Bioware: Is Crafting to Win™ intended?

[ML_DoubleTap]

But I get it... you want to exclude game elements from the competitive play that you and your guild either do not want to commit resources to. But to use your context.. IF you are a guild competing against other guilds to win at any cost... they naturally you would use every point generating element of the completion to your advantage.. right?

 

People always jump to "you just want to exclude game elements" tripe. That's not the case at all. We just want to see those elements on a similar playing field. There is currently no way that PvE and PvP can come close to the amount of points possible via crafting on a personal level. Especially when you start bringing alts into the mix. Even with 5 alts you can be crafting on them all while playing one and doing other conquest activities. This makes crafting a requirement to put up individual numbers in the millions. It is not possible to hit 1 million points as an individual without crafting.

[TUXs]

In reality, crafting is unsustainable in the long term... BUT it's also a level playing field to all crafters.

 

But I get it... you want to exclude game elements from the competitive play that you and your guild either do not want to commit resources to. But to use your context.. IF you are a guild competing against other guilds to win at any cost... they naturally you would use every point generating element of the completion to your advantage.. right?

Unsustainable? How? It's not like there's a finite number of resources. As fast as they're being used, they're being restocked.

 

The funny thing is, they've nerfed points from actually doing content while online, like FPs, Heroics or PvP, while leaving the ability to compete, completely intact, for the one thing you can do without even being online...

 

In what way does that make any sense? They reward most, the one thing that you don't actually need to be playing to do...doesn't that seem backwards?!

[Grayseven]

I think the solution is simple. At the moment the basic points we get from crafting is 500. If Bioware decreases that number to 200, then it will be on a par with PVE and PVP objectives.

 

But it could hurt other crafters that don't have such huge amount of materials. A guild like yours could be a marginal case, so it might be better to let you conquer all the planets, because then you won't see the point in participating in those events anymore.

 

I think leaving the points the same but limiting the crafting rewards to daily limits and setting up a weekly goal per crafting toon would be a better solution. The crafting points need to be made to coincide with other possible point gains in order to keep crafters in the hunt to reach personal conquest goals. Players should be able to reach the weekly Conquest point total doing just crafting in the same way players can reach the weekly goal just doing PvP or PvE goals.

[ML_DoubleTap]

With a 100% SH bonus in a non crafting week you can score 25k points per character every 4-5 hours. Call it 5 and say you have just 4 crafting alts. Even if you only requeue crafting 4 times a day, that's 2.4mil points among those 4 characters for one individual. Even before the FP nerf when you could get 2k points in about 10-15 minutes if I remember correctly it would take playing 24/7 at 5 FPs per hour to hit 1.4mil ... still 1mil behind and the poor FP schlub didn't get to sleep

[ML_DoubleTap]

I think leaving the points the same but limiting the crafting rewards to daily limits and setting up a weekly goal per crafting toon would be a better solution. The crafting points need to be made to coincide with other possible point gains in order to keep crafters in the hunt to reach personal conquest goals. Players should be able to reach the weekly Conquest point total doing just crafting in the same way players can reach the weekly goal just doing PvP or PvE goals.

 

I still think a crafting daily/weekly is the best option. It limits each characters ceiling but makes it a bit easier to reach for those that aren't over the top.

 

My suggestion is making a crafting daily, "Daily: Crafting War Supplies" that awards 1000 pts per war supply as long as you have the daily, and the daily requires 10 supplies to complete. Then another, "Weekly: Crafting Invasion Force" that gives 2k points and requires one to be completed. This means that each character would be capped at 62k (124k with 100% SH bonus). For the more hardcore crafters this would be a fairly significant nerf but it would also make the cap quicker for them to reach. For those that only use crafting to supplement it would help them get to their personal goals quicker.

[aeterno]

Fact is morbid overuse of an approach will make any category seem broken at a glance....

[jenlen]

 

2. Collectively, we have perhaps >50 billion. I personally know 2 players who have >2 billion by themselves, each.

 

 

I think you just illustrated the reason Bioware has allowed crafting to become so vital to Conquest. They can see all of your credit totals, and this is perhaps their way of lowering them all?

 

I've heard it stated from several parties that they felt there were too many credits in circulation. If you guys craft like this every week for months maybe it will drop those billions?

[Grayseven]

I still think a crafting daily/weekly is the best option. It limits each characters ceiling but makes it a bit easier to reach for those that aren't over the top.

 

My suggestion is making a crafting daily, "Daily: Crafting War Supplies" that awards 1000 pts per war supply as long as you have the daily, and the daily requires 10 supplies to complete. Then another, "Weekly: Crafting Invasion Force" that gives 2k points and requires one to be completed. This means that each character would be capped at 62k (124k with 100% SH bonus). For the more hardcore crafters this would be a fairly significant nerf but it would also make the cap quicker for them to reach. For those that only use crafting to supplement it would help them get to their personal goals quicker.

