That's why I said it's usually a function of who has the deepest pockets and most dedicated crafters and not exclusively a function of it. How you won the black hole is how it's supposed to be done. People should win by doing mostly PVP on PVP weeks/planets, FP on FP weeks/planets, GSF on GSF week/planets, etc... Sadly, that's not what's happening a lot of the time, and the way <Nemesis> won their planet that week is probably the exception. Since I've seen <Aisthesis> put up absolutely insane numbers in the hundreds of thousands and close to a million range within the first few hours of a conquest week, I think it's pretty safe to assume that crafting is doing much of the heavy lifting since it's the only way they could put up numbers that huge that fast. To me the conquest system seems pretty broken - which became clear to me weeks ago when my medium sized guild running 4-5 winning GSF teams each night (on a GSF planet during a GSF week) got blown out of the water by crafters and people doing the battle of Ilum exploit/farming level 10 fp with their level 55s. Right now, I think that guilds winning by doing the theme of the week/planet is actually pretty rare. Which is why, at this point, I really don't give a crap about conquests at all other than occasionally it provides some amusing OWPVP opportunities. I don't think I'm alone in this either. There seems to be a lot of apathy over the conquest system, and I think Bioware has really blown the opportunity to make something fun and cool. I'm not surprised to see people trying to make money/stroke their egos off of selling guild spots for the achievement. I'm not even really angry, because to me the whole system is really broken. I am, however, torn between disappointment that it's happened and amusement over the utter surprise members of <Aisthesis> have over people's reaction to what they are trying to do. That they're trying to phrase it as some kind of public service makes it even more lulzy.

While I find what they're doing tacky as hell, hilariously shameless, and completely uncool, it's not like it really matters. Let's be real - the way the system is right now, winning a planet is usually a function of who has the deepest pockets and the most dedicated crafters, so the achievement isn't meaningful anyway. With crafting beating all other methods of getting points, even on planets with no bonus and even on weeks that don't focus on crafting, the planetary achievement is already a function of pay to win. <Aisthesis> is just making it even more obvious.

Considering that there's a guild on my server that's charging people 2 mil per week for a spot in their guild so people can get the planetary achievements, I'd say that's a YES. This guild has won every single week so far, and I think since they put up between 1-2 mil per points in the first hour, it's pretty safe to say that it's mostly through crafting. Not only have they found a way to make it sustainable, they're trying to make money off of it now. So yeah, I think a nerf is in order, ffs. This whole thing is a complete joke now.

Derp for the double post lmao.

Whelp, just to put the final nail in the coffin of the "crafting to win is just not sustainable!" argument - a guild on my server is now charging 2 mil per week to join their guild so players can get the planet conquest achievement. This guild has already won every planet they've been on so far, and from their numbers, it's most likely mostly by crafting. I think this is a pretty safe bet since usually they are a mil or so ahead of everyone else in the first few hours of the conquest week. The only way that's even remotely possible is through deep pockets and lots of crafting alts. Not only does it look like it's sustainable for the future, they've figured out a way to make a lot of money off of it. Seriously, this is silly now. People should not be able to dominate conquests by mostly crafting. On PVP weeks, you should win through PVP. Same with GSF weeks, FP weeks, OPS weeks and yes crafting weeks. Until bioware fixes it, this whole system is unfun and completely pointless.

OP you are truly the gift that keeps on giving. Please never stop posting.

Yes, farming level 14 keyboard turners and people who just figured out what an advanced class is with your premades is quite the accomplishment! I never knew that little league PVP was serious business until now!

Actually no, I'm not in a large guild. Nor do we have trouble usually placing in the top five. What I want is for there to be other viable ways to win a planet than just crafting, especially when, you know, it's not crafting week. Right now, nothing can touch the numbers. You have to craft in order to win. Which, is just well, really freaking boring, frankly. Have you looked at the numbers quoted in this and the other crafting thread? There is no way, even if everything was set back to how it was, for PVP or PVE to compete with the numbers produced. That's the problem. I mean, seriously. If pvp week conquests are won by a handful of hard core crafters putting up millions of points on their alts - that's a broken system. If it's PVP week, you should win by doing mostly PVP. Same with GSF. Same with Flashpoints. It would be just as broken if PVP guilds won the crafting week by doing warzones.

