Conquest Feedback and Upcoming Changes

[olagatonjedi]

That statement is very far from the truth. In limiting the ability for large guilds to gain points, they also limited small guilds' abilities to gain points. These are across the board nerfs. Our guild has roughly 30 accounts active and around, of that number only a quarter actively do any sort of content that would put any conquest numbers on the board. However, we were almost always on the top 10, and even claimed a planet once. That was before the mergers and changes. We're proof that a small, and casual guild can compete if given the opportunity to do so. This patch has effectively neutered our ability, and drive be competitive.

Your guilds situation is exactly what the majority vote was trying to get rid of. The new system gets rid of it, or at the very least diminishes it. Large guilds do the same thing, and that was the #1 problem people voiced that needed to change, so while it affects your guild, it also negatively affects large guilds much more (as intended) and positively affects small guilds that didnt use those tactics.

 

The result: improved overall conquest balance= positive.

[Shwarzchild]

[quote=DisposableHeero;9564648

Capping in the old system was much much less time consuming. It wasn't easier or harder because none of the activities have changes, it is now pointlessly more grind than it was before. There is no competitive reason for lowering these yields, because they are the same for everyone. there is no reason to lower them while keeping the target the same other than as a money grab. They want people to play longer for the same reward, so they subscribe longer, and their buy more cartel coins out of impatience.

 

I agree with you. I do think the point values are too low, and need to rise. It's why I like that BW said they were raising the values as well as lowering the personal target total.

[genealogymaster]

I tried to motivate myself but just couldn’t do it. The reward/effort makes no sense, and I have no desire to kill another 250 mobs to get less than a thousand points. As the Dude would say, It’s a bummer, man.

 

 

Good point I couldn't motivate myself either because the rewards aren't worth the effort.

[olagatonjedi]

This is backwards. More non-repeatable activities, and a bigger falloff of point generating power there is after the one time and dailies are out fo the way, the harder it is for small guilds to compete. If you compare a guild with 5 players and a guild with 20 players, no matter what the activities are, the 5 player guild must get 4 times the conquest points from each of its players to beat the 20 player guild's score. If all objectives were repeatable and yielded 1000 points an hour, and the 20 player guild's players spent 15 hours and hit conquest on 1 toon, than each player in the 5 player guild would need to do 60 hours of conquest to catch them. If there are 12,000 points to be had at 1000 points an hour, then the repeatable activities after that are 500 points an hour, the large guild needs 18 hours per player to get rewards, the small guild needs 108 hours per player. The more limited the efficient point granting activities are in how often you can do them, the harder it becomes for any guild to make up a player deficit through hard work. Eventually you run out of hours to catch up.

A 4x discrepancy (50 vs 200) is easier to overcome than a 5x discrepancy (150 vs 750). The more activities, larger the ratio, and harder it becomes.

[Ibokagain]

 

Hey folks,

 

In this thread we want to cover a few things about Conquests: our goals for the revamp, the feedback we are hearing from all of you, and what we are changing (and when). I recommend you start by reading our write-up of the changes that were coming to 5.8. Let’s jump in.

 

The Conquest Revamp – Goals

We had a few things in mind that we wanted to address as we moved from the old system into the new one. First and foremost were rewards. This includes ensuring that the new system delivers the rewards you earn, but also increasing the overall rewards for participating in Conquests. Here are is what you receive now when you and your Guild complete a conquest:

• A large amount of Credits and CXP via completion of Objectives
  
• Personal rewards, including crafting materials, credits, and more
  
• Invasion rewards, including crafting materials, credits, Encryptions, and more, which is now rewarded to all Guilds who meet the invasion target.
  
• Access to the Fleet vendor which sells special decos and the Master Compendium (Companion Influence boost)
  

 

Here are some of the other areas we were aiming to address:

• Objectives and their points – Conquests are meant to be an activity that someone can work on throughout the week as they play the game. Previously, Conquests were very homogenized in that there was very little diversity among each week. We used this opportunity to spread out what objectives were available in each Conquest.
  
