Upcoming Guild Conquest Updates

[KendraP]

Without cq why would I do the same content I've done dozens to hundreds of times over and over again?

[codydmaan]

I'm really happy about this confirmation. Thanks for making it official. And thanks for making the game enviroment more fair. We look forward to the upcoming changes that will continue to promote server fairness.

[TrixxieTriss]

I clipped away the rest of this because I'm really answering *all* of it, but I just wanted it to be clear which post I'm answering without quoting a whole big piece of text.

 

Quite frankly, I think the most important problem with Conquest is not the balance of points, nor the various questions of repeatability, nor the botting or cheating.

 

Everyone keeps talking about and debating how BioWare can *fix* Conquest, and I've come to the conclusion that they cannot. Nobody can. Conquest has "eaten" SWTOR - it seems like people are talking about how this or that feature of SWTOR relates to Conquest (but never the other way around), and it worries me. We have this big huge game full of things to do, and what concerns us? Just one little corner of it - Conquest - is important, and all those other things are just ways to play Conquest.

 

Is this healthy for the game? I don't think so, and aside from just removing Conquest totally from the game, I don't see how, in the end, it can be fixed *at*all* before it takes the game down with it.

 

Will someone *please* tell me why I'm wrong?

 

You’re not entirely wrong. With the slow cadence of new playable content, Bioware have substituted conquest to be the real End game of swtor. So in that respect you are 100% correct that conquest has eaten swtor and swtor is mostly about conquest once you’ve done your initial stories.

 

Bioware have killed crafting outside of CQ before this by limiting who can do end game crafting or augments and has systematically destroyed reg pvp with bad choices going all the way back to 5.0. So there really isn’t much left for us legacy or long term players to do except CQ stuff.

 

From a personal perspective, Bioware have ruined 4 of my main activities in the last 12 months.

1. Reg pvp

2. Crafting

3. Uprisings

4. And now Conquest

 

Every change has made me play less and less. Not one thing they’ve done in the last 12 months has made me want to play more. Not one thing!!... it kinda makes me really mad cause I love this game and Bioware are ripping that joy away from me.

 

I’d actually unsubscribed after the handling of and the decision to Nerf crafting. I had hoped to be able to test the changes before my sub ran out. But then they had the ice storm that delayed the patch and my sub ran out before I could test. So I decided to resub to test the patch (stupid me right?). Not only did the patch break more than it fixed, but the crafting Nerf has severely impacted my enjoyment in CQ. Well Bioware have less than 60 days to make some changes and get me interested again because that’s the last time I’m renewing it for the foreseeable future if things don’t change to improve my fun in the game,

Edited March 11, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[codydmaan]

[color=#f9d648

 

4) Players want to see change in how Conquests work, specifically with Leaderboards.

 

This feedback does not fall on deaf ears.

[/color]

 

Exactly a change is needed. When we see the same guild no1 on one of the servers I play on its like whats the point of conquest anyway. Change it up so its not possible for years in a row. More server equality. Let's do this!

[SteveTheCynic]

Without cq why would I do the same content I've done dozens to hundreds of times over and over again?

That's a good question, and one to which I don't have a good (or bad) answer. Perhaps that concern is indicative of a *different* malaise that's affecting the game, that of budgetary constraints and/or (more likely both) a huge mass of what the software industry calls "technical debt".

 

Technical debt is the ever-growing pile of decisions made in haste that helped something get built more quickly back then, but now presents an obstacle to developing *this* feature more quickly *now*. If the decision that's made to work around / overcome that stuff is *also* made in haste, the technical debt just piles up.

 

At some point, you have to bite the bullet and "pay back" some of the debt, but that delays (in the short term) adding new features, even as it makes new features that will arrive (or not) in the medium to long term easier and faster to develop.

 

All software systems that are more complex than "Hello, world!" suffer from this problem, and it sometimes feels like there is never any time to do anything about it, but always time to add another feature more slowly and with weirder bugs than if someone had taken the time to fix up some of those pain points beforehand.

 

Software development is my day job, and has been for the last 30+ years, and this is probably the *most* universal problems with the software industry in general, and game software in particular because of its overly tight schedules and so on. The stuff I'm working on at the moment suffers badly from technical debt, and I'm unusually happy about it at the moment because although my project manager is reluctant to commit much time to it (he knows it's necessary, but doesn't want to take time away from projects), our mutual line manager disagrees, and is pushing for us to be able to launch a 200-300 man-day project specifically to pay off technical debt.

 

Sorry. I got way off topic, maybe.

[DeannaVoyager]

Hi all,

 

Thank you for listening to our feedback and responding.

