Conquest Exploit Farming - Battle of Ilum (Is it an exploit? Or just boring farming?)

[gabigool]

The problem to me is that the "PvE" content in Conquests is frankly limited to one weekly op. Killing 250 mobs on a planet/running flashpoints/heroics aren't "PvE", at least using typical endgame nomenclature. The bulk of the "PvE" activities seem more like leveling activities than typical endgame PvE.

 

I see numerous point breakdowns on the previous pages showing the difference between the points "PvE" guilds are able to make compared to the points available to the "PvP" guilds. Last I looked, everything is available to everyone. So why wouldn't the smart PvP players blast through the FPs/heroics then just go grind WZ's?

 

The reality is the PvP player can slog through a few heroics just as easily for the huge PvE points; run a couple queued FP's for huge PvE points.... and now everyone is pretty much equal. Now the PvP guild can now go roflstomp in premades all weekend. This holds up on any planet. Seems pretty inarguable that people willing to spend a large amount of time PvPing can earn more points than people who do not.

 

Just IMO but I've always felt that putting a person who doesn't care to PvP into a situation where they are compelled to is a different animal than pressuring a PvP-minded player into PvE content. Maybe that's a double standard, I don't know, but it's always seemed more polarizing when non- PvP'ers are pushed to PvP than the other way around.

[paspinall]

PvE points with Ilum invasion:

 

3 GF flashpoints x 1000 x2 = 6,000 points per day

 

 

.

 

Yeah.. ONCE, dont forget the only repeatable for the flashpoints is a single flashpoint daily now.

[paspinall]

T

 

 

Which is why I figure that Ilum is more or less balanced between PvE and PvP. If you're really trying to compare apples to apples, you'd have to compare a PvPer that plays for 3-6 hours per day to a PvE'er that plays 3-6 hours per day.

 

PvE'ers that have that kind of time to play (with very few exceptions) are going to have more than one alt. Possibly more. Which means they could do this whole cycle again on an alt.

 

 

But that's just me.

 

And how does that help when a huge chunk of the PvE points are once per LEGACY, and thats not going to help us do the 35K points on one character anyway is it.

Edited August 30, 2014 by paspinall

[Atrix_Wolfe]

I'd just like to add what I see as a major design flaw with the entire conquest point system. That is that while PVP guilds and players get handed points for essentially doing what they would otherwise be doing, everyone else has to divert their attention away from what they'd otherwise be doing and make some kind of sacrifice to gain conquest points. That's just a poor design choice right out of the gate that needs to be addressed.

[Aries_cz]

What about small vs large guilds!?! How about some form of bolster there!

 

My small-medium guild (approx 10-12 ppl online these days) is raking in enough points to be around 3rd or 4th place on the leaderboard. Yes, we are getting roflstomped by guilds with 30-40 ppl online, but the score difference is not that high given the difference between player numbers.

My point is, unless you invade a planet full of huge guilds, it is entirely possible to place on leaderboards with small guild.

[Aries_cz]

I'd just like to add what I see as a major design flaw with the entire conquest point system. That is that while PVP guilds and players get handed points for essentially doing what they would otherwise be doing, everyone else has to divert their attention away from what they'd otherwise be doing and make some kind of sacrifice to gain conquest points. That's just a poor design choice right out of the gate that needs to be addressed.

 

Just wondering, what are PvE guilds supposed to do other than running PvE content? Log in each night for few hours to progress Operations?

[paspinall]

Just wondering, what are PvE guilds supposed to do other than running PvE content? Log in each night for few hours to progress Operations?

 

other than doing PvE content at lower levels than they are you mean ?

 

Because just how many level 50's do you think run the level 50 flashpoints or heroics on planets at level 35 ?

[Tsillah]

To be honest, if you want to show BW how this is not working for you. Stop trying to do it altogether. If their metrics show that people aren't buying into this nonesense they will need to do something about it.

 

As long as people complain but still participate in Conquest point gathering they will just say, ok they complain but they still play it so it will be alright.

[Costello]

Have to admit reading the arguments against the current conquest system they do make a lot of sense.

 

I've seen people in GSF do next to nothing except die (thereby finishing some of the games quicker) yet they will be reward for this. Running level 50 heroics or doing low level heroics may not be difficult but it is time consuming where pve players are required to do this if they want any conquest points.

 

While equal effort put in by members of a small guild will not result in a similar reward to that of a large guild. Thereby making anyone interest in conquest to see which guilds are topping the leader board and joining them. Thereby being able to take advantage of planetary conquest, get the title and achievements and help the guild get additional areas for their guild ship quicker.

 

All in all the conquest systems seems very bias rewarding PvPers and large guilds more (probably by design) while ultimately lacking any real element of conquest. People have asked before how running black talon every day helps you invade Ilum and like wise even the PvP element its hard to see how playing Huttball (win or lose) helps your guilds conquest of a planet.

