Planetary Conquest is Dominated by LARGE Allied guilds

[PatT]

This conquest system is hopelessly broken. There are a few specific guilds, at least one Imperial guild and two Pub guilds, working together, staking out the planets for the spawns of named bosses, so nobody else can get a chance. Not even a reasonably large guild can compete.

 

One of these guilds complained to Bioware about a certain exploit, but then continued to expoloit it all day after the 9.b patch was announced, while others stopped that morning. They ended the event with a 3 million point lead. They are workign with other big guilds, and if a guild shows up to fight the bosss, they call in the opposite side guild, and pvp us down (16 of them vs 8 of us) while their allied pub guild gets the boss.

 

Grief much?

 

If you don't fix this, it will be 3 guilds running this server, hand in hand, and the rest of us locked out. And that doesn't even begin to consider all the guilds who can't afford ships or don't have 500 people. This is the most unbalance, most ill-concieved thing Swtor has yet put forth.

 

I have been a faithful subscriber since launch, but this is simply the end of the fun. It is NOT fun to have everything dominated by a few folks who appear to be favorites of the Devs, (who patch for their complaints in mere hours, while other issues go unpatched for years).

 

I am also a sub to ESO, who does not have these problems and is far more egalitarian. There are other promising games on the near horizon as well. I'm tired of waiting "until it's ready" or "sometime" for you to make this game enjoyable for everyone. Who thought this stuff up? Who did you consult? Pvp guilds? Large Guilds? Do you ever talk to the little people? Because we pay our subs too.

 

I'm ready to walk away and wash my hands of this mess. Come back when this game is ready for prime time. For now, I just have a lot more fun elsewhere.

[Khevar]

Do you have any concrete suggestions, other than the nebulous request, "fix this"?

 

Note that I'm not trying to disagree with your assessment of there being a problem.

 

I'm just saying: if you were in charge of fixing things, what exactly would YOU do about it?

[PatT]

I haven't had time to honestly give it a lot of thought. I wasn't in charge of developing this; which I assume took nearly a year. For me to generate a fix in a few minutes is patently unfair. A bunch of us could probably brainstorm this and come up with something in a week. But an off the cuff fix would probably have serious bad consequences. So, if I had time, I will give it thought, and I will post what I consider.

[sharkgirl]

This conquest system is hopelessly broken. There are a few specific guilds, at least one Imperial guild and two Pub guilds, working together, staking out the planets for the spawns of named bosses, so nobody else can get a chance. Not even a reasonably large guild can compete.

 

It's sad but very true, I mean what is a person to do?

you can recruit more people (which we've done)

hold more events (also do)

but we miss out on that final leg because of bugs (resetting points by logging in a new toon/the oh we're sorry but we didnt mean for it to work that way so we're gonna change it over halfway through the event)

and now to top it off everywhere we go there are mega guilds working together to make the stuff that isn't broken unattainable

 

so do we beg the mega guilds to let us in their "cool kids" club?

recruit and demand participation regardless?

 

I don't know bw....i would take a long look

 

I like the idea of competition don't get me wrong, but perhaps some type of lockout for guilds that won the previous week or a penalty (battle fatigue -15% to points? just a random #)

 

and also....i would make it more random so people don't know which planets or what type of events until it comes out...just a thought

[Cypherz]

This conquest system is hopelessly broken. There are a few specific guilds, at least one Imperial guild and two Pub guilds, working together, staking out the planets for the spawns of named bosses, so nobody else can get a chance. Not even a reasonably large guild can compete.

 

One of these guilds complained to Bioware about a certain exploit, but then continued to expoloit it all day after the 9.b patch was announced, while others stopped that morning. They ended the event with a 3 million point lead. They are workign with other big guilds, and if a guild shows up to fight the bosss, they call in the opposite side guild, and pvp us down (16 of them vs 8 of us) while their allied pub guild gets the boss.

 

Grief much?

 

If you don't fix this, it will be 3 guilds running this server, hand in hand, and the rest of us locked out. And that doesn't even begin to consider all the guilds who can't afford ships or don't have 500 people. This is the most unbalance, most ill-concieved thing Swtor has yet put forth.

 

I have been a faithful subscriber since launch, but this is simply the end of the fun. It is NOT fun to have everything dominated by a few folks who appear to be favorites of the Devs, (who patch for their complaints in mere hours, while other issues go unpatched for years).

