Conquest: My Second Impressions

[CyorReco]

for me the player's conquest quest-UI is horrible

after 8 days i still don't know what i can do with each char, or it does not count for each char, i'm totally clueless

this guy who have coded this terrible quest-UI, need some training ...

the old quest-UI was great, but now

 

PS normally i dont post in forums, but this 'crap' makes me very angry

 

Yep, the UI is the icing on this new cow patty of a conquest system.

 

Initially, i thought it looked cleaner and nicer, but now i realize it is poor just like the rest of these changes..

 

>I don't need to look at 2 tabs instead of 1.

>I don't need to scroll down a longer list than I did before...unless you're actually going to add a greater number of objective choices NOT fewer.

> Previously there was a pictogram icon with progress line or bar under each goal, that gave me a quick at a glance, visual representation of my progress of each goal.

> Previously there was a green tag when you clicked each objective icon for "Repeatable" I see no reason for it being removed. Now there's a nondescript triangle which means repeatable, but is this easier for new player?.. NO

 

Of course these are minor complaints, but I marvel at how they can be so thorough with futzing everything up.

Edited March 28, 2018 by CyorReco

[AmityAmy]

Yeah the Makeb Conquest goal points to Faction Specific "Staged" quests that were removed from the game, IIRC, one of the patches just prior to Knights of the Fallen Empire.

 

Yup, that's right the March 2018 Conquest revamp references quests that were removed around October 2015.

 

How's that for a whole new level of incompetence.

 

All The Best

 

This IS availabe to do, at least on rep side not checked imp, you pick it up on the orbital station iirc.

I did it on rep side a few weeks ago for the achieve, Its a very long tho, I'd recommend a stealther for it

[AmityAmy]

This post may sound cynical, but I'm being completely real here.

 

All your points about why you hate this new system is exactly the POINT of the change to the system. You're not convincing Keith or anyone else there at BWA to revert the changes, because everything you hate about it is exactly what their design goal was. This is why they're "waiting for additional feedback" before they take action on the changes you all hate the most. They need a few weeks worth of data to see if the changes have the desired impact on gameplay, which, you may be surprised to learn, is not to drive players away, but rather the opposite.

 

Basically, the devs had one overarching goal the CQ revamp: Flatten the curve between effort and reward.

 

In short, they wanted a casual level of commitment to CQ to bring an individual player, and smaller casual guilds, closer to realizing their dreams with their flagships. They also wanted to nerf, or perhaps annihilate, the ability of the upper 1% of players on the effort scale to completely dominate the system on the rewards end. Meaning, players who routinely hit the personal goal on 10 characters, or who routinely knock out 150k points on a single toon, and all the players who crafted their way to millions of points. They wanted to nullify those players. Being "not one of those players" myself, I can't say I hate this goal.

 

They wanted to dial it in so that casual players who previously might have hit their personal goal on 1 or 2 toons per week with very little effort ... now those players' same level of "very littke" effort will only get them about 80% of the way to their personal goal ... so now they'll be a little more vested in logging in a little bit more to really hit that goal, and now they're going to feel a lot more vested in that score, and have spent more time in-game.

 

At the same time, they needed to dial it in so that the KILLER COMPETITIVE CQ GODS basically can't hit a personal goal on anything more than 2 toons, max. And because so much of it is tied to legacy, they're gonna have to pick which one guild they want to get the lion's share of their points. They can no longer distribute their individual effort of 1,000,000 points per week across three guild-branches of a singular mega guild.

 

What they knew going into it, is that everyone would revile these changes. Casuals gotta put in a little more effort to get anything in, and in the mindset of casuals, a little more effort is a big deal, because they don't budget a great dale of time to this game, or to gaming at all perhaps. And the CQ GODS were really gonna hate it.

 

.

 

You are probably correct about their intentions, but those people you refer to as CG Gods also keep the queues for all group content functioning at a reasonable pace.

They just gave us UNITED FORCES cos people were drifting out of the game due to impossibly slow queues and low population. Now they give us an update which seems designed to give us slow queues and alot less activity outside of the big guilds.

 

Personally I've spent less time in game since this update and I guess I probably fall into that top 1% on my server (for time spent on CQ objectives anyway) I've also been a permanent sub for the last 4 years. What have I been doing instead? ... looking at other games. I only play one at a time so if I find one I like better it will be a sad farewell to swtor and my contribution to queues which was probably equal to 10-12 casuals will be gone too.

 

The time I HAVE spent in game has been in my large guild, not the small ones and if I do leave, the big guild probs wont really miss me, they have no trouble at all in keeping guild full of active accounts. In the smaller ones it will be more of an issue to have one fewer guildy to run group content with, one less person starting guild activities.

 

I don't see a single way this is going to help small guilds.

With only three planets there is now zero chance to ever get a planetary achieve in a small guild.

