New Conquest System: First Impressions

[Quraswren]

I am amazed how they can take something so borderline broken, that many people actually did, and make it worse.

 

Gratz....

 

No seriously, it would be better if you actually put it back to pre 5.8. No one tested this properly and it is trash.

 

Oh I think they tested it. It's just no one at bioware really cared at what it would do in game and thats before we get into the bugs and people not actually getting conquest points for their effort.

 

And this garbage is a week late. Clearly it needed more work than the OPS boss.

[Lilarienne]

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

 

My initial impressions:

 

I fail to see how these changes will help smaller guilds like mine, especially those comprised mostly of people who work full time. We went from having a tiny sliver of hope that we would occasionally make it onto a leaderboard to pretty much no hope at all. There is now no point for us to attempt to participate or for me to waste credits moving the ship and setting up orbital support.

 

I agree with what others have said about crafting, PVP, GSF, contributions of multiple characters on the same account, and the fact that the points are so relatively low that it really doesn't feel worthwhile anymore.

 

Another thing that I think will hurt small guilds: loss of members who really want to receive those larger rewards, be on leaderboards, be part of a guild with a fully unlocked ship, etc.. There is now pretty much no hope that my guild will be able to finish unlocking our ship, because I doubt we'll ever make a leaderboard again to receive the necessary rewards.

 

So, my initial impression is that Conquests are now just for large guilds.

[TrixxieTriss]

They deserve a chance to fix it, too.

 

That’s if they bother listening and do it in a week. Another mess that takes a month, 2 months or 3 months to fix will be too little and too late.

An actual acknowledgement that they made a mistake would be good too. It would show some humility and show they are human and willing to accept responsibility for their mistakes.

[Beckwith]

Personally, me and my guild love this. It makes it hugely fair to smaller guild than guilds that have 100s of people. We had a hard time breaking in the top 10 and when we did we could not get into the top 5 because bigger guilds and their alt guilds would be doing nothing but lockouts and we could not keep up. Plus no one wanted to be on for 8 hours a night to run lockouts and get points all night long. We have to many raid teams and stuff and could not commit the time to Conquest that some of these other guilds do.

 

Bioware, don't listen to these haters, I believe you guys did right by all the guilds here. If they want to unsub because of this, that is just childish. We, in RHG, love this Conquest remake. Goodjob!

[deserttfoxx]

As a recently returned player, i still have no freaking clue why i am doing conquest. It gives terrible cxp, and just more crafting items i dont need.

 

This is probably the last weeek im doing it.

[ThomasStarWars]

Personally, me and my guild love this. It makes it hugely fair to smaller guild than guilds that have 100s of people. We had a hard time breaking in the top 10 and when we did we could not get into the top 5 because bigger guilds and their alt guilds would be doing nothing but lockouts and we could not keep up. Plus no one wanted to be on for 8 hours a night to run lockouts and get points all night long. We have to many raid teams and stuff and could not commit the time to Conquest that some of these other guilds do.

 

Bioware, don't listen to these haters, I believe you guys did right by all the guilds here. If they want to unsub because of this, that is just childish. We, in RHG, love this Conquest remake. Goodjob!

 

but they got wrong solo players and their content.

[TrixxieTriss]

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.

 

And that should tell you how fundamentally bad this decision was and why it needs to fixed this week or at least rolled back till they can fix it.

[NomadFifteen]

My opinions below. When I say we, it is implied like thinking players, not lumping all players into one group. I do not speak for all players, only those who in some way agree with my thoughts. (But as this 25+ page thread shows, it appears a lot of people do this this way.

 

 

Any chance this is your poor idea of an early April Fool's joke on your players?

 

If not, then it would have just been easier to remove Conquest than make this the new version.

 

No explanation of what the different colored repeatable symbols mean. Why would we want to know what the icons on the interface mean?

 

Crafting, while originally an odd way to succeed, has now been removed as a valid way of making points. This update changed the crafting in a way that to call it poorly thought out gives it to much credit. Zero thought had to go into these changes. The amount of material that goes into a single craft, and then the multiple crafts needed for the poor amount of points would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

 

Removing the participation factor in PvP to make it wins will not make people play it more, it will make people leave the game. Has no one there learned that taking away parts of the game from the players does not make us enjoy the game more?

 

Now we know why these changes were not posted so the players could see what was coming. What was coming was the freight train of 'We don't care about making the game better.' that hit us in the face.

 

Poor update. Everything since the Valkorian soap opera has been a spiral of bad decisions. Any chance someone there will stop making decisions that are 8 or 9 steps back and try taking a couple forward? Even one step that makes us (IMHO) think someone there cares about the game and thinks about the players would give us hope.

 

More and more your phrase of 'Play your way' becomes a dark joke. More and more it is 'Play the way we tell you. We know what you enjoy, and you will enjoy what we tell you.'

 

First time in over 5 years considering dropping my sub, and I thought I would ride this out to the final days. I am not seeing anyone there really trying to improve the game.

