What is your guild's interest in Conquests ~ 60 days later?

[errant_knight]

These reflect my own experience and impressions. I consider it just another aspect of the game that not everyone will take part in and that not every guild will (be able to) take part in. For example, my guild is a casual guild of like-minded people with a busy RL, playing for fun in their limited free time. The grind it would take to make top ten would far exceed our weekly resources in terms of time, credits and materials. If we end up close to the personal conquest goal we push a little to get it, but it's not the primary focus or even the 5th or 10th. The rewards don't really make it worth our precious time. But it looks like some guilds have the capacities, capabilities and motivation to do it, and if that's what they enjoy and want to do and work toward (i.e. the title), then I'm happy there's another aspect of the game keeping players interested.

 

At the same time, that first week when everyone in the guild was onboard and playing together in all manner of things from open world pvp to ops to gsf....that was one of the funnest tiles I've had in the game. We were trying new things and working together. I think that was the intent of conquest, but it was just too much in terms of time and credits to maintain and a lot of the guild didn't see the point when it became obvious that we could place but not win. I miss that time. It was awesome. I'm also glad I tried gsf. Turns out it's really fun once you get past the initial learning curve.

[TravelersWay]

Neither of my guilds (Shadowlands and JC) seem to have really much interest in it. The current point implementation is far from perfect, and though both are large, multi-game guilds, the system clearly favors the guilds with a large active playerbase. Our core playerbase isn't big enough to compete, so why bother? Whatever points we may accrue on a week to week basis, both for guild and for individual are just things that happen to coincide with whatever we happen to feel like playing on a day to day basis.

[MSchuyler]

From the point of view of an outsider crafter it appears to me it has slowed down considerably. The prices I could get for crafting War Materials, especially the crystals and holocron, made my character "rich." Today I can get as much for an armoring mod as I can for the holocron, to the point where it isn't worth putting the attention into crafting them. Demand and prices are way down compared to the original rush, and I assume that means the missions are as well. It was nice while it lasted.

[TX_Angel]

This is the attitude hats killing MMORPG genre over all

This and players demanding more and more and more for free

 

You shouldn't only be doing content for rewards

the joy and thrill of doing (in Conquest sake it would be the competition of it) should be enough

 

The problem with that idea is it implies that everyone can play...

 

The joy and thrill of doing conquest requires that winning be an option, or at least possible. For most people, it isn't. When you can't win, most people don't want to play.

 

The number of people for whom the "effort" is enough reward is very small.

[Kalfear]

The problem with that idea is it implies that everyone can play...

 

The joy and thrill of doing conquest requires that winning be an option, or at least possible. For most people, it isn't. When you can't win, most people don't want to play.

 

The number of people for whom the "effort" is enough reward is very small.

 

agree but make no mistake thats anew (well WOW and beyond) attitude in the MMORPG

 

Before WOW dumbed it all down the "effort" or "competition" was enough for the mass majority of the player bases out there.

 

DAoC made a entire RVR system off the "effort" and "competition" and while far from perfect you never heard people whining for more rewards by doing less there.

 

Original EQ was the master of virtual carrot on a stick design and masses ate it up for long over a decade.

Some complained about how hard the grind was there but almost no one whined for instant gratification and bigger rewards for less activity.

 

List goes on and on and on.

 

As II said before

Its the new player mentality that they be rewarded for simply logging in thats making any attempts at competitive content fail over all.

 

Was a time (a much better time IMO) where PVP was all about ego, reputation, being the best

No one was demanding special gear, speeders, ect for doing the content because doing the content and striving to be the best (through reputation) was reward enough in its own.

 

Now we gotta give out participation rewards and rewards like speeders that make no sense at all (as you cant use a speeder in SW:TOR PVP) and more.

 

All because modern gamer need to be coddled and pampered just for participation and being so dag nab "special "

 

Huge issue of this genre now a days cause devs spend less time on designing good quality content then they do spend designing "participation rewards" so no one has their tender little feelings hurt

 

Simply not helping game or genre at all this mentality that every single thing you do needs some special form of recognition and reward.

