Conquest Feedback and Upcoming Changes

[RudeDog]

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

 

Thanks for listening, I guess. How about listening before you make stupid changes? Anyone with half a brain would have known these changes would irritate the players. You guys keep making poor changes and then spend months fixing (or not fixing) the mistakes you made. How about doing it right the first time.

 

Here is an idea:

 

• Go the to suggestion forum
  
• Find some suggestions that the majority of the players want
  
• Implement those suggestions
  
• Stop making decisions on your own; you have proven to be incompetent when it comes to decision making
  

[RudeDog]

"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."

 

This is just wrong! I am not a beta tester! WE are NOT YOUR BETA TESTERS!! We pay to play a game that is NOT broken! This whole quote is what is wrong with this game and the dev team as a whole! Every patch should be perfect out of the gate! Every revamp, every new flashpoint, everything should be perfect right out the gate! Fix yourselves before you wreck the game entirely! It is your job to make it perfect before pushing it through to the game!

 

Thank you! Exactly right!

[ivanhedgehog]

Only when objective are limited as you have said here to be one time objective. In the past, there were some of these, but there were also more repeatable objective for operations, warzones, Starfighter, heroics, crafting, flashpoints, and uprisings. So in the old system, 9 people with alts could and frequently did make it onto the leader board, and some were able to actually win planets. This too is because of math, but just not with the limited set of objectives that you choose to include in your argument.

 

900 engaged players will beat 9 engaged players. the weeks you won, the 900 werent actively trying. most likely only a small core group were trying.

[DmdShiva]

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.

 

"Complete a random flashpoint through Group Finder; must be eligible for the daily reward", IIRC for 1,000 points base, plus the occasional one-and-done per legacy "Complete flashpoint XXX in any mode" for another 1,000 points. One random flashpoint per day for five days -- "worked on throughout the week" -- got you the conquest reward for completing the five-veteran-flashpoints mission. In the revamped conquest, 'Complete Battle of Ilum on any difficulty mode" awards -- with a full stronghold bonus -- 325 points. But it's repeatable... which, for six days at max stronghold bonus, earns you less than you would have earned doing the daily random FP, the veteran-flashpoints mission, and the one-and-done Battle of Ilum under the old setup. Yes, we can work on it throughout the week... but we don't even come close to earning what we used to... and the personal conquest goal is the same.

 

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.

 

So the crafting 150 characters who used to be able to craft war supplies and invasion forces, earning conquest points on their own, get relegated to making intermediate components and feeding them to the characters who can make the grade 8 and 9 intermediate components that are needed for every type of war supply, making them less able to participate in conquest by taking away one of their sources of conquest points.

 

If crafting is making up too much of conquest, change the rewards from a 'once per item' for war supplies to a set of tiered 'once per character' goals -- 'craft one war supply', 'craft five war supplies', 'craft 10 war supplies', 'craft 25 war supplies', etc. This allows both tuning the reward value for each tier of reward and varying the number of tiers available for a particular week -- a week might only have the 'craft one war supply' objective, like most of the weeks under the previous conquest setup, or could have the first three goals, or might be a full-blown crafting week, with goals up to, say, 500 war supplies.

 

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.

 

A laudable goal... but taking away many of the choices of activity we used to have, and degrading the 'reward' for the ones that remain to a point where they're not worth the time to complete them, should have been seen from the beginning as a poor choice.

 

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.

 

Let's see... Base reward for 'small' invasions... 'medium' invasions have roughly three times the cost for one and a half times the reward... and 'large' invasions have roughly five times the cost for twice the rewards. Unless you're gating the more 'desirable' planets behind assigning them as 'large' invasions, there is zero incentive to invade anything other than a 'small' planet on the basis of the rewards you get. Someone at Bioware wrote the spiel for the vendor selling roast Gorak on Asylum... did no one see that you were doing the same thing with conquest rewards?

[Morteistno]

I am in a conquest oriented guild and we just (barely) managed to get the yield needed for invading a large planet. The last few hundredthousand points needed came from running killing illum republic base over and over again on alts.

 

This is not repeatable as an experience as the boredom and mindnumbingness of it all is not something I ever want to do again. I do hope that besides adding in the FP's and PVP again for conquest also the points for the activities get a decent look at so they are in line with how it was pre 5.8. I.e. where you could easily cap a multitude of characters from just doing some pvp, fp's, gsf, ops, crafting, heroics as a last resort aso.