 

As such calling it a conquest system seems to be more wishful thinking than any real level of conquest and could as easily have been called guild cash sink perk system. Hopefully BW will fix it but I suspect it will go the way of most the systems it was a good idea poorly implemented and best forgotten.

[BaronV]

To be honest, if you want to show BW how this is not working for you. Stop trying to do it altogether. If their metrics show that people aren't buying into this nonesense they will need to do something about it.

 

As long as people complain but still participate in Conquest point gathering they will just say, ok they complain but they still play it so it will be alright.

 

THIS. So This!

 

I hope pve guilds boycott conquests en masse. its not like the rewards were terribly attractive anyway. I've already asked my GM to stop participating in conquests after this week unless they are GSF related since we are a fairly small pve-GSF guild and it was hard enough for us as it is to even be in the top 10 without this additional pve nerf.

 

The whole conquests system is a meaningless number grind where the only genuine reward is bragging rights of being top 10 or number one on the server for that planet.

[Khevar]

Yeah.. ONCE, dont forget the only repeatable for the flashpoints is a single flashpoint daily now.

No, three times. You can run the daily group finder quest for flashpoints 3 times per day per toon. 1 HM 55, 1 HM 50, 1 Tactical. You get conquest rewards each time.

And how does that help when a huge chunk of the PvE points are once per LEGACY, and thats not going to help us do the 35K points on one character anyway is it.

Just do you know, I'm in favor of the idea of changing "once per legacy" to "once per week per toon". I think that is a better solution than what we have right now.

Edited August 30, 2014 by Khevar

[loztchild]

Killing Nameless and Named Commanders should give Conquest points.I mean the Commanders are part of the Conquest Event so why not award us with Points for killing them.

 

We should of a daily and weekly for killing Commanders.

 

Nameless Commanders

Daily 0/1 = 2 000 Points per player

Weekly 0/5 = 4 000 Points per player

 

Named Commanders

Daily 0/2 = 3 000 Points per player

Weekly 0/3 = 5 000 Points per player

 

With Dailies and Weeklies in place for Commanders we should see more people fighting for the Commanders on various planets.

[ScarletBlaze]

other than doing PvE content at lower levels than they are you mean ?

 

Because just how many level 50's do you think run the level 50 flashpoints or heroics on planets at level 35 ?

 

There are other reasons to run some of the heroics on these plants, such as the decorations datacrons dropped from the heroics on some of these planets as well.

[errant_knight]

My thoughts on this type of 'competing' in general.... Using skills and strategy to get through anything in the game, be it pvp or pve is clever gameplay. Using it to skip gameplay entirely is just lame.

 

Ie, teaming up against guildmates/allies in pvp is fine as long as you're actually playing and doing your best to fight them. Taking turns throwing a match is no better than if a boxer does it and just as dubious. It's a cheat of omission--omitting the intent and effort to win--but it's still a cheat.

 

Porting in to fight the final boss, skipping the rest of the flashpoint, is exactly the same. It's circumventing virtually all gameplay to get unearned points. Now, I don't see doing the same thing with commanders as cheating. You aren't skipping gameplay, you're using tactics to open a second front. You're using it to add to gameplay and increase combat possibilities. IMO, that's the way the ship was intended to be used--to drop troops behind enemy lines, not to push an easy button.

[TravelersWay]

Hey everyone,

 

I know many of you have questions about the change made to the Flashpoint Conquest Objectives with the release of 2.9c. I wanted to get some clarification, so I spoke with Lead Designer Jesse Sky:

 

“Conquest Events are intended to provide a set of rotating objectives that incentivize a variety of activities from week to week, including both PvP and PvE – but not necessarily a strict balance between the two. Some events will lean more heavily toward specific activities, and others will be more generalized. The intention is to provide a set of high point value, non-repeatable Objectives that focus on some specific, thematic goals – such as completing certain Flashpoints – while giving highly-repeatable activities such as Warzones and Crafting a broader meaning in the war.

 

As this is a new system, we’re still working out how to create the right balance for the Objectives. The purpose is to create a sense of change and opportunity each week, so that the galaxy’s conflicts feel diverse and interesting. If you favor specific types of activities, you will probably want to gravitate towards invading worlds where those activities receive Invasion Bonuses in order to maximize your Conquest Point gain. Generally speaking, however, players who enjoy a variety of activities should get the most out of the system.

 

All of that said, we will be revisiting the way Warzone Objectives work in 2.10 to put more emphasis on wins and, over time, we may raise the value of other activities (such as Flashpoints) to ensure that things remain competitive and interesting. We are committed to tweaking the system until it better accomplishes its goals.”