 

Crafting: Inventor has indeed been a welcome filler in the past for a lot of people. At the moment there is no infinitely repeatable filler objectives and that hurts people with a lot of alts. For example lower level players have infinitely repeatable heroics, they shouldn't be restricted from level 75 players either. Why are they?

 

Crafting: War Supplies was also destroyed with the last patch. Botting war supplies for conquest would be insanity, if not impossible because farming/buying mats and crafting components to build those things are some of the most expensive things you can do in the game. There was no need to destroy that objective at all. It was the only chance for small guilds to get on the leaderboard or even win a planet a couple of times a year. I've never even considered trying that, it's way too expensive and/or requires too much work, but I understand some guilds and people want to do just that, and they have my respect for putting in the hours, days and weeks to make it happen a few times a year.

 

Crafting war supplies was also one of the most democratic conquest objectives in game: everyone could do it or choose not to do it. Everyone had equal chance to participate. The people who didn't want to do it decided to complain about it because they lost a planet once or twice per year to a smaller, harder working guild, when the only reason they lost was because they didn't craft, and it was their own choice. Crafting war supplies was also another filler for people with multiple alts, and that is also gone now.

 

I've spent most of this week and last week playing another game because the current situation doesn't feel fair, and I really don't like to do conquest with a spreadsheet to keep track of the one time objectives. It's supposed to be a game, not a job. I do my share of "group content" (apparently some people think only group content should count) 2-3 hours every day by raiding, and some of the stuff we do is quite difficult and stressful. That's why I want to do my conquest solo or not at all. I need my alone-time to balance things out and at the moment I'm not getting it.

 

In general I wish people would rather ask for boosts for their own activity, if they think it's too low, rather than sending a mob to push through nerfs to objectives they are not interested in, but can't have anyone else to do them either.

 

 

Please, bring balance back to the Force.

[mike_carton]

Every other game I play now has a public response to people cheating. They post how many people they ban per month and in some cases, what percentages of activities people were banned for. The transparency is refreshing to know they are going after said cheaters. So when they make other changes in the game to address cheating, the players grumble less.

 

QFT. Never understood why SWTOR is coy about these kinds of things.

the modern day equivalent is called "union busting", and the method is much the same. find a weak point of the onion, chip at it until that layer is gone, give it a little time, them rinse and repeat. each layer removed makes the group that much smaller and weaker, until you literally have nothing worthwhile left and you can just bury it without any concern to the now minimal consequences.

 

As in Union Busting, there are a few players here who are helping along the process.

Imagine you are mayor in a small town. There is 1 main road crossing your city that is intended just for cars, trucks are not allowed (because they are damaging the roadn and houses nearby, polluting the city, causing traffic jams and generally... simply they shouldn't be there). You as a mayor already tried to solve this problem in a good way and you warned all drivers tha this road is not for trucks and they are not allowed to enter the town. You installed road signs on both edges of the town. And it didn't help. Trucks are still here. So your next step will be:

 

a) buy few camera's, hire few more policemen and punish all those truck drivers who do not follow the rules?

b) you dig up the road. When there is no road, there can be no truck. Of course no car, but the main thing is to get the trucks out of my town.

 

My (and I'm not alone in this) feeling is that you are choosing b) too often. Because of simplicity.

 

Nice analogy. The gold post (http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=9926735&postcount=412) mentions that they have evidence from players and internal data but is curiously silent on two fronts:

 

- What action did they take against the offenders?

 

- If the offending activities (botting) leave evidence in BW's logs, where is the need to nerf crafting? Everytime they see that evidence in their logs, they can take action against the offenders, leaving crafting as it is for the vast majority of the players. They can even write programs that periodically scan the logs for evidence of offending behavior and send reports to some operations people who can then manually verify the data and take action, if appropriate.

Conquest has "eaten" SWTOR - it seems like people are talking about how this or that feature of SWTOR relates to Conquest (but never the other way around), and it worries me. We have this big huge game full of things to do, and what concerns us? Just one little corner of it - Conquest - is important, and all those other things are just ways to play Conquest.

 

Is this healthy for the game? I don't think so, and aside from just removing Conquest totally from the game, I don't see how, in the end, it can be fixed *at*all* before it takes the game down with it.Will someone *please* tell me why I'm wrong?

The purpose of Conquest is to give players reasons to do the same old content again and again, week after week. I'd say it has succeeded in that. Most - if not all - of the things in the game have already been done by long-time players; Conquest provides a motivation to do them again. As has been said here:

Without cq why would I do the same content I've done dozens to hundreds of times over and over again?

 

I wouldn't be opposed to removing Conquest totally, but I suspect it'll lead to lower player activity (and consequently guild activity) if it is removed.

