Bioware: Warzones are not the Problem in Conquest, Crafting is.

[thesadplanet]

A lot of people (including Bioware themselves, apparently) seem to think that warzones and arenas were overpowered in terms of the amount of conquest points they gave you.

 

However, the points gained from PvP pale in comparison to the completely absurd totals that can be gained through crafting. I'm not sure what kind of metrics, if any, Bioware is using to determine how people are obtaining their points, but anyone who has been paying attention could tell you that crafting is by far the most efficient way to get conquest points.

 

An individual could, in theory, get millions of conquests points all by themselves, and the #1 guild on each planet almost always gets to that spot through brute force crafting. On The Shadowlands, for example, two enormous guilds, WOOK and Covenant of the Phoenix got into a massive crafting war and practically bought out the entire crafting materials section of the GTN. Covenant of the Phoenix gave up at around 14.8 million points while WOOK would go on to get 18.6 million. For comparison's sake the winners of the other two planets on Shadowlands were Old Republic Dads and Triumph, with 8.98 and 10.6 million points respectively. Though, I should point out that the reason why those two guilds didn't put up similar numbers through crafting was because they were dodged by any legitimate contenders due to previous performances.

 

This isn't a unique occurrence either, a quick check of swtorconquest.com shows numerous guilds have managed to eclipse the 15 million point milestone. Hell, one guild on Jedi Covenant apparently finished last week's conquest with a whopping 25.6 million points.

 

The obvious solution would be to go back to the way things were in Week 1, just make everything repeatable (I realize this was due to a bug but I feel that its existence really improved the overall conquest gameplay). That way, an individual can play the type of content they want to, as much as they want to while contributing to their guild's conquest effort. Additionally, making planetary stuff like the commanders and kill 25 guards goals repeatable will encourage people to spend less time on the fleet, and more time on the planets, which has the benefit of making the planets livelier and encouraging open world PvP, something the developers said they were planning on doing over two years ago and have not yet delivered on. It would also give smaller, dedicated guilds a better chance to compete against over large, less active guilds.

 

Of course, even if this change was made, crafting would still be the easiest way by far to get conquest points, but at least guilds wouldn't be forced into the reality of "craft or die" like many are today. From Week 1 to now, conquest has increasingly become more and more about who has the most credits/crafting materials and less about actually playing the game. Is this how Bioware intends conquest to be? I don't know, but judging by the changes they've made it seems like its just intended to be a giant credit sink on top of the already massive cost of buying and upgrading your guild ship. I'd really like to hear from the developers on this. Is Conquest "working as intended" or are there additional changes planned?

Edited September 9, 2014 by thesadplanet

[Kourage]

This isn't a unique occurrence either, a quick check of swtorconquest.com shows numerous guilds have managed to eclipse the 15 million point milestone. Hell, one guild on Jedi Covenant apparently finished last week's conquest with a whopping 25.6 million points.

 

Heck, that guild managed to jump 7 million points in the last 6-7 hours. That means you can have all those points ready to turn in all at once, simply by logging in after you have finished crafting. You can't sneak those points in any other way.

[Kourage]

The obvious solution would be to go back to the way things were in Week 1, just make everything repeatable (I realize this was due to a bug but I feel that its existence really improved the overall conquest gameplay). That way, an individual can play the type of content they want to, as much as they want to while contributing to their guild's conquest effort. Additionally, making planetary stuff like the commanders and kill 25 guards goals repeatable will encourage people to spend less time on the fleet, and more time on the planets, which has the benefit of making the planets livelier and encouraging open world PvP, something the developers said they were planning on doing over two years ago and have not yet delivered on. It would also give smaller, dedicated guilds a better chance to compete against over large, less active guilds.