 

However it is done, it would have to be comparable to the other methods of Conquest point gain. FP's, Tac's and HM50's provide points per day plus the FP and Tac weeklies. PvP has a points per match, points per win, daily and weekly. Crafting would have to follow the same route, taking into account the time and materials costs and the fact that it can be done in addition to one of the other two Conquest point play styles.

[JasonNH]

But I get it... you want to exclude game elements from the competitive play that you and your guild do not want to commit resources to. But to use your context.. IF you are a guild competing against other guilds to win at any cost... then naturally you would use every point generating element of the completion to your advantage.. right?

 

Maybe you need a longer forum break? While I used to enjoy some of the balance you brought to answering the blatant whiners and dramatists around here, your recent post really lacks the kind of lucidity I came to expect from you. The potential output from crafting is wildly disproportionate to anything else. It's pretty hard to argue the case otherwise, as ML_Doubletap has outlined. Is this intended or not? If it is, fine, I'll accept and move on because I don't expect the game to cater to every one of my interests. It just seems rather incongruous with the stated themes of the conquests, but it's Bioware's game to decide their own agenda.

[DawnAskham]

I think leaving the points the same but limiting the crafting rewards to daily limits and setting up a weekly goal per crafting toon would be a better solution. The crafting points need to be made to coincide with other possible point gains in order to keep crafters in the hunt to reach personal conquest goals. Players should be able to reach the weekly Conquest point total doing just crafting in the same way players can reach the weekly goal just doing PvP or PvE goals.

 

Some sort of daily or weekly crafting objectives or limits could help, though with the way the system seems set up, would probably require some sort of Daily / Weekly mission for crafting with conquest points awarded upon completion of the mission.

 

Conquest doesn't really seem to have the ability to fine tune objective requirements beyond setting them as infinitely repeatable or once per legacy per week.

 

The other thing they could do is make ALL objectives repeatable, at least FPs done through GF and all the 'Kill 250' type objectives, then balance the points such that the effort / conquest point ratios are reasonably close.

 

And yes, crafting as it stand today is absurdly good in generating conquest.

 

A 'play the game' character that did all the FPs daily along with a bunch of Operations this week would be sitting in the sub 100K point range, while a character doing crafting can be easily sitting at half a million to over a million points.

Edited September 29, 2014 by DawnAskham

[Churb]

Fact is morbid overuse of an approach will make any category seem broken at a glance....

 

not at all "morbid" overuse of pve and pve WILL NOT get you a first when facing crafters

[TheHarvester]

However, the fact of the matter is, no matter what "theme", nothing comes close to crafting when a guild wants to win at conquest.

 

This is very very important. The primary appeal of conquest was touted to be the ability for various guilds to play to their strengths during certain themes to compete for the title. During a PvP week, the PvP guilds should have an innate benefit. During PvE/GSF, the respective progression/starfighter guilds should have an innate benefit.

 

As the system stands right now, regardless of guild size, players completing conquest goals, etc. A handful of VERY rich players with several alts can sink a LOT of money and mats into crafting which, along with the stronghold bonuses, nets them a vastly disproportionate amount of points per unit time invested into conquest when compared with other means of earning points.

 

While conquest and GSH brought a lot of revitalization to crafting, it also hamstrung non-conquest crafters by disrupting prices and supply of mats in the market mainly because of how powerful crafting is in EVERY conquest week.

 

In order to rectify this, BW seriously needs to revamp conquest goals and how crafting ties into them. Every single other repeatable objective requires the player to be actively doing something in-game: PvP/Operations/GSF/etc EXCEPT crafting, which by design can be done offline. A player with 10 alts can only do PvP matches one at a time on a single character. A crafter with 10 alts can craft 5 war supplies on each alt every 50 mins while doing something else.

 

Crafting should not be a repeatable goal every week. Certainly not on weeks like Flashpoint Havoc, where the namesake goals are once-per-legacy. Having crafting be the core focus during the Trade Emporium or Titans of Industry makes sense. Having crafting be a huge point source during weeks that focus on other aspects of the game unbalances conquest and renders the theme of the week a moot point for guilds that are aggressively competing for #1.

[ML_DoubleTap]

Fact is morbid overuse of an approach will make any category seem broken at a glance....

 

The difference being that the other methods require you to be actively logged in which puts a natural cap on those activities. Even if you play 20hrs a day you're still only able to gain points on one toon at a time via PvE or PvP. With crafting, while it does take some time to obtain material and credits, you can gain points on every crafting character you have on your account. I know several folks that queue up a full 25 war supplies several times a week on 10-15 characters.