There MAY be an increase in encryptions coming in due to hitting the low yield target but at a price of less activity in guild as people no longer play their alts through group content.

Crafting which was previously an opportunity for a small guild to work together over an extended period to focus on getting onto the leader board or even winning a planet has been nerfed into oblivion. As a player with many crafting alts I can say I will never make even a single war supply at current cost.

If they dont change this and if I cant find a better game, I'll will play only biochemists since I dont have to craft stims and med packs for them, and abandon CQ crafting altogether.

I do NOT want to spend hours and hours on low level planets looking for scattered nodes... What idiot thinks that is anyone's idea of a fun activity?

[Rheshalea]

(I'm sorry for those solo-guilding and solo-conquesting, yes, it's not great for you, but were you expecting them to somehow put you on the same level as a proper conquest guild?)

 

Not at all. I was expecting more/new activities so I could meet the personal goal on more than one character by only doing stuff I actually enjoy. In the past, I've only done Conquest every now and then, and only ever on one character, and usually had to PvP (which really is not my thing) to meet the personal goal.

 

I was hoping this revamp might eventually lead to me feeling as if it could be worth it to spend 30000000 credits on the guild ship, for the added activities I have yet to experience. And well, yes, if I took part properly as a one-person guild and made a big effort on my alts, I would hope I'd get a reward for it. But it's not like I'd have expected to hit a Large Yield planet and succeed, or any planet at all.

 

What annoys me is that the rewards for personal conquest is the same as always. I'd rather have more and new decos than credits. And I'd like new and innovative activities, such as completing bonus series on planets, gathering and handing in special mats on the Guild conquest planets, stuff like that (I've shared my ideas in other threads).

 

There was so much Bioware could have done with this mostly unnecessary revamp. I think that's what ticks me off most. They seem to have just re-arranged and/or renamed things and changed the point values for the worse, from a solo player's perspective. Due to the Once per Legacy-activities, the revamp hasn't made me want to play more. On the contrary.

[SentinelThain]

I just feel Bioware are being forced to out all there eggs in 1 basket with Anthem.If that fails that will give EA the perfect excuse to close them down and this game with it.Look at their track record and all the studios they have bought and then offed.

The decisions that they have made with the much hated CXP system and now the CQ beggar belief.Despite the vast majority of players not wanting it they just plough on regardless.It feels to me they are trying to get as many players to leave so they can shut this down.

You guys should talk with your wallet,thats the only language EA understand.I do feel that it's already too late,I give this game a year at most with the current way its heading.

Edited March 29, 2018 by SentinelThain

[DarthSpuds]

(I'm sorry for those solo-guilding and solo-conquesting, yes, it's not great for you, but were you expecting them to somehow put you on the same level as a proper conquest guild?

 

Well, as they claimed they changes were intended to make Conquest both More Inclusive AND More Rewarding I'd at least expect the changes to not make things worse for Solo and Small-Guild Conquest Players.

 

These changes HAVE made things very much worse for Solo and Small-Guild Conquest Players, so I'd expect them to either be reversed, or admitted to being a failure.

 

PS: What is a "proper Conquest guild"?

 

The guild I am in - about 6 Active Accounts and maybe a total of 7 or 8 "Conquest Alts" managed to rank 6th the week before last. Since the "more inclusive and more rewarding" conquest came along no one has even hit their Personal Target.

 

Oh, and having Three Tiers of Invasion was supposed to separate the "proper Conquest guilds" from the Smaller Guilds so every got more of a chance at being rewarded - that didn't happen, all the alleged "proper Conquest guilds" went for the Tier 3 Planets because it was easier. So another aspect in which these changes have failed.

 

All in 5.8 and 5.8a have failed to meet any of the stated goals for these Conquest Changes. Where I work abject failure of that magnitude would be grounds for disciplinary action, and possibly dismissal for Project Leads.

 

All The Best

Edited March 29, 2018 by DarthSpuds

[phalczen]

All your points about why you hate this new system is exactly the POINT of the change to the system. You're not convincing Keith or anyone else there at BWA to revert the changes, because everything you hate about it is exactly what their design goal was. This is why they're "waiting for additional feedback" before they take action on the changes you all hate the most. They need a few weeks worth of data to see if the changes have the desired impact on gameplay, which, you may be surprised to learn, is not to drive players away, but rather the opposite.

...

In short, they wanted a casual level of commitment to CQ to bring an individual player, and smaller casual guilds, closer to realizing their dreams with their flagships. They also wanted to nerf, or perhaps annihilate, the ability of the upper 1% of players on the effort scale to completely dominate the system on the rewards end. Meaning, players who routinely hit the personal goal on 10 characters, or who routinely knock out 150k points on a single toon, and all the players who crafted their way to millions of points. They wanted to nullify those players. Being "not one of those players" myself, I can't say I hate this goal.

...