 

Rewards should be about doing something spectacular and unlikely (or at least difficult)

Rewards shouldn't be about having your tender little feelings stroked for taking a step in game

 

25-35-50 k conquest points a week is ultra easy and simplistic to obtain

Yet we see numerous people whining its not enough and they need to be coddled even more

 

As I said, its shameful and its a mentality killing this genre bit by bit by bit since WOW first dumbed everything down and started the whole "everyones a winner" nonsense in MMORPGs.

[TX_Angel]

Between The Witcher 3, new Civilization game, and Dragon Age Inquisition, its not like there is not high quality options to replace this game out there

 

Time to see EA focus more on its loyal subscriber base (who by their own admission create most of the revenue anyways through subs and cartel shop purchases). Start putting in content to challenge and entertain us long term and stop giving into pressure to constantly dumb down game and ruin content

 

The challenge is that we haven't been getting new content... GSF and GSH are nice additions, but they aren't the core game and people don't come play SWTOR because of those. The core ground game needs additions, and of course we'll get those in 3.0.

 

Will they be enough? Meh, not likely... but then that is the problem with any game... For some reason, millions of dollars are sunk into new games, rather than existing games that already have fans.

[TX_Angel]

As an aside, the scores on my server are waaaaay down compared to where they were two, three, four weeks ago.

 

In fairness, part of that reason is perhaps the 12x XP boost, people are busy leveling alts, which doesn't reward much in the way of points.

[TX_Angel]

Before WOW dumbed it all down the "effort" or "competition" was enough for the mass majority of the player bases out there.

 

Ahh, before WoW, there wasn't a "masses" player base out there...

 

Did EQ EVER have 1 million subs?

 

UO didn't, as far as I know...

 

Consider that the niche markets that like what you're talking about are just that, niche...

 

The "masses" buy Call of Duty and Battlefield by the millions, that is where the "masses" are.

 

Was a time (a much better time IMO) where PVP was all about ego, reputation, being the best

 

And you know what happened? The player base grew up. I'm 40 years old now, I've been playing games since the Atari 2600... The days of being the "best" are over. I'm married, I have three kids, I'm simply not interested in that level of competing, real life is busy enough.

 

I don't need my ego stroked by having the largest epeen in a digital game where I don't even know the other players.

 

Rewards should be about doing something spectacular and unlikely (or at least difficult)

 

I don't want my games to be difficult. Want that? Try some of the games for the original Nintendo... Those weren't just hard, they were "Nintendo Hard"

 

http://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/989/top-10-hardest-nes-games

 

Try that list...

 

I remember those games, they were stupid hard to play...

 

I don't want that anymore, and millions of people think just like I do...

 

25-35-50 k conquest points a week is ultra easy and simplistic to obtain

 

That isn't hard... winning by placing #1 on the board is what is hard...

Even getting onto the board is hard sometimes...

[Tsillah]

I was never big on it but some guildies wanted to go for it. I actually became one of the main contributors for a few weeks but everybody sorta gave up I think.

 

For most people it's not worth grinding specific content and the personal rewards are not that interesting. Also people lost interest in the guild ship completely since the ship won't get upgraded. It's the same in my guilds on both factions actually.

 

We can make it to the top 10. Forget no. 1 but even making it to the top 10 doesn't motivate people.

 

It's always funny to see the top 10.

 

1) Guild X 10000000 points

2) Guild Y 4000000 points

3) Guild Z 2000000 points

 

etc.

 

The no 1 spots are clearly owned by a few guilds and the guild and/or personal rewards don't motivate people to participate. At least that's the experience I have in my guilds.

[LegoUniverseBC]

None. Conquests don't even give any rewards.

 

You can't say they don't give anything at all, they just don't give amazing rewards.

[menofhorror]

I can´t wait for Witcher 3!

[Anniahilus]

Thanks everyone for all the replies. I was having this conversation with some of my guildies a few nights ago, and we speculated that it was game-wide and not just server-wide disinterest.