Every change has made me play less and less. Not one thing they’ve done in the last 12 months has made me want to play more. Not one thing!!

 

Agreed. It must take a lot of talent of a certain kind on the part of the developers (and decision makers) to achieve such a feeling among their customers.

In general I wish people would rather ask for boosts for their own activity, if they think it's too low, rather than sending a mob to push through nerfs to objectives they are not interested in, but can't have anyone else to do them either.

This frustrates me as well, people asking for things that others do to be nerfed. A stark reminder of the nature of some human beings.

 

I'm also frustrated that the developer reply was along the lines of "This is why we did it. Now it will remain like this." instead of taking into account these 400+ plus posts (and other threads) and saying "This is why we did it. We will look to modify the changes to address your concerns, we will find alternate ways of achieving those same objectives."

 

Just making a forum post does not count as being responsive to the customers' wishes, in my book. This kind of non-responsiveness would lead to customer loss in any game that was not blessed with a Star Wars license. That Star Wars setting might be the curse for this game. Without such backdrop, FF XIV was rebuilt while Anthem's development was cancelled.

Edited March 11, 2021 by mike_carton

[DawnAskham]

I clipped away the rest of this because I'm really answering *all* of it, but I just wanted it to be clear which post I'm answering without quoting a whole big piece of text.

 

Quite frankly, I think the most important problem with Conquest is not the balance of points, nor the various questions of repeatability, nor the botting or cheating.

 

Everyone keeps talking about and debating how BioWare can *fix* Conquest, and I've come to the conclusion that they cannot. Nobody can. Conquest has "eaten" SWTOR - it seems like people are talking about how this or that feature of SWTOR relates to Conquest (but never the other way around), and it worries me. We have this big huge game full of things to do, and what concerns us? Just one little corner of it - Conquest - is important, and all those other things are just ways to play Conquest.

 

Is this healthy for the game? I don't think so, and aside from just removing Conquest totally from the game, I don't see how, in the end, it can be fixed *at*all* before it takes the game down with it.

 

Will someone *please* tell me why I'm wrong?

 

Damned if they do, damned if they don't at this point.

 

Conquest is the game as the game itself cannot provide enough new and challenging content - so repeating old content ad-nauseam for crafting mats and guild ship frameworks is all that is left.

 

If they decouple some of this from conquest (such as remove crafting mats or add alternate means to unlock guild ships), who would bother with conquest just for conquest's sake?

[DawnAskham]

Hi all,

 

I wanted to take a moment and address a few points we are seeing in this thread.

 

With regard to the changes we made recently to Crafting based Conquest Objectives, these changes were made because there was proof of exploitative behavior, both provided by the community as well as within our own data.

 

While this was largely related to the Crafting: Inventor Conquest Objective, we also saw indication that this same behavior was also affecting and was possible with the Crew Skills: Harvesting Conquest Objective and had the potential to reach further into all other avenues of Crafting based Objectives. As Chris mentioned, many of these activities were found to be repetitive in nature such that they could be automated in ways which violate our Terms of Service. Because many of the Crafting based Conquest objectives were open-ended (aka Infinitely Repeatable), this combination had the potential to cascade. We needed to close these systems off, hence changing them from Infinite to Weekly/Daily.

 

While addressing the issue above, we took into consideration players who enjoy Crafting and wish for it to remain a viable means for earning Conquest. By increasing the number of required crafts for the Weekly, we were able to appropriately balance the Objective to provide more points than if we had done a 1:1 conversion (for instance, if we had simply changed the previous Craft 50 to a Weekly). We then created Crafting: Inventor 2 as a means for players to earn additional Conquest points through the Crafting system. This was in an effort to alleviate the change in repeatability, while still providing means for Crafting to be used for Conquest contribution. You can now earn more Conquest for crafting less items than before the update, as exampled below

• 1 Weekly Objective = 6,400 Points for 100 Crafts
  
• 7 Daily Objectives = 7,700 Points for 350 Crafts
  
  • For a total of 14,100 Points for 450 Crafts.
    

Previously in order to earn 14,100 Conquest Points through Crafting, players would have needed to have crafted ~950 items.

 

This has not been the first time we addressed Infinite repeat objectives. In the past, we made a change to the formerly Infinite Repeatable Chapters: Defeat Skytroopers 2 to a Daily Repeat to also address exploitative behavior we were seeing. Crafting was not and has not been explicitly singled out. We are always assessing Infinite Repeat Objectives offered and their potential for negative behavior, while also considering their benefit, or lack thereof, in the greater game.

 

I also want to come back to the points I made in my original Guilds and Conquest post.