• Crafting - Crafting is a key part of Conquests, and we certainly did not want to remove that. However, we know the use of War Supplies and crafting was contributing too much to the overall competition of Conquests. For that reason, we reduced the overall effectiveness of Crafting, but added new functionality to War Supplies that they can be consumed to add Conquest points. Allowing you to get points out of them twice if you want, or you could craft them on one character and then move them to other characters to gain conquest points.
  
• Yield Targets – Competition among different sized Guilds has always been a problem in Conquests. We introduced yield targets to assist in separating out Guilds by various sizes, as they have differing targets and rewards.
  
• Interface – We gave the interface a facelift (as outlined in the other post) to make it easier to find activities you may want to complete.
  

 

Your Feedback

We never saw this revamp as being a perfect change out of the gates, but it is a first step for us in crafting an improved Conquest system. Your feedback is incredibly valuable as we can immediately start making changes to get things to a great place. Now that you understand what our goals were, let’s talk about the things we are hearing from you.

 

Changed / Missing Objectives

This feedback was most commonly expressed from PvP’ers who saw a daily objective for winning a Warzone, but not one for participating. Our plan to combat the old system’s homogenization was to spread out all Objectives. This week may not have participation as an Objective, but it isn’t gone, it is just in a different Conquest. However, this information was not clear and breaks too far from the old system.

Plan: We are going to add a repeatable GSF and Warzone Participation Objective into all Conquest weeks. This will go into our next patch (possibly next week).

 

Objective Points Too Low

With the rebalance to Conquest Objectives, there is a general sense that completing your Personal Conquest takes too long and by proxy, Guild Invasions as well.

Plan: We are going to lower the Personal Conquest target to 15,000 per week (down from 20,000). We are also adjusting the Planetary Yield Targets to be:

• Small is now 200,000 (down from 460,000)
  
• Medium is now 550,000 (down from 1,380,000)
  
• Large is now 1,130,000 (down from 2,530,000)
  
  • This will happen in our next patch (possibly next week).
    

 

Crafting Changes Too Harsh

Crafting in Conquests was just too good prior to 5.8. There is a feeling though that we cut a bit too deep on its overall impact to Conquests. The War Supply schematics were combined which made them harder to craft, and their point contribution went down, even with the added functionality of being able to consume them.

Plan: We are going to give it some time and monitor the impact of these changes, and then we will make any needed adjustments in 5.9 or beyond.

 

Large Yield Target Rewards Aren’t Good Enough

We are seeing concerns that the Large (and possibly Medium) Yield rewards simply aren’t good enough to warrant the extra points required. That this may cause most Guilds to simply filter down into Small Yields, which is counter-productive to the goal of getting Guilds to split a bit by Guild size.

Plan: This is something we are sensitive to but without seeing actual participation data around Conquests, we are hesitant to make changes just yet. We will monitor in the coming weeks and make any needed changes in 5.9 and beyond.

 

New UI Confusion

There definitely is some confusion around the iconography in the new UI, especially for Objectives. For quick reference right now, Yellow icon means infinitely repeatable, Blue means daily repeatable, no icon means once per week.

Plan: With 5.9 we will be adjusting some text along with adding tooltips to ensure that is a bit clearer. We’re also going to be swapping the yellow/blue to be consistent with the rest of the game. In addition, we’ll be adding some additional fly text for Conquest Objective completion.

 

Punishing to Alts // Legacy

With the rebalance of Objective points and the reclassification of some Objective types, there is some concern over the ability for a player with multiple characters in a Legacy to be competitive in Conquests. Additionally, there are similar concerns for folks with characters within a Legacy in more than one Guild.

Plan: One initial step to resolve this is the lowering of the Conquest targets as highlighted above. Also, by adding more repeatable Objectives (like PvP participation) as noted, this should give players more ways to gain points and make it easier to achieve targets. Beyond that we will continue to monitor data and your feedback to seek other possible changes in 5.9 and beyond.

 

That is most of the major points of feedback we have seen coming in regarding the Conquest revamp, but we know it isn’t everything. Let us know your thoughts on the changes we have planned. Also, even after these changes are out the door please keep your feedback coming. We are committed to getting Conquests to be enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

-eric

 

 

Yall just don't get it, I along with many others in my guild play this game to have fun. Conquest in the old system was fun, was it perfect by no means. However this new system is worse, I shouldn't have gotten excited like many others in my guild when you posted this, I should of known that it would of been just like 5.0 GC debacle.