 

Just curious if BW/EA views it as such, or if it's a concept they really like, will they attempt to revive interest in it. My guess is that Strongholds/Conquests was merely a placating venture to keep players busy till 3.0

Edited November 10, 2014 by Anniahilus

[errant_knight]

My take in it is that to revive interest, they'd need to reduce the amount of crafting materials necessary and increase the number of things that could be done in smaller groups than ops sized groups. Ie, have some commanders that could be done with smaller groups and possibly more of them. Reduce the number of things that need to be done through groupfinder. Let fps be repeated, adding number of kills to what must be done rather that eligible for the daily so people have to do the whole thing.

 

In other words, give people a way to compete then only a few in the guild want to do it without busting their wallets or forcing them to pug with large groups when they'd rather do things in a group with the guildies who are interested. I know what they were trying to do and it WAS great to have the whole guild working together, but it buts too much pressure on those who don't want to do it or who are exhausted from pulling their guild through it with almost solitary effort and wealth. It's unfortunate, but that's what's happeneing. Increase the gsf rewards, because it really is fun and most people don't get to that point. They need a better reason to get through the learning part.

Edited November 10, 2014 by errant_knight

[Max_Killjoy]

Not sure what it would take to get me interested in Conquest in the first place. It has no effect on the setting, the story, the characters, anything, it's just a vanity reward and some stronghold stuff that starts to repeat quickly.

[BoboHut]

Didn't take long for our guild to see that conquests = Craft to Win.

 

We had some fun with it the first week, but we really just don't see the point. We decide to play the game how we want to and as far as unlocking the guild ship goes, we find it a much more fun guild activity to do late night commander runs and they are way more efficient at getting the unlock items.

 

Things that could make it more worthwhile for our guild would be to:

 

 

• Remove the crafting repeatable objective AND
  
• Make the rest of the objectives lock once per character, not per account.
  

 

With those things in place right now, the system encourages you to get one or two characters on your account to the goal by doing the different objectives and then its back to crafting. The rewards don't come close to making up for what it costs to craft each week hence CRAFT TO WIN.

[LadyVix]

Conquest is largely a big guild only activity, a category that we don't fit into. (4 player guild consisting of only real life friends) The amount that is required to participate (guild ship cost, etc.) is unreasonable for small guilds, so we chose to not participate at all.

[Kalfear]

Conquest is largely a big guild only activity, a category that we don't fit into. (4 player guild consisting of only real life friends) The amount that is required to participate (guild ship cost, etc.) is unreasonable for small guilds, so we chose to not participate at all.

 

well I wouldn't even call a 4 person guild small

its more of a private social club then anything so not sure why anyone would reasonably expect to be able to compete in any guild competition what so ever.

 

Small guild imo would be 10-20 active members (so 30-40 active characters when you could alts)

 

As for conquests being big guild only activity

 

Thats been outright proven false

A single player (myself through alts) can get enough points on Harbinger to grab 8th-10th spot consistantly every week.

 

Get 10 people who are active and not looking for excuses and you blow away the current top guild numbers

 

10 players is NOT a big guild

hell 30-40 characters (when counting alts) is NOT a big guild

 

its easier for big guilds yes

 

but its not a big guild only activity and honestly never has been

 

Wish people would quit restating the lie that it is just to make themselves feel better about their lack of production.

 

I earn myself 250,000-2,000,000 points a week and soon that will raise to 350,000 as a minimum and closer to 2.5-3 million as a high each week

MYSELF

 

Conquest is about determination and persistence

Nothing else

 

No matter how many false excuses are made to justify inaction and non productivity by those trying to justify themselves.

[Kalfear]

Didn't take long for our guild to see that conquests = Craft to Win.

 

 

You are right

100% correct

 

but personally since crafting has been completely gutted and obliterated thanks to the cartel shop and whiny players demanding more for less, I'm ok with it being craft to win

 

as it gives crafting at least 1 use in game.

 

Use to think "well least I make the pre 55 purple mods/armor/enhancements but was recently shown that shameful vendor on maken planet that sells purple 50 gear for planetary coms

 

With out conquest they may as well remove crafting from game

 

So Im ok with conquest being craft to win as it makes what should be an important part of game have some meaning at least.

 

And lets be honest here. crafting is ultra easy in this game so if any players tries to claim they can do the crafting its just pure laziness and nothing but.