At the same time, they needed to dial it in so that the KILLER COMPETITIVE CQ GODS basically can't hit a personal goal on anything more than 2 toons, max. And because so much of it is tied to legacy, they're gonna have to pick which one guild they want to get the lion's share of their points. They can no longer distribute their individual effort of 1,000,000 points per week across three guild-branches of a singular mega guild.

 

What they knew going into it, is that everyone would revile these changes. Casuals gotta put in a little more effort to get anything in, and in the mindset of casuals, a little more effort is a big deal, because they don't budget a great dale of time to this game, or to gaming at all perhaps. And the CQ GODS were really gonna hate it.

 

But in the end, the CQ GODS will still dominate, just instead of dominating literally 100:1, now it's 2:1.

 

I just think these comments summarize my feelings perfectly.

 

The same investment I put into 2-3 characters per week now won't even get me half way to one.

 

I concur with this assessment as well. In my opinion, I don't feel like conquest is something I can be working on while I do other things, in the same way that you can grind Galactic Command while doing other things. I only hit CQ personal goal last week for Gree on two toons, and that was only because of the slug and wampa bugs. This week I'll be lucky to hit goal on any toon. The system still isn't right when a player can put in 9 hours worth of grinding and only get half of their goal.

 

The bottom line is that:

A) A nerf was needed, especially regarding crafting and repeatable objectives

B) Any nerf was going to hit casuals harder than mega conquest dominators

C) Current objectives are undertuned in terms of bang for your buck.

[inoutallabout]

The first operation I ran was with a conquest guild. The first few months of operations were doing storymode ops with conquest guilds.

 

Sucks for people who are new trying to get into operations now.

[DarthSpuds]

The bottom line is that:

A) A nerf was needed, especially regarding crafting and repeatable objectives

 

Was it?

 

I've seen no evidence to support that.

 

All The Best

[TUXs]

The bottom line is that:

A) A nerf was needed, especially regarding crafting and repeatable objectives

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

[TrixxieTriss]

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

 

I agree with all of that ^^^

[KendraP]

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

 

As usual tux... +1

And im someone that finds crafting just about the dullest activity ever invented in virtual reality. If i wanted to spend hours walking around picking weeds, I'd go outside and make it productive.

[dynosian]

As the GM of a small guild,I couldn't agree more. The crafting and repeatable conquest objectives were the ONLY thing that allowed us to participate in conquest. Even though we have fewer than 30 people, and only a very small handful ever did weekly conquest things, we could still get on the top ten very regularly.

 

It was enjoyable and highly rewarding to know that skill and determination could put our name out there with the supposed 'big dogs'. Heck, we even conquered a planet one time, a small guild on a decently populated server COULD do it. The folks complaining about it before... all I can say is 'they must have just been lazy'.... so you can't 1v1 a mega guild with 10x your player base, so what? Make smart choices where to invade, save up, prepare before hand, and push hard, you could make it, we were proof of that. Anyone who says otherwords is telling a lie, and looking for a conquest handout.

 

These recent changes have hit us hard. Conquest used to be a moral booster for us, and now most people are starting to have that conversation of "what do we do now that ToR is officially circling the drain".

 

Yes, some changes needed to be made, but these were not those changes. No system is perfect , but I'd rather have a broken system that let us have some 'feel good' over a system that has us feel like the developers hate us.

[Stellarcrusade]

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

 

Tux is completely correct, well said. Crafting was the equalizer between small guilds and large guilds on weeks like Total Galactic War, where the small/medium guilds had a small chance to compete with each other for a change instead of against the big bully guilds.

 

When a lazy big-guild member tries to say that little guilds just haven't put in the time, so for that reason they do not deserve to have any fun or participate in conquest at all, they are just trying to protect their cushy easy play-style. The crafting allowed the little guilds to actually put in the time by working ahead for months or years. So really with the new system we have basically taken away the "ability" of the little guilds to put in extra effort to have a chance 2 times a year to take a planet.

[aerockyul]

Not at all. I was expecting more/new activities so I could meet the personal goal on more than one character by only doing stuff I actually enjoy. In the past, I've only done Conquest every now and then, and only ever on one character, and usually had to PvP (which really is not my thing) to meet the personal goal.

 

I was hoping this revamp might eventually lead to me feeling as if it could be worth it to spend 30000000 credits on the guild ship, for the added activities I have yet to experience. And well, yes, if I took part properly as a one-person guild and made a big effort on my alts, I would hope I'd get a reward for it. But it's not like I'd have expected to hit a Large Yield planet and succeed, or any planet at all.

 

What annoys me is that the rewards for personal conquest is the same as always. I'd rather have more and new decos than credits. And I'd like new and innovative activities, such as completing bonus series on planets, gathering and handing in special mats on the Guild conquest planets, stuff like that (I've shared my ideas in other threads).