 

It should be telling that previously you had 30 guilds getting the reward. I think there are less now. Looking at DM I see only 2 guilds qualifying for the large planet, 2 or 3 for the medium. Possibly there are many qualifying for the small planet, but you would and should expect that the large majority if not all of the top 10 on large and medium planets should also make the cap.

 

Now take away the 10K bug and the numbers would look much worse than they even do right now.

 

I do sincerely hope that FP's and PVP will not be added in with the insanely small reward you get for GSF, but with values very comparable to pre 5.8

[DmdShiva]

a. increase the amount of items a significant amount, based on their yield type. For example, level 50 influence companion, doing a grade 1 Rich yield mission, takes ~ 1 minute to complete, and nets by default if I remember correctly, 8 items, with a bonus of 2 or 3 items if the companion crits the mission. Tie the output to the character level if you have to, so that a normal leveling character is not producing tons of goods, but the output needs to be increased. That grade 1 Rich Yield, should be dropping at least 50 materials, Bountiful ~ 25, Abundant ~10, Moderate ~5, and the Wealthy ones from found missions should be at least 100 items gained. And yes, if you crit the mission, tie the companions influence into the bonus items, with a level 50 companion doubling the amount. give me a reason to have multiple level 50 companions.

 

Rather than doing this, have the tier difference when you send your companions out determine the level of reward you get. Send a companion out on a tier 1 mission for tier 1 rewards, or a tier 5 mission for tier 5 rewards, or a tier 10 mission for tier 10 rewards, and you get the basic return result. Send a companion out on a tier 2 mission for tier 1 rewards, and you get a higher return if successful. Each mission tier up past the tier of the rewards returns more mats. If you've got a Scavenging skill of 600, and you send a companion out with all of that skill behind them looking for Desh, they're going to be better at it than sending a companion out for Desh with a Scavenging skill of 10.

[TrixxieTriss]

Rather than doing this, have the tier difference when you send your companions out determine the level of reward you get. Send a companion out on a tier 1 mission for tier 1 rewards, or a tier 5 mission for tier 5 rewards, or a tier 10 mission for tier 10 rewards, and you get the basic return result. Send a companion out on a tier 2 mission for tier 1 rewards, and you get a higher return if successful. Each mission tier up past the tier of the rewards returns more mats. If you've got a Scavenging skill of 600, and you send a companion out with all of that skill behind them looking for Desh, they're going to be better at it than sending a companion out for Desh with a Scavenging skill of 10.

 

I like this idea.

[DmdShiva]

PVE players, even with the rollout of 5.8 raw as it is now, were not excluded. We had not one but two rampages, and they were repeatable, meaning that you could kill 250 mobs on Hoth and 250 mobs on Illum for points as much as you wanted, and going forward, with the point requirement reduced from 20k to 15k for personal conquest goal, those points will go farther.

 

Ilum: Rampage. 1000 conquest points, x2 or x3 if invading Ilum, with a 150% bonus for maxed strongholds. That's 3500 to 4500 conquest points. Now, with a maxed stronghold bonus, it's 825 points. Repeatable once per day, that's four or five _days_ you have to dedicate toward getting the same points you could have earned from the one-and-done version it was before. But you can run it on other alts, too... and take away time more 'profitably' spent grinding your first character to get to their personal conquest goal.

 

Or look at the 'random flashpoint, must be eligible for daily reward' goal. 1000 points, another 1000 for Battle of Ilum at any difficulty, another 1000 for the five veteran flashpoint goal. 150% stronghold bonus, 15-30 minutes per flashpoint, and that's 15,000 conquest points for four characters in two hours, with an additional 2500 (and the Ilum invasion bonus for another 1000) for one character. One war supply at 2000 base for another 5000, an invasion force for another 2000 base/5000 end, and you've got personal conquest on two characters, with plenty of time during the week to run out 5000 points for each of the other two characters -- another daily flashpoint for each of them is half of that, and you've got the rampage for one character and any of the base personnel, commanders, operations, GSF, and PvP goals for the fourth -- and you still have time to work on leveling a character or two. But now Bioware's made it more 'challenging', which seems to mean 'grind your tuchis off and you can get it on one character, good luck getting it on two; forget three or four unless you don't have a life', with new ways to throw the time and effort you put into gathering mats for war supplies and invasion forces down a rathole -- seriously, destroying war supplies for a little extra conquest points, after they jacked the cost of making them into the sky and disenfranchised the low-skill characters in the process?