 

Thanks for the info Tait.

 

With that being said, will these changes ensure that PvE centric activities that many of us enjoy will be just as viable as the current other activities. Quite frankly, making PvP goals dependent on wins and/or medals earned does nothing to help those players who are not PvPers (or not very good at PvP) and therefore will not be able to gain the points necessary through PvP. Changing the qualifications for earning the PvP points only punishes those who are not very good at PvP unless alternative modes are buffed enough to make up for the difference.

[GadgetDon]

As this is a new system, we’re still working out how to create the right balance for the Objectives. The purpose is to create a sense of change and opportunity each week, so that the galaxy’s conflicts feel diverse and interesting. If you favor specific types of activities, you will probably want to gravitate towards invading worlds where those activities receive Invasion Bonuses in order to maximize your Conquest Point gain. Generally speaking, however, players who enjoy a variety of activities should get the most out of the system.

 

All of that said, we will be revisiting the way Warzone Objectives work in 2.10 to put more emphasis on wins and, over time, we may raise the value of other activities (such as Flashpoints) to ensure that things remain competitive and interesting. We are committed to tweaking the system until it better accomplishes its goals.”

 

Please remember that, in the goals, many of us play more than one character (including both Empire and Republic, and sometimes even same alignment but different guilds). I don't mind the major thematic stuff being once per event, but the way to code works, it's once per legacy, so only one character can accomplish the thematic stuff.

[Heal-To-Full]

This all happened countless times before - the EVE Online boondoggle with Band of Brothers comes to mind.

 

That said, I doubt it was anything as sinister as devs favoring a friend or trying to get good press; rather, there are people that devs pay attention to, the rest are glanced over as white noise, so to us in the noise category it looks that way.

People that devs pay attention to diverted their attention to only one issue, the one hampering them, so it was fixed while leaving even larger holes intact.

 

 

As far as I'm concerned, any match that had its rules changed in the middle, such as this week's conquest, has to be treated as if it never happened. Hope you're proud of yourselves.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Heal-To-Full

[Buscjo]

For those saying it isn't an exploit, fair enough it may not be. But you could look at it from the viewpoint that stealth classes gain a significant advantage here/larger guilds continue to reap even greater benefits with little effort. Two weeks in and both weeks conquest has felt like there is little to no competition, with larger guilds gaining well into the millions worth of points within a day or so and everyone else falling incredibly behind without a chance in hell. This week I've also seen the top guilds posting in fleet chat asking other guilds to merge with them for the title and then leaving afterward, again making it a completely one sided event without competition. Perhaps there could be a point scaling bonus implemented, where guilds with say 1-10 members online at the time get a 20% increase bonus to conquest points, 10-15 people get a 5-10% bonus and anywhere above that gets no bonus. It may not work but it's just a suggestion.

[Aniajan]

To be perfectly honest, I do not see how conquest was broken by this week's patch. Just as last week, it was the big guilds investing time and resources into winning planets, that won planets. Our guild won Balmorra Rep on T3-M4 and we did everything that could be done for points.

 

Most of us did the Heroics on Balmorra as well as the usual one-time-objectives. We did run Ilum and False Emperor, without the Solo-stealthing Ilum exploit though. We had people doing GSF, we had people doing PVP, we had people crafting. Of course it was some grinding, but to be perfectly honest grinding heroics just replaced grinding dailies for most of our people. We're on Makeb this week, which is PvP and crafting and I assume we're gonna win that as well. y'all know why? Because we're putting more effort in than other guilds. Not because we're a PVE or PVP or GSF or whatever guild.

 

Overall, It just has been a fun two weeks for our guild. We had more guild activity than in a long time, doing conquest, killing commanders. Oh, and not a single scheduled raid was canceled for contest. We had two groups running NiM on two nights each and our three other regular ops groups ran their scheduled raids as well.

 

For comparisons sake: We have about 70 active accounts (paying subscribers) and a little more than 300 chars. There usually are about 10 to 12 players online at daytime and 20 to 25 during primetime. Max players online probably was somewhere in the low thirties.

[Atrix_Wolfe]

Hey everyone,

 

All of that said, we will be revisiting the way Warzone Objectives work in 2.10 to put more emphasis on wins and, over time, we may raise the value of other activities (such as Flashpoints) to ensure that things remain competitive and interesting. We are committed to tweaking the system until it better accomplishes its goals.”

 

So your proposed solution to balance things that are skewed towards handing PVP guilds as many points as they can gather from warzones (An activity they have to divert no attention to as that's what they tend to want to do naturally) is to tip the scales even further in their direction by focusing on warzone wins?

[Grayseven]

So your proposed solution to balance things that are skewed towards handing PVP guilds as many points as they can gather from warzones (An activity they have to divert no attention to as that's what they tend to want to do naturally) is to tip the scales even further in their direction by focusing on warzone wins?

