In Praise of the 6.1.1 Conquest Overhaul

[Soljin]

The big problem with that is group content takes the longest, so will get the most rewards, CQ wise, so basically anyone who doesn't want to (or can't) do group content is getting the middle finger. Not to mention, ops, etc are for higher level players, so new players, would be missing out on getting CQ points for them. The systm may not be balanced, and it may take tweaking, but as far as CQ goes, at the moment it's probably the most inclusive it's ever been.

 

If it scales based off time spent then a solo player could solo 3x different flashpoints at .50 hrs per and get the same rewards as each operation team member completing a 1.5 hr Operation... How is anyone missing out on Conquest points?

 

Under the current system a solo player could spend 1.5 hrs doing pretty much whatever they want and get the same conquest as an Operations group and that's great...

 

What I am saying is this system is awesome but they need to tweak the numbers to scale more evenly for all ranges of content based off time invested not "skill level required" or group size required.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Soljin

[Soljin]

 

4. This game has never, ever rewarded based on time spent.

 

Yeah but it should have...more people would have stuck with the game. Problem is they removed over half the loot incentive from the game to sell it on the Cartel Market so now they have to think of a gearing system interesting and complex enough to keep people interested with almost zero cosmetic influence.

 

I love me some Star Wars but I will say in other games I spend a large amount of time hunting cosmetic items for my characters... I don't have that motivation to play in this game at all.

 

That said I still think the new conquest system is a huge improvement and I am enjoying it.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Soljin

[DarthSpuds]

All conquest should have rewards based on time investment. If A solo Flashpoint takes 30 mins on average and an Operation takes an hour then the Operation should give twice the conquest reward.

 

Yes, but then divided by 8 or 16, depending on how many players you have.

 

All The Best

[Dunderheid]

As I am unguilded, I feel I have little to contribute here except questions. Main question at this point is I am levelling a character and have currently 174000/50000. Would those points over cap be useful to a guile, or are they just "wasted"?

If they are of use to a guild, I may be motivated to join one, although I am not a fan of group content.

Edited April 26, 2020 by Dunderheid

[menofhorror]

Give few gifts to your companion. Sell vendor trash. Take a taxi. Recalibrate a mod on your gear. Do a few crew missions. Place 5 deco in your SH. Grats, you've now made more conquest doing some of the most straightforward, low effort and air headed things possible than you'd get by spending 35-45 mins in content requiring groups, group finders and queue pools. Do you truly consider that as good game design?

 

Lemme reiterate. We don't have a situation where selling vendor trash-tier of stuff and doing group content were somehow equal. Stuff that requires other people, queue pools or some effort is by far LESS REWARDING than giving gifts to your companion. Does this feel right?

 

Do the hamster wheel of irrelevant busy work from fleet and go to your SH and place five deco. Spend two mins doing any of the several face roll heroic missions. Grats, you've reached your conq target. You've also earned far more conquest than somebody doing PvP or GSF manages in an hour or two. Sell vendor trash-tier of idiocy is not an "equal" way of earning conq when compared to grp stuff. Vendor trash way is far superior and more fficient.

 

 

 

 

 

This state of affairs is such that you can't really even ridicule it. " What's next, a button you press in fleet for earning conq?" Well, yeah, you pretty much literally have a couple of those as daily repetables now. BW removed a pretty fun end game replacement and turned it into a daily log in reward. And people cheer.

 

 

I guess you are one of these people who think spamming OPs and flashpoints every week is fun and rewarding. Have fun being burnt out.

Number can use tweaking but having a lot of options makes the whole thing much more fun.

[Ylliarus]

It is obscene.

 

No, it is not. What is obscene however, is how you want to push your personal playstyle onto everyone else, how you want everything in the game to be designed according to how you think it should be. Luckily, it's not you calling the shots (and thankfully it will never be) but the Devs. The Devs have listened to tons of player feedback and this is the system that has come out of it. The new system has been receiving overwhelming amounts of positive feedback and the amount of negative ones - like yours - can be counted on one or two hands.

