Conquest Feedback and Upcoming Changes

[KendraP]

Dear Favorite Devs,

 

After reading your major conquest changes, change is never easy and I understand the new system and reasons for it. I actually like many of the changes and overall new system sounds like it could be good with some continued refinement and changes.

 

My biggest issue is I LOVE ALL MY TOONS so lets get more points for the alts so we have fun playing multiple toons. Here are some suggestions.

 

1) Invasions crafting once daily per character, instead of legacy.

2) This week was points for weeklies allow this also once per week per character instead of legacy.

3) bring back those heroics if too much at least allow weeklies (ex Taris weekly) once per week per character not legacy.

4) what about one single Operation a week (like TFB or SnV) repeatable once per week per character not legacy. instead of the current once daily operation per legacy.

 

I think these ideas help not only the large guilds but small guilds with people with multiple characters. Even the small guilds have members with multiple characters and they just wanna hit 200K on easiest planet.

 

Anyways Oh GREAT Devs I've read many of these posts and don't be discouraged, I think some continued fixes and refinement and the conquest will be just fine for all again.

 

While Im a bit too pissy about things to be overly complimentary... i agree with your point. The per day/legacy objectives being per character would appease most of my issues.

 

Could we at least have an explanation as to why you have developed a hatred of alts, Musco? I dont understand why me capping 10 toons was a problem that needed addressing, and the people who have said that it is have failed utterly miserably at explaining why.

 

Alts helping large guilds more than small guilds is an absurd argument. My guild has maybe 10 active members. We were able to get a decent number of encryptions each week because of the few of us who have tons of alts capped multiple toons. As it stands now, large guilds with massive numbers of activr accounts benefit even more because they can use their people to get the per legacy objectives more.

 

If thr credit rewards are considered too much, scrap them or only give credits for the first time. Its the guild ship encryptions Im after. And hurting those of us who dont exploit because of the few that do is killing the playerbase.

[Andryah]

These changes to conquest are, by far, the worst sample of overkill that you guys have done. When will you learn that you don't need to use a hammer to change a lightbulb? Only a few modifications were all that was needed.

 

For players where Conquests was a major element of their game play, I think this is a fair viewpoint to take.

 

That said.... I don't think the principles they expressed as to their changes were bad..... but the actual deployment with the patch was indeed bad... and very much a repeat of approach and behavior the studio applied with the Galactic Command rollout. So.. it's a pattern emerging.. and the pattern is more troublesome in my view then this particular rollout. Then again, I am used to MMOs changing things and impacting both the comfort zone and preferences of players. Players are not monolithic in their wants and needs... so I understand a studio cannot please everyone.

 

For myself and my guild... we rolled past the debacle of GC and simply ignored the giant hamster wheel and have now moved past the debacle of Conquests. If they fix it suitably... great... but if not... we will simply ignore it and do other things. As a guild we have always been mindful to maintain a diverse guild activity plan... so that no single element or subsystem of content in the game getting changed can torpedo our guilds focus and play. So in reality, they still have a few rounds of bad pattern repeat here before they drive us off to something else.

Edited March 29, 2018 by Andryah

[TrixxieTriss]

No, I just think while there are changes to be made that maybe instead of jumping and yelling that you be patient as you told the story people just a few weeks ago.

 

So was there a point in specifically targeting me about this because in the 70+ pages of this thread, I’m hardly the most out spoken person or the only person in this thread who is upset and is jumping and yelling at the Devs to do something.

Seriously I’m probably in the middle of the pack here and there are people being way more vocal about it than me.

Also, as someone else pointed out, there is an easy fix to this mess that could have been done in a week. This topic is also in a completely different context to the discussion we had a few weeks ago about story stuff.

You might say you don’t make personal attacks, but you sure seem to find ways to focus me as soon as you see someone else do it. Sort of like someone else decided they needed to add their 2 cents worth instead of just leaving it between me and the other person who started it. Now I have 3 of you. Does anyone else want to join in on the Trixxie bashing.