 

I have 4 under lvl 30 characters making the weekly conquest target currently just by crafting a little. I dont play them other then to set up crafting queues couple times a day. Still play my mains as per normal and just added these 4 for some easy conquest points.

 

And yes, first few weeks when flashpoints were popping, it was fun indeed

 

I still think a better design over all would have been to put in DAoC style RVR on a new open PVP planet where you gamed bases and outposts and done conquest that way for sW:TOR.

 

But EA for what ever reason has married themselves to the far lesser product of warzones.

[LadyVix]

well I wouldn't even call a 4 person guild small

its more of a private social club then anything so not sure why anyone would reasonably expect to be able to compete in any guild competition what so ever.

That's why we don't participate.

 

Small guild imo would be 10-20 active members (so 30-40 active characters when you could alts)

While I understand that your personal opinion is that 4 people do not constitute a "real" guild, the fact remains that four people is all that is required by the game to form a guild. If we meet that requirement, I think we should be considered a legitimate guild for all in-game purposes.

 

A single player (myself through alts) can get enough points on Harbinger to grab 8th-10th spot consistantly every week.

 

Get 10 people who are active and not looking for excuses and you blow away the current top guild numbers

 

10 players is NOT a big guild

hell 30-40 characters (when counting alts) is NOT a big guild

 

its easier for big guilds yes

 

but its not a big guild only activity and honestly never has been

It's much easier for a large guild to split 50 million credits to participate. 300 members contributing less than one hour worth of daily proceeds pays for your ship. (166k ea) Four members splitting 50 mil = 12.5 mil each.

 

Wish people would quit restating the lie that it is just to make themselves feel better about their lack of production.

I'd really appreciate if you would refrain from purposely calling my comments lies.

 

I earn myself 250,000-2,000,000 points a week and soon that will raise to 350,000 as a minimum and closer to 2.5-3 million as a high each week

MYSELF

Congratulations. I'm sure your ego swells every time you flame someone in these forums for not "producing" as much as you do in a video game. I'm glad you find the rewards worthy of your time investment. We don't.

 

Our guild consists of four real life grandmothers, all of whom have been real life friends between 22 and 60 years. Our average age is ~58 years old. Two of us are retired. We cumulatively have 8 "kids" and 14 grandkids. We know we're not going to compete with you in number of flashpoints run, or PVP kills. That's not why we play SWTOR. We do it to have fun playing together. Though we're small, we still have 40+ level 55 characters.

 

You may gain a few extra stronghold decorations for participation, but for us, it's easier and less stressful to just buy the items using the 50 mil we saved on the guild flagship. (Which would still be mostly locked down and undecorated anyway)

[BoboHut]

I earn myself 250,000-2,000,000 points a week and soon that will raise to 350,000 as a minimum and closer to 2.5-3 million as a high each week

MYSELF

 

I'm assuming that you are doing this through crafting and once they allow 6 companions to go out at one time, you will be able to make that higher amount per week. That's fine if its what you enjoy doing but that's also the problem. Its not that there shouldn't be something for people who enjoy doing what you are doing, but because you can do nothing but craft and get that amount of points, it defeats the entire idea of conquests. Guilds are not competing with each other by completing multiple objectives and actually going out to do things like operations and flashpoints and heroics and pvp and gsf and all the other things that would make sense. Instead, they are having craft offs and then conquering a planet without having to make one single interaction with another player.

 

So, something that the community thought was going to be a great addition to the game to get people to go back to old planets and do old content to bring some life into those parts of the game never happened. It has been completely overtaken by grinding crafting mats and crafting war supplies from your ship or stronghold or where ever you choose to complete this task without even jumping on your speeder. Yes, one person can pull as many points as you do in a week and if a small guild has someone like that then they can even compete. At the end of the week, congrats on getting your guild name on the board, but what did you get out of it? You certainly did not add your presence to the MMO community that most of us hope to see get better with each piece of new content they add.

 

My personal opinion is that I don't want to see the crafting aspect removed. I just want to see it only be a part of how to win at conquests and not something that defeats the point of even doing anything else.