 

Clearly in your objectives the fact you state that "conquests are meant to be an activity that someone can work on throughout the week" means that yall have no actually perspective of reality when it comes to playing this game. Myself and my guidlies want to play what we want and prior to this patch we could do exactly that and we would complete conquest and hit the top ten many weeks.

 

I do not understand why yall can't get this in your heads as well, live servers are not TEST SERVERS. Please go work at another company that develops software and try doing that. Put your test on the PTS and guess what actually open it up to everyone, I would be more than happy to actually go to the PTS as I have done in the past prior to the influencer programs that clearly do not work now for testing. However the second part of that would mean once people have tested it and given you a majority feedback saying this is broken or this is a terrible idea, if yall don't take that into account then maybe yall should just stop making these "new changes" and just fix the bugs in this game. That way yall aren't wasting company resources on creating more bugs and pissing of your customers.

 

Going forward after this week, I along with many in my guild are done doing conquest. We will play some of the game however all of us are reducing our game play due to playing other games that are actually fun, release new content regularly and actually listen to their player base. Half of my guild has already unsubbed and they will not be coming back to this game ~ 20 subs. Time will tell when the last half of my guild finally says they have had enough.

 

Happy weekend.

Ibok

[dynosian]

Your guilds situation is exactly what the majority vote was trying to get rid of. The new system gets rid of it, or at the very least diminishes it. Large guilds do the same thing, and that was the #1 problem people voiced that needed to change, so while it affects your guild, it also negatively affects large guilds much more (as intended) and positively affects small guilds that didnt use those tactics.

 

The result: improved overall conquest balance= positive.

 

 

 

There's absolutely no logic to that statement. There are no positive effects for smaller guilds. Not a single one of these changes has brought us closer to bigger guilds, nor provided a single member with a sense of accomplishment for trying to participate. Weekly guild goals? Not nearly as satisfying as capping a planet or being in the top ten.

 

The nerf effects all guilds equally, big or small. Ergo there is no positive for small guilds, as they receive the same negatives as larger guilds. Nothing changed that gave a buff that only effected smaller guilds, nor were there any changes that only negatively effected larger guilds. Changes were made across the board, not cherry picked.

 

Using your own argument (50 vs 200 or 250 vs 1000) it's still a 75% split, you're just dealing in larger or smaller numbers, the distance between the two, relative to the ease of gaining points, and their availability, remains exactly the same. At best, nothing has changed, you just have more unhappy people now who don't like how points have to be gained.

[DisposableHeero]

A 4x discrepancy (50 vs 200) is easier to overcome than a 5x discrepancy (150 vs 750). The more activities, larger the ratio, and harder it becomes.

A 20 player guild versus a 5 player guild is always going to be a 4x discrepancy, for literally any activity point values. Learn 2 Math.

[PorsaLindahl]

There's absolutely no logic to that statement.

A 20 player guild versus a 5 player guild is always going to be a 4x discrepancy, for literally any activity point values. Learn 2 Math.

 

You guys are being trolled. Don't take his bait. As I've told others, he'll just keep repeating the same thing, with some small variations, no matter what you respond with.

 

That's your opinion and regarding mine I refuse to do any participation going forward next week in conquest. My playing time also will drastically decrease as I'm playing other games that are actually fun to play, and my sub is no more.

 

I think we both got trolled. He's just mincing words and twisting everything around to make it sound like the opposite of what was said. I'm done feeding him. With his twisted logic, it's no wonder he likes how things are now.

[Kyrra_T]

Your guilds situation is exactly what the majority vote was trying to get rid of. The new system gets rid of it, or at the very least diminishes it. Large guilds do the same thing, and that was the #1 problem people voiced that needed to change, so while it affects your guild, it also negatively affects large guilds much more (as intended) and positively affects small guilds that didnt use those tactics.

 

The result: improved overall conquest balance= positive.

 

See this post is exactly MY point. The goal for those screaming for change has NEVER been to balance content. It has been to try and exclude anyone who 'IS NOT ME' from being able to participate in conquest.

