Devs, too many Conquest Events that offer no Guild Invasion bonus for GSF

[Nemarus]

Way to spit in the eye of your last major release, and those who enjoy it, by immediately making it the one type of activity that we can't get a Guild Invasion bonus for.

 

We've already come to accept that there aren't any new GSF updates coming this year. Can you at least make GSF a viable playstyle for Conquest?

 

I know that future Conquest Events will offer Guild Invasion bonuses for GSF, but never more than x2. And in total, datamining shows that FOUR Conquest Events offer no Guild Invasion bonus at all for GSF.

 

Compare this with Warzones, which have only ONE event without a Guild Invasion bonus, or Flashpoints, which have only TWO events without Guild Invasion bonus, or Crafting, which have only TWO events without Guild Invasion bonus.

 

What is the deal, devs? GSF should at least be treated the same as warzones.

[Jamus_Divinus]

A pity it doesn't match WZ's bonus every week. Edited August 19, 2014 by Jamus_Divinus

[Armonddd]

Agreed. This week, there is practically zero way for a GSF-focused guild to successfully conquer a planet. With a 0% stronghold bonus, it takes 68 GSF matches to hit the 35k CP cap. With a very reasonable 30% stronghold bonus, a subscriber can cut that down to 52 matches. At seven minutes a match, that's over six hours of play -- before factoring in queue times.

 

So it takes me six hours to cap my main's CP, and then I can hop over to an alt and cap theirs in another six hours. We'll say I'm doing dailies or something during the queue times, the better to donate towards decorating my flagship. At the end of the week, I've probably put in four hours a day -- for 70k CP.

 

By contrast, a decent-sized guild can get a team of eight to run around Alderaan or Makeb killing NPCs and such for very easy points. Between the world boss, rampage, guard-kill, enemy commander, and a daily flashpoint, this group picks up something on the order of 15k CPs (19.5k with stronghold bonus) from the planet they're invading... in a couple hours. They then have the rest of the week to worry about heroics, which give up to 16.5k CPs per day (21.5k with stronghold bonus) with another couple hours of investment.

 

Between these two alone, a non-GSF character can theoretically max their CPs in a mere four hours. In one dedicated day, you can do what it takes a GSFer two or three days to complete.

 

As people complete their strongholds, invasions are going to boil down to which guilds can hit 35k CP on more alts than the other guilds. GSF will not be a viable way to do that.

[SammyGStatus]

Look who's back (quoted ur post for the devs to see how stupid they are). Anyway Nem, it's not like we haven't seen this before. There's never going to be a sense of equality between GSF and any other aspect of the game

[Fractalsponge]

I find it very odd that in the new patch Bioware would incentivize ground PVP, which has no dedicated cc revenue stream, over GSF, which does.

[Asbetos]

You also didn't mention that they get points for 10 wins in ranked, which we don't.

 

Yet another punch in the face for the GSF players, after "it's not meant to be competitive", "we'll make a balance sweep in the next patches", nothing new for quite a while, we should really be used to the fact that EA/BW doesn't care much about GSF anymore.

Edited August 20, 2014 by Asbetos

[GroXL]

GSF is the only reason I'm still playing that game and staying subscriber. Maybe you need to loose some subscribers to appreciate the fact that there actually is a community wasting money for you to ignore it's REALLY SIMPLE requests. After the last patch I'm having lovely lag spikes that make my playing near impossible, can't lock a missile, can't fire a blc properly, but hey - what a useless dollhouse I have, maybe I can play Sims there...right.What I can is to terminate my sub. for good!

[Itkovian]

I agree that there needs to be some more conquest objectives for GSF, or at least more links to conquered planets. But not dramatically more so.

 

That said, it's normal that there are some conquest events that don't push certain aspects of the game as much as others (or at all, in fact). The design goal seems to be to give guilds that focus on an aspect of the game to have a good chance of winning from time to time, and also encourage guilds to try out the different features of the MMO.

 

So, given this, is it wrong that some conquest events barely have any GSF component (or none at all)? No, it isn't. But there IS a general dearth of GSF-rewarding conquests... but it's not a dramatic difference. A few tweaks would probably address this.

