New Conquest System: First Impressions

[TrixxieTriss]

Hey folks,

 

Keep the feedback coming! Seeing your thoughts on the revamp is very helpful to the team. My plan is that tomorrow I want to get the following information into this thread: a breakdown of our intention around the Conquest revamp and a list of the feedback points that all of you have raised. This will allow you to see our thoughts on Conquests and then to highlight the feedback you have stated that we are actively reviewing internally.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

Its a new day in Austin Texas. 11am and the 2nd morning coffee should have sunk in.

So, what time should we expect this post?

[KendraP]

Its a new day in Austin Texas. 11am and the 2nd morning coffee should have sunk in.

So, what time should we expect this post?

 

About 4 pm central

[ShadowGovernator]

*rolls eyes* Come on now. That's a big exaggeration & you know it. lol

They know that Ilum boss is a bug & have stated so. That won't factor into their stuff.

And even if it did, that's small toss in the bucket apposed to what normally hits with conquest.

 

You give BioWare way too much credit – they have proven themselves incompetent again and again.

They changed the entire endgame gearing system because their secret data told them that were too many currencies – three – and because RNG gearing is exciting. There are more than three currencies today and RNG gearing proved not to be exciting.

 

The two Ilum Bosses falsely give around 10K points just for logging in – a big drop in the bucket – when you get 90-200 with the new system depending on your bonus for GSF matches won – you get nothing, if you lose – etc.

[TUXs]

3 days (43%) of the conquest week in the books so lets do a little math.

 

I've taken a best guess at the amount of active time it requires a player to repeat each type of objective, and scored that against the point yield to come up with an expectation of conquest points per minute. Accounting for the bugged world bosses giving free points, the optimal points per minute when all activities are available is 422.6. With all of the one time content removed the points per minute is reduced to 60.6. At this point I make a couple assumptions in my model. The first is that approximately 1 day is spent on the low hanging fruit for conquest contributors before it is gone. So players operate at an efficiency of 422.6 points per minute for 1 day, and 60.6 points per minute for the remaining time, at the top end of the leaderboards any way where we can expect player routines to be optimized and adapted to completing conquest. We are for now going to ignore the effect of stockpiled invasion forces and Crafting: Aid The War Effort, because that is not going to be indicative of the system beyond the first few weeks while invasion forces are sunk into flailing against the nerfs and pretending everything is ok until they are gone. However, the existence of these means the totals we see on the leaderboards are highly inflated.

 

Our model of 1 day at 422.6 and 6 days at 60.6 for the conquest week means that in all likelihood, close to 69% of the conquest points to be earned this week have already been realized. Using that number and checking the leaderboards that suggests the following:

 

Only one guild is on pace to meet the large planet conquest goal. The current leader is setting a pace to hit about 2.8 million points. The second place guild is on pace to get 1.9 million conquest points.

 

On the medium leaderboard, 6 guilds are on pace to meet the conquest goal. The top guild here is actually just on pace to meet the large planet goal.

 

On the small leaderboard, 7 guilds are on pace to meet the conquest goal. The top 2 guilds on the small leaderboard are on pace to meet the medium leaderboard.

 

So this week, we can expect about 14 guilds, instead of 30 to earn encryptions. I suspect the number to be higher than that, but not by much. Guilds that are close will dig into their invasion force stockpiles to push over the top at the end of the week, further depleting them.

 

If large and medium targeted guilds down rank, you can add another 1 medium winner and 12 small winners would be possible. So if people target the right planets, you'll see close to the 30 winners that would have happened before, but just barely. 10th place on the large leaderboard is 46,000 points ahead of the pace required to meet the small planet goal, and the 10th place on the medium leaderboard is 508 points ahead of that pace, so it is unlikely there are a significant number of guilds below top 10 that would make the cut for small if they downranked.

 

What this data reinforces is that the conquest point goals are poorly fit to the rate conquest points are earned, to the point where they are rewarding fewer guild rewards than just a top 10 for each planet. I'm pretty sure the design intent was to allow a larger pool of guilds to be competitive.

What's most interesting about these numbers is, this is the very first week for this *NEW* Conquest...interest will never be this high again.

 

Good post...excellent job of highlighting the actual issue.

