New Conquest System: First Impressions

[Tarbuch]

I just didn't expect everyone to be brandishing torches and pitchforks over this. Not even GC had this kind of reaction when it first came out. And that was bad.

 

Yes there was, and as a result SWTOR player base shrinked so badly that they consolidated dozen servers to 3 (2 US + one EU) English, I do not know the state of the German or French servers, I don't play on those.

[PennyAnn]

 

 

In closing what happened to the item/vendor that was suppose to tie in to the conquest system that allowed you to max a companions influence?

 

There is a vendor on the fleet, in the Stronghold section near the public listing of guild flagships. He is invisible to you (you cannot see him by any means) until you have completed your 20k personal conquest goal for the week. Once you have that 20k, he is visable and interactable to you. His name is V1C-0RY.

 

Here is the imgur album I made of his location and the decorations/etc. that he sells:

https://imgur.com/a/vFjrZ

[Sundown]

First impression: not impressed.

 

I was thrilled to see XP/CXP/Valor-boosts up and very much looking forward to getting my rewards for last week's conquest on 7 toons: loads of crates to be had. First toon: nothing. Well, maybe I missed that one last week? Went in with my main: no reward either. Bummer. Ok, they have broken conquest rewards with the new version, nothing unheard of and as far as I understood one of the reasons to refactor it - good job! Well, nothing lost really, as I will get the rewards without boost at some point in time, but still disappointing.

 

Went into the menu: didn't really understand the icons and such, so no idea what was repeatable per char/day/legacy, so just jumped into a pvp match. Win. 825 points granted. Cool, not too shabby, less than before but fine. Next match. Win. No points?! ***?

Checked the missions more closely: also no points for losses?! What were they thinking? Checked the different levels of planets to invade: no big difference at all in rewards for the big guilds that have ships maxed out, so again: ***?

 

Got some 10k for Ilum-Bosses when doing a kill on CZ - ok. **** happens, at least a bug in my favour this time.

 

I thought BW wanted to make Conquest more fair? Before the system was in favour of either crafting (on crafting weeks) or guilds that could do many highly efficient runs on many alts or accounts. So a smaller but dedicated guild with >8 accounts could get lots of points. Now it is just the number of accounts you can get to grind.

 

Playing alts? Does not make sense. Play FPs or PvP or GSF? Does not make sense. Crafting? Does not make sense and is made dramatically more expensive.

 

So: conquest is pretty much dead for me. I will continue to PvP (which I like) and do FPs and the occasional Op, but I will not grind the amounts of points needed to finish conquest on even one char, let alone >5 as I did earlier.

 

I will not unsub over this, as I am not only playing because of conquest, it was a bonus. But it still takes away quite some motivation and I could see my guild was baffled as well.

 

I don't understand you, BW, really.

[megafirstone]

Done just 4 GSF matches each time at least 6 medals(objective) got zero conquest points. This conquest is system is just big bug.

[Vercundus]

I thought BW wanted to make Conquest more fair?

They did. Now it's crap for everyone.

[chouston]

Never thought I would do it, but unsubbed...Goodbye EA

[Calar]

I play in a small guild (about 10 active players), which has farmed to conquer a planet by means of crafting. With the current release absolutely unthinkable.

So far we have mostly made it into the top 10. We were able to achieve this via PVP, GSF and Flashpoints. That's gone since the last patch.

 

I personally have achieved my goals via PVP and GSF. I only play Uprisings, Flashpoints and OP'S occasionally. I have more fun with PVP and GSF. So I reached my personal goal earlier and supported my guild.

 

With the latest patch, I can't do that anymore.

 

Let's take GSF. Currently, with a 150% fortress bonus, I would have to make 100 victories a week just to achieve my personal goal. I got a job. I'm working. How can I reach my personal goal if I only get 213 points for a win?

Even if I still take into account that I have the possibility to take 2 satellites in every second match. Firstly they have to be taken first and secondly I don't think that the taken ones are really defended, because you still need a second satellite, which doesn't necessarily increase the chances of victory.

 

From my point of view, the change, as it is now, is just crap.