Where they messed up is they let you use alts to repeat the crafting missions as many times as you want, but many objectives can only be done once per legacy, which is complete nonsense! If I have 8 characters that are leveled and geared to do Nightmare Pilgrim, then I should be able to get points for each character I kill him on! Same thing for 250 kills or whatever else. Those alts I have are also taking up roster spots from the guild, which is capped at 500. So BioWare wants us to kick our own alts out of the guild to make room for other accounts that can contribute those non repeatable points? We have already limited members to 5 as it is. I have another guild for my Republic characters and I can't even contribute for them on a lot of objectives. A LOT of players play both factions, which is what BioWare wanted in the 1st place!

Edited September 9, 2014 by Kourage

[Vinak]

Crafting isn't a problem. The crafting conquest bonus was.

 

 

I agree with you, everything should just be repeatable. Nobody should have to drastically change their playing experience to contribute to their guild. Players should be encouraged to try new things, not forced to.

 

last week(I guess 2 weeks ago, now) they tried to force people into GSF. No way I was going to do that crap, so I just crafted to the 35k mark.

[Foambreaker]

The changes were not made for the reason you think.

 

The changes were to address the situation where people stopped trying to win because the pay was the same win or lose.

 

Now losers get 250, winners get 750. In the end the EXACT SAME amount of points are awarded overall.

[thesadplanet]

The changes were not made for the reason you think.

 

The changes were to address the situation where people stopped trying to win because the pay was the same win or lose.

 

Now losers get 250, winners get 750. In the end the EXACT SAME amount of points are awarded overall.

 

For the Death Mark conquest, this is true, but I do not believe this is going to be the case for future weeks, though I'm only speculating. The other ones are probably going to have the same Killing Fields goal as before, except that has been changed to be 10 warzone wins and is non repeatable. And even if the PvP goals remain relatively the same as they've always been, thats not the only problem with conquest.

Edited September 9, 2014 by thesadplanet

[ELRunninW]

I hope BW is using that extra day between conquest events to analyze data for future improvements.

[Mephistroth]

I feel that if they are going to limit anything, it should be content that does not require ACTIVE participation (i.e. crafting). A person who is earning points through active game play should reap the benefits. It is an unfair advantage to have wealthy players/guilds stockpile resources and craft on all their toons earning points without having to actually participate in the game. If anything should be limited, it should be passive activities that earn points. If someone wants to earn their points by playing, they should be reward for actually playing the game.

 

My two credits.

[Ruskaeth]

Only way small and medium guilds can compete vs big guilds (zergs) is good planning, picking the right battles, being better at organizing, crafting and PvP. If everything turns out to be "non-repeatable", then it's just going to be size of the guild that matters. Now at least, wins matter more than losses on PvP which is an awesome change. Edited September 9, 2014 by Ruskaeth

[Nepthen]

Is this how Bioware intends conquest to be? I don't know, but judging by the changes they've made it seems like its just intended to be a giant credit sink on top of the already massive cost of buying and upgrading your guild ship.

 

Yes. This is just a huge time and money sink to distract everyone until 3.0 drops. It's no wonder that 3.0 will probably be around 3 months after 2.9... which will be enough time for the first guilds to start getting their Galactic Conqueror titles.

[saremun]

Well, crafting is for the small guilds which would NEVER and i mean NEVER have a chance against the big guilds...

 

 

Crafting was a great idea from BW, i really like that this conquest brought all the aspects of the game.

[DarthTHC]

Dear BioWare, I don't craft so please nerf crafting rewards.

 

However, I do PvP, so please buff those rewards.

 

Thanks!

[Arkerus]

I didn't realize the game just gave you credit for items in your inventory. I thought the trigger had to come from the crafting action. (Then again, the more I think about it, it can't because what if you are offline???)

 

I logged in today after I had crafted some materials last week and got credit for them again today. Well..at least the message popped up in my chat window.

 

The more you know.

 

Edit, I had started them last week but didn't finish them while online. That's why I got credit today.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Arkerus

[Nepthen]

You only get the points for crafting if you log in and actually get the finished product in your inventory. It's not the start of the crafting, it's the end of crafting and obtaining the physical item.

[Arkerus]

You only get the points for crafting if you log in and actually get the finished product in your inventory. It's not the start of the crafting, it's the end of crafting and obtaining the physical item.

