Bioware: Is Crafting to Win™ intended?

[Brewski]

Yes, he has been arguing that crafting should be OP because unlike the other conquest activities it doesn't have an intrinsic worth outside of conquests. While he has exaggerated the claim, it's an interesting point, but does not justify the degree of the disparity that currently exists IMO.

 

It's a valid point, but really, "balanced" comes down to more a matter of public feeling than hard numbers. There will always be guilds that "Craft to Win" and there will always be guilds that "PvP to Win", while most guilds will just do a combination of goals based on what they feel like doing.

 

To me, it would be balanced when, week to week you total all of the conquest points earned by every player in the game for a given week, and you have roughly 1/3rd of them coming from each "area". (Crafting/PvP/PvE) It doesn't have to be 33.33% for each area, and doesn't even have to be perfectly balanced each week, but if you have, in general, a third of the total points coming from each category over time, it means no one area is totally dominate.

 

It's always vary from player to player, guild to guild, and even server to server, and it may never be perfect, but it can be better.

[DarthTHC]

I am not sure how to properly account for the mats, but I agree they have value although not necessarily time. In many cases, I believe players have been sitting on some of their mats since the game's launch. After all, Conquest crafting draws on previously underutilized mats.

 

For instance, I personally am sitting on several hundred Rakata Energy Nodes, Self Perpetuating Power Cells, Biometric Alloys and Alien Data Cubes. I earned these via Cartel Packs (when fixed mats were given out), countless runs through EV & KP long before GSH was ever announced, and even more runs through the same ops to get decorations. At no time, did I ever consider the time I spent was to acquire mats; the mats were a byproduct of my other actions. That is, even if no mats were awarded my behavior wouldn't have changed. The same is true for all of the greens mats harvested or earned via crew skills. In other words, I can make a case that I spent 0 time acquiring mats.

 

Possible if you're just sending crew out as you do whatever else your'e doing. I spend more than that, and I think others do, too. There is a time sink to cycling through alts who do nothing but gathering missions, which is probably the most efficient way to get the mats needed to craft the Conquest Point items.

 

I don't understand this point. Are you saying the opportunity cost of the mats should be considered? As far as I can tell the only opportunity cost is in the form of in-game credits; it's not like I could use the mats to get back the time I sunk in a flashpoint. How do we compare potential credits to conquest points?

 

I'm saying that there is zero value, in War Supplies, aside from the Conquest Points you get for crafting them. Any guild that has been competitive for a few weeks has more than they need. They won't sell on GTN. I haven't tried to vendor them, but I suspect the credit value if they even can be sold is negligible. They offer no ingame benefit. Crafting them from this point forward is the equivalent of destroying the materials, or more accurately the credits and time you spent to acquire the materials, just to get Conquest Points.

 

Again, I don't understand this point. Are you talking about the loot/comms/credits that come from Ops/FPs/PvP? Or are you talking about the player's real world utility gain by not having to craft?

 

I'm saying there is real, ingame value to doing an operation, flash point, war zone, etc. Commendations, yep. Credits too but we can discount those as too few to be meaningful. For ops, a chance at gear that might do anything from improve your character significantly to improve a companion or alt a bit depending on where you are in the operations process. But distinctly more real, honest to goodness ingame value than just Conquest Points.

 

That's why I'm not so convinced the mis-balance is so huge. All those other activities that grant fewer conquest points grant other, often more significant, benefits than does crafting.

 

And as we consider balancing Conquest Point rewards from the various activities, I don't want us to lose sight of those other benefits.

[oofalong]

Yes, he has been arguing that crafting should be OP because unlike the other conquest activities it doesn't have an intrinsic worth outside of conquests. While he has exaggerated the claim, it's an interesting point, but does not justify the degree of the disparity that currently exists IMO.

 

I sort of understood this, but I don't really agree with it. For instance, I have no interest in any loot drop from flashpoints, nor am I particularly interested in comms. (I have been sitting at max ultimate and elite comms for months on my toons.) In other words, if I were to run a flashpoint it would be expressly for Conquest points as nothing else has value to me ignoring the incidental credit drops.