 

I am sorry that you don't like the new system, but the fact remains the majority of players in SWTOR (this majority can be seen here on the forums, heard from players in various guilds and read on various SWTOR-related Discord servers) are in favour of this system. No matter how much you post on these forums, the devs won't revert to the old system and you will not be getting what you want. You will simply have to learn to live with the new system and stop enforcing your personal playstyle onto others.

 

How would you feel if I started arguing on these forums for Operations to be removed from the game because I don't play them that much? (Note, this is a hypothetical, I wouldn't actually do something like that). Would you appreciate it that I would be trying to impose my way of playing SWTOR onto you? I bet that you wouldn't. Why then are you doing the same with the Conquest system? If players want to finish their personal Conquest goal on the fleet, let them. It isn't affecting you in any way shape or form. Leave others to play how they want to play, because how I play, how any of the posters here play, it has no effect on you.

[DarkTergon]

As I am unguilded, I feel I have little to contribute here except questions. Main question at this point is I am levelling a character and have currently 174000/50000. Would those points over cap be useful to a guile, or are they just "wasted"?

If they are of use to a guild, I may be motivated to join one, although I am not a fan of group content.

 

for a solo player it's a waste, as you get nothing extra for it, but if you are in a guild, and they cap any planet, you'll get the guild rewards too. Also, if you join a guild now, you'll get the guild rewards, but the guild will only get your pints from when you join, so those you have already won't count towards their total.

Edited April 27, 2020 by DarkTergon

[Damask_Rose]

As I am unguilded, I feel I have little to contribute here except questions. Main question at this point is I am levelling a character and have currently 174000/50000. Would those points over cap be useful to a guile, or are they just "wasted"?

If they are of use to a guild, I may be motivated to join one, although I am not a fan of group content.

 

If you join a guild right now they wouldn't benefit from those points, but from any you gain after you join. If you get 50k more points after you join and the guild you join meets their conquest goal, you will get the guild reward on Tuesday. Unless the guild is fully leveled up they will benefit from any conquest points you earn since those are what guilds need to level up. As guilds level up they gain better bonuses for their members.

[CelynthePhoenix]

I've been talking to a bunch of players who are in small guilds and a lot of them are contemplating getting a flagship or unlocking an extra flagship room for the first time ever, They all say they log in more often and see people logging in now that hadn't logged in in weeks or months.

 

As I said to one of them yesterday, I've been working on expanding my guilds flagships for years, and I was getting close to burn out of it and give up. Since the latest patch, I feel like I'm playing towards that goal instead, so yeah, I'm overall very happy with the new system and don't think it needs changing except for a few minor tweaks.

 

But I don't think the change should be based on data collected:

- during its first week (I capped all my characters above level 1 this week, I'm not planning on doing that every week)

- during double xp (conquest points are not doubled but we still get them faster during double xp)

- while people have more playing time than usual.

 

In the end, this is a game, it's meant to be something we do for fun and relax. Treat it like a second job if you like but don't expect everyone else to do the same!

[Mardonius]

I'm posting this to rise above the din of a few ardent nay-sayers. The Devs need to see there's also a solid, positive response to the 6.1.1 changes.

(...)

 

The pendulum has swung in the right direction for conquest.

Thank you, EA.

 

I agree and also thank EA for the conquest-changes.

 

Greetings from Germany

[Stradlin]

2. I have the 150% stronghold buff and can't get to 50k in 10 minutes doing the objectives you are complaining about.

Happy to help you out with this then. For optimal results, if you like rewards,you wanna use an unestablished max. level character. (less you have maxed out besides your level, the better.)