 

I haven't logged in since last week so that explains what happened. Thanks. It only triggered when I logged in.

[thesadplanet]

Dear BioWare, I don't craft so please nerf crafting rewards.

 

However, I do PvP, so please buff those rewards.

 

Thanks!

 

That's actually not what I said at all. Next time, actually read the thread to get a better idea of the topic at hand.

[Grayseven]

Crafting is gated by materials. Materials gathering takes time and/or credits, gating that process as well.

 

Gating it any other way would make crafting worthless.

 

It takes 24 mats and 51 minutes to make a thousand points if you are conquering Tatooine right now...not counting mat gathering time.

 

For people who have tons of mats already, they obviously get the advantage as every 51 minutes or so they can get 5000 points per toon AS LONG AS THE MATERIALS HOLD OUT.

 

Meanwhile, in PvP, you get 1000 points every match. I'll be pessimistic about my queue pops and give it about 2500 points an hour for just playing with the chance to get an additional 8k points for kills and wins.

 

Of course, as I queue up my low and mid level toons for PvP I've got my 55 crafters pumping out crafting items. I'm hoping to hit 35000 on most of my 19 toons this week. We shall see as I have some 55's not geared for PvP and without crafting skills that I'll have to run FP's and OPs with to hit the points.

[ML_DoubleTap]

Dear BioWare, I don't craft so please nerf crafting rewards.

 

However, I do PvP, so please buff those rewards.

 

Thanks!

 

Your posts have become more sarcastic and trolly over the last few months. I'm fairly certain you don't even read threads anymore.

[ML_DoubleTap]

My suggestion here is to add a daily and weekly to crafting to cap the amount a single character can earn. The numbers might not quite be right, but I think there needs to be some sort of throttle. It's simply impossible to even come close to the amount of points available via crafting with any other mode of gameplay.

[DawnAskham]

I still contend the only reason we have so many 'once per legacy' items has more to do with poor systems on the back end than with a desire on Bioware's part to limit things at the account level.

 

It just appears to me that anything which isn't directly tied to an existing mission is being tracked and having conquest point rewards triggered through the same back end system which supports achievements, which is legacy based.

 

They need to put up the resources or budget to add missions or ability to track all these things at the character level, and then they can start really balancing conquest.

 

And for crafting, I don't see a problem, though all points per activity should be evaluated and re-balanced as necessary.

 

I do see a problem with all the once per legacy items, every single one should be once per character at a minimum, with things like FPs repeatable as long as they are done level appropriate through GF.

 

There are just no game play reasons at all to limit players to doing some of these objectives once per legacy per week.

Edited September 9, 2014 by DawnAskham

[Volcan]

Where they messed up is they let you use alts to repeat the crafting missions as many times as you want, but many objectives can only be done once per legacy, which is complete nonsense! If I have 8 characters that are leveled and geared to do Nightmare Pilgrim, then I should be able to get points for each character I kill him on! Same thing for 250 kills or whatever else. Those alts I have are also taking up roster spots from the guild, which is capped at 500. So BioWare wants us to kick our own alts out of the guild to make room for other accounts that can contribute those non repeatable points? We have already limited members to 5 as it is. I have another guild for my Republic characters and I can't even contribute for them on a lot of objectives. A LOT of players play both factions, which is what BioWare wanted in the 1st place!

 

I so agree with all of this! Like scary agree.

[Volcan]

A lot of people (including Bioware themselves, apparently) seem to think that warzones and arenas were overpowered in terms of the amount of conquest points they gave you.

 

However, the points gained from PvP pale in comparison to the completely absurd totals that can be gained through crafting. I'm not sure what kind of metrics, if any, Bioware is using to determine how people are obtaining their points, but anyone who has been paying attention could tell you that crafting is by far the most efficient way to get conquest points.