 

Guilds are a large factor in not only our game, but in any game with a social backdrop to it. We took into consideration the negative impact the behavior we were seeing had on new players whether they be new to the game or new to Guilds. Changes were made to ensure that players were joining the right Guild for the right reasons including the departure from said Guild.

 

I would like to note a few takeaways based off of feedback we received;

1) Players use(d) crafting (and specifically the lower point Crafting: Inventor) to tip a character nearing their 50k Personal Conquest just enough over the goal without taking up other potential objectives for your remaining characters.

2) There is a desire for a healthy number of lesser point “filler” objectives which can be used multiple times over larger point objectives to help ensure that the first point is covered.

3) There is a wish for Crafting to remain (and be more of) an integral part of the Conquest experience.

4) Players want to see change in how Conquests work, specifically with Leaderboards.

 

This feedback does not fall on deaf ears. We actively discuss ways we can address both the viability and importance of crafting in Conquest, address the notion of not wanting to tip far over the 50k Personal goal to ensure you have room for alternate characters, and how we can make Conquest a competitive yet fair system for Guilds of all sizes. We will continue to take your suggestions into consideration while also taking a look into the larger picture of Conquest and how we can continue to improve it.

 

As always we appreciate your feedback, and ask that you continue to be civil and respectful in your discussions, and keep the threads on topic.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Random observations / questions.

 

IF 'exploitive behavior' was an issue, was action taken against the accounts? If so, why did the game need to be adjusted if the exploiters were dealt with? If not, why not and why expect the rest of us to take it on the chin to deal with people exploiting?

 

Also seriously curious - what was 'exploitive' about repeating a conquest objective? Again if someone was botting against the TOS - take action against the botting - but otherwise who cares how many times a player gains a few points from any conquest objective as long as they are playing the game within the ToS?

 

As for points and objectives, nothing I've seen over the past year suggests any effort being made to create a simple and reasonably balanced system.

 

Instead, we've seen all kinds of adjustments with everything from removing most / all conquest objectives for events (such as pirates this week) while nerfing simple daily objectives (space, gifts, trash, decorations, etc) while increasing the requirements for others (missions from one to two with the same points) while putting ridiculous amounts of points on content like weeklies such as PVP, Star Fortress, and Uprisings (as in enough points for completing the objective to cap multiple characters).

 

Not to mention we continue to have annoying meta objectives like 'rank up renown 5 times' that award a crazy amount of points (again more than even multiple characters need to cap) while being difficult to manage, as well as have seen high points left on items that are difficult if not impossible for level cap / long time players to obtain (skill points, stronghold unlocks, legacy ranks, reputation).

 

So my request with respect to the objectives and points is this - get rid of all the meta objectives with ridiculously high points, make all objectives tied to missions infinitely repeatable (e.g. heroics, weeklies, events - they will be throttled by the missions), make objectives without underlying missions once per character per day / per week (not per legacy), and re-balance the points per objective based on the preceding as well as the effort required.

 

For conquest as a whole, a lot more discussion would be needed - but my quick list of items to review would include looking at whether it makes sense to keep the titles and achievements locked behind a winner take all system, reviewing whether crafting (mats) should be tied to conquest, looking at which rewards should be tied to guilds results versus individual results, and similarly looking at whether points should trigger multiple rewards (such as every 50K or whatever) versus the system today that encourages capping dozens of alts.

Edited March 12, 2021 by DawnAskham

[Sundown]

I'm really happy about this confirmation. Thanks for making it official. And thanks for making the game enviroment more fair. We look forward to the upcoming changes that will continue to promote server fairness.

Just because you don't like certain activities or want to promote your preferred way of playing does not mean that the changes were fair. They clearly were not, as you can see from overwhelming feedback from all those players here. Getting rid of botters is fine, if you have evidence, destroying the game for crafters is not.

Exactly a change is needed. When we see the same guild no1 on one of the servers I play on its like whats the point of conquest anyway. Change it up so its not possible for years in a row. More server equality. Let's do this!

This is quite telling. All guilds have the same tools at their disposal. If one guild wins all the time, then they are obviously excelling at using those tools. So you are preaching "equality of outcome", not equality of opportunity.

And this confirms what many people were already saying earlier: all this fuzz was created by salty players whose guilds were just not good enough to win. Seeing they still aren't, now actually they want to be handed out their "participation trophy".

 

And to be honest: I wouldn't even mind. I already proposed making the achievements independant of the leader boards, just add a guild threshold (maybe proportional to the number of accounts/members), so it requires guild activity effort to beat it. Only keep vanity items tied to the leaderboard. That could definitely ease the pain I guess.