 

There was so much Bioware could have done with this mostly unnecessary revamp. I think that's what ticks me off most. They seem to have just re-arranged and/or renamed things and changed the point values for the worse, from a solo player's perspective. Due to the Once per Legacy-activities, the revamp hasn't made me want to play more. On the contrary.

 

I like your ideas for including more solo-friendly activities and better rewards. Those would be awesome and a big positive if they went with some/all of those.

I did not mean to make it sound like I was looking down on the solo'ers, I am for the most part a solo'er, but I throw in a lot of group activities to help me make my goal faster, because doing the same solo activity dozens of times in a week is a gigantic turn-off and if anyone is doing that to themselves, that's a self-inflicted wound that Bioware didn't intend. (But the points do need to be higher for those solo activities, for sure)

I was more reacting to the outsized expectations some angry posters have vented about and a lot of them seemed to be from a solo'er's perspective.

I share any concerns about the impact this will have on queues popping, because it is definitely not going to trend positively.

 

SNIP

PS: What is a "proper Conquest guild"?

SNIP

 

My idea is that it's a guild whose sole purpose of existence is largely conquest-based. They advertise for it, and they're in the top-10 every week and not once every three months or only when crafting week comes around.

I've been disappointed in most "conquest" guilds, because most of them are not running conquest together, the expectation seems to always be that you're on your own and they're riding the collective effort of solo'ers. So I ended up doing a lot of solo conquest activities, which are not diverse and get boring quickly.

 

I'm all for them adding more diverse missions to the new system that are friendly to solo'ers, but I would still never expect or demand that a strict solo'er should exceed the efforts of doing the bigger, group-oriented activities.

[aerockyul]

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

 

My sense has always been that Bioware sees our feedback, but they overreact to fixing the problems. They see for years people are complaining about the outsized effect crafting seems to have on certain weeks, and winning during those weeks heavily favored the same mega-guilds over and over. But no one gave any specific feedback about what needed to be changed within conquest-crafting, and Bioware took a hammer to the problem without realizing what the exact complaints were about (this is true of every other problem that has been brought up in the forums and "fixed" by them).

 

Best example I can think of from a recent time was the PvPers complaining about "healers op!!11!" endlessly and angrily. Bioware saw the vague complaint in the headlines and went to nerfing the bejeezus out of healers, when the problem was not their power, it was the queues putting multiple healers on a team, and often lopsidedly. There would be countless posts in those threads complaining and whining about "healers op!!!!111!" and maybe one out of twenty posts would layout the actual problem, and it just got drowned out by the vague, angry, loudest complainers.

 

That said, I'm interested, Tuxs, in what you think would have fixed the crafting issue people had related to conquest that is better than what they did with it in 5.8a. I think combining all bonded attachments into one invasion force was a big, idiotic move. Or at least, maybe the idea is good if they had made it ONE or TWO bonded attachments required, instead of the weird requirement now which is something like anywhere between 4 and 6 attachments of each required for one force. That's just an example.

I think we could all agree it was a little ridiculous seeing some guilds going full out on dozens upon dozens of millions, even well over one hundred million, of points just from crafting, and even with all that sunken cost to the "little guy", the same very few guilds that ALWAYS win every week would still beat those small guilds who were putting all their eggs in one basket for one week.

But what is a good, fair solution to that?

[Joonbeams]

This post may sound cynical, but I'm being completely real here.

 

All your points about why you hate this new system is exactly the POINT of the change to the system. You're not convincing Keith or anyone else there at BWA to revert the changes, because everything you hate about it is exactly what their design goal was. This is why they're "waiting for additional feedback" before they take action on the changes you all hate the most. They need a few weeks worth of data to see if the changes have the desired impact on gameplay, which, you may be surprised to learn, is not to drive players away, but rather the opposite.

 

Basically, the devs had one overarching goal the CQ revamp: Flatten the curve between effort and reward.

 

In short, they wanted a casual level of commitment to CQ to bring an individual player, and smaller casual guilds, closer to realizing their dreams with their flagships. They also wanted to nerf, or perhaps annihilate, the ability of the upper 1% of players on the effort scale to completely dominate the system on the rewards end. Meaning, players who routinely hit the personal goal on 10 characters, or who routinely knock out 150k points on a single toon, and all the players who crafted their way to millions of points. They wanted to nullify those players. Being "not one of those players" myself, I can't say I hate this goal.

 

They wanted to dial it in so that casual players who previously might have hit their personal goal on 1 or 2 toons per week with very little effort ... now those players' same level of "very littke" effort will only get them about 80% of the way to their personal goal ... so now they'll be a little more vested in logging in a little bit more to really hit that goal, and now they're going to feel a lot more vested in that score, and have spent more time in-game.

 

At the same time, they needed to dial it in so that the KILLER COMPETITIVE CQ GODS basically can't hit a personal goal on anything more than 2 toons, max. And because so much of it is tied to legacy, they're gonna have to pick which one guild they want to get the lion's share of their points. They can no longer distribute their individual effort of 1,000,000 points per week across three guild-branches of a singular mega guild.

