New Conquest System: First Impressions

[Vercundus]

I have never seen so many players united! Even GC didn't receive a feedback this negative.

 

When I read patch notes I though 8% tax is going to have a negative response and effect... Oh boy, was I wrong!

 

If the idea of this change was to fix not getting rewards, then bravo... No one will play so no rewards would have to be awarded in the first place. If you wanted to reduce grinding, bingo, but objectives are so worthless now. I only managed to complete personal due to two bugs that gave me 10000 for world bosses (I dare you to revoke those points!)

 

Next week is suppose to be Total Galactic War. If personal is still 50000 points and you messed up war supplies... How many guilds will complete it? 5?

 

If I remember correctly, first mention of conquest change was some 6-7 months ago, meaning you've been working on this way longer and this is the best you can do?

 

I'm sorry BW, but you just lost at least 11 months of my sub time. And I'll carefully think if I want to sub even once a year, purely for the "new content"...

[Master_Morak]

Hey eric, or really, any of the incompetent dev team, how about getting on the forums and explaining your reasoning behind any of these absolutely laughable conquest changes? hmm?

 

I', still waiting if any of these idiots will say anything.

 

That changes are a kick in the *** of conquest Players - only points for winning PvP, the tremendous costs by the crafting quests.

 

The only good idea with daily repeatable is not enough - 250 kills each day - grind at the best.

 

The only thing to is a rollback to the old system and a redesign. Please tell your custom what you want to do, get there feedback and avoid to deliver such a bull.****

Edited March 20, 2018 by Master_Morak

[ThomasStarWars]

I have never seen so many players united! Even GC didn't receive a feedback this negative.

 

When I read patch notes I though 8% tax is going to have a negative response and effect... Oh boy, was I wrong!

 

If the idea of this change was to fix not getting rewards, then bravo... No one will play so no rewards would have to be awarded in the first place. If you wanted to reduce grinding, bingo, but objectives are so worthless now. I only managed to complete personal due to two bugs that gave me 10000 for world bosses (I dare you to revoke those points!)

 

Next week is suppose to be Total Galactic War. If personal is still 50000 points and you messed up war supplies... How many guilds will complete it? 5?

 

If I remember correctly, first mention of conquest change was some 6-7 months ago, meaning you've been working on this way longer and this is the best you can do?

 

I'm sorry BW, but you just lost at least 11 months of my sub time. And I'll carefully think if I want to sub even once a year, purely for the "new content"...

 

totally agree

[xordevoreaux]

It would be interesting to have people mention when they post on this thread how many legacies/players/toons, on average, participated in Conquest. Whether just the big boys are complaining because now they can't make 50m points within hours of the conquest opening, or if it's the small guilds with just a few participants feeling squeezed.

 

Interestly, Rose Corp (not my guild), which typically dominated on Star Forge often, chose the smallest planet, was in 10th place, and dropped off the board an hour ago, hasn't returned. When more people log in when they get home that may change.

 

I think it'll take a couple weeks of the conquest playing out before there's any major tweaks. The bellyaching will calm down once people get their footing and see what they can do. You won't be making 50m off the bat any more, leading everyone else on a 10-slot planet by 20 million points. It was unnecessary before, it's unnecessary now.

 

Edit: A quick glance at the boards again reveals a very smooth curve from one accumulation of points of one guild to the next, across all three guilds, rather than any one guild suddenly jumping millions of points ahead. This smooth curve is a good thing in terms of competition.

Edited March 20, 2018 by xordevoreaux

[curulz]

In order to be more constructive....

 

Too many things are limited to 1 per day per legacy for minimal points. I'd double the amount of points, and remove the legacy restriction. If the legacy portion were to remain, then the points would need to drastically increased, like 3-4 times current amount.

 

Or another option, would be to lower the personal total required, to 10k.

 

This comes from the perspective of someone that usually caps 15-20 toons each week, mostly from operations. I don't PVP or run dailies. I'm sure folks that play different have a different take on it. But for me, this kills capping multiple toons.

[SpeaktoMe]

Congrats I have been on since launch and I just deleted my auto payment, when it runs out I will not renew. This new update is the biggest mistake your team ever made. Thank you for the years of fun and gaming but I think its time for me to move on and find something new.

