New Conquest System: First Impressions

[MorseGod]

Obviously, I haven't spent a ton of time looking at this, but I do have some immediate reactions:

 

Crafting Changes

This feels like it was slipped in under the radar in an attempt to bottleneck the ability of large guilds to manufacture victory easily. The trouble is that it also hamstrings smaller guilds even more. Requiring so much more investment to create the same old stuff should have also been announced so that GTN sellers could have reacted appropriately to the new value of finished goods.

 

Work vs. Reward

The difference in guild rewards between tiers does not seem proportional to the amount of additional grind.

 

Lack of Information

Add some tooltips. Improve some task descriptions. Why are some of the repeatable icons silver / gray and others gold? Where do we donate for Crafting: Aiding the War Effort? (On that note, why does throwing away 10 Invasion Forces, which now cost a lot more to make, only give a few hundred points?)

 

Individual Rewards

Adding credits and CXP to tasks makes working them into limited play time more appealing. Thanks!

 

Accessibility for Smaller Guilds

The concept seems excellent, but if the aforementioned work vs. reward balance isn't addressed, then there's no point to pursuing medium or large yield planets, except to earn titles, so I suspect most guilds will continue piling on the small yield conquests, defeating the purpose.

 

The following addendum includes my subsequent posts on this topic for the purpose of consolidation:

 

Isotope Stabilizers

As an addendum to the crafting changes, I notice that Dark Projects can only be made using Refined Isotope Stabilizers now. Is there still a use for Exotic Isotope Stabilizers?

 

Winning vs. Participating

I'd like to echo the sentiments of others here. In the past, participating in PvP content earned points, even though winning earned more. For those of us who will probably never be great at PvP and frequently join the solo queue, there's no incentive to participate anymore. I can get CXP from PvE content without the frustration of fighting skilled premade PvP groups.

 

One of the areas in which SWTOR is horribly lacking is some kind of training area where friends can actually teach each other to PvP in a controlled environment. It's difficult to learn and improve if one is mercilessly beaten down over and over. Nevertheless, it was worth doing for giggles if a player could help his guild by merely giving his best effort. Now our efforts are meaningless, and there's absolutely no way we're ever going to be able to compete with dedicated PvPers.

 

Multiple Characters

As a smaller guild, we have relied on several dedicated players to meet their goals with multiple characters each week in order to be competitive. I personally do 4 characters per week; I have guildmates who do up to 9. Due to the rewards being so low now and the frequency that they can be claimed reduced significantly, it is impractical to try meeting the personal goals with more than one or two characters, particularly if the people behind them have limited play time.

 

Even if my guild miraculously manages to meet the guild goal, I will personally only earn 1 or 2 encryptions instead of 4, which greatly hinders our ability to expand our flagship. The flagship grind was already extremely slow for small guilds who don't have the cash to simply buy materials outright. Coupled with the increased material costs of dark projects, this is a crippling blow in achieving our community goals as a guild.

 

Review: Day 1

I started earnestly around 3 PM Eastern time. I had no idea that some tasks could only be done once per legacy, so I rotated through my 4 characters and set them to crafting invasion forces using war supplies that were leftover from the last crafting week. I set them up so that the 10th one would earn the points for a particular character with whom I always struggle to earn my goal.

 

My first character (set for 3 invasion forces) made 5 items due to critical successes. To my delight, all 5 counted toward my goal, not just the 3 jobs. My second character was also making 3 but turned out 5, and I realized I got the achievement with him and it was marked complete. I quickly checked my other 2 characters and realized it was complete for the whole legacy, so I cancelled further production to avoid wasting materials for no points.

 

Two guildmates and I stormed Ilum. We first did the heroic mission, during which we were erroneously awarded credit for the two world boss tasks. After finishing the heroic, we did a single Relics of the Gree mission, then headed over to kill 25 champion turrets. Finally, we ran around killing things to earn the rampage points.