 

Also, there is value in War Supplies. It may be less than the sum of the mats, but the finished goods still have some value. As an aside if anyone from Wook or Triumph want to give me their worthless War Supplies you can in-game mail them to Oofalong (imp side) or Jolern (pub side)

[JasonNH]

I sort of understood this, but I don't really agree with it. For instance, I have no interest in any loot drop from flashpoints, nor am I particularly interested in comms. (I have been sitting at max ultimate and elite comms for months on my toons.) In other words, if I were to run a flashpoint it would be expressly for Conquest points as nothing else has value to me ignoring the incidental credit drops.

 

Also, there is value in War Supplies. It may be less than the sum of the mats, but the finished goods still have some value. As an aside if anyone from Wook or Triumph want to give me their worthless War Supplies you can in-game mail them to Oofalong (imp side) or Jolern (pub side)

 

I agree, which is why I described the claim as exaggerated.

[DarthTHC]

No, it would be more akin to American football scoring both field goals and touchdowns as 1 point each. (They are 3 and 7 now for those who don't follow it.) Since field goals are so much easier to make, every team would switch to scoring field goals only. Why bother with the more difficult scoring path when you can get much better rewards by sticking with the easier one?

 

While you are right about American Football, you are wrong about the impact changing the scoring would have in this game.

 

In football, behavior would absolutely change. Teams would make sure they had the best kicker they could acquire, get into field goal range, and kick them, never even thinking about going for a touchdown.

 

But if we just decrease the number of points from crafted items, guilds will still craft just as many things as they do now. Behavior would not change. Only the points they generate would.

 

Irrelevant sports analogies aside, I'm not pretending to have absolute numbers, and really neither do you. My suggested values were offered as my gut feeling on what would make the paths more equivalent without limiting crafting as a way for individuals or guilds to a hard cap. If you don't like them, offer up some of your own.

 

I'm saying though that the numbers do not matter because you're talking about changing them but not capping them. Because under that proposal, every single item you craft would still be worth SOME points, it would not change behavior at all. Guilds would still craft all they could to get as many points as they can because the guilds they're competing against would do that, too.

 

At some point, whether it's my numbers, higher or lower, is a balance point at which most competitive guilds will use it in combination with the other methods rather than to the exclusion of those methods. That's the sweat spot we should be aiming for.

[Jadescythe]

A closer ratio has absolutely no impact on anything real. It didn't change what the guild did at all. It didn't change their focus. It didn't change their planning. It didn't change their strategy. The guild still crafted exactly as many items as they did before. Still ran exactly as many war zones or flash points or GSF events it always did.

 

It only changed their total score. That's irrelevant.

 

It would be like changing soccer scoring to 2 points per goal. Whee! Now games have higher scores! So what? Nothing else changed. The players still play exactly the same way.

 

Let's say that every activity has the exact same points/time ratio. So 1 hour of crafting = 1 hour of flashpoints = 1 hour of PvP. Now, the percentage of my time I spend on any aspect of the game doesn't increase or decrease the amount of points I'm getting, because all avenues net me the same amount of points over an hour.

 

This is why we argue for equalization, so that players can choose how they want to contribute to Conquest and have their dedication be the determining factor rather than the effectiveness of their preferred playstyle. Then you can choose the planet that gives you the best benefit based on the content you plan to participate in the most.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

It seems to me that the only one working properly is crafting. Instead of asking for it to be nerfed why not ask for the others to be fixed?

 

^^ Perfect statement there though I wouldn't go as far as to say ALL the other options need fixing or are broken crafting is one of the gew that isn't actually exploitable.

 

I read a few pages from where I last posted, read the last few and the general trend of the anti crafting people seems to be to ignore the fact that crafting to win costs a s***load of credits to achieve. That is a pretty massive downside really in terms of the game. Still if people want to spend there credits ( or miss out on the profit of selling mats ) in this way they should by all means be entitled to.

 

As to the "it's not fair on poor/small guilds" crap, bah come up with a realistic argument please. Say we fix crafting, say all the exploits are fixed to. What then? It's not fair that Guild A has 500 active toons they can run content on but my guild only has 300, can we get weighting factors included? Come on. The point of rich/poor small/large needsto be utterly removed from the debate as it's pointless since no matter what you do to conquest some guild is always going to get an advantage either from sheer numbers or wealth. Even if it were setup so somehow it favoured the top PVP guilds or PVE guilds in a purely skill basis and numbers in the guild didn't matter there is nothing stopping me using my wealth to buy a guild of said skilled players through sheer bribery so again wealth can factor in.