 

And the guild invasion rewards -- you get a base return for invading a 'small' planet, one and a half times the reward for meeting a goal three times as high, or twice the reward for meeting a goal five times as high. And being in the top ten while doing it. Most conquest guilds don't pick their targets on the basis of the reward, they do it because their guild members need the planet to complete their conquest. If a large guild needs the planet selected as a 'small' invasion, they'll do it, and the small guilds now competing against a large guild are SoL.

Edited March 26, 2018 by DmdShiva

[DmdShiva]

I see what you did there - you played their broken turd of a conquest system - expecting it to be a rewarding experience.

Let me stop you right there - it's no longer rewarding even in the slightest way.

 

That's not true; I found it to be quite rewarding -- I got both of the world boss goals without a problem. That I got them while running the CZ-198 dailies, each one for defeating a basic mob was a problem, and points up how broken the system is.

 

But it can be both broken and rewarding -- the latter just not the way Bioware intended.

Edited March 26, 2018 by DmdShiva

[DmdShiva]

Your post explains exactly why it was a good idea to making completion of personal and guild conquests more difficult for people who only dwell in one area of the conquest tasks. If everyone (Or the majority) segregated themselves to only aspects of the game they personally enjoy, it would leave many areas high and dry. 5.8 changes were a step in the right direction.

 

Ahh, the "You're not having fun the way we want you to have fun, so we're going to force you to have fun our way, even if you don't like doing that, because we're sure that you'll enjoy doing something you don't like once we force you into doing it enough" premise.

 

Let's say you knew someone who thought that getting smacked upside the head with a 2x4 was the greatest thing in the world, and to make sure that you got to enjoy that, too, every time you saw him, he'd smack you upside the head with a 2x4. How long do you think it would take you to stop having anything to do with him?

[ShadowGovernator]

Thanks for listening, I guess. How about listening before you make stupid changes? Anyone with half a brain would have known these changes would irritate the players. You guys keep making poor changes and then spend months fixing (or not fixing) the mistakes you made. How about doing it right the first time.

 

Here is an idea:

 

• Go the to suggestion forum
  
• Find some suggestions that the majority of the players want
  
• Implement those suggestions
  
• Stop making decisions on your own; you have proven to be incompetent when it comes to decision making
  

 

They are not listening not even a tiny bit.

It's obvious that they want to try and polish the turd conquest system that they just pushed out.

Hoping that we will swallow it down - let me stop you right there Biohazard - no one likes to swallow your turd no matter how much you polish it as it's still a freaking turd!

 

Roll it back completely!

[ShadowGovernator]

That's not true; I found it to be quite rewarding -- I got both of the world boss goals without a problem. That I got them while running the CZ-198 dailies, each one for defeating a basic mob was a problem, and points up how broken the system is.

 

But it can be both broken and rewarding -- the latter just not the way Bioware intended.

 

I would not consider getting points for something that I did not earn as rewarding. It's more like cheating!

And it's a huge amount.

 

Further more I do not consider not getting any points at all everytime rampage progress resets as rewarding.

That was what I commented on originally.

 

I do not consider getting a tiny amount of points for doing GSF/PvP rewarding.

I do not consider getting zero points for doing daily and weekly Fps.

Don't consider crafting rewarding as the yields just went up like crazy.

I do not find conquest rewarding on alts due to legacy lockouts.

 

Don't consider the personal conquest mission goal as rewarding and I don't consider the stupid non-visible vendor rewarding.

 

Have I made my point or would you like me to continue?

[BASICELE]

Heya..ALL THE crafting changes made is just killing the whole system!!!STOP monitoring and bring it back where it was!! if u must do some changes to it, lower the points but take away that all mats needed to make one war suply.thats just BS! example grade 6 and 7 mats are close to none to harvest so thats first thing, second is that all companions that is lvl 50 has been complete waste of creds for crafting with this system!!

[Rheshalea]

 

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.

 

-eric

 

 

This really isn't good. I mean, I don't think us players expect perfection either (which in itself is bad), but we do expect to feel as if you guys are trying to improve the game. You tell us that you are, but the content you come up with shows us your view of improvements is vastly different than ours.

You really need to start asking us what we want before spending months completely reworking something that only needed a few tweaks, and didn't even need those tweaks urgently.

 

You also really need to know what you're doing yourselves and then explain it to us in detail well before rolling out patches.

Apparently the Conquest during the Gree event was always a bit different than others - maybe you should have either given us the Conquest part of the patch during another event (as it was only the new raid boss that needed another week?) or at least reminded people about that. I haven't done much Conquest or weekly events so I don't know the details personally. But still, it would have made sense to me to roll this out at the best possible moment, which is something you should be able to decide.