 

I am also a sub to ESO, who does not have these problems and is far more egalitarian. There are other promising games on the near horizon as well. I'm tired of waiting "until it's ready" or "sometime" for you to make this game enjoyable for everyone. Who thought this stuff up? Who did you consult? Pvp guilds? Large Guilds? Do you ever talk to the little people? Because we pay our subs too.

 

I'm ready to walk away and wash my hands of this mess. Come back when this game is ready for prime time. For now, I just have a lot more fun elsewhere.

 

Completely agree, however you made one fatal mistake in mentioning ESO. Every drone and their dog is now going to jump down your throat about it and attempt to derail the thread with the force of a thousand suns.

[OrionSol]

Elitist & small guilds that would not let anyone in their guild unless they were X gear in PVP or Y gear in PVE are not crying that guilds who focused on RP, events, and recruiting mass members are now dominating the server leader boards for once.

 

/shrug

 

Go back to what you do best?

 

You want a handicap for being small? You want to gimp the bigger guilds for being strategic and smart?

[LyraineAlei]

Possible idea that would take a long time to design/implement:

 

Tiered conquest for guilds.

 

Small guilds have Tier D (1-125 members)

Medium-small guilds have Tier C (126-225 members)

Medium-large guilds have Tier B (226-350 members)

Large Guilds have Tier A (351-500 members)

 

Same conquest styles, different tiers.

 

Edit: Just an idea to shut everyone in a small guild up. From complaining about how the big guilds are doing better than us small guilds.

Edited September 4, 2014 by LyraineAlei

[Sarfux]

It is absolutely dominated by larger guilds you are right. I also believe something must be done. 2,524,000 points? cmon... I'm all for competition but if there is something that is exploitable in there get rid of it

 

And also to notes, I don't do conquests or any of that stuff for my guild. I am mainly role-play and that's it. But it's just ridiculous some of these points in a short amount of time. The larger guilds should have the most points but the numbers are just so high that something must be getting exploited. .

Edited September 4, 2014 by Sarfux

[Tegual]

I dunno how "fair" it would be but they could implement some sort of scaling system based on the amount of members you have so that small guilds can compete with big ones without having to gather hundreds more people, however that doesn't fix the issue of teaming up and exploiting things.

[jedip_enguin]

My guilds active membership is usually 8-10 during prime time, sometimes getting as high as 12-14 if it gets really busy.

 

We managed to place 6th on Balmorra last week and that was without cheesing pre-fix BoI/FE with stealthers.

 

That doesn't seem that bad to me.

[JacksonMo]

One of these guilds complained to Bioware about a certain exploit, but then continued to expoloit it all day after the 9.b patch was announced, while others stopped that morning. They ended the event with a 3 million point lead. They are workign with other big guilds, and if a guild shows up to fight the bosss, they call in the opposite side guild, and pvp us down (16 of them vs 8 of us) while their allied pub guild gets the boss.

 

Grief much?

.

 

Do you have evidence this was coordinated, and not just bad timing on your part?

It takes several minutes at best to muster an ops group, even with the handy dandy transport.

Mustering two separate opposing faction guilds to the same outpost at the same time, just to steal one commander from under your nose?

Really?

[siegeshot]

Our server has the same issue. There's a 5-guild super group dominating every planet every week.

 

Simple suggestion, allow guilds to ally up if they're under x amount of members up to the 500 member limit. Could fix this problem in a week with some of my friends' guilds. That way we keep our guilds and keep all the political crap separate. Done, solved, next issue.

[Failtima]

My guilds active membership is usually 8-10 during prime time, sometimes getting as high as 12-14 if it gets really busy.

 

We managed to place 6th on Balmorra last week and that was without cheesing pre-fix BoI/FE with stealthers.

 

That doesn't seem that bad to me.

 

We're in a similar boat, if with marginally higher active numbers...usually 20 tops...and without "exploiting* by anyone last week we finished 4th on Illum....granted, not a chance we'd catch #3, let alone #1 or #2. And we were number 7 the week before that. It's all good as we get our frameworks the past two weeks, and should again this week.

 

Guilds that were close behind us before the fix last week complained we must have been exploiting, until after the fix when our point total kept growing at the same rate as theirs slowed down massively.

 

Guilds of both factions teaming up should be gone, but I don't see how they could ever really prevent it.

 

Especially if it's a guild active in both factions, where it's the same people, the same leaders, on the same voice chat, grouped together, just playing both sides. A lot of mid to large guilds have sister guilds in the other faction. We don't, but I know a lot of the mid, large, and mega guilds do. Heck, most long time players have fully or almost fully geared toons on both sides. How do you keep a guild from coordinating with itself. I don't particularly care for the effect it has on conquest, BUT in a situation like that it's hard to see how to avoid it.