 

I mean, keep in mind that 8 out of 11 conquest events grant the x2 bonus for GSF tasks (if you move the starship to the right spot). So for those it'll be more effective.

 

Personally I think this could be resolved by adding a few more "Starfighter: Dominate the Stars" conquest objectives to the various conquest events.

 

Anyway, we'll have to see how it goes, though it's clear that Balance of Power is not meant for GSF guilds to win... and THAT is fine. There's nothing wrong with Conquest events being tailored to favour specific game elements, so long as everyone aspect of the game gets its change to shine (and fairly so... 5 flashpoint focused conquest and 1 GSF focused wouldn't be fair, for example).

[Armonddd]

That said, it's normal that there are some conquest events that don't push certain aspects of the game as much as others (or at all, in fact). The design goal seems to be to give guilds that focus on an aspect of the game to have a good chance of winning from time to time, and also encourage guilds to try out the different features of the MMO.

 

So what you're saying is, it's not intended for one guild to hold whatever planet they want every week by virtue of wanting to hold that planet. That's reasonable, I think, even if it's not likely to occur to most players ("I want it, so I should have it").

 

So, given this, is it wrong that some conquest events barely have any GSF component (or none at all)? No, it isn't.

 

The question becomes -- and I don't have an answer for this yet -- if every week has an "off category", are those "off categories" all equally viable? If GSF and warzones are both supported but not the main focus of the week, are they both equally rewarded? So far it doesn't look that way, simply because crafting, as the "filler activity", is so much easier to do in combination with heroics, warzones, flashpoints, etc, and those "primary activities" are supported where GSF isn't. A guild that focuses on PvE plus crafting will do significantly better than a guild that does GSF plus crafting -- in fact, as we're discovering in Eclipse, it's much, much better to do GSF plus PvE between queues. But again, as you say, GSF isn't intended to be amazing this week.

[Itkovian]

A guild that focuses on PvE plus crafting will do significantly better than a guild that does GSF plus crafting -- in fact, as we're discovering in Eclipse, it's much, much better to do GSF plus PvE between queues. But again, as you say, GSF isn't intended to be amazing this week.

 

I think the design aims to encourage diversity of play overall, while also pushing certain gameplay elements from week to week (as I said, likely to give specialized guilds a chance to win from time to time).

 

And yes, it is also a fact that this week's conquest event is 1 of only 3 with no real GSF bonuses. 8 grant x2 planetary bonuses, while 1 or 2 of those seem to push it aggressively.

 

Point is, this week is not a good one to try and conquer through GSF. Others will be better, and at least 1 will be much better (assuming the "win a match" goal is a repeatable one).

[Zoom_VI]

Holy crap a wild Armond appears!!

 

On topic: I don't understand what this thread is getting at, you get 500 conquest points a GSF match same as ground PvP, and 1000 for the weekly, also the same as ground PvP.

[Itkovian]

Holy crap a wild Armond appears!!

 

On topic: I don't understand what this thread is getting at, you get 500 conquest points a GSF match same as ground PvP, and 1000 for the weekly, also the same as ground PvP.

 

The difference is that Warzone objectives get a planet-based multiplier (x2 if guild ship is orbiting a given planet), and a third objective.

 

The multiplier is really the big factor that shows whether or not a given activity is being pushed by that week's conquest event. In Balance of Power, GSF gets no multiplier, so it is clearly a secondary activity. Other weeks (8 out of 11, in fact), DO grant a multiplier, and some have more GSF objectives.

[Nemarus]

The difference is that Warzone objectives get a planet-based multiplier (x2 if guild ship is orbiting a given planet), and a third objective.

 

The multiplier is really the big factor that shows whether or not a given activity is being pushed by that week's conquest event. In Balance of Power, GSF gets no multiplier, so it is clearly a secondary activity. Other weeks (8 out of 11, in fact), DO grant a multiplier, and some have more GSF objectives.

 

Yes, many weeks do get GSF multipliers. But four events WITHOUT multipliers is more than any other playstyle gets. Warzones, for example, only have one "week off".

 

Looking at the current conquest event, my guild will not place precisely because there was no invasion bonus. If there were a bonus, I suspect we'd be at around #5 or so.