You need to understand what the players perceive as worthwhile content, yet you don't ask until after you realize you pissed them off. This makes no sense to me. Can you really afford to lose more players? Or is that what you've been told to do?

 

Anyway. Since you did (sort of) ask now, here's what I wanted/hoped for/expected from a solo-player's perspective:

- New rewards (new decos, maybe even a few to choose from, including from newer content)

- Player's and/or guild's choice of bonus-activities so people could play what they enjoy, be it PvP or Ops or solo. Best case would be character-specific bonuses, so people could do different activities on different chars

- "New" activities - how about recycling old planetary bonus series? Space-on-rails missions? Crafting and handing in specific items (for example armor/weapons) to aid the "war effort" as we're maybe, possibly, moving back towards imp/rep conflicts? That way we'd even get a snippet of a story-excuse for doing Conquest. And in that vein, farmable special items on the Guild Invasion planets, both in the open world and heroic mission/flashpoint/WarZone/Ops instances, to be handed in for bonus Conquest points and/or special gear/decos

- UI improvement. The UI didn't even need much "fixing" for me as a solo player, but sure, if the whole system got a proper revamp, which I erroneously assumed based on previous information, the UI needed to be changed. But for the better, not this uninformative mess we have now

 

To be honest, though, I didn't think much about the whole issue beforehand. I still had high hopes for Conquest to finally become something I was eager to do, and on more than one character. I read too much into the word "revamp", I suppose, because I was really expecting and hoping for big, proper changes, not just a facelift.

[AmityAmy]

Well its almost over and I managed to cap 5 toons, it was not fun though and I wont be spending that much time on it again.

 

I'm hugely disappointed that the companions I spent so much time and credits levelling are now pretty much worthless, and that crafting is now removed as a way for smaller guilds to make their mark in conquest.

I wont be making war supplies ever again under the new system, they are a total waste of time, effort and resources, so once I run out of them I wont be making invasion force either.

This means even fewer toons will cap going forward and if I want to spend time in any of the smaller guilds that I'm a member of then I'll probably have to pretty much abandon doing conquest for my main guild.

Have not decided which way that will go yet.

 

Biggest disappointment is how pointless all the alts I made and spent time levelling are now. There is zero incentive to ever make another character here anymore and the whole thing just seems so much less social now.

My normal routine involved capping toons in at least 4 guilds and once in a while putting my main focus in one of the small guilds if they were making a particular effort to get up the leaderboard.

This last week I have not had time to even log those characters.

 

IT SUCKS and unless you change the point yields in a major way I dont see your proposed changes making much difference at all.

 

New ops boss seems like fun but only got round to looking at it last night because of what you did to conquest.

[Darkgift]

Eric said it very clearly in his post. They want people to earn points throughout the week. The game is not designed for casual players.

 

Meaning that they want Conquest to take you all week to accomplish. Sadly I do not have all week to play. This game is now broken for me. Conquest was the only thing I enjoyed about the game. I do not care if you fix PVP rewards. (Sorry PVP'ers but I just do not enjoy killing other players.) I was literally just crafting conquest as a holding out. Waiting for them to finally bring back Kira so my main could win back the love of his life. I was never expecting the Developers to destroy the game for me. The story and companions all went to ****. For an entire year we watched as they consistently brought back companions that, lets face it, none of us really care about. While slowly taking away companions that we were forced to develop relationships with. For me my SWTOR journey has been about the enjoyment of the game and right now there is NOTHING that I am enjoying about it.

 

You said you were listening to feedback.So here is mine.

Drop the legacy lock outs for conquest. I did not level 36 alts for them to be worthless. That took an extremely INSANE level of commitment, time, energy and money to accomplish. I feel like you are punishing me for my loyalty.

 

Bring back Crafting......the way it was. Maybe change the reason people are exploiting the crafting. Maybe by making the Flash Point/ Ops Difficulty more realistic. If players could get the same reward to time spent ratio for completing and Ops/Flash Point as Crafters did for Farming to Completion they would run more group stuff. Instead you took the Opposite route and made the crafting as difficult as completing Veteran Flash Point. So instead of creating enjoyment, you created anger. (Yes I am saying the problem is not the crafting, It is the Difficulty to Enjoyment ratio of the rest of the game.)

 

Bring back repeatable rewards for PVP'ers and Flash Point runners. If that is what they enjoy about the game then why should their game time be less valuable to their guild then a Crafter or Ops runner.