 

Give 4-5 gifts to a companion with low affection. You are now at 10k conquest. Head to your SH and spam same deco on some corner 5 times. Open your paperdoll and press a button to reroll an amp. You are now at 20k conquest. Character doing either PvP or GSF needs like 30 mins to get to 20k. Assuming games pop immediately and there is no waiting time. Somebody doing FPs might manage to get to 20k in 20 mins or so, assuming they have friends online and/or instant queue.*

 

You have so far needed 2 minutes at most. Pretty good am I right? Onwards! Send 5 companions to do crafting mission. 5k conq target dings here immediately if you are doing this with an untrained profession. Another ding after 5 missions are done. You now sit at 30, when measured in plain conq. reward points. Of course, in reality you have much more. Each of the 6 low effort objectives counts as a mission complete and gives the XP as conquest. (even at max lvl) Those 5000 point digs are actually like 5500-5600 dings each now, depending on how much xp boosts you got. Thus, it is better conq to do 4 x 5k objectives vs doing one 20k objective. This manages to make the garbage selling fleet dweller even more superior.

 

Head out and do any of the super fast faceroll heroic missions with a bonus objective. You have prolly reached your target by the time bonus mission completes. If not, sell some garbage and you are all done.If you somehow STILL not, you have to spend all of that 2 minutes and actually finish the heroic mission.

 

 

Everything outlined above takes 10 mins from start to end if we assume you don't know where to go, need to check fleet map for vendors etc. It is much faster if you do know your way.

 

Once that 10 mins has passed and you have logged the 50k char out, person doing an FP is maybe halfway done with the FP run. Assuming it is some super fast FP. (In reality, he is prolly still building the grp) Person doing pvp or GSF has just finished the 1st match of the day. (in reality, he is prolly still sitting in the queue) Assuming the person doing pvp/GSF won the match, he gets 8k conq out of it or so! Nice! From here on, amount of conq earned from a match goes way down though. Win or lose,all the rest of the matches that day bring 1500 conq or so. Do weekly, and you get 10k more.

 

 

 

 

Remember that person doing pvp and/or GSF? His conq rate was already vasttly inferior. By now, it has gone way down. We assume

 

. We assumed those 3-4 matches he played

 

 

3. When you do flashpoints and ops you are also hitting quest completions and rampages, not to mention a flood of points for killing mobs.

Everybody gets these supplementary dings. Same goes for planetary and heroic mission grinders, who also reach the extremely generous 35k from doing 30 missions for example. Only mission you complete in doing a 20 minute FP or 2 hour OP gives xp that absolutely pales in comparion to mission completions you get when grinding super fast planetary heroics.

 

 

4. This game has never, ever rewarded based on time spent.

 

Now it most certainly doesn¨t. Solo player doing menial tasks or most straightforward content available reaches target in 10 mins. People doing group content get ther emuch slower.

 

Maybe take a step back and see what you are arguing. Do you truly wish to justify and explain why 10 mins of solo stuff is vastly superior to doing any of the content that needs groups or other people? Could you, perhaps, agree that both of these playstyles should reward an equal amount of conquest at least?

 

1. This is the first week of the new system. We don't know what next week's will look like. In past systems there were big swings on what content got the most objectives. At this time there is no reason to think that has changed. Other weeks will likely have a preponderance of group content related objectives.

 

I don't think each conq week having a theme was among things they broke apart. Its pretty easy to see the BH/Mando-themed stuff on the list that is unique to this week and about to phase out tomorrow. Similarly, it is pretty easy to see stuff that is likely here to stay. Infinitely repeatables, that actually got nerfed in a patch where overall conquest went up by 400% or so will ofc move from this week to another. Running around fleet for reward that is as easy and fast as possible prolly isn't some shining cornerstone of mando bh culture, so any and all of that stuff prolly isn't tied to this week either. Planets and heroics that give 10k in few mins include all the planets everywhere, so all of that kinda appears as a new always there- core objective too. Master Mode FP objectives taking you to Mando/BH/Warrior culture-themed FPs are gonna go ofc.

 

Since the entire BH event has been broken, they might not be cycling this conq week away normally. UNless there is some oversight, it'll prolly be here for two weeks, not one.

I do agree we'll know for certain only once this conq phases out. THis being some crazy test server experiment accidentally leaking to live feels more likely than notion we have some odd mix of insane and broken conq weeks and ones that actually encourage and reward grp content, too.

[lpope]

All conquest should have rewards based on time investment.