 

Yes Crafting is superior but likewise it costs money. If you or your guild can't keep or refuse to then take a different tact. Get rich instead. What is more important, your guild name on a board ( which you can't even see your personal contribution on afaik, only guild leaders can? ) or 100 million+ easy credits from those that do want their name on a board?

 

Heck if anyone had any semblance of strategy and stopped their tiresome whinging they would realize week 1 they could focus gathering mats and making a fortune off the week 1 competitors who use crafting and then when week 2 hits they are prepared to strike with their gained fortune and mats from week 1 and get on top for week 2. Being that ANY guild can employ this strategy the whole rich/poor argument also becomes moot, it's all numbers of active toons at that point and how dedicated your guildies are in building that week 1 base for week 2.

 

The joy at that point is if you arem axing crafting and so is guild X then crafting is effectively eliminated from the equation and the rest of the conquest fight comes down to the other content.

 

Is crafting balanced? Yes, anyone can do it. It rewards more and easier points yes but at huge cost ( or lack of potential profit - it's only sustainable with by large super active guilds ).

 

Is crafting broken? No, it works perfectly well and obviously as intended or something would have changed.

 

Do poor guilds suffer? No because if they have the active toon numbers of a "rich" guild nothing stops them from building a monetary base for a future week ( other than stupidity on how to actually do so ).

 

Do large guilds benefit? Yes and they always will regardless of the system, get over it.

 

Anything else that needs answering?

[DarthTHC]

Let's say that every activity has the exact same points/time ratio. So 1 hour of crafting = 1 hour of flashpoints = 1 hour of PvP. Now, the percentage of my time I spend on any aspect of the game doesn't increase or decrease the amount of points I'm getting, because all avenues net me the same amount of points over an hour.

 

This is why we argue for equalization, so that players can choose how they want to contribute to Conquest and have their dedication be the determining factor rather than the effectiveness of their preferred playstyle. Then you can choose the planet that gives you the best benefit based on the content you plan to participate in the most.

 

I think that's an unfair ratio though. Under that system:

 

5 hours of crafting (on one character) gets you 125 items that are basically worthless and 125,000 conquest points.

 

5 hours of raiding (on one character) gets you dozens of commendations, a handful of chances to get loot that might improve your character, and 125,000 conquest points.

 

That's not balanced either. You have to either increase the value of the 125 crafted items to at least be on par with the number of commendations you'll get from doing the operation or reduce the conquest point reward for doing the op.

 

"I'm maxed out on commendations," isn't a valid argument against that. Not everyone is on every character and companion.

[Brewski]

And as we consider balancing Conquest Point rewards from the various activities, I don't want us to lose sight of those other benefits.

 

Absolutely that should be considered.

 

But also consider than many of the PvP and PvE objectives hold no intrinsic value either. During last weeks conquest I ran a number of level 50 HM flashpoints for the conquest points alone, because the loot drops were useless, and the money I made during the run was far less than I could make doing nearly any "normal" end game activity. In point of fact, I was losing money by running those, as I lost the opportunity to make more than I did in the exact same way you describe for crafting.

 

All of that needs to be considered, but realistically you can't make an exact calculation because the end result will depend so much on how players feel. So what you have to do instead is just make incremental changes and see how it affects things over time.

[ivanhedgehog]

When taking all factors into account:

 

1) The time required to acquire the raw materials regardless how you get them

2) The total lack of value of the things you craft

3) The real value in the other activities, aside from conquest points

 

I'm not so sure it's that huge a disparity.

 

If all of a sudden War Zones and Operations and Flash Points and GSF started awarding nothing but Conquest Points, I might be right there with ya.

if all of a sudden crafting started requiring you to be online with the one companion crafting and a failure caused repair bill I might be with you.

[TUXs]

It seems to me that the only one working properly is crafting. Instead of asking for it to be nerfed why not ask for the others to be fixed?

Crafting is the only one they haven't touched, the others they have. I don't believe the others are "broken".

[oofalong]

Possible if you're just sending crew out as you do whatever else your'e doing. I spend more than that, and I think others do, too. There is a time sink to cycling through alts who do nothing but gathering missions, which is probably the most efficient way to get the mats needed to craft the Conquest Point items.