[SoontirMorillo]

Hi all,

 

I wanted to take a moment and address a few points we are seeing in this thread.

 

With regard to the changes we made recently to Crafting based Conquest Objectives, these changes were made because there was proof of exploitative behavior, both provided by the community as well as within our own data.

 

While this was largely related to the Crafting: Inventor Conquest Objective, we also saw indication that this same behavior was also affecting and was possible with the Crew Skills: Harvesting Conquest Objective and had the potential to reach further into all other avenues of Crafting based Objectives. As Chris mentioned, many of these activities were found to be repetitive in nature such that they could be automated in ways which violate our Terms of Service. Because many of the Crafting based Conquest objectives were open-ended (aka Infinitely Repeatable), this combination had the potential to cascade. We needed to close these systems off, hence changing them from Infinite to Weekly/Daily.

 

While addressing the issue above, we took into consideration players who enjoy Crafting and wish for it to remain a viable means for earning Conquest. By increasing the number of required crafts for the Weekly, we were able to appropriately balance the Objective to provide more points than if we had done a 1:1 conversion (for instance, if we had simply changed the previous Craft 50 to a Weekly). We then created Crafting: Inventor 2 as a means for players to earn additional Conquest points through the Crafting system. This was in an effort to alleviate the change in repeatability, while still providing means for Crafting to be used for Conquest contribution. You can now earn more Conquest for crafting less items than before the update, as exampled below

• 1 Weekly Objective = 6,400 Points for 100 Crafts
  
• 7 Daily Objectives = 7,700 Points for 350 Crafts
  
  • For a total of 14,100 Points for 450 Crafts.
    

Previously in order to earn 14,100 Conquest Points through Crafting, players would have needed to have crafted ~950 items.

 

This has not been the first time we addressed Infinite repeat objectives. In the past, we made a change to the formerly Infinite Repeatable Chapters: Defeat Skytroopers 2 to a Daily Repeat to also address exploitative behavior we were seeing. Crafting was not and has not been explicitly singled out. We are always assessing Infinite Repeat Objectives offered and their potential for negative behavior, while also considering their benefit, or lack thereof, in the greater game.

 

I also want to come back to the points I made in my original Guilds and Conquest post.

 

Guilds are a large factor in not only our game, but in any game with a social backdrop to it. We took into consideration the negative impact the behavior we were seeing had on new players whether they be new to the game or new to Guilds. Changes were made to ensure that players were joining the right Guild for the right reasons including the departure from said Guild.

 

I would like to note a few takeaways based off of feedback we received;

1) Players use(d) crafting (and specifically the lower point Crafting: Inventor) to tip a character nearing their 50k Personal Conquest just enough over the goal without taking up other potential objectives for your remaining characters.

2) There is a desire for a healthy number of lesser point “filler” objectives which can be used multiple times over larger point objectives to help ensure that the first point is covered.

3) There is a wish for Crafting to remain (and be more of) an integral part of the Conquest experience.

4) Players want to see change in how Conquests work, specifically with Leaderboards.

 

This feedback does not fall on deaf ears. We actively discuss ways we can address both the viability and importance of crafting in Conquest, address the notion of not wanting to tip far over the 50k Personal goal to ensure you have room for alternate characters, and how we can make Conquest a competitive yet fair system for Guilds of all sizes. We will continue to take your suggestions into consideration while also taking a look into the larger picture of Conquest and how we can continue to improve it.

 

As always we appreciate your feedback, and ask that you continue to be civil and respectful in your discussions, and keep the threads on topic.

 

My feedback regarding the conquest crafting changes is:

 

i'm a crafter. I do it to earn credits. I'm too dumb to cheat, and foremost too scared to lose my account. So i click. Every single item. I don't mind repetition.

 

In the past, the infinitely repeatable conquest objectives made sure, that i always hit my personal conquest goal on my crafting toons. Only with crafting.

 

This last week, only one toon reached his personal goal, purley through crafting. Thanks for the 200k points on one toon by the way. I would prefer to reach four times 50k.

 

Two other crafting toons reached their goal with flashpoint. And three toons ended the week with basically zero points. 11k across the three toons. By the way... i played each of the toons for 10 hours over the weekend.

 

I repeat. I played three toons for 10 hours the week and they got basically zero conquest points.

 

I don't like your nerf hammer. And i still think, you should ban players, that exploit instead of forcing major changes like this. 10 hours. Imagine, somebody invested 10 hours in flashpoints. And got nothing.

 

I have 5 days left on my subscription. And i will spend my 10 hours elsewhere. You have punished honest players, because you can't identify or are willing to ban exploiters.

 

You give people three reasons to stay subscribed to the game.

 

1. access to credits

2. new content

3. crafting without restrictions.

