Bioware: Is Crafting to Win™ intended?

[azudelphi]

Actually we were the only guild in the top 10 who was capable of doing all 4 raids on NiM.

 

So maybe they had that many more people doing storymode and hardmode...? Higher stronghold bonuses? More additional activities like pvp, gsf, flashpoints, etc... I don't doubt some crafting could have been involved, but to say it was only crafting is kind of ignorant.

[Rambeezy]

So maybe they had that many more people doing storymode and hardmode...? Higher stronghold bonuses? More additional activities like pvp, gsf, flashpoints, etc... I don't doubt some crafting could have been involved, but to say it was only crafting is kind of ignorant.

 

Also, I thought the point of conquest was to reward guilds whom accomplished the most in a given period of time.....With crafting being unlimited like it is, someone who crafts a bunch of stuff is given more accomplishment points (conquest points) than someone who clears all operations on all 3 modes, does 200 pvp matches a week, completes all the heroic missions and completes all the flashpoints....

 

something fishy is going on here imo

Edited September 30, 2014 by Rambeezy

[azudelphi]

Also, I thought the point of conquest was to reward guilds whom accomplished the most in a given period of time.....With crafting being unlimited like it is, someone who crafts a bunch of stuff is given more accomplishment points (conquest points) than someone who clears all operations on all 3 modes, does 200 pvp matches a week, completes all the heroic missions and completes all the flashpoints....

 

something fishy is going on here imo

 

Operations and flashpoints don't cost millions of credits (unless you wipe, A LOT), 200 pvp matches give you credits, heroic missions give you credits...

 

That cost has to be what Bioware is factoring in. Because I suspect they are not figuring that guilds are going to expend 500 million in resources on a week to week basis.

[Jadescythe]

So maybe they had that many more people doing storymode and hardmode...? Higher stronghold bonuses? More additional activities like pvp, gsf, flashpoints, etc... I don't doubt some crafting could have been involved, but to say it was only crafting is kind of ignorant.

 

Maybe they didn't sleep and did 6,000 Flashpoints that week!

 

Can we at least be realistic in this discussion? We're all aware that the numbers that players gained from crafting were SIGNIFICANTLY higher than anything else. You've heard it from 2 people in the Conquest battle from the OP in this thread. The only reason they got so many points was from the enormous amount of crafting done.

[Rambeezy]

Operations and flashpoints don't cost millions of credits (unless you wipe, A LOT), 200 pvp matches give you credits, heroic missions give you credits...

 

That cost has to be what Bioware is factoring in. Because I suspect they are not figuring that guilds are going to expend 500 million in resources on a week to week basis.

 

I see, people want to be rewarded for doing something that has no skill. I see whats going on here. This is a war between the bads and the goods. Well I'm just gonna take my seat over here and enjoy actually being able to clear NiM DP even though I dont have a fully unlocked guild ship. Enjoy being bad at this game and craft on brother!

[azudelphi]

I see, people want to be rewarded for doing something that has no skill. I see whats going on here. This is a war between the bads and the goods. Well I'm just gonna take my seat over here and enjoy actually being able to clear NiM DP even though I dont have a fully unlocked guild ship. Enjoy being bad at this game and craft on brother!

 

What are you on about?

 

Your response just makes you look a female cleansing product.

[Rambeezy]

What are you on about?

 

Your response just makes you look a female cleansing product.

 

Touché

 

May I ask what brand?

[azudelphi]

Maybe they didn't sleep and did 6,000 Flashpoints that week!

 

Can we at least be realistic in this discussion? We're all aware that the numbers that players gained from crafting were SIGNIFICANTLY higher than anything else. You've heard it from 2 people in the Conquest battle from the OP in this thread. The only reason they got so many points was from the enormous amount of crafting done.

 

Rambeezy was speaking to his guild only taking 10th place. I don't believe 9th place generated their entire lead from some imbalance of crafting. That was my point...