[bluehufsa]

They did. Now it's crap for everyone.

 

+1 to this ^^ :D:D

[AdrianDmitruk]

My first impressions:

 

I randomly got 10k free conquest points due to the kill-an-NPC bug. I LOLed. Did an EV GF yesterday morning, noticed the points for operations were nerfed quite a bit. That was more than offset by the bug (this one time), but I can't imagine the bug will be around for very long. I figured fine, they probably wanted to nerf operations because lockout ops farming was a bit too easy before (I'll have more on this later).

 

Then I logged to my main and noticed that the said main was locked out of receiving conquest points for doing another GF op. Great. Now there's hardly any reason to do the GF on more than one toon at all, except to send a bunch of CXP pills to a single alt. That might work for me, but it's sure as hell going to make it harder to find ops going forward because conquest was one of the main reasons why people did them, and that means far fewer people doing them going forward. Also, bug aside, it's now impossible to cap conquest for a single character on GF ops now, as 1875*6<20000. Let alone there's hardly any reason to do ops on alts anymore unless you really want more CXP pills to mail to your toons that aren't 300 yet.

 

And THEN I noticed that PVP was one win, per legacy, per day. Umm...wow. PVP has ALWAYS been a slow, but steady and reliable, source of conquest points. Even the barest of PVP conquest weeks had at least objectives for doing as many warzones as you wanted and turning in as many weeklies on as many alts as you wanted. Other methods of conquest point grinding were usually faster, except during specific PVP-tailored weeks, but PVP used to be a good staple for capping alts that you couldn't quite get into ops or whatever. You've effectively completely decoupled PVP from the conquest system now, and while I spend about 70-80% of my time in this game PVPing and will likely continue to do it for its own sake, I do worry about what effect the reduced incentive to PVP will have on the queues.

 

And then, the most completely farcical of my first impressions. While perusing the conquest objectives, I noticed that invasion forces can now be repeatedly donated for points (a completely underwhelming amount of points now that they're so much more expensive to make, but still repeatable points in a system where so many formerly repeatable activities were removed). As a proof of concept, I logged into a level 1 toon that literally only exists so I could unlock guild bank/SH/flagship on the Republic side for my alt-only (1 friend's alt as officer in case I need to get a new alt inside) guild. And then I donated 200 invasion forces from my level 1 character, and voila, my level 1 is my first, and possibly only, toon to cap conquest this week.

 

Let this sink in for a moment. My level 1 expenda-toon did something my main, level capped toons could not: reach the personal goal for conquest, because level cap activities AREN'T REPEATABLE. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

 

(ok, to be fair, that level one toon is now level 7 due to the conquest rewards, but still BWAHAHAHAHA this be funneh.)

 

I had been guildless by choice for the past year. I only organized my alts into a pair of faction-mirrored, 1-man guilds a week ago in anticipation of the 5.8 changes to conquest as I saw a chance to seriously partake in conquest again without having to deal with the drama issues that caused me to decide to go guildless. However I've evaluated the new conquest system and let's just say that I don't plan on succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. The rewards for conquest simply aren't worth the huge costs of the only mass-repeatable way of playing the conquest system.

 

OK, now here's what Bioware should have done, and what they can still do:

 

Unfortunately Bioware has quite the penchant for secrecy, and unfortunately it has quite the penchant for biting them in the rear end. Changes like this absolutely needed to be on PTS, with some direction as to what their goals were in terms of balancing this, and they needed to be responsive to any constructive feedback received, Had they done this before going live, the implementation almost certainly would have gone much better.

 

As an example, let's suppose Bioware wanted to nerf GF lockout farming, as there had been a steady trickle of complaints that this was OP. They could've said that on PTS, and no doubt someone would have suggested breaking up the conquest rewards for ops into individual bosses. Instead of, say 6k points for the op, 1200 per boss instead. If people only did the lockout for the last boss, they'd only get the 1200, and throw away the potential for 4800 more. Voila, now if people want to spam ops they have to actually do the entire op; you can still do ops on as many alts as you want, but now if you want the full conquest points you have to do the full op. This kind of approach would have nerfed the excesses of lockout farming in a reasonable and sane manner.