 

They don't actually wan't balance, they just want all those pesky other people who kept 'cheating' them from winning by being social, completing activities, and generally playing the game, to go away so that without effort they can win.

 

The actual goal is to exclude anyone from the pitiful amount of content available to them who might get in the way of that happening.

 

Even Bioware isn't stupid enough to lock the large guilds out of content. They believed that what was wanted was the guild rewards. They apparently never realized it was the planetary titles.

 

I fully expect a proposal to pop up in this thread that any character who HAS a planetary title be excluded from participating in a conquest for that planet, and anyone WITH Galaxy Conqueror banned from participating in conquest entirely.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Kyrra_T

[PorsaLindahl]

See this post is exactly MY point. The goal for those screaming for change has NEVER been to balance content. It has been to try and exclude anyone who 'IS NOT ME' from being able to participate in conquest.

 

They don't actually wan't balance, they just want all those pesky other people who kept 'cheating' them from winning by being social, completing activities, and generally playing the game, to go away so that without effort they can win.

 

The actual goal is to exclude anyone from the pitiful amount of content available to them who might get in the way of that happening.

 

Even Bioware isn't stupid enough to lock the large guilds out of content. They believed that what was wanted was the guild rewards. They apparently never realized it was the planetary titles.

 

I fully expect a proposal to pop up in this thread that any character who HAS a planetary title be excluded from participating in a conquest for that planet, and anyone WITH Galaxy Conqueror banned from participating in conquest entirely.

 

Before arguing with him some more, think of poor Bart.

[Exly]

A 20 player guild versus a 5 player guild is always going to be a 4x discrepancy, for literally any activity point values. Learn 2 Math.

 

Under the current system, what you said may be true, but in the old system, a guild with 20 player accounts and no alts would have the chance to outdo a 5 person guild were all 5 had 4 characters in the guild, but it is also possible for the 5 people to outdo the 20 people if they are motivated to do so.

[ShadowGovernator]

Before arguing with him some more, think of poor Bart.

 

Indeed poor Bart - however it should read;

 

BioWare must roll-back conquest

BioWare must roll-back conquest

BioWare must roll-back conquest

[Morteistno]

 

 

 

Yall just don't get it, I along with many others in my guild play this game to have fun. Conquest in the old system was fun, was it perfect by no means. However this new system is worse, I shouldn't have gotten excited like many others in my guild when you posted this, I should of known that it would of been just like 5.0 GC debacle.

 

Couldn't help but rereading the original announcement and after a few sentences you get this

 

"Conquest point values for all objectives have been rebalanced across the board."

 

Apparently rebalancing is the same as "adjusted downwards in degrees varying between a factor of five and infinity" in bio-speak. I suppose technically it is a form of rebalancing so in a court it may hold up but as players who are paying to have fun it is not exactly what most players expected with this I guess..

[Morteistno]

They didn't even need to do that. All that they needed to do was tell us the truth in the first place. Instead they told us that they were making changes in order to make it easier for small guilds to achieve their conquest goals, and we all know that it is now significantly harder for anyone, guilded or not the even achieve their personal goal.

 

This was a mean spirited nerf meant to make the game more of a grind, and was not done to increase our enjoyment of playing it. They want us to work for paltry rewards, and sink more time, effort and credits to do it.

 

Well, I don't want to come to this game or any game to do work. I want to play and enjoy myself, and this new approach of theirs is nothing but a load of rubbish, and does nothing but reduce the number of reasons for me to continue paying for and playing this game.

 

So far that is what it seems like indeed. The changes Eric mentioned will somewhat improve the situation but the absolute silence on a serious upwards revision of the points per objective, reinstatement of weeklies counting for conquest, getting rid of the new legacy bound restrictions aso means that after the 'fix' next week and potentially long after 5.9 it will still be much harder than before to reach personal conquest goals.

 

There are numerous posts that spell out the mathematical differences, which remain extreme even after the downwards revision of the 15k target pre and post 5.8 and hard as it is to believe that noone at Bioware did some mathematical comparison between how easy it was to get the conquest score in the old vs the new system before they released it is insane to believe that they have not read the posts made by the community proving this and so are aware of it now.

 

So the silence on it means that it is probably intended.