[magicallypuzzled]

i as stated earlier wouldn't mind skill required activities to be as repeatable and have as many points as non-skill required activities. the point is there has to be something like crafting that dedicated people can spam to make up for their numbers and currently that is only crafting as pvp and instances were stupidly nerfed. Edited September 30, 2014 by magicallypuzzled

[azudelphi]

i as stated earlier wouldn't mind skill required activities to be as repeatable and have as many points as non-skill required activities. the point is there has to be something like crafting that dedicated people can spam to make up for their numbers and currently that is only crafting as pvp and instances were stupidly nefred.

 

And again, the kind of infrastructure needed to sustain this kind of max theoretical point generation is costly both in game and out of game.

 

It was a one time clash of two very large guilds that were both crafting to try and beat the other guild's crafting.

 

And yes, smaller guilds can stockpile and plan and unleash resources to compete every once in a while with the system as it is.

[Drockter]

Crafting is expensive... and is the credit sink of the conquest system. If your guild spent 500 Million, and has access to orders of magnitude more than that... perhaps thats the point. Drain the holdings of those willing to spend that much to win.

 

Perhaps thats the point... they want you to burn through all of your cash, at the end... the system will balance (as others stated prior). Crafting at the level is simply too expensive of an endeavor to go on for ever. It may take a few weeks... but eventually it will become unsustainable. Either via lack of resources, or burnout.

 

All that said... OP do you have a suggestion on how to fix the system?

 

I personally like the PvP changes (participation + win points), PvE I am not sure how they can address without making things infinitely repeatable (although they should add location dailies and weeklies IMO as avenues for points IMO). But what should be done with crafting?

 

I am not sure what I would change... as I said... crafting at that level is unsustainable in the long term... it may take sometime for the large guilds to burn out, or spend out... but it will happen at some point. Then based on cost and time... i think that the average player will use crafting to augment their score... much like I've starting dabbling into PvP to augment my score.

[Rambeezy]

And again, the kind of infrastructure needed to sustain this kind of max theoretical point generation is costly both in game and out of game.

 

It was a one time clash of two very large guilds that were both crafting to try and beat the other guild's crafting.

 

And yes, smaller guilds can stockpile and plan and unleash resources to compete every once in a while with the system as it is.

 

Factoring in money to make an argument for something being worth x amount of points is bad because not everything can be bought. Operations cant be bought, lockouts cant be bought.

[ivanhedgehog]

are you intending to say guilds shouldn't have the ability to make up for their numbers in order to get into the top ten?

 

I am saying if you arent number 1 you didnt win. consolation prizes dont count

[Jadescythe]

i as stated earlier wouldn't mind skill required activities to be as repeatable and have as many points as non-skill required activities. the point is there has to be something like crafting that dedicated people can spam to make up for their numbers and currently that is only crafting as pvp and instances were stupidly nerfed.

 

Your point is moot. Everything is based on number of characters and large guilds always have more characters. You can say that 4-5 really dedicated crafters could beat out these guilds, but then they just have 4-5 more people do it than you and you lose. Anything that 1 dedicated player can do, a large guild can find 2 people to do the same.

 

The only way small guilds have a chance is if everything is done on a scale basis. So your points are based on points per participant, not total guild points. All this will lead to is guilds excluding members from participating (or being in the guild at all depending on how it's setup) in order to cut out the Conquest dead weight. As it is now, guilds are actually encouraged to recruit members to bump their Conquest totals which is actually a positive effect.

 

I think BW had 2 key purposes in mind when designing Conquest:

 

1) To encourage players to join guilds and encourage guilds to recruit players

 

2) To encourage players to participate in older content by offering rewards specific to completing it and get more play time without adding new content

[magicallypuzzled]

I am saying if you arent number 1 you didnt win. consolation prizes dont count

 

ah well as i stated before i really couldn't care less it doesn't bother me at all that someone can get an unattainable amount of points for me especially since that same method is what allows me to be competitive in the 3-10 place range in the first place. also consolations prizes are the only things with any benefits to them so i disagree completely.

[ivanhedgehog]

i as stated earlier wouldn't mind skill required activities to be as repeatable and have as many points as non-skill required activities. the point is there has to be something like crafting that dedicated people can spam to make up for their numbers and currently that is only crafting as pvp and instances were stupidly nerfed.