[OneHit]

Its really bad. All of it. Best thing i can equate it too is when you guys decided to give up on endgame for 3 years and go full story mode. You never go full story mode.

 

Also i can compare it to the time you guys decided to take out all gear drops in the game. And instead forced random gear.

 

Its that bad. Its really just terrible. Cant tell which are repeatable and whats not? even after you sort it. You still cant tell. Is it the little recycle symbol. Why are some gold an some silver? Is there a tool tip i'm missing. Also what about these weak rewards. Really. Why are we getting the same rewards we did when conquest first started. OOOOH. IF I INVADE THE HARDEST PLANET I GET ANOTHER CRATE OF **** DECOS I HAVEN'T NEEDED SINCE 2016, AN EXTRA 100K, 2 EXTRA RESOURCE MATRIX FOR 5.1 GEAR, AND AN EXTRA 20 JAWA JUNK. It's really gonna stop the larger guilds from going for the easy planets.... You guys are out of touch!

 

The ultimate problem is you guys don't know how to make MMO's. That's the basic underlying problem. You cant operate like this. You can't make major changes without testing them. Give us a 20 minute stream a week before. Release the notes a day before. And not have some sort of input from the community.

 

I have to ask the question. Are the devs trying to systematically destroy every good thing about this game?

[ThomasStarWars]

It would be interesting to have people mention when they post on this thread how many legacies/players/toons, on average, participated in Conquest. Whether just the big boys are complaining because now they can't make 50m points within hours of the conquest opening, or if it's the small guilds with just a few participants feeling squeezed.

 

Interestly, Rose Corp (not my guild), which typically dominated on Star Forge often, chose the smallest planet, was in 10th place, and dropped off the board an hour ago, hasn't returned. When more people log in when they get home that may change.

 

I think it'll take a couple weeks of the conquest playing out before there's any major tweaks. The bellyaching will calm down once people get their footing and see what they can do. You won't be making 50m off the bat any more, leading everyone else on a 10-slot planet by 20 million points. It was unnecessary before, it's unnecessary now.

 

i used to play op, and scoundrel, jugg and knight, slinger and sniper, and assassin as a solo non guilded.

 

now i have no incentive to play them at all

[KendraP]

I have been a subscriber to this game for over 5 years. Ive stuck with it through some dumb decisions (like taking loot off ops bosses). Eventually it came bsck around, and i sincerely hope it does again.

 

That said, conquest is a huge draw to keep me involved. If there are not promised changes for the better and fast, my money might go elsewhere.

 

Having seen this makes me terrified to consider how you intend to fix skanks in pvp. Should you somehow, purposefully or accidentally by oversight, make pvp tanking useless AND not fix this broken conquest system i will be gone. Heck if you dont fix this broken conquest system and give tanks in pvp a damage nerf or cap i might be gone.

 

You have a very good chance of keeping me and my money. It requires primarily fixing of this conquest system. I am not a credit farmer or gtn player. My income comes mostly from heroics. Im sitting at 50 mill across my entire legacy and trying ti practically solo fund my guilds ship. Without capping multiple toons i have little hope, and honestly little reason to continue playing.

 

I thought the randomness was going to be the worst part of this change. Boy was i wrong.

[nightsoflove]

The initial reaction to a disappointment is always the harshest, right? This is my third post, and I'm probably going to wake up tomorrow, thinking that I over-reacted and go about my day, but right now, it feels rather satisfying to express my opinions.

 

I think that it's time to admit that there's something wrong in the way that this game is handled. I play as a member of a small guild, but we perform a leadership role in the wider community of our server and we run activities for other players in a community that can be equally as vicious as this one. We're not perfect and we are very capable of admitting that, and we struggle to navigate the ins and outs of our community while we create something. We don't always agree, but that's the point. We have to tell each other that we're wrong when we're doing something wrong, otherwise we wouldn't realize it at all. A swat on my wrist is a safer bet than the ire of an angry and disappointed community, no? It's why I surround myself with the rational, level-headed people, aside from the fact that we're good friends. My point is, that someone had to recognize that these changes were going to be a bad idea and that this person wasn't given their due attention or had their concerns dismissed for alternative reasons. I find it inconceivable that it would be missed. More over, that this these concerns hadn't at all been put to the test by being brought to the community for validation, to gather whether we believed this would be good direction for the game.