 

And I'm sure the community could have come up with similar feedback for the excesses of crafting, had they only been asked.

 

Instead, we now have a situation similar, but not quite identical to, the 5.0 debacle which saw SWTOR dwindle from a dozen NA servers down to two. Bioware promises "new and exciting changes!" coming soon but remains incredibly vague as to what they have in mind. Had they simply overlaid the multiple-tier approach to invasions upon the old conquest point system and objectives, perhaps with a few minor balance tweaks, this could have been very well received, and their pre-5.8 info definitely set this expectation. Instead they completely broke multiple staple sources of conquest objectives that hit both PVErs (no more alting for PVE stuff) and PVPers (you only get to have one match per day count now, and oh it better be a win!) ludicrously hard. Seriously, breaking both PVE and PVP to that degree is impressive--if you're trying to drive the game into the ground.

 

This is arguably even worse than 5.0, because at least they had the decency to put 5.0 on the PTS. They completely ignored the feedback they received from 5.0 PTS, at least for several months, and the game lost a whole hell of a lot of people when CXP was nothing more than an RNG grind fest. I know I didn't play the game after 5.0; I came back later after they had tweaked CXP to make the RNG a supplement rather than the sole means of gearing. But at least with 5.0, the community had some warning of the dumpster fire that was coming. This came without any warning as to what our expectations should have been. I'm sure most of us expected 5.8 to be an improvement to conquest, not a massive nerf.

 

I recognize that it can be difficult when a developer's grand idea for the game is rejected by the community that plays the game, but seriously, put stuff like this on PTS before rolling it out to live. 5.0 was PTSed, but feedback from the PTSers was ignored at least until the point when the game had lost mega subs and devs had little choice but to revisit the PTS feedback on making CXP palatable or see the game shut down. My fear is that this game cannot bear another 5.0 debacle without EA shutting it down.

 

Please completely revert 5.8, put it on PTS, solicit feedback (including just on what your balancing goals for conquest are), and redeploy a revamped conquest system in 5.9/5.10 or 6.0, depending on how long it takes you to get it right.

[Rocketmanballs]

I loved running all my toons through lockouts to get conquest points. Actually, it really wasn't that fun but it was more fun than everything else in the game. My sub is up in in a couple of weeks. I'm so not going to resub with this new cq crap and GTN tax increase. Roll it back or im gone.

[Sarova]

Can we roll back the Conquest changes entirely.

 

It's the ONLY way Conquest can be saved.

This is the only way to fix Conquest.

 

Whilst the OP of this thread focuses on the loss of guild benefits, solo players like me who enjoyed doing the Conquest personal achievements have been sidelined by the changes. Conquest was the only reason I went into GSFs & I was just starting to get the hang of it and earn medals. Now this has been rendered pointless (in more ways than one). The only reason for me to even bother with Conquest now is to unlock the Vendor so I can buy an instant lvl 50 influence token on one alt. There is no point in me even opening the conquest menu after I get that as there is no incentive to do any of the things I used to for the added Conquest points (PvP, Flashpoint daily, crafting, warzones and even heroics). Warzones are so imbalanced in team makeup (one side is frequently made up of players with 230-234 gear whilst the other has a team full of 248 gear) that getting Conquest points for a loss was worth entering.

 

One of the other benefits for the solo player was the "intro to Conquests" quest that I did on alts (that could be picked up on the fleet and included a grand chance cube as a reward) seems to have been removed.

 

Had I not benefited from the points I got for a boss completion bug on Ilum last night I would have given up. The worst thing of all are the changes to crafting and being forced to wasted a stack of 10 invasion forces for very little conquest points (and they have been made more expensive to craft even though they take over an hour to make just one). Even though I had a small stack, it was still worthless to use them up.

 

Once again, the changes seem to have been implemented to benefit the in-game activities preferred by Keith & Co who most likely have an uber-guild dedicated to these things (PvP, Ops) as well as attempting to force us to do areas/events we might have no interest in (Iokath, relics of the Gree).