 

What they knew going into it, is that everyone would revile these changes. Casuals gotta put in a little more effort to get anything in, and in the mindset of casuals, a little more effort is a big deal, because they don't budget a great dale of time to this game, or to gaming at all perhaps. And the CQ GODS were really gonna hate it.

 

But in the end, the CQ GODS will still dominate, just instead of dominating literally 100:1, now it's 2:1. That's still domination. It just feels less dominating, and to hardcore players of any stripe, that hits where it hurts. Winning isn't necessarily the only goal, they're always gonna win. It's about winning BIG. And now the definition of a big win is a lot smaller than it was.

 

So they knew everyone was gonna hate it. But they suspect that in time, as the hardcore players continue to dominate, they'll eventually stop theirb itching, and the as the casual players realize they're getting a lot more total reward than they ever did before, because now they're getting the GUILD-LEVEL reward at a frequency they never did before, they will also stop theirb itching. People will still always grumble for the old days, while simultaneously still playing as much as they did before, if not more, and being overall happier with the outcomes.

 

Anyway, that's the design goal in the heads of the development team, if I'm not mistaken to assume such strategic level thinking at BWA. But no plan survives contact with an entitled and whiney playerbase, so they're in wait-and-see mode at the moment.

 

The problem is that devs almost always know better than the players, and that kind of god-mode feeling sometimes inspires the devs to go too far afield, ala Galactic Command 1.0. Time will tell if these CQ changes are dialed in right, or not.

 

But all your wailing and gnashing of teeth isn't going change anything. Only your actual level of participation will.

 

To that end, I'm not quitting the game or anything as melodramatic as that, but count me among those players who simply stopped participating. In the old system, I very easily and casually hit the personal goal on 2-3 characters every week, and I feel insulted at how hard I'll have to work now to even get 1 done. The same investment I put into 2-3 characters per week now won't even get me half way to one. So I'm simply not participating at all.

 

I think they need to dial the point values in some different directions. But even though I think their first shot missed, if I'm not mistaken about their target, then count me among the players happy that they s--tcanned the old system, and eager for them to perfect the new system.

 

This is probably the smartest, most level-headed, and best-reasoned post I've ever read on this forum in all my years here. Honestly, if the devs would communicate these concepts with even a fraction of the clarity of this post, there would be far less outrage over things.

 

What's particularly great about this post is that I don't even agree with the assumptions this poster attributes to the devs (e.g. the need for nerfing the hardest-core players who put in tons of time and effort to max a ton of toons - IMO those players help uber casuals like me enjoy the game by keeping queues popping when we get to log in for our 15 minutes or so, etc.), and I certainly don't agree with the results of this first crack at reform, and yet still if I heard anything close to this from the devs themselves, I would be far more understanding and patient...

[TUXs]

Tux is completely correct, well said. Crafting was the equalizer between small guilds and large guilds on weeks like Total Galactic War, where the small/medium guilds had a small chance to compete with each other for a change instead of against the big bully guilds.

 

When a lazy big-guild member tries to say that little guilds just haven't put in the time, so for that reason they do not deserve to have any fun or participate in conquest at all, they are just trying to protect their cushy easy play-style. The crafting allowed the little guilds to actually put in the time by working ahead for months or years. So really with the new system we have basically taken away the "ability" of the little guilds to put in extra effort to have a chance 2 times a year to take a planet.

I wanted to highlight the 2 most important parts of your post...

 

Think about that second part...MONTHS of planning. Our "large" guild prepared for Iokath for MONTHS before we made the push for it - it is absolutely conceivable that a smaller guild would need a year to make such a push. The amount of effort that people need to put in is staggering. People who did little else but farm for hours each and every day for months at a time.

 

Again, yeah...crafting was VERY rewarding, completely lopsided tbh...but for a very good reason imo.

[TUXs]

That said, I'm interested, Tuxs, in what you think would have fixed the crafting issue people had related to conquest that is better than what they did with it in 5.8a. I think combining all bonded attachments into one invasion force was a big, idiotic move. Or at least, maybe the idea is good if they had made it ONE or TWO bonded attachments required, instead of the weird requirement now which is something like anywhere between 4 and 6 attachments of each required for one force. That's just an example.

I think we could all agree it was a little ridiculous seeing some guilds going full out on dozens upon dozens of millions, even well over one hundred million, of points just from crafting, and even with all that sunken cost to the "little guy", the same very few guilds that ALWAYS win every week would still beat those small guilds who were putting all their eggs in one basket for one week.

But what is a good, fair solution to that?

Nothing could have "fixed" crafting...because I honestly don't believe it was "broken". I understand what you're saying about it, but crafting served a "greater good" for this game.