Edited November 10, 2014 by BoboHut

[BuriDogshin]

There is no pressure in my guild to participate in Conquests, yet we've placed on the leaderboard every week, have fully unlocked our Empire Flagship, and our alt Pub guild will be buying a flagship as soon as we decide on the name.

 

Some weeks, 40% of our points came from two players who have over ten alts each, and only five or six players participate at more than the "getting points doing what I normally do" level. Other weeks, the points came from more diverse sources.

 

If you are on the leaderboard, the rewards are not bad: 110K credits, jawa scraps, and an encryption worth about 50K. Plus whatever you get doing the Conquest activities, which can be quite a lot on some weeks. Other weeks, you spend so much farming mats that you might lose money.

 

I have enjoyed it, and I have never played SWTOR so much or been so rich. Will I play again next week? Who knows.

 

YMMV.

[Kulyok]

We unlocked our flagship, and we're getting the first place from time to time. I think we might even get a Galactic Conqueror for our guild members eventually(though I'll probably have to pay some other guild for taking my alt for Balmorra, since I missed that week). I'm not going far beyond the weekly quota, though, and it's pretty easy just doing the weekly tactical/HM FP.

[BrintoSFJ]

The guild i am in have absolutely no interest in it. Once we decided to craft on all of our toons, 3 members of our guild including me crafted like crazy on all of our alters in guild and in 1.5 days we made over 1.5 mil but we were still 4 million points behind leader and at the end of week were out of top 10. and we wasted over 10 million for nothing. this is simply a ******** system. terribly executed just like many other aspect of this game, 3 years into development still eaware have no idea how to properly integrate a system into game. shameful..

[Kalfear]

 

 

Congratulations. I'm sure your ego swells every time you flame someone in these forums for not "producing" as much as you do in a video game. I'm glad you find the rewards worthy of your time investment. We don't.

 

 

ahhhhh yes, its MY ego in play when I simply correct your outright false and very arrogent statement that its impossible for you to compete

 

Yup yup

 

How dare I use facts

 

LOL kid (cause thats how your acting) I fully enjoy my time and do everything I wish to do in game because truth is conquests take up maybe 10% of my play time to get those numbers.

 

Just because you cant figure out (whats clearly hilited for you in this very thread on how to do it numberous times) doesnt make others egotistical or anything

 

It just makes you rather ...

well lets leave it at that

 

You made a false statement

I corrected your false statement with facts

Stop being so self centered and realize your EXCUSES are not fact and do NOT give you the justification you think they do

 

Really you should have just left it as "I have no interest in Conquest points and thus choose not to participate" and moved on

 

It was you and YOUR ego that brought forth the whole big guild whine and cant compete whine.

 

YOU WERE WRONG

Accept it and move on

 

I'm assuming that you are doing this through crafting and once they allow 6 companions to go out at one time, you will be able to make that higher amount per week. That's fine if its what you enjoy doing but that's also the problem. Its not that there shouldn't be something for people who enjoy doing what you are doing, but because you can do nothing but craft and get that amount of points, it defeats the entire idea of conquests. .

 

Dont disagree Bobo.

And yes I do it through Crafting

 

(5th companion wont make a difference as what I do is hit the weekly mark in first day through crafting on 7 characters (currently, soon to be 10) and then stop earning points except for points that come from normal play on my assorted mains (through flash points, Ops, Heroics, Weeklies, ect)

 

What 6 companions will do for me is make it ALLOT easier to recap materials used to hit those marks

But as my points based on characters rather then companions it will not raise conquest points (with the one exception of crafting weeks where invasion plans are repeatable in which case a 6th companion will hugely increase my weekly output that week).

 

Honestly Conquest point gathering for me takes almost no time away from playing.

the only issue is remembering to be consistant and run material missions non stop while playing (its easy to forget and let companions be idle) and remember to set up full materal gain missions (all characters) 2-3 times a day.

 

As for being crafting to win, Yes I agree it would be awesome if it was more then just crafting.

Those first few weeks were my guild was going to the wire Monday morning to squeek into the top 10 at #10 was EXCITING and fun.