 

Incidentally, I never said anything about Crew Skills for mats. I was specifically talking about existing mats prior to Conquests. Even though this is not an infinite amount, I suspect there are many times than either of us could fathom. Unfortunately, there are a lot of inactive/ex-players who probably have cargo bays full of them; I am aware of at least one guilds efforts to tap into this source of mats.

 

Anyway, to estimate the true cost (in time or credits) of mats we would need to do some type of weighted average about the amount of mats in existence prior to Conquests compared to those generate since. I really have no idea what the split is, but obviously the portion since the release of Conquests is only growing.

 

Anyway the point here was, you stated when accounting for The time required to acquire the raw materials regardless how you get them crafting does not provide disproportionate rewards. To which I say I think you are underestimating the volume of mats that existed prior to Conquests.

 

I'm saying that there is zero value, in War Supplies, aside from the Conquest Points you get for crafting them. Any guild that has been competitive for a few weeks has more than they need. They won't sell on GTN. I haven't tried to vendor them, but I suspect the credit value if they even can be sold is negligible. They offer no ingame benefit. Crafting them from this point forward is the equivalent of destroying the materials, or more accurately the credits and time you spent to acquire the materials, just to get Conquest Points.

 

Right now they may appear to be valueless and right now they don't sell on the GTN, but BioWare has demonstrated their willingness to shift the crafting economy. As I said, I am happy to sit on a few hundred War Supplies if someone wants to send them my way.

 

I'm saying there is real, ingame value to doing an operation, flash point, war zone, etc. Commendations, yep. Credits too but we can discount those as too few to be meaningful. For ops, a chance at gear that might do anything from improve your character significantly to improve a companion or alt a bit depending on where you are in the operations process. But distinctly more real, honest to goodness ingame value than just Conquest Points.

 

I outlined a case where I disagreed with this here so I won't do it again in this post.

 

That's why I'm not so convinced the mis-balance is so huge. All those other activities that grant fewer conquest points grant other, often more significant, benefits than does crafting.

 

And as we consider balancing Conquest Point rewards from the various activities, I don't want us to lose sight of those other benefits.

 

The fact that Triumph and Wook were each able to generate ~40m Conquest points via crafting and that this was ~10x the third place finisher tells me that the system is broken. That is, there are simply not enough points to earn via non-crafting options. Is anyone able to break 10m Conquest point without crafting? I do not believe this is possible, which means crafting will always be the deciding factor, which means it is too strong relative to the other options (or too cheap to perform compared to its true value). Either way it is broken

[MeNaCe-NZ]

I'm saying that there is zero value, in War Supplies, aside from the Conquest Points you get for crafting them. Any guild that has been competitive for a few weeks has more than they need. They won't sell on GTN. I haven't tried to vendor them, but I suspect the credit value if they even can be sold is negligible. They offer no ingame benefit. Crafting them from this point forward is the equivalent of destroying the materials, or more accurately the credits and time you spent to acquire the materials, just to get Conquest Points.

 

This isn't entirely true. With the right crafting skill, crafting the right war supply and buying the materials at the right time there are some war supplies that are profitable if sold at the right time ( I can make from 10 - 300% depending on those factors ). I won't give away much more than that as I don't want to saturate this super volatile market more than it is and I make pretty crazy profits from crafting.

 

have no interest in any loot drop from flashpoints, nor am I particularly interested in comms. (I have been sitting at max ultimate and elite comms for months on my toons.) In other words, if I were to run a flashpoint it would be expressly for Conquest points as nothing else has value to me ignoring the incidental credit drops.

 

Also, there is value in War Supplies. It may be less than the sum of the mats, but the finished goods still have some value. As an aside if anyone from Wook or Triumph want to give me their worthless War Supplies you can in-game mail them to Oofalong (imp side) or Jolern (pub side)

 

See that is your point of view and that's fine but I think Darth makes the point that those items actually have an intrinsic value in the game far more than conquest points do. Gear and comms ( credits too if you really want to buy from GTN heh ) give new toons/players access to higher tier game content they couldn't do otherwise. Conquest points give you more or less nothing except a few crafting trophy rewards that can't even be compared to 1 single ops rewards due to the exhaustion factor and the junk drop and a few credits. I won't bother with the math as no doubt it exists but would 1 run through say DF 16M SM not give better overall "rewards" than an entire week done on conquest? Other than the ability to sell war supplies as I do at time for a profit ( that is by far an exception, not a rule, if everyone did it who crafting war supplies I wouldn't be doing it as the markets I use would die too ) there is little reward in conquest other than status for your guild and that's debatable status at that - some players think conquest sucks so bad they ridicule the top guilds on the charts and respect them less whilst other players rate them highly for their achievement ( personally I think kudos for rating high but nothing skillful was achieved though the amount of credits and time to be spent to rank so high NO MATTER how they did it I admire ).