 

The above may come off as harsh, but I want the game to get better after each update. Still waiting for that to happen.

[juliushorst]

Conspiracy theory: Maybe Bioware is TRYING to make people quit en masse so they can justify shutting the game down and making room for Anthem?

 

Yeah, it's even better plan than this conquest change... I don't see myself touching Anthem, no matter what - not my genre and often blamed for killing ME or placing SWTOR where it is now. Why would I want to play it?

Edited March 21, 2018 by juliushorst

[TrixxieTriss]

If you find an email, please let us know so we can flood their email with complaints. That should get their attention.

 

The only way they can get hard data feedback is for people to click “cancel subscription” and then add the feed back there. I’ve unsubbed.

Edited March 21, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[Eriamea]

Story and PvP are two very compelling reasons to play this game. Grinding Conquest to make some guild ship look a little bit nicer is not. This is not EVE.

I disagree. It is a game and people can play it for whatever reason they want. Conquest provided a nice context and incentive to bring a guild together and organize activities for every one...and conquest was an incentive for many people to pvp and to enter a certain amount of matches per week. Heck, I've been dragged into SF matches just to help the guild, something I would not have done otherwise (pleaaaase we need one more match and queue is not popping! Of course, I was crashing all the time but they were still happy as they could do their match and still get their points).

 

So, here is a practical example of the foreseeable effects of this patch on those who don't care about conquest but like to pvp: a lot of people were pvping to meet some conquest objectives, many weeks there were even points for completing the weekly which required a number of minimal matches. You earned some points even if you were on the losing team. Now you get only get points for one winning match per day. Simple logical deduction: less people will pvp or at least enter into less matches and, among those who will pvp, more people will quit a match midway if the team is losing.

 

Besides this patch will only help feed the monster guilds with players and hurt the medium and small ones as even with dedicated players they won't be able to top the boards anymore as people won't be able to use alts.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Eriamea

[Kyrra_T]

Story and PvP are two very compelling reasons to play this game. Grinding Conquest to make some guild ship look a little bit nicer is not. This is not EVE.

 

I'll be glad to let you pay my subscription so you can decide that for me. Where shall I send the bill?

 

And Conquest IS NOT for making a guild ship look nice. You can get encryptions without ever doing conquest in a meaningful way.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Kyrra_T

[Euphrosyne]

Man, I didn't expect people to react this negatively to a single patch. I honestly don't see any problems with it other than getting Conquest now takes more time. Big deal.

 

If Conquest farming is the only reason some of you still play, you might be playing for the wrong reasons.

Conquest was introduced to incentivize people to play more. They recognized that repeatable content in and of itself wasn't enough to get most people coming back, so they added a competitive aspect to it. They also tried to incentivize virtually any activity that you can actually complete: fps, ops, wzs, gsf, heroics, weeklies, crafting, wb kills, and instanced bosses. The weeks were a bit different in that some activities got more emphasis than others (so, say, crafting groups did better than lockout groups on crafting weeks, but had to do pvp or pve content in non-crafting weeks). But both pvp and pve content were incentivized, and both pvp and pve players stood a reasonable expectation of regularly capping.

 

This new system disincentivizes virtually every activity in the game. Most content now rewards fewer conquest points than before (if it rewards any at all). It's hard to get across just how "it takes longer" doesn't come close to describing the issue. Before, you might need a flashpoint a day to cap a given character in a given week. This week, you need a minimum of sixty runs of a single flashpoint, Battle of Ilum, to cap that same character. (I quoted a hundred earlier in this thread, based on my own stronghold bonus of 100%, but those who have 150% have it somewhat easier.) Crafting weeks might have required thirty war supplies or four invasion forces; now, a single character needs a hundred invasion forces, all of which require an exponentially larger amount of white and green mats to make than they did previously, and all of which have to be destroyed by "donation" (rather than being able to use them to make Dark Projects, say to purchase the new Commander's Compendia). The same sort of inflation goes for gsf wins. This isn't "a bit harder", it's vastly out of proportion to anything reasonable. And the restriction of many activities to a single character per legacy means that everybody who plays alts is SOL.

 

Talking about "the wrong reasons" is kind of rich. What does that even mean? It's a part of SWTOR like any other; it's just as valid a reason to play as ERP or playing through the solo stories for the first time. Conquest was specifically created to keep people coming back to play the game after the content tap started to drip less frequently. It especially exists to improve the queues for group finder activities like fps, pvp, gsf, and ops; those activities will die without people running them to get their weekly conquest. By changing conquest in a way which makes it worse for almost everybody who does it, and which makes it better for virtually nobody, they're making it vastly less fun for people to do a thing that they play the game to do. Of course people are going to get mad about that.

[inoutallabout]

Another thing that I think will hurt small guilds: loss of members who really want to receive those larger rewards, be on leaderboards, be part of a guild with a fully unlocked ship, etc.. There is now pretty much no hope that my guild will be able to finish unlocking our ship, because I doubt we'll ever make a leaderboard again to receive the necessary rewards.