[Exly]

I don't think a roll back is correct. Changes yes. But what about those individual that have gotten the last operation boss and from what I have understand that is not easy to do, should they lose their achievements and rewards because of the conquest?

 

A roll back doesn't just affect one part of the game but other parts and while something should be done with the conquest doing a rollback affects more than just conquest and that would not be fair to those that have done the operations (and no I haven't done it) and achieved the achievements and rewards. I would hate to see anyone lose that because of one part of the game needs fixed.

 

Why not do both. In the short term they could roll back the changes to conquest (not operations or anything else), and then go to work on making changes to conquest.

 

Then, when they are done making changes, and they have communicated those changes to us, and have adapted what they are doing to include our feedback, they could release a more customer friendly version that we can appreciate.

[Ibokagain]

 

I do like the change from per character to legacy. I think that does help small vs large guilds.

 

junk rewards and generally not give two thoughts to conquest again.

 

Actually that right there hurts smaller guilds more as smaller guilds have much less qualifying accounts then say the larger guilds.

[KendraP]

Actually that right there hurts smaller guilds more as smaller guilds have much less qualifying accounts then say the larger guilds.

 

This is my opinion on the matter. I used to cap 5-15 toons. Ive capped one this week and thats due to the bug. I also havent really been trying this week, because why would I?

[phalczen]

Hey folks,

 

Keep the feedback coming! Seeing your thoughts on the revamp is very helpful to the team. My plan is that tomorrow I want to get the following information into this thread: a breakdown of our intention around the Conquest revamp and a list of the feedback points that all of you have raised. This will allow you to see our thoughts on Conquests and then to highlight the feedback you have stated that we are actively reviewing internally.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

There's just too much (77 pages and counting) to provide feedback on, but I did want to comment on a couple of posts.

 

• EVERY PvP match, win or lose, MUST reward points

• EVERY GSF match, win or lose, MUST reward points

• Restore crafting to how it was - maybe add in a diminishing return to points. Crafting is a VERY important thing to this game imo.

 

See, but this is exactly the problem. There are multiple threads in the GSF and PVP forums about so-called leeches, etc. Its not necessarily as bad as a person going AFK with a macro, but its pretty clear that a percentage of players will join pvp and GSF matches for the rewards of UCs, CXP, and conquest points, and not be there to actually contribute to their team. Now, it's not like I am paying the subscription cost for a leech so I cannot make said leech play the way I think they should. But its clearly a degenerate playstyle and I understand why the Devs made the changes they did. Subverting the once-per-legacy and weekly op boss lockout system by saving end-boss lockouts may have been "the only way some small guilds could compete," as someone wrote on page 60-something of this thread, but it was clearly not intended nor did it prevent large or multi-guilds from taking extreme advantage of it. Crafting was just as bad if not worse. When you can have multi-sub-guilds putting up tens of millions of points all through pre-crafting, something is clearly wrong with the system.

• State in the conquest notes if something is repeatable or not (clearly - like it was)

 

Agree completely. I need to be able to see within seconds whether an objective is:

• once per week and per legacy
  
• repeatable once a day per character
  
• repeatable once a day per legacy
  
• repeatable without any restrictions
  
• etc.
  

There are color coded symbols, but no legend. Devs need to include a legend to decipher the icons, or elaborate in the text on the right sided window when you click on the objective, or pop-up a tool tip when you hover your mouse pointer over the icon.

 

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.

 

Now, this is a fair criticism, and this deserves to be addressed. I don't know if the nerf bat was swung too hard on warzone/GSF participation ... but removing the ground and GSF weeklies was definitely too far. Conquest is about "Winning," I get that sentiment, but a player shouldn't spend 9 hours doing conquest-related content including doing 7 GSF matches and only have 8513 legitimate points to show for it. Therefore, I think the pvp weeklies and gsf weeklies need to be re-instated as conquest objectives, if the Devs are unwilling to add back the objectives for simply participating (which they may well be because of exploitability.)

 

EDIT: and absolutely the Commander's Compendium, at 4.25 mil and 3 Dark Projects, needs to be Bind on Legacy!

Edited March 22, 2018 by phalczen

[Ibokagain]

I’ve been holding back comment, but here are my observations so far:

 

1. The changes are designed to make Conquest an account-centric activity, rather than an alt-centric activity. I believed this is intended to lower the entry barrier for new players.