Also comms + gear = more content to run which often = more conquest points ( well for ops anyway ).

 

If anyone is still reading I had a thought on one solution that I am in favor of ...

 

Instead of having war supplies the repeatable factor for 500 points, make invasion force only the repeatable factor for 500 points.

 

The cost then to keep up this level of crafting will sky rocket, war supplies will start getting crazy expensive to buy as everyone chases them for the invasion force materials and the base materials won't drop in price, would probably increase somewhat ( unless people give up crafting altogether ).

 

So this way the time factor of points is severly reduced due to invasion force taking longer and the cost goes up even further because even though war supplies are considered cheap now at usually sub 10K each that is a lot more expensive than the single mats. With the demand for war supplies sky rocketing if you had invasion force as the repeatable so too will the cost so increased time + increased cost = decreased crafting for conquest points efficiency.

 

Why am I in favor of this? Firstly it eases some peoples issues around crafting without ruining crafting, the rules more or less stay the same it just becomes somewhat more restricted and difficult and secondly because I will get even stupider richer from crafting and gathering for the conquest crafters I've always been a fan of the conquest crafting because unlike conquest points I favor credits - that's my thing so that is my reasoning for being pro crafting. My whole defense though is 90% of the anti crafters arguments are seriously flawed ( as most don't even attempt to counter argue the points I put against their base arguments ) and more a case of sour grapes than anything else. As soon as you call crafting "broken" you've already lost.

[DarthTHC]

if all of a sudden crafting started requiring you to be online with the one companion crafting and a failure caused repair bill I might be with you.

 

They haven't changed ops, flash points, war zones, etc., except to add conquest points to them. The conquest points are a bonus over and above what you always got.

 

OTOH, they did add crafting things specifically for Conquest that generate points and then are valueless.

[Jadescythe]

I think that's an unfair ratio though. Under that system:

 

5 hours of crafting (on one character) gets you 125 items that are basically worthless and 125,000 conquest points.

 

5 hours of raiding (on one character) gets you dozens of commendations, a handful of chances to get loot that might improve your character, and 125,000 conquest points.

 

That's not balanced either. You have to either increase the value of the 125 crafted items to at least be on par with the number of commendations you'll get from doing the operation or reduce the conquest point reward for doing the op.

 

"I'm maxed out on commendations," isn't a valid argument against that. Not everyone is on every character and companion.

 

I still think it's all equal. You are right that other Conquest objectives have secondary rewards, but crafting has perks as well. Those being that you can craft while offline, including gathering resources. You can also complete other objectives while crafting. It's true that you have a certain amount of time you need to spend gathering materials or earning credits (many of which complete Conquest objectives as well), but that isn't greatly inhibiting your ability to craft.

 

BW will have better metrics to determine how much of a change needs to be made (and perhaps an even distribution isn't correct), but currently any negatives to crafting are vastly overshadowed by the enormous gains in Conquest points. Tone down those points and we can reevaluate the viability of each method afterwards.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Anyway the point here was, you stated when accounting for The time required to acquire the raw materials regardless how you get them crafting does not provide disproportionate rewards. To which I say I think you are underestimating the volume of mats that existed prior to Conquests.

 

Likewise I think we could say you are seriously over estimating the amount of mats that still exist from prior to GSH. It's kind of moot if neither party can back up what they are saying with any sort of hard proof. You can use yourself as example but that mats you spoke of don't actually contribute that much to conquest. They contribute to Dark Project on the whole which doesn't contribute to conquest at all I believe?

 

Now I'm sure if we could work out how many points had been generated from crafting ( some guilds have given their figures here already ) and applied that to the possible amounts of materials that were used to craft these war supplies the numbers would be utterly staggering for one week alone. I myself, like you, had bays and bays of materials prior to GSH and even utterly filled every bay I had with materials I knew would increase in value or use. I went through all of those within about 2 weeks by either selling them on or using them ( though not all for war supplies, prefabs is a nice market also ). Whilst I'm not trying to use myself as proof or anything my own experience and observations ( as a heavy trader in the commodity market that is GSH/Conquest, I want creds not points ) tells me that you are wrong sorry, most of the materials that could be used for war supplies or prefabs that existed prior to GSH have been long since used up ( except the inactive players you speak of but that's moot as they aren't contributing until they become active ).