 

Quit trying to FORCE people to play this game the way YOU want them too. And just allow them to enjoy the parts of it they they enjoy. No matter what you do someone somewhere is going to find an exploit. All you did is force the crafting exploiters to find another exploit. (a.k.a. The Ops Lock Out Exploit.) So quit punishing everyone else who IS NOT using exploits.

 

Sincerely,

Disgruntled Fan

[Darkgift]

Also, just wanted to run some supply numbers at you. If you start with no War Supplies and you want to make 1 invasion each day for five days on 4 crafters (20 total here) You will need the following mats

 

320 Grade 9 Mats

320 Grade 8 Mats

320 Grad 7 mats

320 grade 6 mats

480 Grade 5 Mats

480 Grade 4 Mats

640 Grade 3 mats

640 Grade 2 mats

 

This comes to a total of 5200 items to be farmed. Just wanted to throw that out there as you look at the Crafting piece.

 

Also adding another bit about the daily/weekly Flashpoints as well.

 

Consider that is 5200 mats farmed over 8 planets, travel time with a 2 min loading screen. Travel time to the farming site. Additional time if you have to kill mobs. The time for each pick up, and run from node to node. Then factor in downtime time to launch 2-8 companions on white crafting materials missions. Add in time it would take to launch 2-8 companions, all making crafting components for war supplies prior to them even making the invasion forces. And Finally the 4 hours it takes to make each Invasion Force. (which I guess could be all done at the same time)

 

Can someone please do the math for the fastest way to Farm (Not Buy) these mats? I'd like to see how much actual play time farming these mats would actually take. I haven't crunched numbers but something is telling me this might not even be physically possible to achieve in one conquest cycle. Let alone repeatable the following week after week.

[AmityAmy]

Eric said it very clearly in his post. They want people to earn points throughout the week. The game is not designed for casual players.

 

Meaning that they want Conquest to take you all week to accomplish. Sadly I do not have all week to play.

 

I typically spend alot of time in game every night and have a multitude of alts and this isnt for me either..... so who does that leave?

[PorsaLindahl]

I typically spend alot of time in game every night and have a multitude of alts and this isnt for me either..... so who does that leave?

 

The only ones that are going to be left are going to be F2P's and those that have either game-time cards still active or have purchased the long-term subs. Oh and those 3 or 4 people that think that this crap was a good idea. I suppose those 3 or 4 people will have fun in the future trying to do group content and won't start whining until queues taking 10 hours to pop.

Edited March 26, 2018 by PorsaLindahl

[SelenaCat]

• Take every conquest activity in the game and figure out how many iterations of that activity you want to require to hit the weekly personal goal, divide the goal by that number, and award that number of points, per toon, per iteration.
  

 

If you want to foster diversity among conquest events, then create something extra for each conqeust event that rewards additional points, while ensuring that folks can still cap their toons (all their chosen toons, within reason) doing only their chosen activity. For example, Gree operation and Gree dailies for Gree week; Bounty contracts for Death Mark; Bonuses to GSF (above and beyond what's required to cap normally) for Clash in Hyperspace.

 

This is almost exactly the method I would use to distribute conquest points. Figure out an approximate amount of active playing time you want to require to complete conquest on a single character, and then just multiply whatever fraction of time each activity takes by the total to give a baseline amount of points awarded.

 

For example, if you choose 10 hours total time base (which would be 4 hours with full stronghold bonus), and kept the old 20k total, you would need to reward approximately 2k conquest points per hour spent. (I personally would use about half that amount of time, doubling all these numbers, but I used it for easier math.)

• Planetary heroic (approx. 3-4 minutes each): 125 CQ points, or some multiple based on completing the daily planetary. (These likely would be specific to the invasion theme, rather than counting for all heroics)
  
• PvP/GSF (approx. 15-20 minutes): 500 CQ points, with some bonus (1.5x or 2x) for a win.
  
• Daily flashpoint (approx. 30 minutes): 1k CQ points
  
• Daily uprising (approx. 20-25 minutes): 750 CQ points
  
• Daily operation (I would assume 30 minutes for this: approximately halfway between the 1 hour it takes for most full runs and the 15 minutes it takes for a lockout. Since ops provide some of the best CXP/loot rewards, so you can afford to be a little stingier in rewards): 1k CQ points
  

 

After assigning base values for every week, then provide bonuses for whatever activity you want to highlight for that given invasion. Boost FPs? Give more points for that week. Specific FP's/ops, world bosses, event weeklies, win 10 PvP matches, etc., and base it on the approximate amount of time it takes to complete each activity. That will still allow the "I mostly play SWTOR for one reason" crowd to still participate in CQ (and by extension, participate in endgame activities), while also providing an incentive to vary activities week by week for those that like to participate in a wider variety of activities.