Edited March 29, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[casirabit]

So was there a point in specifically targeting me about this because in the 70+ pages of this thread, I’m hardly the most out spoken person or the only person in this thread who is upset and is jumping and yelling at the Devs to do something.

Seriously I’m probably in the middle of the pack here and there are people being way more vocal about it than me.

Also, as someone else pointed out, there is an easy fix to this mess that could have been done in a week. This topic is also in a completely different context to the discussion we had a few weeks ago about story stuff.

You might say you don’t make personal attacks, but you sure seem to find ways to focus me as soon as you see someone else do it.

 

Actually Trixxie, I found you to be the most honest person about your feelings but I was confused as to why you changed your views from being patient before and now acting like this. I didn't think this was the type of person you were and was a little surprised by it. As far as the others, I have read quite a number of their posts and a lot of them are not the types I would even trust and in a case like that I would rarely even respond to them. You I thought was different. Maybe I was wrong.

 

If this is how you react when I have concerns about the way you went from one extreme to the other I will cease to even respond to since you seem to want to attack me. Have a good day.

Edited March 29, 2018 by casirabit

[Andryah]

If players step back a bit and look at the studio more broadly.... the pattern I have commented on becomes more clear.

 

Bascially.... after several years of making the game easier and easier and faster to level, etc... beginning with Galactic Command, and now Conquests... they appear to be deliberately making the game more grindy for rewards, primarily at level cap. I guess.. this is to slow players down some (which never goes well in modern MMOs)

 

It will be interesting to see if they continue with this approach.

 

As for the clear impact that the new Conquest has on "solo-guilds"...... that is probably intended as it would be foolish to tune content around a solo-guild mechanic.

 

As for making new Conquests for solo play a better experience.. I think this was a bate and switch (deliberate or simply poorly thought out.. I don't know). Conquests were always intended to be a guild focused cooperative effort style of content... so I really do not begrudge their choice in this regard.

 

The whole philosophy of making the system work equally well for small, medium, and large guilds... is a great idea that simply was not achieved... so it will be interesting to see if they make the needed changes to "keep the promise" they made to players with their advance information.

Edited March 29, 2018 by Andryah

[Elliraen]

For players where Conquests was a major element of their game play, I think this is a fair viewpoint to take.

 

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't care if I have your, or anyone else's, approval for my point of view. And I definitely don't need some long winded diatribe of nonsense trying to defend their actions. They screwed up bad. That's the bottom line.

[Andryah]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't care if I have your, or anyone else's, approval for my point of view. And I definitely don't need some long winded diatribe of nonsense trying to defend their actions. They screwed up bad. That's the bottom line.

 

Don't take this the wrong way.....but...

 

A) I don't care what you do or do not care about. You are entitled to your opinion and so am I.

 

B) I have noted in each of my posts on the topic that they in fact screwed up the release of Conquests.. so I really do not get where you are coming from here... other then to vent on another player just because you are frustrated. Go back, read my posts.... and stop pretending I am supporting the current Conquest system... because I am not. Neither I, nor my entire guild will give Conquests one ounce of time or effort unless/until they fix it.

[olagatonjedi]

I think that the fact that there is a quick solution to this problem makes it different than lack of content problems. All that they needed to do was revert back to the old system, and then go back to work on their "new coke™" version before releasing it after they have changed it into something that we might appreciate.

if they reverted back:

1) it means they wasted time and resources for nothing, so that is just a bad move

 

2) it means they concede their product wasnt sufficient quality (which is debatable by every individual til life ends), and opens themselves up to more criticism

 

3) it sets a precedence for future released content to be openly criticized worse with expectations of rollbacks, which is a bad move

 

4) they have to come up with an entirely different scheme, hope that people like it all over again, and run the risk of the same scenario, which is another waste of resources

 

It sounds like you really havent thought out how "easy it would be to "fix" this conquest issue.

Edited March 29, 2018 by olagatonjedi

[curulz]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I don't care if I have your, or anyone else's, approval for my point of view. And I definitely don't need some long winded diatribe of nonsense trying to defend their actions. They screwed up bad. That's the bottom line.