[oofalong]

See that is your point of view and that's fine but I think Darth makes the point that those items actually have an intrinsic value in the game far more than conquest points do. Gear and comms ( credits too if you really want to buy from GTN heh ) give new toons/players access to higher tier game content they couldn't do otherwise. Conquest points give you more or less nothing except a few crafting trophy rewards that can't even be compared to 1 single ops rewards due to the exhaustion factor and the junk drop and a few credits. I won't bother with the math as no doubt it exists but would 1 run through say DF 16M SM not give better overall "rewards" than an entire week done on conquest? Other than the ability to sell war supplies as I do at time for a profit ( that is by far an exception, not a rule, if everyone did it who crafting war supplies I wouldn't be doing it as the markets I use would die too ) there is little reward in conquest other than status for your guild and that's debatable status at that - some players think conquest sucks so bad they ridicule the top guilds on the charts and respect them less whilst other players rate them highly for their achievement ( personally I think kudos for rating high but nothing skillful was achieved though the amount of credits and time to be spent to rank so high NO MATTER how they did it I admire ).

 

It absolutely is my point of view. At every instance, I tried to say so rather than project my perspectives onto other players. Everyone is allowed and should have their own opinions, and I was trying to get DarthTHC to consider another point of view.

 

Nevertheless, Conquests are being won via crafting. I believe the numbers are pretty compelling hence why I believe Conquest crafting needs to have its relative reward changed - and I keep posting here to try to convince others of this fact.

[Brewski]

While you are right about American Football, you are wrong about the impact changing the scoring would have in this game.

 

In football, behavior would absolutely change. Teams would make sure they had the best kicker they could acquire, get into field goal range, and kick them, never even thinking about going for a touchdown.

 

But if we just decrease the number of points from crafted items, guilds will still craft just as many things as they do now. Behavior would not change. Only the points they generate would.

 

The more you downgrade it, the less people will consider it worth the effort, and usage of it will also downgrade. For example, if we made every crafted item worth exactly 1 point, who would bother? Why would you spend 24/7 crating on 6 or more characters, costing you millions of credits, if the point total you receive for doing so is less than one operation?

 

Somewhere between 1 point per item and 500 points per item is a number that will bring it into balance.

 

I'm saying though that the numbers do not matter because you're talking about changing them but not capping them. Because under that proposal, every single item you craft would still be worth SOME points, it would not change behavior at all. Guilds would still craft all they could to get as many points as they can because the guilds they're competing against would do that, too.

 

I have to admit to being a bit confused. On the one hand you seem to argue against hard caps on crafting, and on the other you are saying that without caps there's no way to limit it. Saying "it's impossible to fix, so you shouldn't try" doesn't seem like the answer.

 

As stated above. Somewhere between earning 1 point per crafted item and 500 points per crafted item there is a balance point. That's what we need to look for.

[Zoom_VI]

It absolutely is my point of view. At every instance, I tried to say so rather than project my perspectives onto other players. Everyone is allowed and should have their own opinions, and I was trying to get DarthTHC to consider another point of view.

 

The whole purpose of discussion is to try to convince the other person of your belief, that's how progress happens. If humans didn't "project their perspectives on others" we would still be hunting antelope with pointy sticks.

[MeNaCe-NZ]

Nevertheless, Conquests are being won via crafting. I believe the numbers are pretty compelling hence why I believe Conquest crafting needs to have its relative reward changed - and I keep posting here to try to convince others of this fact.

 

Well let's stop running in circles then - quite simply what is your solution taking in to consideration everything else that is exploitable? A solution that fixes crafting as you see it broken without over powering other aspects.

 

Maybe the direction of this topic should be in that direction rather than if it needs fixing or not.

 

Noting if you "fix" crafting too hard you can risk crashing the market as it stands now and piss a lot of people off who have invested heavily in various parts of it trying to continue making creds off the guilds using crafting.