 

You required an extra week to make this one perfect, but again, you missed the opportunity, as you've done many times before this past year. It's really disappointing and I find myself questioning whether this developer team is able to satisfy me as a customer for much longer. I want to enjoy this game and I want my friends to enjoy the game, too. Please start listening and look to your player base for advice. Nobody knows what we want better than us.

Edited March 20, 2018 by nightsoflove

[xordevoreaux]

i used to play op, and scoundrel, jugg and knight, slinger and sniper, and assassin as a solo non guilded.

 

now i have no incentive to play them at all

 

In the past week, you've posted enough threads about enough topics to show you don't really have any incentive to play for plenty of reasons, not just for this.

[Fraah]

Thoughts?

 

Layout: Guild Invasion page is okay, conquest page has added needless scrolling and isn't very nice to look at. IMO there is a general lack of conciseness and explanations to this page.

 

Points: Too few points for most activities makes gaining points a chore rather than rewarding.

 

PVP: Points for PVP is obviously a mistake, so please just acknowledge it and we can move on. No ideas why the points for the weeklies have been removed either.

 

Legacy: One of the stupid things about the original conquest was the once per legacy objectives and you've made this worse by removing the unofficial once per toon stuff (GF dailies, etc).

 

Crafting: You've made crafting a lot more expensive and thus a lot less powerful. IMO this is a bad change, but this is probably one point where there will be a 50/50 approval/disapproval split.

 

Scaled planets/scaled rewards: IMO this is fine. Giving too good rewards for the hardest planets would reward big guilds too much.

 

In summary: I think this makes conquests less rewarding for many people, will make some of these people less active, won't make many people more active than now and will thus further reduce the activity on most servers.

 

Many of the changes are needless and harmful and we need a big rethink very quickly.

 

A lot of people are comparing this to the initial command rank system and while I don't think it's quite as bad as conquests are mmore peripheral than gear, I do think there is a parallel and I worry people will leave because of this ill thought-out change and won't come back later, as happend with 5.0.

 

Lessons that should have been learned obviously weren't.

 

I'm hoping for a detailed response from Keith telling us which of these changes were really intentional (as I said, I am 99.9% certain the lack of conquest points for PVP are a bug, if not then there really is no more hope...) and what the reasoning behind the other changes was.

[ThomasStarWars]

In the past week, you've posted enough threads about enough topics to show you don't really have any incentive to play for plenty of reasons, not just for this.

 

oh i do want to play. i thought suggestions forum was for suggestions though? dont be so passive aggressive on me.

 

i and a lot of players agree that this conquest system sucks.

[Zerileth]

Congrats I have been on since launch and I just deleted my auto payment, when it runs out I will not renew. This new update is the biggest mistake your team ever made. Thank you for the years of fun and gaming but I think its time for me to move on and find something new.

 

We're running out of player base for this to keep happening. I can't believe I'm starting to think about how to close out my account: which achievements to finish up, start selling off stuff in my storage, buy those last few cartel items and max out my collections. And finally delete rarely played alts and shut her down. If they don't reverse this, my next two weeks will simply be devoted to getting my account ready for closure.

[peter_plankskull]

If your beta testers were ok with these changes to the conquest system, you need to never pick them again. My guess though is that these issues were raised and subsequently ignored .

 

I wouldn't blame the beta testers... originally before GC was released... it was 100 levels... people testing it complained that it was far too grindy... in response they raised it another 200 levels...

[decicco]

How did you make conquest worse than I thought possible?

 

With the small conquest objective of 460k, at 20k a pop, you’re looking at 23 different toons meeting this goal. So either you have 23 active people attempting to grind the revamped and extremely nerfed point system (never have I been in a guild where this has happened) or you have fewer players who are better off not doing conquest at all because countless hours of grinding for EACH toon is absurd. I’m only above 10k now because of the npc bug on Ilum.

 

On a personal note, I didn’t do conquest before because of the lack of interest from my peers who numbered maybe 10 at best.

 

If you are going to set the bar this high, remove the flagship frameworks and plans so that I can work towards a goal that’s attainable, that goal being expanding my flagship that has been unable to expand because of a) larger guilds monopolizing the leaderboard and b) guilds and individuals hoarding plans and encryptions until someone meets their extortionistic credit prices.

 

Whoever is advising from EA needs to be ignored completely, as the lessons learned of grinding in Battlefront II apparently didn’t translate here.