[Primarch_PWnD]

If you are tired of the conquest system, stop doing it. "Problem" solved.

 

He provided feedback with actual numbers supporting it, without being rude or nasty......that's called CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, and it's considered a GOOD thing.

 

What is your deal anyway?

 

You get belligerent at people who provide feedback you don't agree with, you get belligerent at people who don't want to play specific content, and now you're belligerent at someone who's been playing to death and providing feedback that's been given each week of the conquest already.....

 

Worst of all, you're telling him to stop playing....someone who's clearly dedicated and likes the game.....

 

Is that what you really want? What if everyone you told to "stop playing" actually did stop? You'd wind up with servers emptier than they are now.

 

Remember launch, when all the forum defenders were telling people "if you don't like the game, stop playing it!"? Well, they did stop playing, and it knocked down so many dominos that the devs STILL haven't been able to pick up all the pieces.

 

He provided feedback with actual numbers to back it up.....maybe that's why you posted something so completely cyberbullying; you couldn't actually tell him he's wrong, but you couldn't handle negative feedback.....

[Zoom_VI]

If they "fix" this it'll only get replaced by the "Bioware: Is being in a 500 member guild an intended prerequisite for a win" threads...

 

^^this

 

Crafting is the only method a smaller guild has to compete with a larger one, you take it that away and conquests becomes nothing but a function of guild size.

[ML_DoubleTap]

^^this

 

Crafting is the only method a smaller guild has to compete with a larger one, you take it that away and conquests becomes nothing but a function of guild size.

 

This argument doesn't hold up. Crafting is available to large and small alike, so a large guild with crafters will still beat a small guild with crafters. There's only only one guild on our server that has beat us so far head to head, and one other that likely would and they both do similar crafting, just with more people.

 

You can't really get away from the advantage that a large guild has.

[JMagee]

This argument doesn't hold up. Crafting is available to large and small alike, so a large guild with crafters will still beat a small guild with crafters. There's only only one guild on our server that has beat us so far head to head, and one other that likely would and they both do similar crafting, just with more people.

 

You can't really get away from the advantage that a large guild has.

 

I think the point he was trying to make was that if you eventually institute a cap, whether it be hard or soft, on all ways of generating conquest points, it's eventually going to come down to the guild with the most characters to perform that task.

 

A guild with 500members could complete a crafting weekly 500. A guild with 100 members cannot. As it is now, a highly craft-centric guild with 100 members can challenge a 500member guild who is not incredibly focused on crafting. If a cap was put on crafting, that would become much more difficult.

[Grayseven]

^^this

 

Crafting is the only method a smaller guild has to compete with a larger one, you take it that away and conquests becomes nothing but a function of guild size.

 

Sorry, but does not compute.

 

A smaller guild crafting will never compete with a larger guild crafting. Never. I'd like to direct your attention to Triumph's 42 million points, WOOK's second place 37 million points and Aftermath's 3rd place 4 million points.

 

No small guild can compete with a larger guild under the current system. No small guild can compete with a larger guild under any system currently imaginable for Conquest.

 

That isn't the discussion. The discussion is about the disparity in Conquest points earned through crafting when compared to the other two means of acquisition. The current imbalance putting crafting far and above other Conquest goals is painfully obvious, the question then becomes how can it be fixed without preventing crafters from contributing to a guild score while achieving their weekly personal Conquest totals.

[venomlash]

Crafting consumes resources at a really ridiculous rate. Doing flashpoints and operations generates LOADS of stuff (comms, gear, decorations, rare crafting materials). I say it's like the Knight/Warrior resource system; weak attacks generate Focus/Rage, while strong attacks consume it.

 

That said, I'd like to have a little more emphasis on running group missions in Conquests. My guild is tiny and doesn't have a ship, so it takes forever to get my points, and I'm usually stuck crafting for about 60% of my conquest rewards when I'd rather go out and shoot stuff.

[ParagonAX]

^^this

 

Crafting is the only method a smaller guild has to compete with a larger one, you take it that away and conquests becomes nothing but a function of guild size.

 

False. Those are two separate issues.

 

1. As demonstrated by various people over and over again in this thread, crafting is granting way too much conquest points compared to any other activities. IMHO, BW should stick to their "theme" week philosophies. Crafting should be the best activity in crafting weeks, but not for other (FP, WZ, Operations, GSF) weeks.

 

2. I do agree that the conquest system in general favours larger guilds. I agree that it is a problem and should be fixed. I am not smart enough to solve that problem, but BW had stated they are looking into it. I place my faith in the people at BW far more intelligent than myself to figure this out.

[curulz]

If you limit points via crafting though, whether you reduce the points per create a cap, you don't resolve the issue. Large guilds will still be in the driver seat.