 

Remember if it was your decision and your decision suddenly caused someone who has 5 bays of mats worth 1000-2000 credits to suddenly become worth 100 - 200 credits it will be your head they would want on the pole.

 

My solution which no doubt could use some math behind it:

*Make invasion force the repeatable for 500, make other crafting worth 0 or one time 1K.

 

*Make operation bosses worth points per boss and you can't get points without having beating the previous boss. You then get a nice large bonus for beating the content. HM/NiM DO NOT rewards higher points, same as SM ( keep the elitist b/s out of conquest ).

 

*Make FPs repeatable again and use a similar strategy to the above with OPs except no points per boss, 1 reward at the end if all bosses are killed ( and a bonus for bonus as it is now ).

 

*Do something about WZs to stop guilds working together with preformed groups for win/participation points. Rarely ever touch PVP so not sure on solution here, only aware of issues from other people's posts about them in other threads.

 

*Same with GSF to stop people quickly folding matches to get the participation points.

[Nepthen]

I would gladly trade in all my excess commendations for additional conquest points. Then all those runs through SM DF with my head on my keyboard while I DPS will definitely be worth the hassle.

 

Say... 500 points per ultimate? 250 for Elite? (I just grabbed numbers from the air)

 

EDIT:

 

<snip>

Instead of having war supplies the repeatable factor for 500 points, make invasion force only the repeatable factor for 500 points.

<snip>

 

That would be very interesting. I know for myself, I can really crank out the Biochem war supplies (I have a legacy of Biochem raiders) but I'd be hurting on the other supplies.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Nepthen

[MeNaCe-NZ]

for 500 points.

<snip>

That would be very interesting. I know for myself, I can really crank out the Biochem war supplies (I have a legacy of Biochem raiders) but I'd be hurting on the other supplies.

 

Yes me personally I have Biochem and Artifice over 2 toons and they happen to unfortunately make the same bloody war supplies heh.

I mean it would be no major problem or change for people with toons already making all types. What it would do though is force far more people to buy materials because as it stands say you pump out only crystal capacitors and holocrons you generally have the gathering skills to support your crew skill as that is how B/W designed it it would seem so you can ideally not go to GTN if you choose. However switch it to invasionforce is you only had the one crafting skill you now have to spend credits on GTN or pull in the war supplies from guild bank/guildies. It's going to slow down the crafting thing big time whilst having a positive effect on the market keeping those uninterested in conquest happy who like making money.

[Mireleni]

I think the OP makes a good point that for every conquest week, no matter what your guild bonuses are based on the planet you invade, the fastest way to get the most points--by far--is crafting. As much as I like being able to get points by crafting, it would add more variety if some of the weeks, for instance, the crafting conquest points were non-repeatable. Some of the other conquest objectives might have to be shifted around to compensate, but they could work that out. It could shake things up and make it more interesting, and I don't see any reason not to do this.

[oofalong]

Quoted out of order:

 

Maybe the direction of this topic should be in that direction [a solution that fixes crafting] rather than if it needs fixing or not.

 

Unfortunately, there are a number of people who do not agree/recognize that Conquest crafting is a problem. I would like to establish consensus on the issue to ensure any proposed solutions actually solve the problem.

 

Well let's stop running in circles then - quite simply what is your solution taking in to consideration everything else that is exploitable? A solution that fixes crafting as you see it broken without over powering other aspects...

 

As I described here, fixing Conquests will not be a simple nor one-off event; it will be iterative and sequential. There is a quote often ascribed to Einstein that given an hour you should spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes actually solving it. I believe we are very much in the problem definition phase of Conquests, specifically crafting.

 

And, while I can't quantify specific changes for BioWare to make, I could outline a process for them, which would include backtesting changes as well as frequent tweaks. We have already seen them adjust the Flashpoint rewards. Hopefully, more changes or communication is forthcoming - speaking of which anyone from BioWare want to chime in on this thread?

 

EDIT: my parable was supposedly Einstein not Newton...oops

Edited October 2, 2014 by oofalong

[Daekarus]

Conquest crafting is limited by credits, essentially. I have no problem with people dumping hundreds of millions on crafting mats if that's what they want to do... it stimulates that section of the economy and makes simply running missions and selling the results (or actual node farming) more worth the time and effort. I think the people who blow huge chunks of money on mats are a bit crazy, but to each their own. Winning just isn't that important to me, given that Conquests will go on forever...