 

If anyone remembers, the very first week that Conquests were introduced to the game, you could run FP after FP after FP after FP for points...our first week my guild won Ilum because we were playing non-stop to get points there, running 3-4 groups at any one time...the very next week they made it ONCE per and made crafting the "go to" activity...I'll be honest, I was freaking bitter over that for a long damn time...but as time went on, I started to see some other things that Crafting contributed to...new players looking for an easy way to make their 1st million credits could sell mats. Players who were online all day were farming mats in their free time (or full time for some). The THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Jawa junk I had at one point, got pretty much eaten up during our push for Iokath...there are soooo many spokes to that crafting wheel, that's why I don't believe it was "broken".

[Mithran]

After the initial Conquest revamp, I came onto Forums (posting for probably the third time since before this game was launched) to register my displeasure over the changes to a system that had been working well. I indicated there that while I hadn't committed to cancelling my account, I was considering it. I gave SWTOR a chance to respond to the "feedback," since you were quick to express your desire to address the "feedback." The response to the widespread criticism of the revamp was a symbolic gesture, not a real response.

 

Was the goal of the changes to make small guilds more competitive?

If that was the goal, the makeover was a dismal failure. Small guilds are LESS competitive.

 

Was the goal of the changes to make Conquest more time/effort/labor intensive?

If this was the goal, I think you've overachieved and the message boards have been filled with customers railing against the amount of time/labor they're required to perform.

 

I've worked on my characters here long and hard, but they're just not viable, anymore. After the initial revamp, I ventured onto Forums (where I don't want to be spending my time) to express my complaints. Since there were a lot of other people voicing the same complaint, SWTOR was obliged to scale back its system, but instead of addressing the concerns, you've chosen to see how little you can get away with.

 

The complaints are still being voiced, but I've seen no indication that they're being heard.

 

In view of my expressed complaints not being either heard or addressed, I have cancelled my subscription. My sincere hope is that SWTOR will make SIGNIFICANT changes to the current system, and not just the token gestures we've seen, so far. In the absence of SIGNIFICANT changes to the system, I will leave the game and the results of many, many hours and dollars that I have invested into building my account, here.

 

The default now has moved from one of my staying in the game to a default of my leaving the game.

 

I cancelled my subscription very reluctantly. I've enjoyed playing the game and I like many of the people I've met, here. I like the graphics, the content, the setting, and my characters very much. The few interactions I've had with Customer Service were largely pleasant interactions where my concerns were adequately addressed. I've been extremely frustrated by all the bugs that you won't fix (Eternity Vault, anyone?), but I'd been willing to overlook the downsides of this game because I regarded it as worthwhile in other respects.

 

I sincerely hope that you will heed your customers' concerns, but I'm betting now that you won't.

[JediJoy]

As the GM of a small guild,I couldn't agree more. The crafting and repeatable conquest objectives were the ONLY thing that allowed us to participate in conquest. Even though we have fewer than 30 people, and only a very small handful ever did weekly conquest things, we could still get on the top ten very regularly.

 

It was enjoyable and highly rewarding to know that skill and determination could put our name out there with the supposed 'big dogs'. Heck, we even conquered a planet one time, a small guild on a decently populated server COULD do it. The folks complaining about it before... all I can say is 'they must have just been lazy'.... so you can't 1v1 a mega guild with 10x your player base, so what? Make smart choices where to invade, save up, prepare before hand, and push hard, you could make it, we were proof of that. Anyone who says otherwords is telling a lie, and looking for a conquest handout.

 

These recent changes have hit us hard. Conquest used to be a moral booster for us, and now most people are starting to have that conversation of "what do we do now that ToR is officially circling the drain".

 

Yes, some changes needed to be made, but these were not those changes. No system is perfect , but I'd rather have a broken system that let us have some 'feel good' over a system that has us feel like the developers hate us.

 

^^ This!

 

Im second in command of a small guild. Crafting conquest weeks were our one and only chance to beat the larger more conquest focused guilds. We had a small group of very dedicated crafters who prepped for many moons for a crafting week. We would be the "big crafting bomb" droppers due to our hard work. People would join us and be completely shocked when they found out that we were a small guild with our level of conquest numbers. We kicked large guilds arses time and time again. The most recent was on Belsavis where our competitors had over 80-100 members on at all times of the day and night, while we got lucky if we had more than 15 on at one time. Through hard work and dedication, we won. This gave my guild a HUGE morale boost; more members participated in conquest then ever before.

 

Members would cheer and constantly post in guild chat our conquest score everytime a crafter would load in. Its sad to know that we will never ever have that feeling again. Crafting wasnt broken. The large guilds cried about it solely because they didnt like getting beat by a small guild. Quantity doesnt beat Quality.

 

Tux made some great points regarding crafting weeks. I completely agree with him.

 

The devs claim that the whole point of the change to conquest was to level the playing field and give small guilds a chance. Instead they gave us a system that took away small guilds one and only chance to compete and win. On top of that they made it even harder for small guilds, most who are very alt friendly, to reach their goals to even get the min rewards. Conquest changes havent really fazed the large guilds. Its the small guilds that are on the forums, its small guilds demanding change to this horrible excuse of a conquest system.