[masterceil]

This is almost exactly the method I would use to distribute conquest points. Figure out an approximate amount of active playing time you want to require to complete conquest on a single character, and then just multiply whatever fraction of time each activity takes by the total to give a baseline amount of points awarded.

 

 

For example, if you choose 10 hours total time base (which would be 4 hours with full stronghold bonus), and kept the old 20k total, you would need to reward approximately 2k conquest points per hour spent. (I personally would use about half that amount of time, doubling all these numbers, but I used it for easier math.)

• Planetary heroic (approx. 3-4 minutes each): 125 CQ points, or some multiple based on completing the daily planetary. (These likely would be specific to the invasion theme, rather than counting for all heroics)
  
• PvP/GSF (approx. 15-20 minutes): 500 CQ points, with some bonus (1.5x or 2x) for a win.
  
• Daily flashpoint (approx. 30 minutes): 1k CQ points
  
• Daily uprising (approx. 20-25 minutes): 750 CQ points
  
• Daily operation (I would assume 30 minutes for this: approximately halfway between the 1 hour it takes for most full runs and the 15 minutes it takes for a lockout. Since ops provide some of the best CXP/loot rewards, so you can afford to be a little stingier in rewards): 1k CQ points
  

 

After assigning base values for every week, then provide bonuses for whatever activity you want to highlight for that given invasion. Boost FPs? Give more points for that week. Specific FP's/ops, world bosses, event weeklies, win 10 PvP matches, etc., and base it on the approximate amount of time it takes to complete each activity. That will still allow the "I mostly play SWTOR for one reason" crowd to still participate in CQ (and by extension, participate in endgame activities), while also providing an incentive to vary activities week by week for those that like to participate in a wider variety of activities.

 

I mostly agree with this post, except I wouldn't screw my Guild's hard-working Operation noobies like that. To solve the problem of lockout farming, I think you should just get points for each boss - at around your 15 minute value (500 CQP). Perhaps 250 per boss and just 500 for the last boss in an op if that seems too much for, say, Nefra or Bonethrasher.

 

Either way, 1000 CQP is too low for a full op, but too high for just farming last boss.

[Quraswren]

I mostly agree with this post, except I wouldn't screw my Guild's hard-working Operation noobies like that. To solve the problem of lockout farming, I think you should just get points for each boss - at around your 15 minute value (500 CQP). Perhaps 250 per boss and just 500 for the last boss in an op if that seems too much for, say, Nefra or Bonethrasher.

 

Either way, 1000 CQP is too low for a full op, but too high for just farming last boss.

 

I would love to see it per boss.

 

I think it would need to be slightly more conquest points as well given you get nothing for losing or the group falls apart which happens. Unlike PVP and the participation reward for just being there.

 

You could form a group and get nothing, because of that chance at zilch. I think the PVE runs need more points to their base conquest point pay out but per boss would be the best move. Encourage whole ops runs.

 

In saying that I don't have a problem with last boss lockouts though. They take about as long as one PVP match so it's a wash. Plus you can only run them as long as you have alts. Thats a limiting factor when it comes to LO runs as you need healers and tanks in most cases. Unlike in PVP, you can just keep running with the same toon if you want.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Quraswren

[TUXs]

I would love to see it per boss.

Easiest solution ever.

[vaporousmist]

So after the "revamp" and the accompanying rage i felt at ALL THE THINGS said revamp entailed, i took the rest of my week to chill and have instead been reading what others had experienced/felt with said changes. Many i agree with, several that i don't. Let's discuss

CRAFTING One thing i have found (or found a lack of) is a true understanding of what it is to craft for conquest. The devs obviously don't get it and i would wager it's because they don't participate in it.

Misconceptions about conquest crafting:

1. It's easy
   
2. Crafters don't have to work as hard as me on a weekly basis (mostly heard from PvPers)
   
3. Crafting awards too many points and it's pay to win
   
4. "crafting was contributing too much to the overall competition of Conquests" ~the devs
   

Let's talk about why each excuse/reason is wrong.

1: it is NOT easy to compete in a crafting conquest. The smaller the number of true/hardcore crafters you have in your guild, the more prep and lead time it takes. i come from a smaller guild and to prep for conquest against the major guilds takes months full of countless hours of farming not to mention crafting those mats into components.