 

That's fair, your opinion is your own. But I really don't think he's defending them. He's been critical of steps BW has taken many times, usually from a 50 thousand foot view

[olagatonjedi]

Could we at least have an explanation as to why you have developed a hatred of alts, Musco? I dont understand why me capping 10 toons was a problem that needed addressing, and the people who have said that it is have failed utterly miserably at explaining why.

The reason has been mentioned, and validated multiple times throughout this thread. Perhaps you choose not to accept the reason, doesnt mean its not there, or valid. Mathematically, it provides more assistance to small guilds to limit alt use for conquest.

 

That said, people are acting like the conquest changes completely deleted their alts, with statements like "i cant even play my alts anymore." Perhaps there is a bug going around im not aware of, but I can still log into mine after I complete conquest on the main of my choosing.

[TrixxieTriss]

Actually Trixxie, I found you to be the most honest person about your feelings but I was confused as to why you changed your views from being patient before and now acting like this. I didn't think this was the type of person you were and was a little surprised by it. As far as the others, I have read quite a number of their posts and a lot of them are not the types I would even trust and in a case like that I would rarely even respond to them. You I thought was different. Maybe I was wrong.

 

If this is how you react when I have concerns about the way you went from one extreme to the other I will cease to even respond to since you seem to want to attack me. Have a good day.

 

Actually Casi, I am pissed off about the changes and I don’t even do much conquest myself. I’ve seen what Bioware have done here and how it’s affected everyone. It’s how they’ve affected such a big part of the community that’s really twisted my knickers.

These changes stretch into every part of the game in some way even if you don’t partake in conquest. It is having the same affect on player retention as what 5.0 did and I’m angry at Bioware for doing this again to the games population and not fixing it faster because they have it firmly within their power to revert the system to the old one till they fix this one.

 

My family is more angry and upset than me because they do partake in conquest as part of their enjoyment of the game (me, not so much). And when my family gets upset, I’m like a mother bear with her cubs and I’ll fight tooth and nail. If it was just going to affect me and hardly anyone else, I’d have just left after giving my criticism to the Devs.

I also still had some faith that they couldn’t make the game worse. I even lowered my expectation to not expect anything new or good. But Bioware were still able to go lower and actually break an integral part of the game for many people. I honestly didn’t think they could go any lower.

 

It obvious from the little communication and action we’ve had back from them since they asked for feed back, that posting anything for them to see is pointless. So the only form of protest left to us is to unsubscribe, don’t buy CCs and hope other people follow your example in the hope Bioware sit-up and realise people have had enough.

If Bioware just communicated more and in a two way manner, like Keith’s been saying they are going to do since he took on the role, most of this rage could be managed and we would know they were listening properly and taking notes?

 

I’ve a bad feeling where this whole conquest thing is headed and 5.9 feels like it could be more of the same sort of blunder. If they pull their heads out of the fire and fix things, then I’m ready to spend money with them. But I’m certainly not going to pay them to keep doing these sorts of things.

 

I don’t want to fight with you. My quarrel is with Bioware and not the players. We are all in this heap of steaming “whatever” together. I’m passionate about this game and I’m angry at the Devs for ruining it from with in. Sometimes that passion spills over too much and I can occasionally come across too strong. But I never attack other players and if I offend them unintentionally, I always apologise.

99% of my frustration is with Bioware.

[curulz]

Mathematically, it provides more assistance to small guilds to limit alt use for conquest.

 

If you mean that the new benchmark goal vs. Top 10 helps small guilds earn rewards, then yes. In theory it should help smaller guilds earn the rewards. If you mean it helps a small guild win a planet, I'd need you to show your work as to how it will help a small guild earn top spot.

[KendraP]

The reason has been mentioned, and validated multiple times throughout this thread. Perhaps you choose not to accept the reason, doesnt mean its not there, or valid. Mathematically, it provides more assistance to small guilds to limit alt use for conquest.

How exactly? Maybe I'm being purposefully dense, but as guildmaster of a small guild who made the board primarily through PvP and usage of alts, this point doesn'tseem valid.