 

People were running flashpoints all day long

Doing world bosses

Doing heroics and ops

 

and while I personally refuse to do lvl 55 warzone PVP (and will wait out EA till they put joystick control in for GSF, no matter how long that takes) im told those queues were popping fast as well

 

It was fun, exciting, entertaining, and good for game

 

No argument at all on that aspect

 

But even with all that in mind I still dont think the rewards to crafting in conquest a bad thing because of all the damage done to crafting in every other aspect of game.

 

Dont get me wrong,

 

Id gladly trade in my conquest points making ability to remove armor and weapons and speeders and other craftable items from the cartel shop so that crafters could once again sell wares and have a use in equiping players

 

Id gladly trade in my conquest points making ability to remove ALL purple gear (other then 55 com gear from basic, elite, ultimate, ops drops) from any vendors ensuring all crafters had a line of goods better then whats sold by NPC for leveling up. (you should be able to buy green mods, armor, enhancements only from NPC vendors. Blue and purple should be crafter made only)

 

Id LOVE for this game to embrace crafters and make them important outside of conquest points

 

But they dont and will not

So crafters being able to do the points like they do in conquest is the trade off imo

 

But lets be honest here, learning conquest crafting recipes is ultra ultra ultra easy that even the most lazy player could do.

 

The problem is not crafters dominating conquests

the problem (as I showcase in reply to person above you) is players whining they cant do something when in fact they CAN do it, they however refuse to do it, and then complain its some evil bias of the game.

 

No word of lie, over the 12x xp I been making some conquest characters (I have all the mains Ill ever play so these just bonus characters) and they literally level to end of Nar Shaddaa for 3rd companion, craft to first teir conquest recipes (around 200 skill) and then are easily set to hit weekly mark every week despite never leaving strong hold

 

My strong hold bonus is STILL only 38% so when I eventually do get it to 100% imagine how much easier these points will be.

 

Yes its craft to win in conquests

but its not hard, difficult, or really even challenging

One simply only need desire to spend a few minutes a day to do it

 

I think it would be grossly more unfair if you were required to spend hours upon hours upon hours entering warzones or GSF or any other play style content

 

The more time it takes, the more unbalanced it becomes because of real limitations on different play styles and types

 

Crafting takes but minutes so the casual vrs hardcore excuse doesn't fly

the big guild vrs small guild excuse doesn't fly

none of the excuses fly as crafting takes but minutes and is only limited by ones own desire and determination

 

and honestly, even though above poster pretends these companions should be programming for her and her alone, they can not design to improve players own dedication and determinations.

 

They can only give them the tools to battle on a equal playing field

 

Crafting allows for that simply put

 

 

Having said all that Id gladly give it all up, guild ship (which is not to costly as some claim), conquests, top 10, all of it for a full sized planet that enables DAoC style RVR where we fight the empire (or empire fights us) for control of the planet via open world pvp (but allowing us to seige and claim outposts and bases and defend them and what not).

 

DAoC had an excellent system that promoted faction unity and rewarded the whole faction rather then just some guilds of faction.

 

That type of conquest would be amazing in this game

And it would even promote crafting by having crafters build the bases defenses and support units (in here could be turrets, reinforce walls/sheilds, droid defenders, ect) that upgrade the different capture objectives.

 

But sadly we just dont have that and probably never will because adding that would be a death strike to Warzone PVP.

[PLynkes]

It seems to have taken off like a mad craze in my Imp-side guild over the past couple of weeks. I left the game for a short while due to a slight case of burnout. I intended to stay away until 3.0 but came back when I heard the Rakghoul event was returning (always lots of fun with the Guildies, that one).

 

Anyhow, in the time I was away Conquest seems to have become quite a big deal. When I left we weren't ever on the leader board, now we regularly make it on there, and this week we are currently in 5th place. Everybody seems quite focused on it, and there are lots of people doing stuff together because of it. Equally though, nobody is putting anyone under any pressure to do it if they don't want to.

 

We have gained a few new members lately, but I'm wondering if our change in fortunes is more because many other guilds have stopped bothering with it due to burnout, or aren't trying any more because they think they can't compete. Last night we took out a named commander (the ones with a shield on a timer) and there was no competition for it at all. No other guilds looking to nab him. Maybe we were just lucky, or maybe interest in this thing is waning.