 

An individual could, in theory, get millions of conquests points all by themselves, and the #1 guild on each planet almost always gets to that spot through brute force crafting. On The Shadowlands, for example, two enormous guilds, WOOK and Covenant of the Phoenix got into a massive crafting war and practically bought out the entire crafting materials section of the GTN. Covenant of the Phoenix gave up at around 14.8 million points while WOOK would go on to get 18.6 million. For comparison's sake the winners of the other two planets on Shadowlands were Old Republic Dads and Triumph, with 8.98 and 10.6 million points respectively. Though, I should point out that the reason why those two guilds didn't put up similar numbers through crafting was because they were dodged by any legitimate contenders due to previous performances.

 

This isn't a unique occurrence either, a quick check of swtorconquest.com shows numerous guilds have managed to eclipse the 15 million point milestone. Hell, one guild on Jedi Covenant apparently finished last week's conquest with a whopping 25.6 million points.

 

The obvious solution would be to go back to the way things were in Week 1, just make everything repeatable (I realize this was due to a bug but I feel that its existence really improved the overall conquest gameplay). That way, an individual can play the type of content they want to, as much as they want to while contributing to their guild's conquest effort. Additionally, making planetary stuff like the commanders and kill 25 guards goals repeatable will encourage people to spend less time on the fleet, and more time on the planets, which has the benefit of making the planets livelier and encouraging open world PvP, something the developers said they were planning on doing over two years ago and have not yet delivered on. It would also give smaller, dedicated guilds a better chance to compete against over large, less active guilds.

 

Of course, even if this change was made, crafting would still be the easiest way by far to get conquest points, but at least guilds wouldn't be forced into the reality of "craft or die" like many are today. From Week 1 to now, conquest has increasingly become more and more about who has the most credits/crafting materials and less about actually playing the game. Is this how Bioware intends conquest to be? I don't know, but judging by the changes they've made it seems like its just intended to be a giant credit sink on top of the already massive cost of buying and upgrading your guild ship. I'd really like to hear from the developers on this. Is Conquest "working as intended" or are there additional changes planned?

 

Ok, I seriously agree with your post. Considering the top score on our server did not even really play last week and won. Let me explain:

 

This guild is a cross faction guild. The only thing they did was log over to craft, then log back. Most of the time there were only 3 or 4 people online. It's a bit off that the top earning guild wins by simply playing for 3 minutes every 3 hours just to send out companions. But that's just me.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd be more sympathetic if it weren't for the individual rewards (in the case of the event just held, the stronghold crafting material items), some of which are not really available elsewhere.

 

As long as there are individual rewards for individual character conquest point totals, then I'll go after the target total any way I can, and if that includes pumping out prefabs while slumming Voss heroics, then you can be damn sure I'll be doing those things.

[thesadplanet]

I'd be more sympathetic if it weren't for the individual rewards (in the case of the event just held, the stronghold crafting material items), some of which are not really available elsewhere.

 

As long as there are individual rewards for individual character conquest point totals, then I'll go after the target total any way I can, and if that includes pumping out prefabs while slumming Voss heroics, then you can be damn sure I'll be doing those things.

 

I have no problem with you having that playstyle. In fact, I encourage it. I just want people to be able to decide what content they want to do to earn conquest points rather than be forced into crafting thousands of useless items as its the only repeatable source of income.

[Damask_Rose]

Where they messed up is they let you use alts to repeat the crafting missions as many times as you want, but many objectives can only be done once per legacy, which is complete nonsense! If I have 8 characters that are leveled and geared to do Nightmare Pilgrim, then I should be able to get points for each character I kill him on! Same thing for 250 kills or whatever else. Those alts I have are also taking up roster spots from the guild, which is capped at 500. So BioWare wants us to kick our own alts out of the guild to make room for other accounts that can contribute those non repeatable points? We have already limited members to 5 as it is. I have another guild for my Republic characters and I can't even contribute for them on a lot of objectives. A LOT of players play both factions, which is what BioWare wanted in the 1st place!

 

I strongly agree with this. People shouldn't be punished for playing characters in different guilds.