 

This week for example, about the complaint about how large guilds jumped ahead so fast, some people and guilds were just well prepared. If someone choose to plan ahead and had que'ed invasion forces with a full que they would log into, for one and only one toon without stronghold bonus, 37500 points. Planned to choose Voss? 62500 points per toon. 100% stronghold bonus? 125k per toon(I only have 75%). Again, per toon, at log-in at the start of the conquest week. Thanks to datamining anyone can see what the event will be each week and plan accordingly.

 

Did I plan ahead? Nope, I didn't have the time to do more than token planning, but just by doing various daily and weeklies as well as crafting I'm probably at over 250k just between 5 toons. One main, and 4 just crafting for the personal reward.

 

Will mid or small sized guilds...including mine...ever win a world? Not bloody likely. They just don't have the manpower to take the tops spot, let alone number two or three.

 

Should they fix conquest missions that aren't 'working as intended' mid week, ever? No...the damage has already been done, just fix it for the next time that specific event comes up.

 

Generally I think conquest has been working well. Some bugs and mistakes here & there but I count those as being growing pains of the sort you get when any system is implemented.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Failtima

[Psychopyro]

Do you have evidence this was coordinated, and not just bad timing on your part?

It takes several minutes at best to muster an ops group, even with the handy dandy transport.

Mustering two separate opposing faction guilds to the same outpost at the same time, just to steal one commander from under your nose?

Really?

Yes... We both showed up at the same time. The other guild could not keep control. Suddenly their opposing faction buddies showed up and killed us, then kept us from getting to the other guild killing the commander. We decided to try the second version of the planet. There was a commander up, but their other faction guild was already guarding it from us. We watched them let the guild pull the commander and kill it as well, never raising a finger to them...

[BanthaRaider]

How about that:

 

The top 3 guilds (or just the winner) gets a 7 days Lockout from conquest.

Add a Debuff for all guildmember so they cant switch guilds and do it anyways.

 

Why? 1 week to fight for stuff or regain ressources spend for this Victory.

 

 

AND PLEASE!! Change Legacy based Flashpoint/Ops 1 time Objectives to Daily.

[Reno_Tarshil]

Completely agree, however you made one fatal mistake in mentioning ESO. Every drone and their dog is now going to jump down your throat about it and attempt to derail the thread with the force of a thousand suns.

 

Guess you were wrong, not a single person has attacked the op for ESO.

[AesirUesugi]

I don't know if I have to put this into every thread but PLEASE. YOU CAN'T JUST GIVE A RATING BY MEMBER COUNT. I don't want to be forced to remove all the alts, players who are on hiatus ( and sometimes still subbed) and start feeling slightly resentful towards players who aren't contributing because they are taking up my member count and not doing anything...

 

We are in a small guild between 6 and 10 online on any given non event evening. Peaking at 12-13 when we run events. And because we have a tonne of alts each we have 160 members but not even 30 qualifying accounts (less than 6% rep bonus).

 

Some of my most active players don't even participate and it's a core of about eight players who will use three to seven alts each to accrue points. We have placed comfortably in the Top 10 in the last 2 weeks and even this week with running CZ and no bonuses anywhere we are still at position 7. 3/4 of our 600k points have been gathered by 2 players.

[Kalfear]

while what the OP describes is clearly a exploit being abused (and EA should act on it immediately if true)

 

I read the thread title and have to shake my head some what

 

Why would you think a small guild could compete vrs a large guild to begin with?

 

CONQUESTS title pretty much tells you up front that the biggest most active guilds will win

 

So sick of hearing quality vrs quantity arguments (not you OP but others have stated this) and I cant help but think, if they truly were even half as quality as they claim, they wouldn't be losing to quantity. So really sounds liek to me lacking quantity vrs has quantity.

 

OF COURSE THE BIG ACTIVE GUILDS WIN.

 

Hell history alone has shown us time and time again that the lesser skilled force can over come the more trained force by simply throwing wave after wave after wave of soldiers until they win by attrition rather then advanced battle tactics.

 

If you can prove a guild is exploiting, capture on video and send into EA.

Then the ball is in EAs court and hopefully pressure on them to actually support their own product.

 

But 3 guilds exploiting doesnt change the fact that SIZE MATTERS in conquests.