 

One guildmate and I decided to do Hoth heroics because we wanted to do something productive while earning the Hoth rampage points. We did 8 of the 9 heroics (I normally only do 6), killing everything in sight to earn our conquest points.

 

At this point, I took a break to eat. I worked on this thread a bit, ordered a pizza, and relaxed for a while. No points accrued for eating the pizza, unfortunately.

 

I returned to keep grinding. I entered a warzone and prayed for a win. The Lord favored me; my team won the Huttball match, and I got my points for the day. I thought I'd test the Lord in GSF. I played 7 matches. I finished my weekly goal. I did not earn a single conquest point for the effort, however, because Imperial pilots dominated every match.

 

In all fairness, I'm usually the worst player on the GSF team. I struggle with visual impairments, but I typically do it because I enjoy flying spaceships and grabbing a few points to help my guild. To do the entire weekly mission, however, and get nothing for my guild out of it was extremely disheartening.

 

I've worked for about a year to build a little guild to the point where a handful of motivated players have been putting in the hard work to get us on the leaderboard. Prior to the server merger, we had only made the board twice. Recently, though, we have made the board for the past 4 consecutive weeks.

 

It's after midnight now. After spending a majority of the past 9 hours grinding away at SWTOR, I've managed to get one character to 18,513 points (due to a free 10k from a bug) and another to 5,000 (due to the crafting points falling to the wrong character). My guild has 90,362 points.

 

Needless to say, this has been a disappointing first day under a system that I thought would really help smaller guilds like mine see MORE reward for our efforts, not less.

 

Review: Day 2

I set my main to craft an invasion force. Once again, I did this from leftover war supplies. I highly doubt I'd be willing to invest the materials to make war supplies at all under the new system. That put him just over 20k for the week, thanks to the 10k bug from yesterday. While the invasion force was cooking, I got to work on character number two.

 

My second character had 5k from yesterday because he was the lucky winner from crafting 10 war supplies. I ran him through the Ilum heroic and one of the Gree missions, then a guildmate joined me to do the 25 champion turrets again, which is a tedious grind that I often neglected pre-5.8 unless I simply needed extra points. I helped my guildmate with her Gree mission, and then we ran around Ilum to do the rampage.

 

We then went to Hoth again. We did 8 of the 9 heroics again, killing everything in sight to get the points for the Hoth rampage. After that, I stopped playing for most of the day. I came back for a scheduled guild flashpoint run at 8 PM.

 

Our flashpoint team was 1 tank and 3 DPS, so we certainly weren't going to do anything in master mode due to lack of a healer. That meant our conquest option was to earn a bit over 300 points (at max bonus) in veteran mode. We decided to just do a random flashpoint for CXP / daily reward purposes, and then we did run Battle of Ilum once. I took a break again and told myself I'd come back and try to win a warzone for 800 points, but as of this writing, I have not been motivated to log in and do that.

 

Throughout my day, my guildies made it clear to me that they were dissatisfied. I feel the same. Last week, I fought for Balmorra (Republic) and personally earned approximately 609k points across 4 characters. I worked conquest like it was my job because I could see that my efforts actually made a difference. Now that I know my tiny handful of grinders isn't going to hit the goal regardless of what we do, I don't see a lot of point in playing much.

 

Review: Day 3

I can see on Discord that my core conquest junkies are either playing other games or nothing at all. I considered the same grind as Day 1 and 2, which takes hours for a paltry 5k points or so on just one character, and I decided not to bother logging in.

 

Instead, I informed my guild that there's no point to grinding in the new system because with our numbers, we'll never make the planetary goals, much less be competitive for the board again. I've told them that until this system is fixed, I will focus on unfinished storyline content on my alts and making money (if I choose to play at all), and that our guild events will continue just for laughs and hanging out together because the amount of points available for conquest aren't worth the grind, and we definitely will not be planning around conquest goals until the system is rolled back or some major overhaul allows us to actually gain some traction for the hours upon hours of grind.