 

Edit: also - it can not be much effort to raise the points per objective. I assume it is a very simple table whose values need to be updated. I.e. like a 5 minutes job.

Edited March 23, 2018 by Morteistno

[PorsaLindahl]

Couldn't help but rereading the original announcement and after a few sentences you get this

 

"Conquest point values for all objectives have been rebalanced across the board."

 

Apparently rebalancing is the same as "adjusted downwards in degrees varying between a factor of five and infinity" in bio-speak. I suppose technically it is a form of rebalancing so in a court it may hold up but as players who are paying to have fun it is not exactly what most players expected with this I guess..

 

Rebalance: (Definition the rest of the world uses)

verb

balance again or restore the correct balance to.

 

Rebalance: (BW's definition)

verb

kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.

 

Wait. Isn't that the definition of decimate?

Edited March 23, 2018 by PorsaLindahl

[Martin_Lauridsen]

I have only been back for a few weeks after years of play, last week was my first time i did Conquest, im a SOLO player, i do not play with other, i do not like to interact with other....

I could do the Conquest last week fairely easy, but this week its just some bull ****.

 

1. I have no Crafting Profession, so how the heck am i suposed to get those points ? So thats a lot of points i cant get there.

 

2. There are no H2 missions i can do every day that will give me any points, like it was last week *** ?

 

3. The Alliance Divided for Critical mission, yeah another **** buster, i cant find it any where, since i had like 15 critical missions, i have no f..ing clue which one it is, reading the description it cant be any of them, so where the heck is that Critical Mission for <Critical Missions: Iokath> ? Yeah no where :/ another points i cant get...

 

4. <Critical Missions: Relics of the Gree> just holy **** again, i did those missions, well except the 2 PvP, i do not like PvP, i sux at PvP, so another points i cant get.

 

5. <Defeat the Guid Patriarch (Master Mode)> Ah yeah, like i have the gear for that, so now they have to carry me... I just reached 70, another one i probably wont be able to do... fork sake...

 

6. <Group Finder: Uprisings> Are you freaking kidding me, 161 points for this one ? i would need to do 124 of those to get to 20.000 lol come one ?

 

7. <Hoth: Rampage>, <Ilum: Rampage>, are you freaking kidding me, i killed around 200 of them, then i had to log, when i came back yeah it was *********** back at 0, are you freaking *********** kidding me ?

 

8. <Starfighter: Dominate the Stars>, <Starfighter: Seize Control>, just come one, i went in 1 time, spent i would say 40 mins in que, and the whole battle i did next to no damage, this is not new player friendly, so 0 point i would get here either, not that the ****** 105 would make any difference anyway, would only need to win 190 of those anyway, yeah **** that.

 

So what i want to say is, *** man, how am i suppose to get to 20.000 points with all this crap ? Im at 13.850 atm, and there is no *********** way i will ever get to 20.000 this week, so all so far was for nothing, again im a SOLO player, do not like to team with other, so again how to get to 20.000 when you wont give stuff to do that could get one to 20.000 alone :/

Edited March 23, 2018 by Martin_Lauridsen

[Ibokagain]

Rebalance: (Definition the rest of the world uses)

verb

balance again or restore the correct balance to.

 

Rebalance: (BW's definition)

verb

kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of.

 

Wait. Isn't that the definition of decimate?

 

exactly!

[DarthSpuds]

Well just got in from 14 hour day at work.

 

Less than no incentive to do anything Conquest related.

 

And reading through this post I see three things that 100% areshameful.

 

1) No further responses from anyone at Bioware - they are clearly in "bury head in sand and hope it goes away" mode.

2) Keith has made no comment / apology.

3) Conquest has not been rolled back to 5.7 version.

 

Let me remind you Bioware; your stated intentions for this Conquest revamp was to:

1) Make Conquest more varied, fun and enjoyable.

2) Rebalance Conquest Rewards,

3) Improve the chances of Smaller Guilds to be rewarded for their efforts.

 

Where I work if I had just spent several months and gods alone know how much money on a vanity project that had manifestly failed to meet its own stated goals, and simultaneously caused the company to lose customers, and so revenue - I would have been fired already.

 

You set your own goals for this Conquest Revamp.