 

At the moment there is nothing i need to buy. I got everything. New content... yeah... 2022... maybe. And you took 3 from me.

 

My final point. Just so you understand what you did. Infinitely repeatable conquest objectives for crafting meant, infinitely amount of crafting materials were needed. Absolutly everybody -from f2p over preferred to sub- had a reason to gather materials for conquest crafters. Because he got paid well. You killed an entire source of income. You could have made more credits by running around on Imperial Taris for half an hour with three gathering skills, than you could have made with running flashpoints or heroics for three hours.

Edited March 12, 2021 by SoontirMorillo

[Kaveat]

Others are already making very valid points, so I'll just focus on one specific point here:

 

Previously in order to earn 14,100 Conquest Points through Crafting, players would have needed to have crafted ~950 items.

 

Where there complaints about the quantity? If so I must have missed them, and so has every one I have talked to today about this post. The quantity was never the issue. The complaints are primarily about the now lack of ability to cap a toon just from crafting or harvesting. Multiple toons for us alt-a-holics, many who once idled in the game doing these things in-between other tasks through out our day(s).

 

For a select few, it was quite a bit deeper: "With the removal of crafting and harvesting for CQP, there is literally no way to cap toon(s) without hopping on that tiresome hamster wheel of confrontation and combat". And yes, the troll-hounds baying over it was already anticipated, but it is an entirely valid view and comment that I though worth sharing.

 

We who have put much time and many resources to get where we respectively are, excel at what we enjoy, to have it be worthwhile, and to be able to contribute to CQ in the process. With 6.2.1, you killed us. Not nerfed, killed. Which is precisely where daily diminishing (per character) CQ returns would have been a preferable anti-whatever mechanism vs the nuke you just dropped on us. Think of covid as an ongoing Hiroshima, and 6.2.1 as Nagasaki. It was just as much overkill then as this is now.

 

Its to the point that many crafters are so disillusioned with CQ from this update they no longer even bother paying attention to CQ, and that combined with the still existing covid restrictions in many areas, you just caused many to have some level of depression by taking away that which they both loved to do and were able to feel a sense of accomplishment and contribution while doing it. And this is no analogy either, just a sad reality of the covid times in this digital world.

 

You doubt it? You have the records to show who was active in crafting, and whose demographics have nose dived off a sheer cliff in the short time since 6.2.1 went live. Try emailing or calling some of those players and ask them yourselves... why?

 

I have 5 days left on my subscription. And i will spend my 10 hours elsewhere.

As of 6.2.1, I have three reasons left to still be here, and only one of them of them has any basis in the game itself. Given the right viable option(s), the two could be filled elsewhere with much less nonsense or drama, and then the third could go pound sand.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Kaveat

[kelgryphon]

For Dev Consideration:

 

The gathering CQ was already low, it would take about 45 minutes of a really good farmer or 90 minutes for an average to get to 50k CQ by gathering nodes. Gathering is half impossible to bot. It takes skill, patience, and decision making that bots can't do without seriously hacking the game. What was the purpose of making that non-repeatable? It took actual work to get CQ for that, was great for guild and group events, and impacts individuals negatively, not bots in guilds.

 

It would be great if the impacts of the changes stuck to crafting by removing the old, broken schematic in the first place and creating a way to catch botting, instead of punishing folks who just like to sit and craft for hours in their strongholds. This may have slowed down the botting a bit, but it hurt the individuals and smaller guilds who were using the CQ system fairly.

 

The change just doesn't seem to be specifically toward the folks who are botting. It's towards crafters and gatherers and the impact is felt. I lead a crafting and gathering group in my guild and we're struggling to stay relevant with these changes because you can't get to CQ now as a crafter and especially as a gatherer. My hours spent traveling around planets gathering materials were some of the most relaxing I had in the game, but now with no CQ associated, there's no point.

 

Just maybe reconsider the intent v. impact here, doesn't seem like the impact was worth it.

[Lord_Thorne]

I have long wondered what the real goal of Conquest is in the minds of the developers, if it isn't to keep people logging into the game and encouraging them to play. It's getting to be like the tax laws, with loopholes and exploits and exceptions and special cases, as well as constant changes whenever the authorities feel like it (and a major complaint/whining issue for just about everybody!). To be honest, I'm not sure why they don't just add a conquest mission just for being logged in for a certain time, like an hour or two per toon (or legacy).

If there's people violating the TOS, with bots or otherwise, go after them and stop making things annoying for the rest of us.

[hillerbees]

 

We are always assessing Infinite Repeat Objectives offered and their potential for negative behavior, while also considering their benefit, or lack thereof, in the greater game.