 

Design the game for the players not yourselves and stop fixing things that aren't broken. There are plenty of really broken things that you should be putting your resources into (like this or this or this)

Edited March 21, 2018 by Sarova

[Hautamacky]

Keith and Eric you wanted to give more chances with the changes of the conquest to little guilds that you did not succeed because the changes made the conquest system broken.

 

Two Guilds of Tulad Hord where I'm successful in the Conquest because we have a good guild structure, these two guilds are Koosai and Glückbärchi gmbh, and the change is likely to make the guild break apart and into other games.

 

 

A few changes **** implemented here a few examples:

 

With the h quests that you can only do one a day with a char is not good for little guilds either.

 

With the war supplies that you need 5 different degrees bring big and small guilds nothing because then everything is overfarmed and not really bring credits out of the game.

 

The Fps can not run over finder for points is no longer in it.

 

That there are no points for only BG Ranged or Gsf games more gives the what is now in it bring nothing because what is required there is not or only with difficulty can be achieved.

 

Now what you can do now:

 

Bring again points for FPS purely in the finder makes.

 

Bring for PVP RANGED and BSF games or if you have the daily made points and that gives the Weekly again points.

 

Bringing the H quest quests to a maximum of 45 in a day so you can not indefinitely make h quest points to contain it.

 

With the points for the OP Finder that there are only for a char is not so good that even small guilds run with others some Ops over Finder because it would be better on Max 3 times a day so with Max 3 Chars.

 

The war supplies would be better if you made it similar to the beginning of the conquest, making two kinds of war resources. For one you need mats of 2 to 5 degrees for the other 6 to 9 degrees.

 

As the points could be for my changes:

 

FPS Finder 1000

Op Finder 2000

FPS Weekly 1000

Rebellion weekly 1000

PvP Ranged and GSF daily 1000

PvP Ranged and GSF Weekly 2000

H Quest 500 or 750

*

The text would be translated with the google translater because you ignored the different language forums.

[Mdgshorty]

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

 

Eric,

Here is my feetback to you. There is a saying don't fix what is not broken. The conquest system was not entirely broken. There were parts that I liked in the old system. I do not like having to scroll through the objectives. We had to do less of that in the old system.

 

I get that you may have wanted to make it look similar to the activities, but the old sytem of displaying the objectives was fine the way it is. I liked seeing the colorful icons. I do not like you took away GF flashpoints, Complete any PVP match, Complete any GSF Match as activities. Those should be a given and always should be in there.

 

I also do not like that you had nerfed the points we get from conquest. What I do like is conquest and guild invasions tabs are separated though.

[ThomasStarWars]

Bring back random flashpoint queues, repeatable points, and warzones, participation, repeatable points, for former point grants. That's all I need for myself.

 

But others have a lot more as well for their small guilds, and solo preference. Please listen for once.

[tuulem]

If you wanted to limit the big guilds dominating conquest and make it easier for smaller guilds to compete, why didn't you just cap the amount of points a player could get per toon per week and make it relative to the type of planet being invaded?

 

Pulling numbers out of the air, but you could have set it at 30k for a small yield planet, 50k for a medium yield and 70k for a large yield.

 

But whatever you do, you seriously need to think about getting rid of that stupid, stupid legacy lockout.

[Gelious]

I could't help but notice: before the patch, I had 10% SH bonus and daily ops cost 2k points. (or were it 3k?)

 

Now I have 125% bonus and daily ops cost 1.8k.

 

What gives, Bioware? Please don't tell me you actually listened to the thread, where the guy was complaining about last boss runs...

Edited March 21, 2018 by Gelious

[Darevsool]

After playing a bit when I got home yesterday, here's how I got my points up to 20k on a single toon.

(via 150% SH bonus)

 

Did CZ-198 Dailies. There is a toon there that triggers 10k conquest points that you're supposed to get on ilum. Known random npc bug.

I crafted an invasion force.

I crafted 10x War Supplies

I "donated" 50 crafted invasion force.

 

I did this on a single toon on two different accounts.

 

While I have around 1500 invasion force that I've been collecting for years of conquest, I don't plan on that being a continual source of points.