 

2. Rewarding “wins” is probably intended to address PVPer complaints that PVE players simply play to complete their weekly, without making efforts to win.

 

3. Nerfing crafting is also intended to level the playing field. See 1.

 

I think all of the changes boil down to those goals. I can’t tell whether the changes will be good or bad in the long run, because we haven’t even finished one conquest yet. But I think that is what they intended to do.

 

I couldn't stop laughing while reading this.

 

1. I highly doubt a brand new player to this game could even remotely compete. First they would have to pay 50 million for a guild ship, then they would have to buy every stronghold and unlock it. Granted then they could get their 10k bugged points for world bosses on Ilum. So to summarize last I checked when you level 1 to 70, I'm pretty sure you don't make that much cheddar.

 

2. Regarding PvP wins, you win one game and you are done for the day (on your legacy) it's not repeatable. So that is another 825 points, so now you are up to 10,825.

 

3. Have you even looked at crafting, check out making war supplies weapons and tell me that the change is for a brand new player to be able to compete.

 

Overall these changes don't help a new player unless said player is buying mass amounts of credits.

[Shwarzchild]

Actually that right there hurts smaller guilds more as smaller guilds have much less qualifying accounts then say the larger guilds.

 

Yes I'd agree it does hurt small guilds after re-reading what I wrote. However, I kind of think it's impossible to balance the playing field. A large guild will generally always beat a small one. Unless, there's like a bracket system that only pits large vs large, medium vs medium, small vs small. Small guilds will always fail against big ones without having like vs like.

[casirabit]

Why not do both. In the short term they could roll back the changes to conquest (not operations or anything else), and then go to work on making changes to conquest.

 

Then, when they are done making changes, and they have communicated those changes to us, and have adapted what they are doing to include our feedback, they could release a more customer friendly version that we can appreciate.

 

Not sure they could actually rollback just the conquest without affecting everyone else. While conquest needs some changing I don't think the rollback should affect the other parts and before you say that it is possible, consider who you are talking about.

 

Of course, there may be some that wouldn't mind a rollback so they could experience the Arcann romance (not me p) so for them they might enjoy it.

Edited March 22, 2018 by casirabit

[Hautamacky]

We will hear from the two until 1 pm the are now only in the office and work slowly through everything then go eat at company costs, of course, so we have to wait and still those who will certainly no night shift insert

[Ibokagain]

I'm absolutely against mixing cartel coin rewards with in game rewards. FIrst off, they already have grand chance cubes as a possible reward from cxp boxes. Mostly, if it goes one way then it will end up going the other. If you're able to get cartel coin rewards from doing in game challenges, then it won't be long before they make in game challenges aided by real life money purchases.

 

Not only that, but it hits their bottom line. People still spend money on CC packs. I don't know why because the prices are jacked up so ridiculously high, but people will seriously drop over 60 usd for hypercrates, and Bioware needs that money. I'm fine with just getting normal rewards for crafting, credits, and cxp stuff. That's great. Just make it so I can actually do conquest on more than a few toons without making this game a full time job. Bring back the incentives to do group content.

 

This I would rather they add in some charged matter transubstantiator and encrypted memory cores to the guild rewards for hitting the goal, for the first place of planet make the reward higher perhaps.

[Ibokagain]

*rolls eyes* Come on now. That's a big exaggeration & you know it. lol

They know that Ilum boss is a bug & have stated so. That won't factor into their stuff.

And even if it did, that's small toss in the bucket apposed to what normally hits with conquest.

 

There is also some doubling bug out there besides the ilum one, not sure how one of my toons got it bug they were at a little over 20k, when I logged back into them at another time they were at 40k. There are many more bugs then this.

[Thermonuked]

ok i agree with pretty much everything everyone in this thread has brought up so far, but instead of just moaning, i'm going to try added some suggestions on how it could be improved.

 

1, no legacy wide lock outs on anything, personal conquest points should relate to each character trying to achieve those points, not the account as a whole.

 

2. participation and variation should count for more, bring back rewards for taking part in things like pvp or gsf, win or lose, rewards for completing weekly achievements, across the board, more choice of fp's, heroics and uprisings to get rewarded for, maybe even have lower level rewards for killing bonus bosses on lower levels.