 

I don't necessarily think time investment is the only deciding factor for conquest point rewards. Imagine a scenario where BW creates a task that requires clicking something 200 times, but with a 30 second cooldown between clicks. So that task takes approximately 1 hour 40 mins. Should it get the same reward as a MM operation? I would say no. It's a contrived example, but there are some fairly wide ranges in completion time in group content, so it would be difficult to balance around time without adding additional categories to content. There is a reason people spam HS and RR for example.

 

I think there needs to be multiple criteria that determines conquest points, one being time investment, another being skill / difficulty and perhaps others such as incentivizing areas of the game that are underutilized.

[xordevoreaux]

I don't necessarily think time investment is the only deciding factor for conquest point rewards. Imagine a scenario where BW creates a task that requires clicking something 200 times, but with a 30 second cooldown between clicks.

 

Or, as is more often given as a counter-example of why time-based rewards are bad regardless of the reward, casual players lack endless hours on hand to play the game to reach those rewards.

[Stradlin]

I don't necessarily think time investment is the only deciding factor for conquest point rewards. Imagine a scenario where BW creates a task that requires clicking something 200 times, but with a 30 second cooldown between clicks. So that task takes approximately 1 hour 40 mins. Should it get the same reward as a MM operation? I would say no. It's a contrived example, but there are some fairly wide ranges in completion time in group content, so it would be difficult to balance around time without adding additional categories to content. There is a reason people spam HS and RR for example.

 

I think there needs to be multiple criteria that determines conquest points, one being time investment, another being skill / difficulty and perhaps others such as incentivizing areas of the game that are underutilized.

 

 

Difficulty puts me to gray area. Good old conquest system was never about that either. Not really. Still, In old system and new, it was a pity how little you got in terms of rewards from stuff such as end game MM FPs or soloing master mode KOTFE chapters. This stuff pushes you quite hard. Yet, in eyes of the game facerolling some random place solo was a task no smaller than doing KOTET c3 in Master Mode. Derping through MM HS was no different than Nathema on MM. Difficulty was never a factor.

 

Generally speaking, I think most of the things you saying are completely accurate...

 

... Its just that in order to have any kind of conversation going about this, one is reduced to objective ways to measure stuff. Hours, minutes and mouse clicks. Lots of peoplle you are discussing with here are folks who have grown completely alienated from concept of game features challenging a player or requiring any kind of an effort or investments from the player. They do not want that. Games challenging those playing them in any way is something that has been integrqal to games centuries before video games became a thing. It remains important to video games in 2020. Not on these forums though. Talking about difficulty of content, how much effort it requires, how complex it is to set up..ANY of that simply won't fly here. When sticking with fairly undeniable quantities such as minutes and seconds,.there, you might still ge through. Barely.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Stradlin

[DarthAlastor]

It's pretty simple Bioware / EA put in a system where people can do whatever they feel comfortable doing. If someone wants to play solo they can play solo or group up to do heroics or FPs or Ops or PVP or GSF. As others have already stated people get more cq points because they can complete multiple actions at the same time while doing heroics on any single planet they choose. If you want to only play PVP or GSF then feel free to do it but let everyone else do what they want because what other people want is different from how you want to complete your objectives

[Soljin]

I don't necessarily think time investment is the only deciding factor for conquest point rewards. Imagine a scenario where BW creates a task that requires clicking something 200 times, but with a 30 second cooldown between clicks. So that task takes approximately 1 hour 40 mins. Should it get the same reward as a MM operation? I would say no. It's a contrived example, but there are some fairly wide ranges in completion time in group content, so it would be difficult to balance around time without adding additional categories to content. There is a reason people spam HS and RR for example.

 

I think there needs to be multiple criteria that determines conquest points, one being time investment, another being skill / difficulty and perhaps others such as incentivizing areas of the game that are underutilized.

 

I disagree with your thoughts on Skill/Difficulty completely. Skill in this game is reaction time coupled with dexterity. If we are going to create examples then lets talk about people with impairments that prevent high levels of dexterity...They are now relegated to smaller reward returns due to "Skill caps" on rewards.