LMAO. You're not that important. Any guild of a decent size will have their own people who can make them.

I don't agree with many of the changes made by bioware (although some I think were needed, especially to level 55's running through level ten flashpoints and the Battle of Ilum exploits), but this simply isn't true. Look at the numbers people have posted in this thread about how much crafting brought for the first two weeks. Even when they were broken, gaming the flashpoints never brought in the kind of numbers hard core crafting does. PVP never could compete to begin with (despite what the hysterical carebears ignoring the actual math of the conquests thought), much less now. Honestly, I could care less about whether small guilds can compete. To me, conquest becomes completely pointless when on GSF weeks, crafting wins. When on PVP weeks, crafting wins. When on FP/OPS weeks, crafting wins. That's just not fun. PVP planets should be won by doing mostly PVP. Same with FP/OPS or GSF. But you can't. If you want to win a planet, you have to do it by crafting. Which is a pretty sure fire way of getting a huge section of the player base to simply stop caring about conquests.

Should it be a contest of who has the most dedicated crafters on weeks/planets that focus on PVP? Should it be a contest of who has the most dedicated crafters on GSF weeks/planets? Should it be a contest of who has the most dedicated crafters on FP/OPS weeks/planets? Cause that's what it is right now. Crafting blows everything else out of the water no matter what planet you choose, no matter what the week's theme or focus is. Having a few dedicated crafters with deep pockets, lots of alts, and banked stored materials is how you win. Just look at some of the threads where people post their weekly numbers, ffs. To me? That gets pointless pretty quick. Crafting should have only have the advantage on planets or weeks that favor it. I mean, would you be cool if PVP gave those kinds of numbers for the same amount of time involved? Would you think it's fair if on crafting week or a planet with a crafting bonus, a guild of dedicated crafters got blown out by GSF pilots because there's no way they could make the same amount of points?

1. Most of the players I know don't roleplay so there are a lot of us on the server. It's really a non issue. 2. Which side dominates in pvp depends as it swings back and forth. One side might dominate for a while (an afternoon, a week, a few months) but it always seems to even out. And unlike the above poster I don't think the imps are dominating at the moment. I haven't logged onto my imp toons in about a month now and I figure I've got about a 70% win percentage pub side. There are great guilds and players, both hardcore and casual, on both factions. There are some fantastic players who play both factions. Derps, of course, are everywhere especially with the Conquest incentives. Pops for regs are good in all brackets especially during prime time - a couple minutes at the most. Ranked I hear is happening, although every time I try to queue in for it I sit in the queue for ten minutes before getting bored and queuing up for regs instead. Not sure about GSF, although my guild (Saberwing) does a lot of flying and I haven't heard any complaints about queue times lately. 3. Probably? Not an expert on the PvE hero stuff, so I really couldn't elaborate on this.

Yup OP, I totally agree. Crafting is just out of control and if bioware doesn't set some limits on it, pretty soon most players are going to stop caring about conquest which just becomes a contest of who has the most dedicated crafters.

I don't know enough about crafting to know about what increasing the war supplies would do (as opposed to say, just dropping the point totals to 50 points instead of 500). I do, however, like the second suggestion of tying crafting conquest points to a daily and weekly. That would still allow it to be relevant and people to participate, but pull the throttle back on it quite a bit. I definitely don't think it should be removed from conquests though. I mean, I don't find it fun, but others obviously do. It just needs to be brought more in line with everything else.

I think you're missing my point here. If you won your planet during GSF week by doing mostly crafting then the conquest system is completely broken. It doesn't matter that you had to work hard at crafting. The point is that crafting should not be blowing every other method of getting points out of the water every single week for every single planet. That's the point. Because otherwise this just turns into a competition of who has the most dedicated crafters, and everyone else gets bored and wonders off because what they like to do never get's it's moment in the spotlight. Guilds should not be able to win during GSF week by doing mostly crafting. Guilds should not be able to win during PVP weeks by doing mostly crafting. Guilds should not be able to win during OP/FP weeks by doing mostly crafting. The fact that guilds can, whether crafting is hard work or not, is just ****** game design and a guaranteed way to get a big chunk of the player base to stop caring about the entire conquest system.