 

3. rewards relative to the difficulty of the tasks being undertaken, story mode flashpoints should get a lot less cp than running a mm fp, 16person hm ops should get a lot more than 8person sm ops, winning pvp/gsf should get more than losing, daily achievements should get less than weekly

 

4. a more informative interface for the new conquests, tabs for each activity type would be nice, but a drop down selector would also work, clearer indication of what is repeatable, once per day and once an event, or once an account needs to be more obvious.

 

i'm sure there are a ton of other things which need to be addressed, but as someone with 8 republic and 9 imperial characters who i like(d) to run conquests on, these changes make me wonder if its worth subscribing anymore if i can at most just use 2 characters

[Khaleg]

Its a new day in Austin Texas. 11am and the 2nd morning coffee should have sunk in.

So, what time should we expect this post?

 

That's after the meeting where they discuss if there should be another meeting tomorrow and which cookies should be served. Musco wants cookies with a "special" flavor to relax and Keith wants just Oreos. :--)

Edited March 22, 2018 by Khaleg

[Lyshar]

Follow up impressions:

 

GSF , when it pops is actually faster now. Instead of playing through the entire match for some cq points, people now just drop as soon as they think they are on the losing side, as they get no cq points for losing. PVP has more folks dropping too for the same reason.

 

Not sure why but repeatable missions for conquest seem to reset during the day, or so it seems . Resets kills for rampage missions, nothing like having 100 kills on Ilum and come back to see 0 later in the day. Also noticed some items seem to reset. Had invasion force reset, and then half way through crafting it showed as being complete.

 

Crafting, ***? Why take all the lower level schems? Now lower level toons can't really do conquest.

 

I don't want quitters in GSF & WZ though. Make people want to finish what they start, yet also make sure they give it their all. If one person goes "We're losing, I'm out." the team will be short one person and have to wait for a replacement, then they get one that goes "Oh they are losing, I'll leave." or "I'm not playing as a replacement.". I've had times where I was going to log and forgotten I was in queue, then I accept and do my best. Even if I end up replacing a quitter, it's no fun.

 

Not to mention if conquest is so much of a reason for them to queue in the first place let them have a reason to stay or in the long run they won't even queue up.

[Ibokagain]

Yes I'd agree it does hurt small guilds after re-reading what I wrote. However, I kind of think it's impossible to balance the playing field. A large guild will generally always beat a small one. Unless, there's like a bracket system that only pits large vs large, medium vs medium, small vs small. Small guilds will always fail against big ones without having like vs like.

 

Correct in their current system a large guild would always beat out a smaller one. The only way they could make it more competitive would be to have the planet yields restrictive to guilds qualifying account sizes. Meaning smaller planets would be for truly smaller guilds, and so forth.

[Khaleg]

Correct in their current system a large guild would always beat out a smaller one. The only way they could make it more competitive would be to have the planet yields restrictive to guilds qualifying account sizes. Meaning smaller planets would be for truly smaller guilds, and so forth.

 

I think it's very simple. It's quite some effort to build and maintain a large guild. If people don't want one it's their decision and damn right, but I ask to live with the consequences like a grown up would and should do and I'm not accepting "Booohhooo, but I want it all nevertheless". That is childish. A large guild is part of the effort or "work" if you can say so to earn the right for the rewards. People just should man up already and stop the whining.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Khaleg

[TUXs]

See, but this is exactly the problem. There are multiple threads in the GSF and PVP forums about so-called leeches, etc. Its not necessarily as bad as a person going AFK with a macro, but its pretty clear that a percentage of players will join pvp and GSF matches for the rewards of UCs, CXP, and conquest points, and not be there to actually contribute to their team.

It hasn't been an issue since Conquest was released - up until Tuesday, it was exactly like I asked for. Sure, people cheat the system...improve our ability to kick them, don't punish those who are willing to do GSF or PvP for points. It hasn't impacted me in years...it won't harm PvP or GSF to return it to like it was.

[KendraP]

It hasn't been an issue since Conquest was released - up until Tuesday, it was exactly like I asked for. Sure, people cheat the system...improve our ability to kick them, don't punish those who are willing to do GSF or PvP for points. It hasn't impacted me in years...it won't harm PvP or GSF to return it to like it was.

 

Hell it can only help pvp or gsf to return it to the way it was.