 

That's exactly correct. Immediately on realizing I could only reasonably hit conquest on two or three toons, I moved them all into a large conquest guild. Might as well get the max rewards if I'm only getting it on a few of them.

 

I love my small guild but triple weekly rewards is too good to pass up when there's so much effort going into just getting those few toons to conquest in the first place.

[Tarbuch]

Just reverse this guys. Seriously, anything you do going forward at this point will only make it worse. Just do an emergency patch tomorrow morning and go back to 5.7 whatever. You might lose a few that are currently working at this lemon but you'll lose far more if you don't. Move quickly here!

 

They did not reverse the 5.0 fiasco, they spent a year tweaking the system, and lost ~50% of the player base.

 

I would presume that the same will happen with 5.8 fiasco, BioFai is incapable of admitting failure, and will just double down on their hubris.

[KendraP]

That’s if they bother listening and do it in a week. Another mess that takes a month, 2 months or 3 months to fix will be too little and too late.

An actual acknowledgement that they made a mistake would be good too. It would show some humility and show they are human and willing to accept responsibility for their mistakes.

 

Hell i'll stay around for just a PLAN on how they're going to fix it. If I know improvements are coming, I can deal with it.

If all I get is "but it was for you! it's exciting!" I'm done

[TrixxieTriss]

i disagree. It is a game and people can play it for whatever reason they want. Conquest provided a nice context and incentive to bring a guild together and organize activities for every one...and conquest was an incentive for many people to pvp and to enter a certain amount of matches per week.

 

So, here is a practical example of the foreseeable effects of this patch on those who don't care about conquest but like to pvp: A lot of people were pvping to meet some conquest objectives, many weeks there were even points for completing the weekly which required a number of minimal matches. You earned some points even if you were on the losing team. Now you get only get points for one winning match per day. Simple logical deduction: Less people will pvp or at least enter into less matches and, among those who will pvp, more people will quit a match midway if the team is losing.

 

Exactly THIS ^^^

Edited March 21, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

Hell i'll stay around for just a PLAN on how they're going to fix it. If I know improvements are coming, I can deal with it.

If all I get is "but it was for you! it's exciting!" I'm done

 

What if the plan is a fix after 5.9. Will you still stick around or have faith they will change it to include everything that was removed.

[TrixxieTriss]

That's exactly correct. Immediately on realizing I could only reasonably hit conquest on two or three toons, I moved them all into a large conquest guild. Might as well get the max rewards if I'm only getting it on a few of them.

 

I love my small guild but triple weekly rewards is too good to pass up when there's so much effort going into just getting those few toons to conquest in the first place.

 

R.I.P. Conquest guilds

[Sareeph]

Snip

 

I agree with what others have said about crafting, PVP, GSF, contributions of multiple characters on the same account, and the fact that the points are so relatively low that it really doesn't feel worthwhile anymore.

 

One thing I have noticed, looking at the conquest guide on Dulfy about conquest points for each activity, the points in game are coming up as being multiplied by 1.5 with full SH bonus and rounded up slightly instead of the 2.5 that the full SH bonus warrants. Either Dulfy has the wrong points per activity posted, or the multiplier in game is wrong.

Edited March 21, 2018 by Sareeph

[Lularapio]

This update was total garbage in regards to the conquest and crafting changes. You killed my desire to play the game.

 

I'm not paying a sub to be forced to play what you guys want me to play, grind what you want me to grind.

 

I am not renewing my subscription unless those awful changes are reverted.

[KendraP]

What if the plan is a fix after 5.9. Will you still stick around or have faith they will change it to include everything that was removed.

 

if the plan was to truly include everything that was removed, yes i'd stay. despite the raging of the last couple days i'm really not that difficult a person to please.

 

I stuck it out through GC and am actually ok with the way that works now, despite being one of it's harshest critics at the time.

[Viraxis]

What if the plan is a fix after 5.9. Will you still stick around or have faith they will change it to include everything that was removed.

 

I will probably hang around a month or 2 if they lay out a plan on how they will fix it soon. My sub is up at the end of this month and I already switched to going month to month from a 6mos recurring membership.

[PorsaLindahl]

I think Keith knew exactly what they were doing. In the livestream last week he said he was excited about the changes coming. I guess he delights in tormenting his customers.

 

It's sad that they tried to gloss this over with double xp and that nonsensical companion chaos crap.

 

Keep this in mind: No matter how many roses you put on a pile of manure, the stink will always prevail. And 5.8 is one heaping pile of manure.

 

T-minus 120 hours.. tick tock, tick tock....

[Kyrra_T]

What if the plan is a fix after 5.9. Will you still stick around or have faith they will change it to include everything that was removed.

 

Not without a detailed explanation of what they are doing in the change. A nebulous 'we will fix it after 5.9 will NOT cut it.