 

If you don't know anything about PvP, you should probably not make statements that prove it.

 

PvE still dominates only now PvE doesn't have an easy mode exploit that puts victory out of the reach of anyone not exploiting the system.

[Kalfear]

Hey everyone,

 

I know many of you have questions about the change made to the Flashpoint Conquest Objectives with the release of 2.9c. I wanted to get some clarification, so I spoke with Lead Designer Jesse Sky:

 

“Conquest Events are intended to provide a set of rotating objectives that incentivize a variety of activities from week to week, including both PvP and PvE – but not necessarily a strict balance between the two. Some events will lean more heavily toward specific activities, and others will be more generalized. The intention is to provide a set of high point value, non-repeatable Objectives that focus on some specific, thematic goals – such as completing certain Flashpoints – while giving highly-repeatable activities such as Warzones and Crafting a broader meaning in the war.

 

As this is a new system, we’re still working out how to create the right balance for the Objectives. The purpose is to create a sense of change and opportunity each week, so that the galaxy’s conflicts feel diverse and interesting. If you favor specific types of activities, you will probably want to gravitate towards invading worlds where those activities receive Invasion Bonuses in order to maximize your Conquest Point gain. Generally speaking, however, players who enjoy a variety of activities should get the most out of the system.

 

All of that said, we will be revisiting the way Warzone Objectives work in 2.10 to put more emphasis on wins and, over time, we may raise the value of other activities (such as Flashpoints) to ensure that things remain competitive and interesting. We are committed to tweaking the system until it better accomplishes its goals.”

 

 

here is my take on all this

 

Flashpoints should be repeatable but you should ONLY get conquest points if 2 specific items are in play

 

1) The flashpoint MUST be Green or higher in difficulty to ALL GROUP MEMBERS (IE: No more rerunning lvl 10 Esseles flashpoint as a lvl 55 as it would give no credit. However you could run lvl 50 hm Esseles as a 55 and get credit as the content green to 55s)

 

2) You must be present for ALL boss fights to recieve conquest points (this would eliminate the exploit of multiple 2 man groups (or solo) running flashpoint and then inviting guildies to max out group just before you end flashpoint)

 

Pretty common sense restrictions that DO NOT punish people who enjoy flashpoints over PVP/Star Fighter/ect

 

As for upcoming PVP warzone changes.

Ill wait to see changes but unless your system comes with a way to eliminate ranked pre mades from farming the unranked warzone queues for easy points (which I doubt you will do as you seem to think gear > skill makes for good PVP), I dont see any reason to take part in your grossly unbalanced and childish post 55 pvp warzone content.

 

Wanna fix the imbalance

- eliminate Expertise stat in UNRANKED warzones

- do not allow more then 2 people to queue togather for unranked war zones (or even better just make UNRANKED solo queue 24/7 to avoid the premades farming issue)

- intentionally limit the number (to 2) of same guild people in any UNRANKED Warzone

 

Premades are fine for Ranked. Hell they should be mandatory for Ranked PVP IMO

Expertise is a stupid stat but least if restricted to Ranked only you mostly ensuring a balanced feild in ranked

 

Unranked is more PUG friendly, learn war zone friendly place (or should be) and thus you need to eliminate the gear discrepancy and pre mades from the equation there.

 

Oh Im sure some self serving PVPer (will probably even lie and claim not a PVPer for fake effect) will now say they disagree and blah blah blah. Its just a bad player trying to hold onto the artificial advantages you have given them in current PVP system.

 

Put a emphases on win in warzones with out addressing the many issues facing warzones currently and you will ensure LESS participation, not more, in the long run.

 

Personally I've washed my hands of post 55 warzone PVP

Ill gleefully PV in open world

Ill gleefully PVP in Pre 55 where expertise is not a issue and there is a semblence of balance at least

but post 55 warzone PVP is just such a badly designed system from top to bottom and anyone with any self respect as a player knows this full well.

 

So I really dont think EA will get it right regarding warzones as they have refused to address the 2 main issues that been plagueing SW:TOR max level pvp warzones since the start

 

If you stop rewarding participation in post 55 warzone pvp or make winning a grossly unbalanced contest the big earner. All you will do is drive out the non hard core warzone players from any participation at all.

 

Would be different if they fought on balanced and equal ground but thanks to expertise (even with the bad bolster system) its basically same as a group of 186 geared 55s fighting a solo level 40 player.

 

I fail to see where the challenge or accomplishment is in that match.

 

Summary

-Make green and high difficulty flashpoints (that you are present for from the first boss on) worth repeatable conquest points

- fix the gear and pre made imbalance advantage being utilized to steam roll players in UNRANKED war zones already