[PennyAnn]

And their data will clearly back this up when they pull it at the end of the week to look at it.

 

Broadly speaking....instead of quitting, threatening to quit, demanding rollbacks, etc. etc. if players would simply NOT touch Conquests until they fix the issues that have been clearly identified by multiple objective player comments... the data will match the angst expressed in this thread.

 

If everyone grumbles and threatens to leave, etc. etc. yet continues to play Conquests.. then the data till not match the expressed discontent. And like it or not... they do compare their actual data analytics with player complaints... seeking to find a trend/consensus between player allegations and player actions.

 

In our guild, in general we have the same observations of issues as others have presented AND we have all reported the issues via bug reporting. Until they are addressed... we as a guild have tabled Conquests for now..... and it's not like there are not plenty of other things for the guild to focus attention on. Nobody in my guild has threatened to quit over it, we simply see it as a poor use of our collective time until they get things fixed.

 

If no one plays the conquest, none of the bugs can be discovered and reported. We are play testing things for them on live right now, and without playing conquest there would be no factual feedback, only emotional feedback.

 

Your guild can choose to table doing conquests, but I doubt it will make any difference to Bioware. 70+ pages of negative feedback better, though... and that's just in this thread alone.

 

You may not like how others express their unhappiness but it is not your right to tell people how to post here. It has been made obvious over the years that the only way to get them to listen is to threaten their bottom line. That's why Ben was replaced and Galactic Command fixed. If the number of people who have threatened to unsub actually do, it will indeed make a difference. I can only hope that it isn't too late when that happens.

[Ibokagain]

It hasn't been an issue since Conquest was released - up until Tuesday, it was exactly like I asked for. Sure, people cheat the system...improve our ability to kick them, don't punish those who are willing to do GSF or PvP for points. It hasn't impacted me in years...it won't harm PvP or GSF to return it to like it was.

 

^Exactly this 100%

[AlrikFassbauer]

As predicted, big guilds are doing small planets right now. The Ilum number of 460.000 has already been surpassed by 4 bigger guilds, of which one already has ober 900.000 points, meanwhile no guild reaches the number of the middle planet. For the big planet, only one guild has the half of the 2530.000 points, and it is the only one over 1 Million anyway.

All on Tulak Hord.

[PorsaLindahl]

See, but this is exactly the problem. There are multiple threads in the GSF and PVP forums about so-called leeches, etc. Its not necessarily as bad as a person going AFK with a macro, but its pretty clear that a percentage of players will join pvp and GSF matches for the rewards of UCs, CXP, and conquest points, and not be there to actually contribute to their team. Now, it's not like I am paying the subscription cost for a leech so I cannot make said leech play the way I think they should. But its clearly a degenerate playstyle and I understand why the Devs made the changes they did.

 

What the changes to these amounts to is on par with a parent punishing all their children for the actions of 1. Or burning down a forest to get rid of one rabid wolf. It was complete and utter overkill.

 

I couldn't stop laughing while reading this.

 

1. I highly doubt a brand new player to this game could even remotely compete. First they would have to pay 50 million for a guild ship, then they would have to buy every stronghold and unlock it. Granted then they could get their 10k bugged points for world bosses on Ilum. So to summarize last I checked when you level 1 to 70, I'm pretty sure you don't make that much cheddar.

 

You don't need to be in a guild or own a guild ship to meet personal conquest (at least under the old system). I just recently leveled up new, un-guilded, characters. They completed their personal conquest, and then some, without the benefit of guild invasion bonus. Granted I had the 150% stronghold bonus, but nothing else. Under this new garbage system, though, it probably won't happen. You may be partially correct about a new player vs a new character. But it would still have been possible under the old system for both.

2. Regarding PvP wins, you win one game and you are done for the day (on your legacy) it's not repeatable. So that is another 825 points, so now you are up to 10,825.

 

To back that up, there are times when it takes 4 matches to complete the daily, which is 4 matches (wins count x2). So it's not a matter of "Hey, just win a match and be done for the day." No single person can carry a team in PvP. It doesn't matter how good they are, or how good they think they are. If you have 3 or more people that just screw off during a match, you can pretty much hang up winning if the other team is even remotely competent. Anyone that says otherwise is just lying and trying to stroke their ego.