You set and then delayed the release for this update so you could better attain those goals.

You manifestly failed to meet any of those goals you set for yourself.

 

Honestly, apart from the Command Crate fiasco I can't think of any other MMORPG patch that comes even close to exhibiting this level of incompetence.

 

All The Best

Edited March 23, 2018 by DarthSpuds

[genealogymaster]

Woopee (sarcastically) they are doing a patch on March 27. What could this be?

[Ibokagain]

Woopee (sarcastically) they are doing a patch on March 27. What could this be?

 

lol thanks for the laugh I needed that.

[DarthSpuds]

Woopee (sarcastically) they are doing a patch on March 27. What could this be?

 

Well unless the Patch Notes for 5.8a read:

 

1) Conquest - Conquest will be reverted to version 5.7.

Nothing else will be "rolled back", this is NOT a "roll back", we are re-applying Version 5.7 Conquest.

 

Then it is the WRONG Patch.

 

All The Best

[olagatonjedi]

There's absolutely no logic to that statement. There are no positive effects for smaller guilds. Not a single one of these changes has brought us closer to bigger guilds, nor provided a single member with a sense of accomplishment for trying to participate. Weekly guild goals? Not nearly as satisfying as capping a planet or being in the top ten.

 

The nerf effects all guilds equally, big or small. Ergo there is no positive for small guilds, as they receive the same negatives as larger guilds. Nothing changed that gave a buff that only effected smaller guilds, nor were there any changes that only negatively effected larger guilds. Changes were made across the board, not cherry picked.

 

Using your own argument (50 vs 200 or 250 vs 1000) it's still a 75% split, you're just dealing in larger or smaller numbers, the distance between the two, relative to the ease of gaining points, and their availability, remains exactly the same. At best, nothing has changed, you just have more unhappy people now who don't like how points have to be gained.

You obviously don't understand, even when presented as clear as day, so I doubt you will ever understand the benefit.

[olagatonjedi]

A 20 player guild versus a 5 player guild is always going to be a 4x discrepancy, for literally any activity point values. Learn 2 Math.

Learn to read. I encourage you to review the math involved in my post alluding that the 4x statement

[aerockyul]

Eric, a request for clarification on the randomness of Conquest weeks, since I don't see it addressed anywhere else

 

You and Keith have mentioned each conquest week will drop randomly, except for the Event weeks and their associated Conquests.

 

Are we talking RNG outside of the event weeks? "Randomness" can mean two things in the context of Conquest. If, outside of events, it is all ruled by 100% RNG, we could technically get Total Galactic War every single week, or not at all, ever. Some of us could be chasing a certain week for years the way a lot of us are chasing that last piece of gear through command crates or trying to get a platinum drop in a cartel pack.

 

Or do you guys mean randomly within the number of conquest weeks? Say there are 20 individual weeks--whichever conquest week will come is random within a 20 week period. So we are guaranteed to get a shot at every conquest week, we just won't know exactly when, but we'll know it'll at least be within 20 weeks, and there will be no repeats or drops within that time.

 

I really hope it is not the first one...

[PorsaLindahl]

Eric, a request for clarification on the randomness of Conquest weeks, since I don't see it addressed anywhere else

 

You and Keith have mentioned each conquest week will drop randomly, except for the Event weeks and their associated Conquests.

 

Are we talking RNG outside of the event weeks? "Randomness" can mean two things in the context of Conquest. If, outside of events, it is all ruled by 100% RNG, we could technically get Total Galactic War every single week, or not at all, ever. Some of us could be chasing a certain week for years the way a lot of us are chasing that last piece of gear through command crates or trying to get a platinum drop in a cartel pack.

 

Or do you guys mean randomly within the number of conquest weeks? Say there are 20 individual weeks--whichever conquest week will come is random within a 20 week period. So we are guaranteed to get a shot at every conquest week, we just won't know exactly when, but we'll know it'll at least be within 20 weeks, and there will be no repeats or drops within that time.

 

I really hope it is not the first one...

 

It's going to be the first one. And Eric said that they were considering running events more often as well. So there may be the possibility of only 2 "Random" conquests per month. And then there's a chance that they'll be the same.

Edited March 23, 2018 by PorsaLindahl