. Or otherwise said: Let's assume you put a hypothetical cap and remove all the players below 1200 rating from the pool playing ranked. Even if ranked where still to pop with the now much better players remaining after a bit of time half of the players will be below 1200 again, (in the very unlikely scenario they would keep on playing) Ranked can not survive as a system without people with below average skills actively participating,

I think a far simpler explanation is: they did not consider most of the story/class missions as something people would still do at level70 when they set the values. Hence they are low. With the exception of the KOTET / KOTFE chapters ( which indeed have a pathetic reward) also none of these stories are repeatable content. Now what they missed in all of this is that with how easy it became to level up there is a high probability that even a story oriented player will have entire planets left of uncompleted stories by the time they hit 70. They also created the L70 datacron and players buying that would have all story content left. So I am not so sure it was a conscious decision to give low cxp on those (remember early on everything gave low cxp), I just think that when they started rebalancing cxp rates they focussed on achieving this through repeatable/ 'end-game' content. (with the exception of kotet/kotfe). Another additional reason could be that they figured that for all these missions you don't need better equipment. I.e. face it... for a level 70 these things are faceplant easy. (but a lot of the repeatable content is as well) I do support an upwards revision of all the sory missions in terms of cxp though. As I see no reason why these should not be a viable path on the cxp treadmill and yes there are many of them that are actually pretty cool.

Actually... to me it seems it has improved a lot compared to a few years ago. In team ranked I see no real issue. You may get the occasional scolding if someone really, really screws up but overall... I can't say I have encountered a lot of toxic behaviour in terms of 'go kill yourself, delete game aso'. In solo ranked neither.. though I expect that there most people playing it are just happy it pops in the first place... after a loooong time. In terms of gameplay, yes I still see some 'toxic behaviour'. Ie stealths waiting untill acid even when they are 1-4 and wo skill is my biggest gripe, then some immeadiately leaving or leaving after losing round 1... but in terms of downright rude behaviour / comments towards other people I think it improved a lot tbh.

On point 1: agreed added him to ignore a while ago. On point 2: I see a similar trend. Ie overall attendancy is definitely down, From what has been announced in 5.9 (the 'we hear you' you know!) this seems fairly marginal tinkering at best. As another poster already stated Bioware does not seem to realize/care a) how bad it is and b) how many people cared about conquest, ie how urgent it was to fix it. I think that whatever tinkering happens in 5.9 is a case of way too little, way too late. What I absolutely fail to understand is how they still do not seem to realize this. The changes they will do in 5.9 as far as they have been announced fix nothing, and even if they changed them so they did they are way too late. Especially since fixing this mess could have been done with what seems very little effort, Adjust some point valkues, include weeklies every time and get rid of most legacy restrictions. It is probably no more than adjusting some tables and setting some flags. it is by no means a large effort.

Correct. If you get a pop from gf queue the odds are very high it will be a lockout run that is trying to queue sync with a replacement, which means you will most likely be kicked. Best is to lfg on fleet or join a guild that runs ops.

You gain the option of not subscribing this month and still have shae and nico, which you have already had for years while people only getting them now did not. I do not mind if they were to give something special to fi:rak_02: everyone who subscribed continuously since launch, in fact they should do something for these players but the complaints about two year old rewards being made available again and a feeling you need to be compensated in a way are a bit asinine according to me. Ie as if you would have unsubbed if you knew two years later the reward might come again. Really? 🤔

Actually if I understand Eric's explanation correctly all the weeklies should be infinitely repeatable. He seems to say that when something is set as daily repeatable it is daily by legacy. The difference being that with inifintely repeatable you could complete a weekly multiple times on the same day on different alts. With what you suggest you could do them across alts but not on the same day, which would be a vast improvement over what we have now but still annoying compared to how it used to be. Eg imagine you complete the fp weekly on char 1. In the daily repeatable by legacy you would not play another FP on char 2 which had 4/5 on its weekly as that would complete it and you would miss out on the conquest bonus. If they are inifintely repeatable you have no such issue. Which is much better also as - like many people I guess - I do not have the opportunity to play every single day.

I never saw the 'general population' asking for an alt unfriendly system. The general population and especially their loyal subs have many alts which bioware doesn't seem to realize. I saw people asking for something to be done about the lockouts, though if you ask me it was mostly in a misguided belief that it would make things easier to compete against the top conquest guilds. The main effect of it is a CXP gain nerf, on the leaderboards the same guilds as before are winning. Which was predictable as these guilds have a focus on conquest. To be honest I rarely if ever saw someone complaining about crafting at all.

Have said everything I wanted on the new conquest. Just want to bump it over the 'drama' that bioware is making some old sub reward available again, This is way more important

I thought they said somewhere that thew would use existing mats. Not 100% sure though.

It is still a subscriber only reward. I have Nico not Shae and I don't care much either way as I think the game has much bigger issues currently. I like getting Shae, mostly as according to all accounts she is a substantially better comp than the others at least in dps role. Then again I don't have a real need for another comp so it matters very very little. Overall I think it is pretty ok that they give people a second chance on subscriber rewards. It has been a loooong time since they were initially offered. And at this point of the game I think it needs everything possible to keep on going. This is a very low cost thing to do which may bring in a few new subs or keep people from unsubbing for a limited time. Which may very well be essential to the survival of the game overall at this point.