 

On the previous system, I'd only be able to do enough things to meet conquest goals on a single toon.

10k points for crafting a single invasion force

7k points for doing the two flashpoints on ilum

1250 points for the ilum heroic

2.5k points for killing 250 npcs

 

 

The old system was more fun, even for a solo player.

The new crafting points/recipes use far too many resources in my opinion.

 

I still don't like the new system at all.

If guild lockouts were a problem, if crafting weeks were a problem, altering the points for those objectives should have been the first option for "rebalancing."

[Darevsool]

I could't help but notice: before the patch, I had 10% SH bonus and daily ops cost 2k points. (or were it 3k?)

 

Now I have 125% bonus and daily ops cost 1.8k.

 

What gives, Bioware? Please don't tell me you actually listened to the thread, where the guy was complaining about last boss runs...

 

The stronghold bonus is calculated by the number of rooms you have unlocked, not the number of decorations you've plopped down.

 

As of yesterday anyway.

[khamseen_air]

Adding my input to the masses, even though it will no doubt be met with deaf ears.

 

The new system sucks. It's gone from being a fun weekly incentive to repeat content across multiple toons, and turned into a slow and painful experience of lacklustre performance.

This new system will do nothing to 'help' smaller guilds, which was the supposed reason for the changes in the first place, if anything the removal of most of the repeatable options only serves to hamper smaller guilds who relied heavily on players trying to complete the weekly targets on multiple toons but now most of the unlocks appear to be legacy wide so there's not even any point in playing more than one character any more.

 

The interface itself is totally rubbish. It's gone from handy and easy to decipher icons which instantly from a glance told you what type of game play they related to, into a 50 shades of grey list which constantly moves around and nothing seems to be in the same order twice on. It's horrendous. It's also very difficult to tell easily which of the new objectives are repeatable and which are one time only. It doesn't help that some of the ones which are supposed to be repeatable, are now only unlocking once per legacy.

 

The whole system is a joke. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it's not an improvement, it's a step backwards. I'm going from completing my weekly conquest on an average of 4-5 toons a week down to not even wanting to bother completing it on one. Congratulations on another successful fail.

[Sarova]

The interface itself is totally rubbish. It's gone from handy and easy to decipher icons which instantly from a glance told you what type of game play they related to, into a 50 shades of grey list which constantly moves around and nothing seems to be in the same order twice on. It's horrendous. It's also very difficult to tell easily which of the new objectives are repeatable and which are one time only. It doesn't help that some of the ones which are supposed to be repeatable, are now only unlocking once per legacy.

Thanks for including this - ^^read this devs, don't think anyone else has put it so clearly.

[Gelious]

The stronghold bonus is calculated by the number of rooms you have unlocked, not the number of decorations you've plopped down.

 

As of yesterday anyway.

Wow, you misunerstood me, like, completely. I was saying they nerfed conquest gains for daily ops in GF and you are telling me about how SH bonus works now. (which I knew anyway)

[Monsuun]

I'll throw my two bits in with everyone else. I'm an officer in a fairly large guild. No one likes this CQ change. CQ gave me goals to work toward, it helped my guild (which I love, many of us have become like family), and I felt that the reward-to-work ratio was fairly good.

I was actually hopeful for this patch. Some things I had heard sounded good in theory, but I didn't really see how it could be implemented well. I decided that the devs were probably smarter than me and had put more thought into it and had it handled. I was wrong on all counts. My 6-year old could probably have thought this through better.

I'm going to stay and finish playing through my class stories, which is the biggest reason I love SWTOR in the first place, but if CQ isn't fixed by the time I'm done with those I will really have no reason to stick around.

There have been some very wonderful suggestions here on this thread. I implore you to take your time and read through them. These are people who have evidently played the game and put more time into it than the people who implemented this recent train-wreck. Seriously, I agree with the people who are asking; "Who thought this would be well-received by the players?" Out of all the comments I've read on the SWTOR forums and reddit, I think I've seen 2 positive reviews (one by someone who doesn't even DO CQ). Every other one was negative... It's bad. Fix it please!