 

Conquest was the best way to keep people motivated and playing while we somewhat patiently waited for new content to come out which has been few and far between. Over half my guild has unsubbed with no plans to resub.

 

I never imagined i would say this... but... WoW is actually looking pretty good. They release large expansions every 2 years with smaller content additions throughout each expansion. I tried ESO in beta and didnt like the play style. I also hear good things about Final Fantasy.

[Suprderk]

As the GM of a small guild,I couldn't agree more. The crafting and repeatable conquest objectives were the ONLY thing that allowed us to participate in conquest. Even though we have fewer than 30 people, and only a very small handful ever did weekly conquest things, we could still get on the top ten very regularly.

 

It was enjoyable and highly rewarding to know that skill and determination could put our name out there with the supposed 'big dogs'. Heck, we even conquered a planet one time, a small guild on a decently populated server COULD do it. The folks complaining about it before... all I can say is 'they must have just been lazy'.... so you can't 1v1 a mega guild with 10x your player base, so what? Make smart choices where to invade, save up, prepare before hand, and push hard, you could make it, we were proof of that. Anyone who says otherwords is telling a lie, and looking for a conquest handout.

 

These recent changes have hit us hard. Conquest used to be a moral booster for us, and now most people are starting to have that conversation of "what do we do now that ToR is officially circling the drain".

 

Yes, some changes needed to be made, but these were not those changes. No system is perfect , but I'd rather have a broken system that let us have some 'feel good' over a system that has us feel like the developers hate us.

 

Well said. If we had the old system with the added guild goal for those who don't make top 10 that would be great. I like the small, medium and large yields but it would be nice if we could pick any planet and just have the reward progress as we pass each target. By this I mean if you reach the small yield goal on the planet of choice that is the reward you get, but once you pass the medium yield goal the reward changes that reward. That way everyone would not be on the same planet because each planet could provide small, medium, and large yield rewards. Most people would be much happier with the old system with a few tweaks like these.

[phalczen]

Why is that? I absolutely agree that crafting skewed the living **** out of Conquests...but...Crafting was also undeniably a positive thing for the health of this game. It provided GTN sales, massive credit AND material sinks, tons of solo activity and it allowed small guilds to make pushes that they otherwise never will be able to.

 

The good of crafting far outweighed the bad imo.

 

I won't presume to know the specifics of how you managed with a small guild to prepare months in advance for an invasion of Iokath. Putting aside the truth and immersive factor that a true military force would need to do exactly that, I too am part of a small guild for years on Harbinger, and I think I can count on one hand the times we even ended up anywhere on the leaderboards. This is with 8-14 active people all with multiple accounts. The same mechanisms that allowed a small guild to even have a chance, with months of preparation, are the mechanisms that allowed mega guilds to dominate the rest of the time. Besides, the notion of "preparing" for next weeks conquest was obviously a turn off for the developers, or they wouldn't have gone to great lengths to randomize the system outside of game wide periodic events.

 

What is this crafting that was positive for the health of the game? Are you referring to the minimal market afforded by Artifice dye modules, color crystals, and biochem consumables? Did that somehow vanish with this update? Perhaps you are referring to the acquisition of raw materials ... by my calculations, the amount of materials needed for crafting in conquest has quintupled ... it seems to me the resource brokers make out even better in this system. You and I both remember well the intimate role crafting had in SWG ... this game doesn't even come close, Tux. Regardless, players who do the resource grind or even churn out and sell the war supply components required for an invasion force stand to make millions more than they did pre-5.8.

 

Let's also not forget a key development quote:

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).

-eric

 

While this specific point was meant to refer to the repeatable WZ and GSF objectives, I also interpret it to mean that, just like before, some weeks will have more crafting objectives than others.

 

People who are saying the system was totally fine are delusional. People who think dev time should have been spent elsewhere might have a legitimate argument, but the devs should still ensure systems that integrate, supplement, and enhance end game content are working as intended, not just working as designed.

 

Conquest as a method to unlock your guild flagship was always PROFOUNDLY inefficient. The easiest path for smaller guilds was always to have guildies camp the commander areas, summon their members, and kill commanders over and over. Our sister pub and imp guilds did exactly that and got our flagships fully unlocked in a few weeks years ago, without ever even appearing on the leaderboards. Its still the most efficient way to get the rooms unlocked even now post 5.8.