 

or they could cut out the middle man and let you buy conquest points with credits or CC's.

[oofalong]

Because the cost (there was no cost) and time per point were horrifically out of balance for something that was repeatable.

 

Again, crafting has a credit cost that is included in with the time. Yes, harvesting requires time; either your companions are harvesting or you are. Companions harvesting is crafting downtime; player harvesting is a downtime to other conquest objectives.

 

That trade-off is why there is a higher max theoretical / hr conquest gain.

 

I think you should clarify your definition of costs. For instance, I have hundreds of crafting mats from hoarding them since the game's launch. Further, I have hundreds of Jawa Junk that can be used for additional crafting mats from collecting Cartel items. In other words, the incremental cost for me to craft for Conquests is nonexistent; I have already absorbed the sunk costs of my activity. Still, there is absolutely an opportunity cost associated with my materials.

 

But first, can we agree that ignoring the opportunity cost of the mats, crafting provides a higher return than other game play, including Flashpoints, Operations and Warzones? This is true so it shouldn't be too hard to agree with.

 

Now to address the opportunity cost of mats. We could estimate their value using one of three methodologies:

• Replacement cost via the GTN
  
• Replacement cost via harvesting which is predominantly in-game time
  
• Replacement cost based on crew skills which is a combination of credits and in-game time.
  

 

The most efficient and appropriate approach is probably some combination of all three. The problem is no matter which methodology you choose crafting for Conquests still has a higher return than any other activity assuming you are doing it as efficiently as possible. For instance, many flashpoints have sufficient mobs to harvest as well as credit drops or chest and this allows you to simultaneously run crew skills. Again, the end result of this activity is to generate mats for Conquest crafting. And, this activity provides a higher reward than any other available in-game activity.

 

Thus, just like the spammable flashpoints, crafting provides a disproportional reward in Conquests based on the time invested.

 

@azudelphi - I look forward to your reasoned response to this

[magicallypuzzled]

Your point is moot. Everything is based on number of characters and large guilds always have more characters. You can say that 4-5 really dedicated crafters could beat out these guilds, but then they just have 4-5 more people do it than you and you lose. Anything that 1 dedicated player can do, a large guild can find 2 people to do the same.

 

The only way small guilds have a chance is if everything is done on a scale basis. So your points are based on points per participant, not total guild points. All this will lead to is guilds excluding members from participating (or being in the guild at all depending on how it's setup) in order to cut out the Conquest dead weight. As it is now, guilds are actually encouraged to recruit members to bump their Conquest totals which is actually a positive effect.

 

I think BW had 2 key purposes in mind when designing Conquest:

 

1) To encourage players to join guilds and encourage guilds to recruit players

 

2) To encourage players to participate in older content by offering rewards specific to completing it and get more play time without adding new content

 

and if they do that than they deserve it.... but they don't do that and if crafting wasn't repeatable it wouldn't matter that they don't because there wouldn't be any repeatable content that would let a more dedicated guild surpase them they could relax and just cruise and no smaller guild would ever be able to catchup.

[magicallypuzzled]

or they could cut out the middle man and let you buy conquest points with credits or CC's.

 

sure they could but they won't so why bother discussing it?

[DawnAskham]

sure they could but they won't so why bother discussing it?

 

They do indirectly.

 

One can buy CM packs filled with jawa junk to trade for mats, sell the rest of the stuff in the packs for credits, buy more mats, and then queue up a dozen alts to craft up a million points.

 

Every other activity requires actually playing the game, with the CM having no effect on the potential amount of Conquest points earned.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

The problem is no matter which methodology you choose crafting for Conquests still has a higher return than any other activity assuming you are doing it as efficiently as possible.

 

Is this actually still being debated after 35 pages? I thought from page 1 it was clear that crafting is by far and away the biggest return of points within the game currently to the point it can hardly be argued.

 

The argument comes down to the cost factors that you eluded to and yes even though you can make money/materials doing FP's and then ideally put this back into crafting points it cannot be ignored that that is still a profit that was lost by you or your guild by using the crafting materials on the more or less useless war supplies.