2: crafters work just as hard as you folks do AND we do it WITHOUT the advantage of consistent rewards for our efforts. for every 15 minutes you spend in a PVP match, you get a reward when you're done with it. for every 15 minutes of crafting i do, i get to SPEND credits on buying/companion missions for white mats to match what i've farmed. Additionally to that, in order to have the credits to buy those white mats, we have to go out and do additional content to farm credits so we can afford the white mats. So in order to participate in a crafting conquest, crafters have to actually work twice as hard as the PVP/Eers in order to be able to craft, which leads directly into item 3.

3: now, i'm biased because i'm obviously a crafter and i think my time spent working in the game should be better rewarded, but crafting should definitely not be considered as overly compensated for points. let's discuss the math involved in crafting. it costs you nothing, save repair costs or gear upgrades, to participate in PvP/E (and as previously mentioned, crafters must also do to earn credits to pay for their mats). SO here's a little crafting math for you. to craft a stack of 100 ea grade 8 and 9 components it costs me, IN WHITE MATS ONLY, 400,000 credits (if i am buying from the vendor and not doing companion missions). and out of those 100 components i get a base return of 25 war supplies. IF i can craft 1000 components in an hour, i am SPENDING 4 million credits to compete in conquest with 250 war supplies. those war supplies will take (at max comp lvl 50 on a single toon) approximately 7 1/2 hours to craft during conquest. so time spend gathering, crafting components and transforming in to war supplies is 10-11 hours with a total return of a BASE of 625000 points. any conquest crafter worth their salt will have sunk millions upon millions of credits into their strongholds to get a point boost of 150%. so let's total this up, 3 hours of lead work (farming and crafting components), 4 million credits, 7 1/2 hrs crafting time DURING crafting week (for a grand total in time of ~11 hours) and a grand total of 937500 points. when was the last time a PVP/Eer spent 11 hours of their time and 4 million credits to participate in conquest. now plug aaaaaalllll that lovely information into an equation that allows you to see how much time and effort your players put into this game to net 70 MILLION points in a single crafting conquest week especially when those are small guilds with 5-10 crafters tops. we as crafters work D**N hard and pay through the nose to participate in conquest. we deserve every. single. point. garnered in this manner.

4: Musco/Keith, you boys have GOT to be kidding. aside from the math i just laid out for you, you have repeatedly nerfed crafting in conquest. we started out with repeatable crafting every week. we were nerfed down to 3 weeks (4 since you've added iokath but that's a joke cuz there's only 1 planet that whole week), nerfed when we had to start crafting components instead of just using base mats. on a non-crafting week we can get 10,000 points MAX PER LEGACY. how is this excessive? you have done your level best to punish crafters and "even the playing field" for the other player styles. This latest nerf is WAY TOO FAR. Crafting weeks are SUPPOSED to cater to the players who enjoy farming and crafting. we don't do it because we HAVE to. we do it because we WANT to. You have obviously made these changes because you don't understand your own content and the effort that this undervalued set of players puts in to your game.

 

Bring back Crafting......the way it was. Maybe change the reason people are exploiting the crafting. Maybe by making the Flash Point/ Ops Difficulty more realistic. If players could get the same reward to time spent ratio for completing and Ops/Flash Point as Crafters did for Farming to Completion they would run more group stuff. Instead you took the Opposite route and made the crafting as difficult as completing Veteran Flash Point. So instead of creating enjoyment, you created anger. (Yes I am saying the problem is not the crafting, It is the Difficulty to Enjoyment ratio of the rest of the game.)

 

Sincerely,

Disgruntled Fan

 

Disagree on "exploiting" crafting. as detailed above, it's hard work to participate in crafting and no way to exploit it. Agree that crafting is not the problem here, the problem is the perception that crafting is an "easy win" system.

 

People want everything to be fast and easy, and that's why the quality of the MMO genre has worsened over the past decade. Keep asking for fast and easy, and you'll get what you want until you dont get anything.

 

There was nothing fast or easy about conquest, with maybe the exception of NS/Balmorra heroics weeks. There should be equal reward for time spent. work is fine, grind is not. and that's all this revamp is: G-R-I-N-D.

 

I really never understood what anyone had against crafting week on conquest.

I've read posts that stated crafting your way to the top of the leaderboard is stupid. Why? It's crafting week!! Crafting WAS the main focus, before the changes. Anyone can craft stuff. Anyone.

What was so annoying about the old conquest crafting?

 

THIS!!! you're my new hero!