 

Limiting the number of toons capped objectively benfits larger guilds as they have more member accounts - i.e. more legacies.

 

I have maybe 10 people that play regularly. Basic arithmetic says thats 10*15000=150000 points if everyone caps their main. In other words, I am strictly dependent on alts or people going beyond the objective to reach the planet cap. A 100 person guild has 100*15000=1500000 points. That's cap multiple times over, particularly since the rewards are so underwhelming that most guilds are probably not bothering with the larger planet. Why risk getting nothing, when yiu can easily get the most useful part of the reward?

 

That said, people are acting like the conquest changes completely deleted their alts, with statements like "i cant even play my alts anymore." Perhaps there is a bug going around im not aware of, but I can still log into mine after I complete conquest on the main of my choosing.

 

Nowhere did i say it made alts unplayable. I myself have played 3 charscters this week (1 at cap, 2 more probably will reach it). That said, I have a guild to run and a ship to expand. This process is now unnecessarily convoluted since I can only feasibly cap 3 toons.

[Elliraen]

Don't take this the wrong way.....but...

 

A) I don't care what you do or do not care about. You are entitled to your opinion and so am I.

 

 

You cared enough to quote my sentiments on the matter, and respond to it, so it must have mattered to you on some level. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation.

 

Your are entitled to your opinions. I'm not denying that. But your opinions are usually contradictory because you'll criticize with one hand while the other hand is making excuses. Your diplomacy in this matter is a failure.

 

Have a nice day.

[TrixxieTriss]

That said, people are acting like the conquest changes completely deleted their alts, with statements like "i cant even play my alts anymore." Perhaps there is a bug going around im not aware of, but I can still log into mine after I complete conquest on the main of my choosing.

 

The term you are looking for is “Alt unfriendly”. Basically meaning there is little incentive or it will be detrimental to play your Alts because you will not be able to achieve enough conquest points on them or they will mess up points on other Alts.

So while you can still play them by running around doing quests or pvp if you don’t or care about conquest, you can’t use them like you used to because it will be detrimental to your goal.

Yes you can login on them and do stuff. You just can’t use them to do anything significant for conquest like you used to be able to do.

When you consider that many people get a lot of enjoyment from playing their Alts and them having a purpose, by removing or degrading the ability to use them like that makes them seem worthless. People are rightly annoyed because Alts are also an massive part of the game for people. Bioware seem to continually forget that and people are angry.

Edited March 29, 2018 by TrixxieTriss

[HKtheindomitable]

Ask for feedback and its good feed back that makes them look good and they respond immediately and multiple times.

 

Ask for feedback and it’s bad feed back that makes them look bad and they respond a week later to say they are monitoring it. Then they hide behind their wall of silence till we stop making a noise,

 

Truth. The whole scenario from before (harassment/stalking/death threats) has put a big reduction on communication when noise is made. And so far, the noise is still too scary for the responses to be more than they are. We may never get the communication we want. Everyone here raging at BW can blame themselves for that. The raging attitude led to that before.

[Elliraen]

Ask for feedback and its good feed back that makes them look good and they respond immediately and multiple times.

 

Ask for feedback and it’s bad feed back that makes them look bad and they respond a week later to say they are monitoring it. Then they hide behind their wall of silence till we stop making a noise,

 

The "noise" will only stop when people get tired of typing the same things repeatedly, or cancel and lose posting privileges. That's when they'll look at the forums and say "Well, that finally blew over." Then they can focus on making the remaining 3 subscribers happy and give them their solo operations.

[HKtheindomitable]

If you mean that the new benchmark goal vs. Top 10 helps small guilds earn rewards, then yes. In theory it should help smaller guilds earn the rewards. If you mean it helps a small guild win a planet, I'd need you to show your work as to how it will help a small guild earn top spot.

 

From what I understood, the biggest problem was reaching top 10 to get the reward. But now with the new system, any guild that reaches the goal, gets the reward, and the top 10 is just a score board.

[HKtheindomitable]

The "noise" will only stop when people get tired of typing the same things repeatedly, or cancel and lose posting privileges. That's when they'll look at the forums and say "Well, that finally blew over." Then they can focus on making the remaining 3 subscribers happy and give them their solo operations.