You may mor may not be correct on their intentions, However I have a few comments to make: I think that everyone has already established that in the current system everyone who is in a guild that regularly made the top 10 loses. (And I would venture that almost everyone who is interested in conquest is in one of these guilds. At least with an alt). They will get much less rewards (as a guild) than before due to the fact that much less charactes in the guild will make their personal score. Now where this leave the players that in your example could not make top 10 before but still wanted a guild flagship with expansions? At first glance they benefit marginally as they no longer need to be in the top 10 (keep in mind however that if the objectives scores and repeatability were not nerfed into the ground this would also have been the case - the only thing that has an effect here is the fact that they just need to meet the small guild cap. However similar to anyone else they will struggle hard to make the personal cap which also drives the guild reward on many toons, so the overall number of encryptions (what this is supposedly about) the small guild will get is very low. (still better than zero though. With the old objectives and scores and just having to meet the cap also the small guilds would benefit much more as they also would have a much easier time on meeting the personal caps!) Now add to this the following: - the overall influx of encryptions in the game is much lower than before as much less people / alts are making the cap. So the offer of encryptions for those who still need them will overall steeply decline and ergo become much more expensive on fi the GTN. Still so sure the small guild is benefitting from this? As far as I know the encryptions a non top 10 guild can hope to get every week will take them ansolutely forever to build a flagship unless they will supplement it with buying encryptions of the GTN... Encryptions which will become much more expensive than they were... - Group content will be harder to achieve as well. Face it the conquest minded people will have much less time to play alts or typical group activities. Typically I would do PVP and queue for Master Flashpoints even the occasional uprising with many alts. This week I did one lockout run, a little pvp and just enough FP's to get the weekly on a single char, the rest I solo'd doing the stupid weeklies that I had done over and over again already. I did not even log in my republic characters at all. I.e. I queued for much much less group content than ever before. Less people queuing = also much less pops for these small guilds. Still convinced this is working out to your advantage? Face it, if they wanted to help the small non top 10 guilds the only thing you needed to do was remove the top 10 requirement and set an arbitrary cap to reach. Everything else they did in lowering scores for group repeatable content (operations, pvp, gsf, flashpoints, introducing much more legacy lockouts and so on is not benefitting anyone, If you think this gives you or a player like you any advantage you are dead wrong. The top 10 is meaningless now and the number 1 spot and planetary title is still as out of reach for the guild type you describe as ever before. Yes you get potentially a token number of encryptions now but overall also encryptions are going to be much much harder to come by. I.e. even if you are correct on Bioware's intentions they still achieved the opposite of it in my opinion.

Keep in mind that: You may find it acceptable only because it is a slightly less nerf now than last week. Ie your expectations have already lowered a lot. Next week may not/probably will not have the weeklies in them (cz98 aso) this is the main reason why with carefully planning And 'acceptable grinding (As they are short) you can cap multiple alts this week.

Ok this patch makes conquest a little more palatable. I could conceivably even make the cap for one main without drastic and unwanted play changes. The main issues remaining right now; Per legacy restrictions. They hurt gameplay a lot I do not play alts much anymore and overall I play much less. Points for repeatable objectives are much too low. Especially for PvP and flashpoint. An increased reward for master fps would be nice as well. The queue for veteran (faceroll) fps seems fine but master was not great too start with and seems worse now. As it is now on the plus side: small guilds unable to make too 10 before should w a medium effort be able to get the small planet cap. Losers everyone else: all the other guilds see much less encryptions than before as much fewer alts make the cap. I am certain the total number of encryptios being earned is well below pre 5.8 levels.

Hi Eric, Can you please tell us what the discussion is about, as based on the goals we heard from the team there should not be much to discuss. Ie the main goal as we understood it was to give smaller guilds and more people an opportunity to get the rewards. How this can ever be compatible with much more effort needed than before to reach the personal target on a single let alone multiple characters is completely beyond me and everyone it seems. Hence my feeling and I guess that of most people that your stated goal is not the true goal. We may not like the true goal but if it were clearly stated at least it would make your actions more believable. Right now there is an overwhelming feeling that the dev team is being untruthful and not listening to the players at all. We also think that removing some of the legacy locks or changing objective scores is very easy to do. If we are wrong there and this takes more time/effort at the very least the message that yes this will be changed but takes x time would help restore some confidence. We will see after the patch but the feeling I have right now is that the reinstatement of PvP or FPs in the objectives will be done similar to gsf. Ie with a low repeatability and very low objective score value making them at best something that will be complimentary to whatever other objectives there are rather than as they used to be perfectly feasible avenues to cap conquest on multiple characters.

Please specify for the warzones and flashpoints what the point value is and how repeatable they are. Endlessly? Daily? One time per character? One time per Legacy?

If you are brand new my advice would be to just enjoy the excellent class stories and not worry too much about credits yet, You will have plenty of them later on and the best experience you will ever have in the game is honestly the class stories.