 

 

Triumph and WOOK would still win out. Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't necessarily. But on an even playing field, size will win whether it's crafting point or other points.

 

I think they should bag the whole thing. Set a per guild goal, based on total members (with perhaps a curve to account for non active players). If you hit the benchmark, then you win. If there is a leaderboard, it should be % based which will at least give smaller guilds a fighting chance.

 

Guild A has 500 members with a goal of 25000 x 500 = 12500000. If they hit 14000000, they were at 112% to goal

Guild B has 50 members with a goal of 25000 x 50 = 1250000. If they hit 2000000, they were at 160% to goal

 

Still some opportunity to game the system, but it believe each guild should compete for a goal, rather than try to match point for point

[ParagonAX]

If you limit points via crafting though, whether you reduce the points per create a cap, you don't resolve the issue. Large guilds will still be in the driver seat.

 

 

Triumph and WOOK would still win out. Now, I'm not saying they shouldn't necessarily. But on an even playing field, size will win whether it's crafting point or other points.

 

I think they should bag the whole thing. Set a per guild goal, based on total members (with perhaps a curve to account for non active players). If you hit the benchmark, then you win. If there is a leaderboard, it should be % based which will at least give smaller guilds a fighting chance.

 

Guild A has 500 members with a goal of 25000 x 500 = 12500000. If they hit 14000000, they were at 112% to goal

Guild B has 50 members with a goal of 25000 x 50 = 1250000. If they hit 2000000, they were at 160% to goal

 

Still some opportunity to game the system, but it believe each guild should compete for a goal, rather than try to match point for point

 

Then a tiny guild of 4 really dedicated players will win conquest every single time. It is much much easier to get a few hardcore players together than to get 500 hardcore players together.

[JINeziz]

 

"IF" you do NOT like the "crafting to win" route, then why did you do it?! I & others have already stated how you can do it with out it, but you refuse to acknowledge that route. Instead you say you don't like it, but yet you did it... Hmm interesting...

 

.

 

Soooo, tell me how your guild would have beat Wook on Taris? A planet which had the crafting bonus. How would you beat all those millions by not crafting? Lets hear your master plan.

 

Triumph wins by strategizing, pooling resources, and focusing every1 on the bonuses that the invaded planet offers. To spell it out for you, that includes pve and pvp in all their forms, as well as crafting. Adjusting to a planets bonuses is the way to win. Even if those bonuses dont play to you guilds strengths, which makes the competition very interesting.

THE POINT: Is that crafting for many, if not most, is NOT the most enjoyable way to play/win. Its the LEAST BALANCED means of gaining conquest points and competing with other guilds. The route to becoming Conqueror Of The Galaxy should be a bit more fun. Especially since ya hv to conquer each planet to do it, no repeats. Why do you hv a problem with this?

 

And keep in mind, they've dominated every planet they touch, with or without crafting. Advice on how to win isn't smthing you hv enough planetary victories to be offering.

[TheHarvester]

Crafting is the only method a smaller guild has to compete with a larger one, you take it that away and conquests becomes nothing but a function of guild size.

 

You have a valid point, insofar as the larger guilds do not themselves take advantage of crafting. Conquest in its entirety is already skewed towards larger guilds. I know from personal experience that a smaller focused guild can beat a larger disorganized one. However, if a large guild decides to get organized and begins crafting meticulously, no smaller guild will be able to match that scale of point generation. Instead of depending on crafting as a "maybe" solution against larger guilds, we need a retuned conquest system that levels the playing field for all guilds.

[Zoom_VI]

This argument doesn't hold up. Crafting is available to large and small alike, so a large guild with crafters will still beat a small guild with crafters. There's only only one guild on our server that has beat us so far head to head, and one other that likely would and they both do similar crafting, just with more people.

 

You can't really get away from the advantage that a large guild has.

 

No but crafting can and will allow a small guild to overtake a large one. I would know. My guild has won on two planets where we where up against guilds well over three times our size, crafting was the only method available to fight them since it is the only method that doesn't entirely scale with guild size.

 

Sure a large guild will still have a crafting advantage but, if you remove viability of crafting, guild size become the one and only determinant of success in conquests. But I'm starting to think that's what the OP wants, since from what I have seen, his guild is the largest on his server.

 

And don't give me the crafting is sustainable crap either. My guild is comprised predominantly of crafters, and we have been having to take down weeks, and once our mats stockpile is entirely gone will likely have to take back-to-back down weeks, simply because the amount of time required to acquire mats (or acquire credits to buy mats with) is significantly more than the time it takes to burn the mats. This is especially true given that War Supplies have no market value.

Edited September 29, 2014 by Zoom_VI