 

If the kids here simply exercised some self-control and patience, the noise would stop sooner.

[calypsissmexy]

The term you are looking for is “Alt unfriendly”. Basically meaning there is little incentive or it will be detrimental to play your Alts because you will not be able to achieve enough conquest points on them or they will mess up points on other Alts.

So while you can still play them by running around doing quests or pvp if you don’t or care about conquest, you can’t use them like you used to because it will be detrimental to your goal.

Yes you can login on them and do stuff. You just can’t use them to do anything significant for conquest like you used to be able to do.

When you consider that many people get a lot of enjoyment from playing their Alts and them having a purpose, by removing or degrading the ability to use them like that makes them seem worthless. People are rightly annoyed because Alts are also an massive part of the game for people. Bioware seem to continually forget that and people are angry.

 

Something about Alts annoy the crap out of the devs. They constantly make changes that show they find all the things that alts can help you achieve to be troublesome. I think something about the limited character slots F2P players have, means they design the game with maybe two characters in mind and people who have been playing for years can have 15 to 30 active characters, which screws all their calculations up when implementing anything new system-wise. So they just gimp alts in the system, ignoring the fact that their monthly paying customers pay partly to have more alts.

[HKtheindomitable]

Something about Alts annoy the crap out of the devs. They constantly make changes that show they find all the things that alts can help you achieve to be troublesome. I think something about the limited character slots F2P players have, means they design the game with maybe two characters in mind and people who have been playing for years can have 15 to 30 active characters, which screws all their calculations up when implementing anything new system-wise. So they just gimp alts in the system, ignoring the fact that their monthly paying customers pay partly to have more alts.

 

I agree that the limiting they do is not the best. There is some legitimacy to limitations, however the severity doesn't need to be so great. Sometimes folks can get carried away with a good idea. I think that happened here. And it probably happens more than it should. I merely speculate about this in this case, but quite often there's that one individual that makes dumb decisions, making the rest look bad. I know this truth personally, which is partly why I don't rage and get all upset about bad decisions.

[KendraP]

I agree that the limiting they do is not the best. There is some legitimacy to limitations, however the severity doesn't need to be so great. Sometimes folks can get carried away with a good idea. I think that happened here. And it probably happens more than it should. I merely speculate about this in this case, but quite often there's that one individual that makes dumb decisions, making the rest look bad. I know this truth personally, which is partly why I don't rage and get all upset about bad decisions.

 

If I'm being purposefully ignorant, someone explain to me. How was my capping 10 toons a week on non-crafting weeks affecting any of you? My 10 person guild was lucky to make the board much less win anything.

[SNy-lotrolinux]

From what I understood, the biggest problem was reaching top 10 to get the reward. But now with the new system, any guild that reaches the goal, gets the reward, and the top 10 is just a score board.

 

Clearly, you understood incorrectly.

 

Has hitting the Top Ten been easy with small guilds under the old system? No, but it was possible, nonetheless.

It was possible by running the multitude of alts through their individual goals, each getting their points into the sum, each qualifiying for the guild reward should the Top Ten be reached.

We did this for the last 6 or 7 consequitive conquests before the change, with basically 6 (7) toons from only TWO PEOPLE (with some minor support from the others that came on for a few hours throughout the week) (see the post I made in the other thread).

 

EVERY char that made their goal got flagship expansion items. That was 13+ for us over the last weeks.

 

Now? With the idiotic change to daily per legacy, no more alts. We can TRY to reach the cap on 3, maybe 4 chars, but with the lack of repeatable objectives, and the legacy dailies for just about everything, it will be a massive grind.

None of our other members are near the 150% bonus, so they will simply be UNABLE TO QUALIFY for their personal goal.

Given that, it will remain to be seen if we can even make the 200k we need (we are at <80k ATM). Just run the math (it has been posted above), it will be a frigging GRIND whereas it was just running the content we were running, anyway.