 

Any chance you could find a way for end game gear crafting of assembly components to be 1 step instead of 3 (you can keep the overall quantities of materials the same) - its a repetitive objective of which many of us feel violates OUR terms of participation and enjoyment of the game!

Edited March 12, 2021 by hillerbees

[TrixxieTriss]

I would like to note a few takeaways based off of feedback we received;

1) Players use(d) crafting (and specifically the lower point Crafting: Inventor) to tip a character nearing their 50k Personal Conquest just enough over the goal without taking up other potential objectives for your remaining characters.

2) There is a desire for a healthy number of lesser point “filler” objectives which can be used multiple times over larger point objectives to help ensure that the first point is covered.

3) There is a wish for Crafting to remain (and be more of) an integral part of the Conquest experience.

 

Here are some relatively simple tweaks that you could do in the mean time to help towards achieving the points you listed.

 

1. Crafting: inventor 2, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day.

 

2. Crew skills : missions, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day

 

3. Crafting: War Supplies, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy per day

 

4. Crew Skills: Harvesting, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day

 

They would help many people who only need a few extra points to push Alts over the line.

 

5. Unlocking Crafting Conquest 2 on guild ship for 2 million credits and 52 coms : Crafting Rally - part 2 should provide more than 34,000 once per legacy per week. Suggest this could be made once per legacy per day

 

*** I will add more as I think of them

Edited March 13, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[SteveTheCynic]

Where there complaints about the quantity? If so I must have missed them, and so has every one I have talked to today about this post. The quantity was never the issue. The complaints are primarily about the now lack of ability to cap a toon just from crafting or harvesting.

The previous complaints (before 6.2.1) were about how (if you believe the rantings of the offended megaguilds that couldn't make first place because another megaguild was better-organised(1)) it was trivially simple to craft those 950 objects with a little over 200 crafts of a lowest-grade biochem schematic that's no longer available. Compare that to 450 crafts of the same schematic (or even a different schematic - at one point per craft instead of one per item, there are lowest-grade "current" schematics, primarily Assembly Components and similar, that are just as rapid - that provides one point per request instead of 4-5 points per request for those old Biochem schematics.

 

(1) Better-organised in the sense, allegedly, that they were better able to recruit and retain people who had those schematics and who were willing to spend substantial amounts of time feeding crafting requests to their crews. (Whether it was manually or by (alleged) botting is neither here nor there.)

[rmejia]

The harvesting nerf stumps me.

 

The harvesting conquest objective has the Crew Skills prefix before it, but apart from being an assignable crew skill, the objective has nothing to do with the Crew Skills window. The harvesting objective is done by harvesting nodes in the planets. To harvest these nodes, you need to explore the planet, look in the map, move around, jump, fight off any enemies nearby and then harvest the node. To harvest 10 nodes, one may need to traverse considerable distances through several mobs of enemies. Gathering mats from the crew skills window is completely different. You send the companions on missions and forget about it, but these do not count for the harvesting objective. Harvesting nodes on planets has little to do with crafting, it is another type of activity, it is exploration and fighting enemies. Unfortunately, it is getting bundled into the conquest crafting nuke.

 

Unlike crafting which can be done anywhere in private, the harvesting needs to be done out in the open. If there was any player “potentially exploiting” this, they would be visible to everyone and would be reported. There are what I assume to be gold seller bots harvesting nodes on planets, and everyone saw these, and reported them. To single out harvesting as repetitive sidesteps the fact that every single activity in this game is repetitive. If anyone does automate harvesting on the planets, I find it hard to believe that this is a skillset the vast population of the userbase would have and yet everyone is getting punished for it. Some people like to farm, explore the planet, enjoy the scenery and the environment; it can be a relaxing change of pace. This objective I do not see why it cannot be infinitely repeatable. Maybe there could be something in between once a day and infinity, maybe repeatable several times a day. You could in theory make a lot of points with infinite repeatable, but at the same time it takes time and effort to harvest, which puts a cap on the points. I am skeptical of this objective being exploited for conquest. From the official post I see the words “possible” and “potential”, but it is also “possible” I could win the lottery today if I play. In addition, the resources disappear when gathered and unless there are many instances, just one person gathering would limit anyone else trying to harvest in the same vicinity. Harvesting belongs in a different category from the point and click objectives being targeted in this nerf.