[ThomasStarWars]

I'll throw my two bits in with everyone else. I'm an officer in a fairly large guild. No one likes this CQ change. CQ gave me goals to work toward, it helped my guild (which I love, many of us have become like family), and I felt that the reward-to-work ratio was fairly good.

I was actually hopeful for this patch. Some things I had heard sounded good in theory, but I didn't really see how it could be implemented well. I decided that the devs were probably smarter than me and had put more thought into it and had it handled. I was wrong on all counts. My 6-year old could probably have thought this through better.

I'm going to stay and finish playing through my class stories, which is the biggest reason I love SWTOR in the first place, but if CQ isn't fixed by the time I'm done with those I will really have no reason to stick around.

There have been some very wonderful suggestions here on this thread. I implore you to take your time and read through them. These are people who have evidently played the game and put more time into it than the people who implemented this recent train-wreck. Seriously, I agree with the people who are asking; "Who thought this would be well-received by the players?" Out of all the comments I've read on the SWTOR forums and reddit, I think I've seen 2 positive reviews (one by someone who doesn't even DO CQ). Every other one was negative... It's bad. Fix it please!

 

Totally agree.

[TUXs]

Here are my thoughts:

 

• This has KILLED alt play. Alts were a BIG part of Conquests...and this damn game.

• Crafting changes are going to hurt more players than Bioware ever imagined. Crafting, while dominating, was also a KEY PART of this game. Gathering mats was an activity...buying mats drove the GTN. Conquest was a HUGE credit and mat sink...that's gone. Crafting, while dominating, was also a HUGE part of gameplay. Players would gather mats while waiting for other people to do stuff with, it was a down time activity, a solo activity, and a too many people in a group already alternative activity...you needed it...

• PvP and GSF changes are just atrocious. Revert those...this was a ridiculous change.

• No conquest credit for the Op of the day is just stupid...or for FPs, or anything group related...

• Legacy wide goals are a TERRIBLE idea...again, it kills alt play.

 

Bioware, the old conquest system certainly had its flaws, but they were NOTHING compared to this. Alts, and MANY alts, are GOOD for this game...stop punishing players with them. Last week I capped like 7 toons on personal Conquest...that's a record for me. Ya know what the best part was? I didn't even TRY to...I simply played those toons...that will never happen under this system.

Edited March 21, 2018 by TUXs

[casirabit]

1. I do like the new screen for the conquest.

 

2. While I am a crafter, I understand the reason for the changes to the crafting. Too many people were using the crafting exclusively to get high conquest points, and people were complaining that this was unfair and not right, so they changed it to reflect a more uniform way of using crafting to compete in the conquest. I did notice while crafting that crafting is spread out further on your toons and this week you could do up to 10 and it didn't matter if various characters were doing it, this was a change for the better especially in the invasion crafting, when in the past only one could do it. You could do it on a variety until you hit the max of 10.

 

3. While the system could use some tweets (especially regarding pvp) I don't think it needs to be scrapped and I don't they will do that so instead of demanding they roll it back (which given past history they will not) it might be advisable to give improvements.

 

Improvements:

 

1. There should be more pvp incentives and it shouldn't be based on whether you win or lose. As far as what missions or how it should be done, I would refer you to a person who actually pvp, such as Tux and Trixxie as they have repeatedly stated they pvp. (I think GSF could use some as well )

 

2. If you are not going to do the group finder for flashpoints, then there should be a few more flashpoints, of course I know there are weeks that there was not that many flashpoints and other weeks there were quite a few. This is speaking for those that do the group finder flashpoints.

 

3. Weekies need to be changed back to the way they were. We used to be able to get credit for each character now it is legacy wide.

 

These are the ones I thought of that could use some fixing/changing that might help the system as I know from experience roll back something is not something that can or will be done for various reasons and might help save your new conquest system and relieve some of the problems that people are having with the system.

 

 

One positive note: Thank you for the decorations, they are nice. I especially liked the Club Vertica decoration. The sith ice sculpture is nice as well so thank you for those. Just wish they didn't call for credits and invasion kits too.

Edited March 21, 2018 by casirabit