 

Sitting and clicking a button for 1.5 hours in my mind is more difficult then MM content...Have you ever leveled a companion to 50 using trophies...That only takes 30 minutes and there is not enough conquest in the game to cover how terrible that is.

 

Lets not forget BW does have the ability to add a bit more interesting conquest paths then clicking a button repeatedly for 1.5 hours if they are given the chance to make adjustments.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Soljin

[DarkTergon]

It's pretty simple Bioware / EA put in a system where people can do whatever they feel comfortable doing. If someone wants to play solo they can play solo or group up to do heroics or FPs or Ops or PVP or GSF. As others have already stated people get more cq points because they can complete multiple actions at the same time while doing heroics on any single planet they choose. If you want to only play PVP or GSF then feel free to do it but let everyone else do what they want because what other people want is different from how you want to complete your objectives

 

Excatly, and as previous people have mentioned, anyone who's doing content you have to que for (or any content for that matter), chances are you have to wait at some stage, wether it's que times, or you are doing something else, like changing stuff, you can also do these simple quests and get your rewards, it's not as if you are blocked from them.

 

And again I point to my post below.

 

this is why i like this Conquest more than the previous versions, it's more alt friendly, more inclusive, and more people will benefit. The ONLY people who DON'T benefit from this are the mat sellers.

[Aulus_Claudius]

Or, as is more often given as a counter-example of why time-based rewards are bad regardless of the reward, casual players lack endless hours on hand to play the game to reach those rewards.

Most MMOs have some sort of skill-based reward system. Harder content gives better loot, more points, whatever it is you're playing for.

 

In SWTOR, they've listened to the more casual players already: "that's too elitist," "not just the top 1% of players should be able to get good stuff," etc. So everyone can get good gear, and MM ops and team ranked PvP are not the most efficient means of farming most things, including conquest. Before anyone gets the wrong impression: I'm not opposed to this more egalitarian approach.

 

However, it raises the question: if we're not going to make rewards skill-based, what should we base them on? The most egalitarian, perfectly equal thing imaginable is time investment. Everyone can put in time, and it doesn't matter how well you play. All are equal. But that's not enough for some, who apparently not only don't want the system weighted toward good players, they want it actively weighted against them and toward casual gamers unwilling to put either time or effort into the game. I can come up with no other possible explanation for some of the things they've now added to conquest.

 

The question is, if you're not going to base it on effort, and not going to base it on time, what do you reward in a way that still brings value to the game? I'm fine with a system that rewards all content people play more or less equally for time investment, and even with a doubled rewards for the first time you do each one so people who don't have much time can have an added impact for those first goals, and many of the changes are certainly positive in that direction. But riding a taxi being worth more than a flashpoint? How about selling junk? Giving a companion a gift? Rolling an amplifier? What possible value does a system bring to the game that rewards the most banal, uninteresting side activities in the game more than actually playing the content it offers?

 

Asked another way: If they're going to make conquest so mind-numblingly easy to accomplish that it's basically a glorified login reward, why not just make the materials an actual weekly login reward and do away with the pretext? Plenty of MMOs do it already.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Aulus_Claudius

[casirabit]

What some don't realize is this gives those of us that have a lot of alts a reason to play those alts and play more. While some may only have 1 or 2 characters, most people I know have a ton of alts and we like playing them as well. I have this week been able to play all my alts and actually played more than I normally do.

 

You fuss about the conquest because more people can get more alts to the conquest goals like it is hurting you. It isn't. No one is telling you how to play but you been trying to tell us we have to play this way or that and we have to group up just because you say so. I do group but I choose who I group up with. I have been through enough grouping when I first started playing back at launch realizing there is no way I will do group pickups anymore. Not worth the hassle.

 

Let people play their way and you play yours and stop telling us we are doing it wrong, just because it is not your way.

 

So what if some small guilds are able to get encryptions for their guild ship. It still takes 50 encryptions per framework. I seriously doubt a small guild will be able to do that in a short time. It will still take some time and some guilds just want to be able to unlock the guild ship to decorate. Shock: Some people just love to decorate big deal.