 

The word balance is used to justify the crafting changes, but there is no balance within the different objectives lumped into the crafting group. As an example, crafting an Invasion Force requires an exaggerated number of resources, mats, grades & time vs something simple like crafting grade 1 components. Not all Crafting objectives are equal, but they are equally getting sliced across the board in what appears to be a massive “crafting bad, everything else good” campaign. I can agree on changes made for balance, limiting inventor is reasonable, but the other changes and point readjustments I think could use more thought and consideration to balance the effort required for crafting more complicated things. I can understand development having limited resources and time to attend every single issue but going back to the goal of “balance” some changes have a much greater impact than others and this needs to be actively considered.

 

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Edited March 13, 2021 by rmejia

[SteveTheCynic]

The harvesting nerf stumps me.

 

The harvesting conquest objective has the Crew Skills prefix before it, but apart from being an assignable crew skill, the objective has nothing to do with the Crew Skills window. The harvesting objective is done by harvesting nodes in the planets. To harvest these nodes, you need to explore the planet, look in the map, move around, jump, fight off any enemies nearby and then harvest the node.

It does, indeed, have nothing to do with the Crew Skills window, but so what? Gathering from nodes in the field is using a Crew Skill just the same as launching a mission from the window is.

 

Oh, and the harvest / gather objective is for *anything* that harvests / gathers, including slaughtering strong+ droids / beasts and carving up their corpses for materials, not *just* harvesting from fixed nodes, but *not* harvesting harvestable decorations.

[Carba]

hmm, 45 pages of negative comments. I'll just observe that there are infinitely many integers between 1 and infinity. Any number of daily repeats, say 10, would block automation without disrupting the community of crafters. Comparing crafting CQ to planetary mission CQ makes the feedback clear. You can run combat missions on each planet independently of other planets. So, it would be relatively easy to run 40-50 alts to 50k CQ each week. A natural analog would be to allow CQ credit for say each Dark Project or other CQ craft objective crafted daily on each planet.

[DWho]

So why is it acceptable to farm kills but not to farm the corpses afterward? Other than Kill Farming is predominantly a Guild/Group activity (rampages being the exception but much more limited than the group "version" - and limited in value with non-Guild play when you hit 50K CQ points) and Node/Corpse Farming being a primarily solo activity. Both require you to go out and interact with the open world and require killing something or running around looking for a node to harvest. Node/Corpse Farming rewards a lot less than kill farming as far as CQ points go anyway.

 

It almost seems like it is a situation once again where it is an activity looked down upon as not playing the game "the right way" by a certain section of the playerbase and thus should not be a part of their Conquest. Or perhaps it is a case where you have to have "less profitable" crew skills (instead of Slicing, Treasure Hunting, and Underworld Trading) which cuts into your credit mining abilities and since you don't want to lose out on those credits, no one should be allowed to gain CQ points from those "lesser" crew skills.

[mike_carton]

The harvesting nerf stumps me...Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

 

That's a nicely written post. I agree whole-heartedly. This is why I'm wary of posts asking BW to tweak something that is in a good place. Where a surgical knife is required, they'll use a machete and take collateral victims.

 

The infinitely repeatable harvesting objective needs to come back.

Edited March 13, 2021 by mike_carton

[Kaveat]

I don't think any of the dev's are crafters, and don't care about the damage they've done.

 

fixt

 

missing the original devs that were transparent in their actions (or at least the intentions), and had no issues communicating the games mechanics in clear and concise terms instead of 'hiding behind the curtain'

(RIP 2012 Community Q&A blogs)

 

The sad truth is that 'crafting' in this game has been the baby left on the door step that no one wants to take responsibility for since the CM took over things that were once the sole providence of crafters, and every subsequent release has just end up worse off than it was before. Then you add in the forum-troll politico wars of CQ, and its just a sad state of being where their heads turn with the hot winds of whoever can squawk the loudest on where to aim their nukes next.

 

With the time they put into 6.2.1 shinyitis emote issues alone, they could have instead been working on things that actually impacted game play (or *gasp*, even crafting).. but, you know, Space Barbie has to be able to /spit, and... Reasons™.

[Dnlgorz]

Here are some relatively simple tweaks that you could do in the mean time to help towards achieving the points you listed.

 

1. Crafting: inventor 2, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day.

 

2. Crew skills : missions, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day

 

3. Crafting: War Supplies, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy per day

 

4. Crew Skills: Harvesting, could be made once per character, per day and not locked to once per legacy, per day

 

They would help many people who only need a few extra points to push Alts over the line.

 

5. Unlocking Crafting Conquest 2 on guild ship for 2 million credits and 52 coms : Crafting Rally - part 2 should provide more than 34,000 once per legacy per week. Suggest this could be made once per legacy per day

 

*** I will add more as I think of them

 

Agreed! Simple! But why aren't the Dev engaging in a productive conversation?

[DarkTergon]

Removed as my contributions appears to be unwanted Edited April 21, 2021 by DarkTergon