 

If your in a small guild who lacks the numbers to compete,

you have exactly two choices

 

1) Accept your limitations and embrace the hopefully small but tight community you have in your guild

or

2) Join a larger guild so you do have the numbers to compete

 

Its really not a hard concept to understand

[Lotharofxev]

[Heal-To-Full]

I dunno how "fair" it would be but they could implement some sort of scaling system based on the amount of members you have so that small guilds can compete with big ones without having to gather hundreds more people

But small guilds aren't supposed to compete with large ones.

 

Imagine that me, my 20 alts, my brother and two of our friends create our own guild, which stays at 4 accounts. Should we be able to compete, i.e. have a chance to take control over a large planet like Makeb, thanks to this scaling buff?

 

Clearly not.

So where to place the cutoff point?

[Rafaman]

So first and foremost, it is what you make it OP. Yes, bigger guilds have and advantage, but you also have some responsibility to make it work for your guild. Admittedly you have to change your focus and manage what you can manage but that doesn't mean you can't have fun with conquests.

 

In brief, my guild has a small group of active users so our goals are commiserate with that fact.

 

1. We want to compete for a top 10 slot. It isn't always possible because guildies have lives outside of the game, but we have great contributions toward this goal. We know we can't compete for the number 1 spot, but we can strive for a top 10 and that is a goal we are willing to work toward.

 

2. We have our own points competition within the guild. Prizes are given to the top 3 point totals, this is per legacy encouraging guildies to use their alts and this has contributed to an increase in guild points over all.

 

3. Irrespective of the top 10, we try to improve our point total every week, and we make it a priority to do more as a guild. Almost all of our Ops and Flashpoint runs are now guild runs. Guildies are having more fun and there is an increase in guild activity. And our goal of ship unlocks is well underway.

 

So.... so what if Conquest are dominated by larger guilds. It doesn't matter to us. Conquest are working for us because we make it work.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Rafaman

[Prisoner]

This conquest system is hopelessly broken. There are a few specific guilds, at least one Imperial guild and two Pub guilds, working together, staking out the planets for the spawns of named bosses, so nobody else can get a chance. Not even a reasonably large guild can compete.

 

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.

 

If you don't fix this, it will be 3 guilds running this server, hand in hand, and the rest of us locked out. And that doesn't even begin to consider all the guilds who can't afford ships or don't have 500 people.

 

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.

Edited September 4, 2014 by Prisoner

[curulz]

I would love to see the commanders be an instanced encounter with a 100% framework drop rate, that would eliminate open world clashes.

 

There could be certain qualifications, meaning a certain % of active players per guild achieve their personal conquest score (I don't know, 50% maybe? or have it scale based on size?) or even a hard number of total points based on guild size. Once achieved, there could additional items that needed to be done to unlock the encounter if they wanted to add an extra layer. One of which could be PVP, to adhere to what I believe was the original intent of the system. Limit the times the commander can be killed, or even better just limit the framework drop after the initial kill/drop.

 

keep the planetary conquest leaderboard as is. The big guilds still get their competition and chance to be #1 for bragging rights, but the other guilds still get a chance to gather the frameworks to unlock the ship.

Edited September 4, 2014 by curulz

[demotivator]

How about that:

 

The top 3 guilds (or just the winner) gets a 7 days Lockout from conquest.

Add a Debuff for all guildmember so they cant switch guilds and do it anyways.

 

Why? 1 week to fight for stuff or regain ressources spend for this Victory.

 

How about: NO.

 

And no, my guild has never been #1. We might do it this week though.

 

I can't understand why people are so worked up about (not) being conqueror. The benefits are so minimal, as long as your guild appears in the leaderboard you get your guild rewards to expand your flagship, that's really all that matters (IB4 "lock all guilds in leaderboards for 1 week so that mine can get a chance!")

Edited September 4, 2014 by demotivator

[Heal-To-Full]

1. We want to compete for a top 10 slot. It isn't always possible because guildies have lives outside of the game, but we have great contributions toward this goal. We know we can't compete for the number 1 spot, but we can strive for a top 10 and that is a goal we are willing to work toward.

I alone keep delivering more points each week than guilds taking the 10th place on any planet. Of course it depends on the server. But just goes to show - one major contributor can easily replace a dozen players who don't care.

 

Top 10 is quite easy and everyone with a ship can go for it. With 5 planets, it takes 50 guilds with 50 million credits each just to have enough ships to fill all top 50 slots.