 

You can still play for conquest, and once you are done with one toon, you can actually enjoy doing just the stuff you truly enjoy, rather than the very specific conquest tasks. It's a good change for the game, just maybe not for your personal experience.

 

This game is all about personal experience. and by revamping in the way they have, the devs have taken personal choice and experience out of the mix. They have decided what content is enjoyable from their perspective. no one HAS to participate in conquest, but for those that do want to and enjoy the direction it gives for their play style on a week to week basis, these changes have crapped all over the idea of getting rewarded for doing the content you enjoy doing.

 

Every player in this or in any other MMO is a strikingly different individual with their own preferences. In their effort to make conquest more varied, they have done the opposite. Players largely like knowing what objectives are coming so they can plan their play accordingly, as a guild or a solo artist. This new system is pure chaos, with little reward to encourage participation.

 

Aside from completely rolling back (which the devs have already proven they are unwilling to do given the upcoming patch tomorrow), here a some things that definitely need fixing for conquest to be viable again and save subscriptions:

• planetary bonuses need to come back. Guilds don't pick planets based on the rewards. they pick planets based on objectives, bonuses and where they think they can/need to win. additionally, if bonuses return, you can keep the point targets for tiered planets at their current levels.
  
• Crafting: either roll it back or fix it. fixing it would entail requiring fewer of the lower grade mats to make a single war supply (nerf to 4 down from 6/8) and/or fix the farming for all mats from grades 2-7. there is currently no efficient way to gather these mats in the quantities currently required.
  
• If you really need some randomness in your life, include some kind of new random daily objective for conquest with a super bonus that relates to the type of week it is.
  
• Legacy objectives: ditch these. part of this game is about alts and you've killed them. again.
  
• Fix the UI, too much confusion between was is repeatable and was is once per legacy.
  

 

the single compliment i have for the revamp is the guild point target for rewards. It's always frustrating to have worked so hard all week only to get pushed into 11th place at the 11th hour. if your guild puts in the effort, they should reap the reward. so kudos on that point.

 

 

Bring back repeatable rewards for PVP'ers and Flash Point runners. If that is what they enjoy about the game then why should their game time be less valuable to their guild then a Crafter or Ops runner.

 

Quit trying to FORCE people to play this game the way YOU want them too. And just allow them to enjoy the parts of it they they enjoy. No matter what you do someone somewhere is going to find an exploit. All you did is force the crafting exploiters to find another exploit. (a.k.a. The Ops Lock Out Exploit.) So quit punishing everyone else who IS NOT using exploits.

 

Sincerely,

Disgruntled Fan

 

Every week of conquest pigeonholes a specific type of play style, whether it be ops, pvp, flashpoints, gsf, heroics, crafting or events. No single play style is better than any other. The MMOs that recognize and foster this mentality are the ones that have a lasting player base. The devs cannot continue to depend on the fact that "it's star wars!" to save them and their game. stop forcing people to play the way YOU THINK they should. provide content and availability for all play types and you will consistently have a happy community. Darkgift nails it on the nose. One of my guildies has been with star wars since beta. has been the most positive, persistent, committed player, even through the many frustrations he's experienced in the game and this latest bout of thoughtlessness was too much even for him. I know an entire guild of crafters and pvpers who saw the changes and walked away the same day. Devs, i urge and implore you to make some drastic changes for the better. for the love, listen to your community for once! or own up to what your intentions for this game really are, make the cuts and stop stringing us along. to join with the myriad of other voices who have all said the same thing: i have 15 days left on my sub. please change my mind. i really really want you to. The reason you see so much anger is because your players love the game and hate to see the mottled mess it's become.

Edited March 26, 2018 by vaporousmist

[Boomdiddy]

I would love to see it per boss.

 

I think it would need to be slightly more conquest points as well given you get nothing for losing or the group falls apart which happens. Unlike PVP and the participation reward for just being there.

 

You could form a group and get nothing, because of that chance at zilch. I think the PVE runs need more points to their base conquest point pay out but per boss would be the best move. Encourage whole ops runs.

 

In saying that I don't have a problem with last boss lockouts though. They take about as long as one PVP match so it's a wash. Plus you can only run them as long as you have alts. Thats a limiting factor when it comes to LO runs as you need healers and tanks in most cases. Unlike in PVP, you can just keep running with the same toon if you want.

 

The only problem I foresee with this is it will make it significantly harder to get someone to que for in-progress ops when somebody drops from a group. Then you have people who will have lockouts on bosses that won't be able to finish ops because everybody wants full points.