Edited March 22, 2018 by MorseGod

[JediJoy]

Obviously, I haven't spent a ton of time looking at this, but I do have some immediate reactions:

 

Crafting Changes

This feels like it was slipped in under the radar in an attempt to bottleneck the ability of large guilds to manufacture victory easily. The trouble is that it also hamstrings smaller guilds even more. Requiring so much more investment to create the same old stuff should have also been announced so that GTN sellers could have reacted appropriately to the new value of finished goods.

 

Work vs. Reward

The difference in guild rewards between tiers does not seem proportional to the amount of additional grind.

 

Lack of Information

Add some tooltips. Improve some task descriptions. Why are some of the repeatable icons silver / gray and others gold? Where do we donate for Crafting: Aiding the War Effort? (On that note, why does throwing away 10 Invasion Forces, which now cost a lot more to make, only give a few hundred points?)

 

Individual Rewards

Adding credits and CXP to tasks makes working them into limited play time more appealing. Thanks!

 

Accessibility for Smaller Guilds

The concept seems excellent, but if the aforementioned work vs. reward balance isn't addressed, then there's no point to pursuing medium or large yield planets, except to earn titles, so I suspect most guilds will continue piling on the small yield conquests, defeating the purpose.

 

Very well said. The crafting changes just ruined conquest for all small guilds; crafting week was their only time to actually be able to compete against a large guild.

 

Pro's: the revamped look "looks" good and the added dailies objectives are a nice touch.

Con's: everything else.

[Viraxis]

The different tasks that yield conquest points are borked. I am all for the crafting changes. Crafting your way to victory always seemed dumb to me.

 

However, what I have a serious problem with is now you are forcing people's playstyles just to earn personal conquest. For example, I play the game for PvP. I do very little else with my limited time. I also play republic which is always a tough win on my server most times I play. Now it seems I only get conquest points with a Win. This is ridiculous. I have completed weeklies at times with 0 wins due to faction imbalance when I play.

 

So now to participate in conquest, I have to do some of everything just to make my personal goal. This is a really stupid change.

[masterceil]

The different tasks that yield conquest points are borked. I am all for the crafting changes. Crafting your way to victory always seemed dumb to me.

 

However, what I have a serious problem with is now you are forcing people's playstyles just to earn personal conquest. For example, I play the game for PvP. I do very little else with my limited time. I also play republic which is always a tough win on my server most times I play. Now it seems I only get conquest points with a Win. This is ridiculous. I have completed weeklies at times with 0 wins due to faction imbalance when I play.

 

So now to participate in conquest, I have to do some of everything just to make my personal goal. This is a really stupid change.

 

Try being a GSFer, mate ;x We've both been shafted, and I don't like it. BioWare once again tryna pimp Iokath at the expense of the actual fun things to do in the game ;x

[DarthSpuds]

So now to participate in conquest, I have to do some of everything just to make my personal goal. This is a really stupid change.

 

From Bioware's POV it is a great change - it forces more and more players to repeatedly engage with more and more OLD content.

 

All The Best

[Paulsutherland]

From Bioware's POV it is a great change - it forces more and more players to repeatedly engage with more and more OLD content.

 

All The Best

 

Or they just won't bother.

[Exly]

Conquest point values are too low across the board. At these levels I will just ignore conquest.

[DarthSpuds]

Or they just won't bother.

 

Looking across this raft of badly thought out, and even more badly catalogued changes I am almost convinced the "they won't bother" any more is the effect Bioware desired.

 

All The Best

[Paulsutherland]

Looking across this raft of badly thought out, and even more badly catalogued changes I am almost convinced the "they won't bother" any more is the effect Bioware desired.

 

All The Best

 

You're probably spot on there mate.

[KendraP]

First impression? This sucks.

 

No point in going for larger planets because rewards suck.

 

War zones not spammable for low points

 

Crafting changes make it next to impossible for me to augment encryptions from conquest by crafting dark projects

 

FP daily not worth anything

 

Need i keep going?