 

Now even though we've finished our flagships, many of us still want/need the achievements/titles. There would have been no chance to compete with BBB before 5.8. I'm not sure we can right now post 5.8A, but at least the system is being reconfigured to address that. Its not perfect, but neither was Galactic Command. The Devs didn't ask us or prep us about those changes either, and I'm not thrilled it took over a year for GC to get in a decent place. I hope the Devs learn from that and make the adjustments needed for Conquest too. For the record, I'm not happy with where it sits right now. But the design goals aren't irrational to be perfectly honest. The devs do not want you to grind any one specific activity to win conquest ... they don't want it to be grinding the Ilum flashpoints over and over like it was in the beginning, or crafting hundreds of millions of points worth of invasion forces ... just like they didn't want people to grind one specific thing over and over for GC. And just like GC, conquest needs to have the right mix of "try everything in the game," "do what we Devs want you to do this week," and "do what you the player enjoy most." It also has to strike a balance between the "doing what you do naturally" that GC is right now, versus focusing on it as an event ... which ultimately translates into some degree of grinding. Those balances are off right now, and that's what needs to be addressed.

[Rheshalea]

I like your ideas for including more solo-friendly activities and better rewards. Those would be awesome and a big positive if they went with some/all of those.

I did not mean to make it sound like I was looking down on the solo'ers, I am for the most part a solo'er, but I throw in a lot of group activities to help me make my goal faster, because doing the same solo activity dozens of times in a week is a gigantic turn-off and if anyone is doing that to themselves, that's a self-inflicted wound that Bioware didn't intend. (But the points do need to be higher for those solo activities, for sure)

I was more reacting to the outsized expectations some angry posters have vented about and a lot of them seemed to be from a solo'er's perspective.

I share any concerns about the impact this will have on queues popping, because it is definitely not going to trend positively.

 

I didn't take your question negatively at all.

I think just about all solo players are that because they choose to be. I mean, we could play some other game instead of SWTOR, but of all the games around, we happen to like this one. So we accept that we won't see all the content, we accept that we won't get all the cool stuff that only drops in Ops, or we accept that we have to team up with random people and risk having a real bad time to maybe get what we want.

 

For me, well, I started the game the day it went live and played together with my husband. Some other friends checked the game out too, but didn't stay for long. Other friends have come and gone, some occasionally still pop in to check what's new. I myself have taken many breaks, but the lack of story content lately (and my serious dislike of KotFEET) is really making me feel tired.

I really hoped the revamped Conquest would make the game feel fresh again for a while. I doubt I'll be staying for more than a month this time around either, especially since I reached a few of my personal goals during the week since I resubbed.

[JediJoy]

I won't presume to know the specifics of how you managed with a small guild to prepare months in advance for an invasion of Iokath. Putting aside the truth and immersive factor that a true military force would need to do exactly that, I too am part of a small guild for years on Harbinger, and I think I can count on one hand the times we even ended up anywhere on the leaderboards. This is with 8-14 active people all with multiple accounts. The same mechanisms that allowed a small guild to even have a chance, with months of preparation, are the mechanisms that allowed mega guilds to dominate the rest of the time. Besides, the notion of "preparing" for next weeks conquest was obviously a turn off for the developers, or they wouldn't have gone to great lengths to randomize the system outside of game wide periodic events.

 

SNIP

 

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Now even though we've finished our flagships, many of us still want/need the achievements/titles. There would have been no chance to compete with (SNIP) before 5.8. I'm not sure we can right now post 5.8A, but at least the system is being reconfigured to address that. Its not perfect, but neither was Galactic Command. The Devs didn't ask us or prep us about those changes either, and I'm not thrilled it took over a year for GC to get in a decent place. I hope the Devs learn from that and make the adjustments needed for Conquest too. For the record, I'm not happy with where it sits right now. But the design goals aren't irrational to be perfectly honest. The devs do not want you to grind any one specific activity to win conquest ... they don't want it to be grinding the Ilum flashpoints over and over like it was in the beginning, or crafting hundreds of millions of points worth of invasion forces ... just like they didn't want people to grind one specific thing over and over for GC. And just like GC, conquest needs to have the right mix of "try everything in the game," "do what we Devs want you to do this week," and "do what you the player enjoy most." It also has to strike a balance between the "doing what you do naturally" that GC is right now, versus focusing on it as an event ... which ultimately translates into some degree of grinding. Those balances are off right now, and that's what needs to be addressed.

 

First, you can prep months in advance for a crafting week. Tux's guild chose to go after Iokath when it came out. Prior to 5.8, small guilds had a much larger chance to get on the leader boards than they do now. Especially if those guilds are alt friendly like mine is; even on non crafting weeks we were able to stay on the leader boards due to the repeatable objectives that we would run our alts through; ie nar shaddaa heroics etc. No one "wants" to grind; but the grind prior to 5.8 is NOTHING compared to what it is now.

 

Crafting is now obsolete. Yes the cost of mats will go up, but the amount of people willing to purchase them will go down immensely. Crafting conquest weeks werent broken. My small guild (on the same server youre on) beat that same guild you mentioned earlier several times on crafting weeks PRIOR to 5.8; now we have no chance in hell to even compete with larger guilds on any week.