I don't think we actually disagree here lol. I'm not saying that a GSF guild should be able to win only by doing GSF during the week that's their theme. They should be able to win by doing mostly GSF though, mixed in with crafting, heroics, FP, wz or whatever. On GSF week, the bulk of points from winning guilds should come from doing GSF. Same with PVP weeks or FP weeks or OP weeks. But right now that doesn't seem to be the case, and crafting + deep pockets + lots of alts trumps everything else. This I actually have no problem with. Bigger guilds with lots of active members who are partaking in the area of focus that particular week (whatever it is) being on the top of the leader boards isn't something that bothers me. If big guilds are GSFing mostly and winning during GSF week - even if they don't normally do it - then to me that's totally fine. My issue is that crafting is so overpowered right now, that it just doesn't matter what week it is. And again, we'll find out if that's the case this week, by who gets to the top of the leaderboards and how they end up getting there.

Or you just say "Screw it. This isn't a job and I'm not grinding on something that's not interesting to me" and stop caring and play parts of the game you actually find fun. Which... is where I'm headed if the PVP guilds can't even compete this week. And Bioware can't expect players to keep caring about conquests (at least the players who have zero interest in crafting), if the conquests aren't fulling their intended design by having crafting heavy guilds win every single week. Also, I don't expect PVP guilds to win this week. I expect them to get blown away by the heavy crafting guilds with deep pockets, because that's what it takes to win. Again, I hope I'm wrong, but I seriously doubt it.

Oh I agree. It is the best way to score points. But should it be? Even on weeks when crafting isn't supposed to be the focus? Should people who craft tons be able to beat out PVP guilds on PVP week? Or FP heavy guilds on FP week? Or GSF guilds on GSF week? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the entire conquest system? I mean, look. If it was crafting that tipped guilds over the edge by say like 10 thousand points, then I wouldn't have an issue with it. But when it just flat out beats everything else by several million points? That ****'s not fun to play. It's the most passive part of the game, ffs, and if it continues to be the way to win, I'm checking the hell out. I'm just not interested in contests that measure who has the deepest pockets/most crafting alts. Life is way too short to be spending hours and effort on something that I find completely tedious.

This week is pretty much the litmus test for me. If crafting heavy guilds manage to knock the actual PVP guilds way down/off the leaderboards this week (and I think that's exactly what's going to happen even without the crafting bonus) then I'm pretty much going to give zero ****s about conquests going forward. I mean, come on. During GSF week, <Saberwing> was on Corellia which had only the GSF bonus and we got third. That was with 12-16 aces flying every night (at least until we realized it was pointless, anyway). Part of that was all of the derp with the easy FP bonuses, but a lot of that was sheer crafting numbers. I really don't think it's going to be any different for the groundpounder PVP heavy guilds this week, especially since they've listened to the forum whiners and nerfed the PVP rewards. I hope I'm wrong though. It would be nice to see more PVP guilds up there than have been in the last few weeks.

So? This is crafting week and they planned accordingly by having a ton of crafting already queue up when the Conquest started. Look, I play on the Ebon Hawk, and yes, while the top three slots per planet are dominated by guilds who either have a lot of members or have a small hardcore group of super active players, it is absolutely possible to make the top ten with a medium size guild, because my guild <Saberwing> has done it now three weeks in a row - first week 4th, last week 3rd, this week 8th so far. We would have been higher last week, because we have a ton of GSF pilots in the guild, if it weren't for all the flashpoint exploiting going on. We're not a zerg guild. We're not a mega guild. We're not a guild of hard core no lifers either. <Saberwing> has a core membership who has played together for almost seventeen years across multiple games. We're professionals, full time workers, people with small children and families, college students, etc... We have 483 toons in the guild (most of which are alts) maybe 40 active accounts at the moment and somewhere between 10-20 people on during prime time. We haven't done any mass recruiting since this began either, instead bringing new people in a few at a time. If we can consistently place on the leader boards when often we're derping around trying to kill commanders and dying hilariously in OWPVP for no conquest points whatsoever, then it's entirely possible for other medium sized guilds who aren't hard core to do the same thing. Mostly we just play the game the way we've always played the game, and since we're a casual guild with diverse interests, the conquest system suits us well. Anyway, quit worrying about the #1 spot ffs. If you aren't large or super dedicated, of course your chances of getting in are slim. The top ten though? Totally doable by a medium sized group of casual people.