[MorseGod]

Isotope Stabilizers

As an addendum to the crafting changes, I notice that Dark Projects can only be made using Refined Isotope Stabilizers now. Is there still a use for Exotic Isotope Stabilizers?

[DarthSpuds]

Is there still a use for Exotic Isotope Stabilizers?

 

Apparently the current use for them is Vendor Trash.

 

Knowing Bioware they'll wait 6 months until everyone has Vendored them, then they'll add a Trade-Up Vendor so you can hand in 10 EIS for 1 Recombinator.

 

All The Best

[nightsoflove]

Winning

 

The CQ rewards for simply completing content is now gone. I don't see the point in it, but it demotivates me to participate. I already expect PvP focused guilds to be running premades for their CQ points, and achieving these dailies are going to just be frustrating. This is daft, really.

 

So far, the new CQ quests haven't really appealed to me, a player in a small guild. Everything gives measly rewards now. I have to farm twice as hard to complete conquest, and I'll be working for the same reward. I am much disappoint and frustrate. Again, they never really sought proper player feedback before releasing. What they gave us was a brief and inconclusive look at what they were giving us, as they've done quite a bit lately. I honestly wish they'd let us review new content with more depth.

[PiiTarr]

Obviously, I haven't spent a ton of time looking at this, but I do have some immediate reactions:

 

Crafting Changes

This feels like it was slipped in under the radar in an attempt to bottleneck the ability of large guilds to manufacture victory easily. The trouble is that it also hamstrings smaller guilds even more. Requiring so much more investment to create the same old stuff should have also been announced so that GTN sellers could have reacted appropriately to the new value of finished goods.

 

Work vs. Reward

The difference in guild rewards between tiers does not seem proportional to the amount of additional grind.

 

Lack of Information

Add some tooltips. Improve some task descriptions. Why are some of the repeatable icons silver / gray and others gold? Where do we donate for Crafting: Aiding the War Effort? (On that note, why does throwing away 10 Invasion Forces, which now cost a lot more to make, only give a few hundred points?)

 

Individual Rewards

Adding credits and CXP to tasks makes working them into limited play time more appealing. Thanks!

 

Accessibility for Smaller Guilds

The concept seems excellent, but if the aforementioned work vs. reward balance isn't addressed, then there's no point to pursuing medium or large yield planets, except to earn titles, so I suspect most guilds will continue piling on the small yield conquests, defeating the purpose.

 

I agree with what you've said here. These changes have killed my desire to do anything with conquest,

[MorseGod]

Winning vs. Participating

I'd like to echo the sentiments of others here. In the past, participating in PvP content earned points, even though winning earned more. For those of us who will probably never be great at PvP and frequently join the solo queue, there's no incentive to participate anymore. I can get CXP from PvE content without the frustration of fighting skilled premade PvP groups.

 

One of the areas in which SWTOR is horribly lacking is some kind of training area where friends can actually teach each other to PvP in a controlled environment. It's difficult to learn and improve if one is mercilessly beaten down over and over. Nevertheless, it was worth doing for giggles if a player could help his guild by merely giving his best effort. Now our efforts are meaningless, and there's absolutely no way we're ever going to be able to compete with dedicated PvPers.

Edited March 20, 2018 by MorseGod

[Darevsool]

My first thoughts are:

 

I'm not fond of the changes - neither the UI nor the reworked point system.

 

"Donating" 10 invasion force gets you ~500 conquest points (at 150% stronghold bonus). So for 400 invasion force you can (though I'm not sure why anyone would) cap a 20k personal goal almost instantly.

 

It now takes crafting 10 of the War Supplies to get the conquest points, instead of 1. It's 5k points when complete.

The individual War Supplies need at least 5x more mats to craft. (except biochem...that may be a bug/oversight).

 

PVP no more participation points, you have to win to get conquest points.

 

No more points for daily GF flashpoint.

 

It looks like Daily Ops might be once per day per legacy (no more guild lockouts?)