[Toraak]

I usually completed conquest on 1 or 2 characters. All through GSF, now that is out the door, and I know the loss of conquest points for Participating in GSF will drastically affect the GSF queu. I highly suspect that most of the time I got a GSF pop the majority of both teams were there for conquest. Now this will serious harm the GSF queu. Bad decision on the way you changed GSF, and PvP to not just participation, but to WINS, not to mention how pathetic the points are for both and the fact I do not believe either are spammable now.

[IvoryTiger]

Just an FYI. Biochem is the only crafting skill that didn't get their War Supplies squished into one level. It's still multiple levels like 5.7 and before.

[KendraP]

I usually completed conquest on 1 or 2 characters. All through GSF, now that is out the door, and I know the loss of conquest points for Participating in GSF will drastically affect the GSF queu. I highly suspect that most of the time I got a GSF pop the majority of both teams were there for conquest. Now this will serious harm the GSF queu. Bad decision on the way you changed GSF, and PvP to not just participation, but to WINS, not to mention how pathetic the points are for both and the fact I do not believe either are spammable now.

 

Not even just wins... just wins i could've dealt with. Once per legacy per day for a pathetic point amount! Its absurd

[Zerileth]

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!

[Toraak]

Not even just wins... just wins i could've dealt with. Once per legacy per day for a pathetic point amount! Its absurd

 

I'd agree, however even if it was spammable for Winning only, it would mean Less of the old Conquest farmers would be there, so I believe even having it as WINS is bad for the queu. Lets face it GSF has had slow pops for awhile without conquest farmers. Now it'll be nonexistent.

[Balosar]

Well, I don't know if I'm that representative. I played the game on release with one character to lvl 50 but stopped early after this since I'm mostly a single player.

This December I got back and even subscribed, got a new character to lvl 70 and my old to lvl 70 too. And I had fun untill today.

 

My goal was to get a freaking guild ship just because it's a 800 meters battleship. And I saved the credits and got this ship alone. I also intended to expand it but I didn't find a way to make it in a appropriate time (yes I know it's made for guilds but I don't want to farm for years). I collected other things I could do in single player and I had fun (like collecting money for strongholds, doing all Star Fortresses, making selected achievements) and I started to do conquest alone too. But it was fun to repeat missions I could do alone to gather enough points.

 

I hoped patch 5.8 will help me to get an expanded guild ship on my own. I even planned to play the other classes not only for story but maybe for conquest rewards helping to get that ship finish. But the patch didn't help.

It's so terrible and just not doable for little guilds or solo players like me. I did research for tips on how to expand guild ships and find out you can do veteran flashpoints to gather Refined Isotope Stabilizer just to find out you removed this from the game again.

 

It's absolute impossible for me to successful participate in conquest alone. I know it's made for guilds but why do you have to exclude solo players?

 

Now that I came to the conclusion I can't get this ship done without farming for years I lost my motivation. I don't plan to play the other class stories any more and I unsubscribed already. I won't go on playing this game now (thats why I started with "I may not be representative") but I hope there will be changes motivating me to come back

Edited March 20, 2018 by Balosar

[Toraak]

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!

 

^ 100% this. and I've never said that about anything BW has done, including GC. This however needs to go back to the way it was.

[Nebdar]

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.

 

I just quote because it in almost 100% summarize my opinions and questions....

[xordevoreaux]

There are 30 guilds on Star Forge occupying all available slots that are somehow earning points toward conquest on this new system. While you're here bellyaching, they're earning points.

 

SOMEBODY has figured it out. In fact 30 guild leaders have figured it out.

Look at Unchained Wrath on Star Forge, biggest planet, number 1, hit 1.028,930 points, second place is You Aint Sith at 435,538 points. THEY FIGURED IT OUT and they're rolling with it.

 

Get your footing in this new system and run with it. If this was an employee test to see how versatile you were with changing conditions, most of you, based on your whining, would score very poorly.

 

My recommendations to the DEVs: Let this play out for 2 weeks worth of conquests before doing any tweaks whatsoever. What you're seeing is a small subset of players who aren't patient enough to work with the new system.

 

Players on this thread saying the new conquest system sucks, etc., etc., roll it back, etc., etc., talk to the leader of Unchained Wrath. They have figured it out, and they're smoking you.