 

The counter to that of course ... well what else would we spend our credits on? Some guilds/players are so super rich that it hardly matters anymore to make more money as there is just nothing to buy in this game that isn't vanity products and most super filthy rich players probably bought most of what they wanted from that long ago so now given the opportunity to buy themselves a top spot on a ranking board they go for it.

 

One would have to think eventually the money sink effect will kick in and slow it all down somewhat but I would think if it's not happened yet it probably won't happen.

 

In the end if there was something else to actually spend credits on that actually had a use beyond vanity ( and let's not mistake conquest ranking here, it's all vanity itself ) then perhaps people wouldn't be so eager to blow credits on crafting but when it's 10-15 million for a rancor/walker or 10-15 million to aim for top spot in your guild for conquest ... what's the difference ( though 1 does only last 1 week heh ).

 

Maybe they should start having public top 10 lists of each ranked guild ( click guild, drill down into it ) so we can see which players rank highest also - that would drive the hype even further ( and make me even richer, thanks conquest and gsh! )

[magicallypuzzled]

They do indirectly.

 

One can buy CM packs filled with jawa junk to trade for mats, sell the rest of the stuff in the packs for credits, buy more mats, and then queue up a dozen alts to craft up a million points.

 

Every other activity requires actually playing the game, with the CM having no effect on the potential amount of Conquest points earned.

 

and what is wrong with that? as far as i can see absolutely nothing.

 

they also haven't removed the middle man like the post i quoted was saying try harder next time.

Edited September 30, 2014 by magicallypuzzled

[Zoom_VI]

Why were repeatable flashpoints and PvP nerfed? Surely those could've leveled the playing field for smaller guilds.

 

Leveled? You mean slanted. Flashpoints and PvP conquest points are nothing but a product of how many people can you get to spam them.

[iamef]

Why don't you all just create another thread where folks are free to debate just how much better (or worse ) crafting is than other conquest objectives. Perhaps another thread where people discuss whether Triumph, WOOK, et al have some nefarious purpose in bringing up the question of crafting now.

 

In this thread, there is one question: Did Bioware intend crafting to become such an overwhelming contributor to the overall conquest point structure?

 

Oh, and also, you can create another thread where you debate whether Planetary Conquests itself is actually just a massive credit sink supporting and complimenting a soft push towards a pay-to-achievements (and dare i say win) future.

[Zoom_VI]

Can we at least be realistic in this discussion? We're all aware that the numbers that players gained from crafting were SIGNIFICANTLY higher than anything else. You've heard it from 2 people in the Conquest battle from the OP in this thread. The only reason they got so many points was from the enormous amount of crafting done.

 

Yes everyone is aware how effective the return is, however everyone should also be aware that crafting is the only activity that costs.

 

In order to craft you need mats and you need them on a large scale.

To get mats you have to

-spam resources nodes which costs game time

-spam gathering missions which costs credits+real time

-buy mats off GTN which costs a lot more credits but not time.

 

Warzones, GSF, and flashpoints only cost time, there is no credit expenditure.

 

Some people seem to complain that it gives to much points for something that occurs passively. (ignoring the active time require to accumulate the wealth or mats) However it is important to note that since crafting is passive, that Crafting+PvP, Crafting+GSF, or Crafting+Flashpoints will always yield higher points than just Crafting, and that statement will always be true as long as crafting doesn't give infinite points.

 

Crafting is also a function of available resources, time, credits and available crafting alts, while all other sources of conquest points are a function player accounts. While larger guild population still gives a advantage in the crafting area of conquest, the effectiveness of it is not purely tied to guild numbers. Or in other words superguilds like Triumph will stand the most to gain from a nerfed crafting system.

 

It is also important to note that a guild that has been as dominant as Triumph has been, will have known about Crafting's effectiveness since day 1 of conquests. Crafting nukes are after all the oldest trick in the Conquest book. However it is interesting to note that Triumph only complains after they burned out on crafting, as evidenced with this quote

Some of my guildies were so stressed all week they were dreaming of mats in their sleep. I never want to see another War Supply again.

 

Now they wish to pursue a different meta having burned themselves out exploiting the old one.