 

Regarding the UI - There's no "map legend" that says which ones are repeatable once per legacy, repeatable all the time, or one time only. There is a "sort by" drop down menu, but it isn't all that helpful.

 

I didn't see any sort of "daily" list for conquest points.

[LeyDrewid]

The new conquest system is bad. It feels like Bioware doesn't understand their own game. Legacy based objectives limit alt participation. Who plays SWTOR on only 1 character? Wins only for PvP? So no incentive for participation. You claim to make the leaderboard changes to increase competition. New system allows all guilds who make the threshold to get the majority of the rewards.

 

 

 

Can we please get a Conquest sub thread on the forum finally? GSF has it's own thread and conquest has a significantly larger percentage of the player base.

[Helgram]

If the goal here was to keep players active on relatively few toons in order to hit conquest goals on those toons, then ... GREAT SUCCESS. Without spamming invasion force deletions, you'll have to keep busy all week to make Conquest and you'll only accomplish it on a few toons. Guilds with lots of unique active accounts will be sitting pretty.

 

The price will be somewhat shocking, though. PvP no longer is the road to conquest, so participation wil be down. Groupfinder ops are no longer the way to conquest, so participation will be down. With no real chance of capping more than a handful of toons no one will run multiple ops, as you only get points once per day per legacy.

 

There's no compensating mechanism to incentivize more difficult content, so there won't be any commensurate uptick in participation in HM runs.

 

Conquest was a primary motivator of bustling activity on the servers and that just got damped down to an excruciating degree.

 

<Unchained Wrath>, the biggest Conquest guild running, won't be doing lockouts under the current regime. But that leaves us with little we can do in large groups that's still rewarding. Without the lure of daily lockouts, or at least full runs, to put points on all our alts, there will be a lot lower participation across the board.

 

Every day will be as dead as Monday.

 

Please consider strongly changing daily repeatables to per-toon instead of per-legacy. That will restore lockouts and multiple operation runs per legacy. Without that I think you're going to see concurrency counts nose-dive.

[fishpeople]

Are you deliberately trying to ruin your own game?

 

One pvp win per day, per legacy? Why did you think that was a good idea? Same with GSF? and with far fewer CC points?

 

Flashpoints? Again legacy? and why not random?

 

This will just kill motivation to do conquests, the rewards aren't all that incentive either.

 

Can you change it back to the way it was?

[EricMusco]

Hey folks,

 

Feel free to use this thread as a source of general feedback on the Conquest revamp. We will be reading through the thread (and of course the rest of the forums) and gathering feedback.

 

-eric

[ThomasStarWars]

Hey folks,

 

Feel free to use this thread as a source of general feedback on the Conquest revamp. We will be reading through the thread (and of course the rest of the forums) and gathering feedback.

 

-eric

 

Please bring back win/loss for pvp and repeatable COUNTING, also bring back random flashpoints.

Edited March 20, 2018 by ThomasStarWars

[DarthSpuds]

Hey folks,

 

Feel free to use this thread as a source of general feedback on the Conquest revamp. We will be reading through the thread (and of course the rest of the forums) and gathering feedback.

 

-eric

 

Can we roll back the Conquest changes entirely.

 

It's the ONLY way Conquest can be saved.

 

 

All The Best

[ThomasStarWars]

Can we roll back the Conquest changes entirely.

 

It's the ONLY way Conquest can be saved.

 

 

All The Best

 

this would be best.

[Darevsool]

Eric,

 

Are there different conquest objectives rotating in/out of the list we see today on a daily basis?

 

One of the dev posts said there was some sort of daily list of conquest activities.

 

Unless the devs meant the repeatable activities once per day per legacy (blue triangle) I'm not seeing anything that looks like a daily objective list.

 

Can you please clarify?

[fishpeople]

Hey folks,

 

Feel free to use this thread as a source of general feedback on the Conquest revamp. We will be reading through the thread (and of course the rest of the forums) and gathering feedback.

 

-eric

 

Just revert it back to 5.7.