 

 

While some will find the easy way it doesn't bother me as that is not my style. I like to decorate but I am damn sure not going to sit there and decorate one corner all the time and while you can give gifts to companions, I have a lot at max rank, not going to waste time doing that. There have always been some people to find a shortcut to things and there will always be. That doesn't mean everyone is doing it. Most are doing the things they love and getting the points. It just that they don't have to do things they don't like and that when it becomes a problem to some.

Edited April 27, 2020 by casirabit

[DarthSpuds]

What some don't realize is this gives those of us that have a lot of alts a reason to play those alts and play more. While some may only have 1 or 2 characters, most people I know have a ton of alts and we like playing them as well. I have this week been able to play all my alts and actually played more than I normally do.

.

 

I've spent more time playing Alts this last week, than I had in the previous six months.

 

I am 100% certain I am not alone in that.

 

All The Best

[xordevoreaux]

What some don't realize is this gives those of us that have a lot of alts a reason to play those alts and play more.

Definitely!

[Aulus_Claudius]

snip

Was that meant as a response to my post? You didn't quote anyone, so I can't tell. If so, please tell me where you got the idea from my post that I want to tell you or anyone how to play, or expressed dissatisfaction at people getting alts through conquest faster. Perhaps you've been debating people who are against the changes entirely and assumed I'm one them; I'm merely critical of the implementation.

 

Conquest should be fair to everyone and not pigeonhole you into playing certain content. You should be able to play as many characters as you want. We agree. That's the whole point. Currently, people who actually play the game's content (whether it be story, heroics, FPs, ops, PvP, you name it) are now at a severe disadvantage compared to those who game the system and log around taking taxis and gifting. That's not me trying to tell you how to play, it's the system doing so by making the least interesting parts of the game the most rewarding and thereby punishing you for actually playing the game the way you want to.

 

Sure, people will always find a "most effective" or fastest way to gain CP, but ideally the spread between different content types should be fairly small and the most effective way should actually involve playing the game, not gaming the system. In the current implementation, they've turned it into a daily login bonus in all but name.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Aulus_Claudius

[casirabit]

Was that meant as a response to my post? You didn't quote anyone, so I can't tell. If so, please tell me where you got the idea from my post that I want to tell you or anyone how to play, or expressed dissatisfaction at people getting alts through conquest faster. Perhaps you've been debating people who are against the changes entirely and assumed I'm one them; I'm merely critical of the implementation.

 

Conquest should be fair to everyone and not pigeonhole you into playing certain content. You should be able to play as many characters as you want. We agree. That's the whole point. Currently, people who actually play the game's content (whether it be story, heroics, FPs, ops, PvP, you name it) are now at a severe disadvantage compared to those who game the system and log around taking taxis and gifting. That's not me trying to tell you how to play, it's the system doing so by making the least interesting parts of the game the most rewarding and thereby punishing you for actually playing the game the way you want to.

 

Sure, people will always find a "most effective" or fastest way to gain CP, but ideally the spread between different content types should be fairly small and the most effective way should actually involve playing the game, not gaming the system. In the current implementation, they've turned it into a daily login bonus in all but name.

 

No, not a response to your post.

[Aulus_Claudius]

No, not a response to your post.

Okay, misunderstanding then. Without a quote I just went by post order.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Aulus_Claudius

[IzumiCurtis]

Okay, misunderstanding then. Without a quote I just went by post order.

 

Someone made a thread about how much he hates the changes and then decided to invade this positive thread to continue to whine. (And making me unable to tell which thread I'm reading anymore.) That's probably who the response is to.

 

More ontopic, a newer, low level guildie (Who just recently got a toon to level 50/51 for the first time) who doesn't have anything close to 150% stronghold bonus no longer feels useless and actually feels like he can help the guild hit target/get encryptions. And no, he's not sitting on fleet selling junk. (Even if he was, he would not be getting 5k a pop.)