From what I've seen, the best thing to do for the strictly PVP guilds Impside is to queue into warzones a lot. If you're good, someone will notice and people will start asking you to join groups, which is how you get to know people and find a guild that might be a good fit for you and them.

Agreed. I don't see them either. Either the server I play on is PVP Narnia (unlikely) or this is a problem that's been way overblown. Are there derps? Sure. PVEers with 600 expertise? Yes. Noobs who run around like headless chickens? Of course. But for the most part people do seem to be trying to play even if they are hilariously terrible sometimes. That's just a growing pains problem that will fade away as noobs get experience and gear. I could see tying conquest points to getting a minimum number of medals. although that will suck for those games you queue into one minute before they end because of rage quitters. Or incentivising wins by rewarding them with more points (a loss 500, a win 1000 for example). But rewarding only wins would be a really, really terrible idea on Bioware's part and all you're going to see are teams of PVEers playing ranked at 5 am /stucking out for quick matches as they win trade.

Oh for sure. The problem I see with ranked win trading is that in a few weeks when the next PVP ranked season starts, if you have guilds /stucking out against each other to speed stuff up, it's going to wreak havoc on the ranking system which isn't terribly cool for the PVPers who actually try to compete for their ranks and titles. Hey at one time, we were all inexperienced derps doing hilarious things in PVP. Even me. No... especially ME. I remember being in my first huttball match looking around and realizing that I had no idea what the hell was going on. Getting better requires time, experience, and not getting rolled so hard that you actually have enough breathing room to learn. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think you can learn a lot from playing against better players and losing. I learn things from better players kicking my *** just about every single day (which is why I love to PVP to be honest. There's always something new to learn). But if you're dying so fast that they've triple capped you and are now just spawn camping it's extremely hard to learn anything. Which is why, if new players really want to get better, they're better off starting in the little league brackets. You have fewer skills to worry about, less godly premades to go up against, and are mostly playing with keyboard turning clickers who may or may not have just figured out what an advanced class is. Sure, you're going to get more experienced players like me screwing around or leveling up a toon through PVP (and there is one hilariously tragic PVP guild on my server that does nothing but run premades in little league because they are too wussy to come play with the big dogs), but they're a lot more diluted in those brackets usually. It gives you time to figure out what the basic strategies are for each map and what your class is capable of doing as you get skills one or two at a time. Lowbies really is for learning, at least in ground PVP. Unfortunately, it's not an option for gsf, which is why I think flying has such a high learning curve. Exactly. I think the carrot works better than the stick when it comes to encouraging people to actually go out and try, instead of camping west all game or hanging out at the ship spawn. Yeah I agree with this. I mean, I'm glad they made the changes. I think the cap on FP makes things a lot more fair and that they fixed stuff that was badly broken, but I was really was surprised that they changed it right in the middle of the week. They really should have just waited until the next conquest week to fix it, especially since they didn't do a points roll back. Because all they ended up doing was make the guilds who'd already taken advantage and were in front untouchable.

So why don't you make some friends, build some alliances of your own, and get some PVPers on your side? Work with those people to defend your own commander when they attack or get help to take one out. Put a little bit of effort in instead of just showing up with eight people and expecting to get a framework. Unlikely. This week there 30 slots for guilds on the leader boards. Three guilds can't dominate 30 spots. The number of planets changes weekly too, and other weeks there will be a lot more planets up for contention, which means a lot more chances for people to win planets and take out commanders.

OP I love how you speak for all guilds everywhere. That's hilarious. By the way, on my server, there is at least one cross faction guild that seems to be thriving. Both their Pub and Imp sides have placed in the planetary top tens the last two weeks, and seem to be well on track to doing the same thing this week.