 

Speaking of which, the queues for FPs etc. empty. I have been waiting in queue with a healer (!) until I got auto-logged out while I was writing that other post, and that was with Double XP on and school holidays, to boot! Unthinkable the weeks before!

 

So, get your facts straight, and stop spouting the nonsensical notion that any of this has been asked for or is even backed by data.

Also, the math has obviously not been done, or they would not have reduced guild threshold by ~60% and personal by 25% within the first week of this "improved" system. It appears also heavily "optimized" for a +150% bonus and the apparent belief that everybody had racked up thousands of Invasion Forces. Hint for the devs: those small guilds, that you wanted to "help out" with this? Those that presumably had trouble to hit Top Ten before? That will be the same guilds that do not have +150% bonus and have not accumulated those huge amounts of Invasion Forces to burn. Neither will they be able to craft them now, what with the uncalled-for changes to the recipes.

 

So, all in all, just when we got the hang of it, you drop this hot mess on us. I will also cancel my subscription, because this is LotRO all over again, and the sheer amount of dev communication (read: lack thereof) is the very same. Tanks, but no thanks.

 

SNy

Edited March 29, 2018 by SNy-lotrolinux

[Stellarcrusade]

The "noise" will only stop when people get tired of typing the same things repeatedly, or cancel and lose posting privileges. That's when they'll look at the forums and say "Well, that finally blew over." Then they can focus on making the remaining 3 subscribers happy and give them their solo operations.

 

Even if your statement is sarcastic you may be right. However, why would they bother to try to make the remaining 3 subscribers happy if the motivation isn't to keep players happy now?

 

If we give the team credit and assume they are not ignorant, then perhaps the conclusion is that the direction of the changes in the game really has nothing to do with player satisfaction at all, but rather what the development team wants the game to be. If something bothers the development team (like how much impact crafting had on old conquest), then they nerf that, who cares what the players think.

 

Development seems to be simply eliminating pet-peeves of the dev team. If a huge majority of players react negatively about the changes, the response is never to reverse course and make the players happy again, its to make a slight change back into the direction it was before to be seen as a minor consesion or compromise. I think the dev needs to be more focused on customer service. But thats just what it seems like to me based on what we have seen since 5.x started.

Edited March 29, 2018 by Stellarcrusade

[PennyAnn]

The frustration around here is so palpable... and unfortunate.

 

We're going after each other because we're so frustrated with changes that make no sense to us, aren't being explained by developers in sufficient detail (not the white knight mind readers telling us what the devs intended like they attend development meetings themselves). Then there are the ever helpful people who "don't care" about this kind of content or that kind of content and want to lambaste everyone who does, for caring about the state of the game. What good does that do?

 

The fact that we're asked for feedback but get very little response to it to even acknowledge that they are still reading these threads (that they themselves asked us to respond to) isn't helped at all when other posters take it upon themselves to speak for the developers, or just plain bash those who simply want some response to feedback (that again, they asked us for).

 

Please, I beg of all of you (for whatever good it does) to reserve your criticism for the developers (and keep it constructive, actionable, helpful) and quit going after each other. It just fills the feedback threads with nonsense that (if I were a developer) will likely see them give up on even reading these threads. The people that have taken time to give constructive, actionable, and factual feedback that might actually see some changes that we all tend to agree would be helpful don't deserve to get buried in the "You said this" vs. "No, you said that and I said this" back and forth. I'm going to hold myself to the same standard, and start using /ignore on more than just the one or two who I've discovered are just here to tell me it's Black when I say it's White. No more feeding the trolls!

 

Thanks in advance for your consideration, because at the end of the day we all love this game or we wouldn't still be here. There is a quote from Parks and Rec (one of my favorite TV shows) where Leslie Knope says: "What I hear when I'm being yelled at is people caring loudly at me". We all care a little too loudly around here sometimes.

 

To those out there who have crunched numbers and given solid, constructive feedback - please keep doing so. I hope that they will read, listen, hear, and implement some of the very good suggestions for improvements to the current system that would see us all enjoy it more, and therefore play the game more.

 

Cheers.

 

.

Edited March 29, 2018 by PennyAnn