7.0 Conquest Changes

[Pricia]

All four of your examples are incorrect. There is no way you are finishing any of them in 15 minutes or less. 30 minutes minimum for each as long as there is little to no competition in CZ or Black Hole. Lots of people come on here and say multiple heroics can be completed on a single toon in less than 15 minutes and quite frankly, they are all lying.

 

There are a few single heroics that can be completed in that time but 2 or more will take at least 15 minutes and that won't get you 50K much less 100K. The issue however, is not that multiple toons can't be completed, but rather that they are not rewarding at all for the effort. You will no longer get the Conquest mat, will get 1/8 of the credits and as a guild you will get half as many encryptions for the same effort (which you need at least 150 of to unlock any room and the good rooms need 250)

 

If all they did was increase the CXP needed to 100K, it would not be an issue. Reducing the rewards down to almost nothing is where the problem lies.

 

I mean, doing CQ in 15 minutes currently is not TOTALLY wrong. Of course, you pretty much need the 150% CQ bonus for it, and a guild bonus.

 

But it only works for the first few characters, and it doesn't account for the fact that there will be way more people in weekly areas with 7.0 - so you'll have to wait for respawns (I mean, shared tagging won't do anything when you're waiting for the clickies to respawn in the first room of CZ 198). And if I do it in the same way in 7.0, the only reward I'll get is the CQ reward. No renown means no other way of getting fragments/gear other than doing the specific activities they want us to do (what everyone else will be doing), and those take much longer than switching toons and doing a few heroics to get CQ done.

 

So, that's my issue with is. If we actually want to make actually progress WHILE doing CQ, it will take 3 times longer easily now. And remember that the weekly CQ bonus per planet only counts once per day too, so you'll only be able to get the points on one character.

 

So again, they say they want us to play alts, but that's going to be made much harder.

[Warrgames]

They are not outright restricting the weeklies. All weeklies will still be available to complete at any point, they are just making some of them give better rewards (ostensibly upgrade-based, although we don't have full details on this - likely only these missions will drop the Aquatic Resource Matrices) each week.

 

From the post of "Changes and New Features in 7.0": "You can still access Missions that aren’t a part of the rotation if you choose, they will just have reduced rewards". If you want to go run Oricon even if Ziost and Yavin are the highlighted weeklies, you can, and still get CQP for doing so.

 

Are you sure you still get CQP for completing them? They are talking about cutting rewards for completing them. One of the rewards is CQP. They may be reducing or removing the CQP for the not highlight ones to further force players to play the way they want us to.

[Samcuu]

So what you are saying, the only guilds that should get encryptions and unlock their guild ships are large guilds. If you have a small guild we don't care that you don't get to unlock the ship. The only guilds we care about is the large ones.

 

You guys seem to want to push people into the operations well not this person. Since you don't like me running my alts in things I like to do and getting conquest points for my guild so we can unlock our rooms then so be it but that means if (and a large if) I stay I will be playing less not more.

 

The behavior you devs are showing is the reason I left wow and I will not deal with this behavior in another game.

 

To the players: Take care everyone and Happy Holidays. Not sure I will even wait for the expansion to be release to check it out. Good luck. Been fun.

 

Agreed, it's mostly just me in my guild because I don't play often enough to run a large guild. I run all my alts through conquest and it's taking a long time but I'm upgrading my guild ship very slowly lol. Bioware are just bad developers. I don't think there's any ill will in what they do, I just don't think they understand how their own game works. They've already made ppl join all the huge conquest guilds due to their policies, sucks for small guilds out there trying to improve.

[joshuadyal]

It seems like in an effort to combat the runaway wealth of those who've taken advantage of exploits or otherwise had the opportunity to grind much more money than a normal person working a full time job and having this as just one of his many hobbies and freetime pursuits that they've made said normal guy have an even HARDER time getting enough money to actually do freaking anything. I know that runaway wealth and inflation is a problem in the game's economy. But doesn't this sound like it will increase the gap between the haves and the have-nots, with the have-nots having even less opportunity to actually get ahead at all?

 

Sigh.

[Zechalakazam]

I know its late and the dev probably will not read this BUT the motivation for me to play SWTOR everyday is to finish conquest on 12 of my alts and now with this changes, I probably play 2 or 3 days coz it will feels like a drag completing all 12 conquest.

 

Edit: After reading the thread in full, I'm in the same boat as after finishing story imma just quit again *shrug*

Edited November 7, 2021 by Zechalakazam

[WARDOD]

I confess that I didn't quite understand how you intend to manage "multi character " drops in 7.0, I quote:

 

"Existing, returning and new players can look forward to improvements in creating their next Star Wars character through a refactored character creation system."

 

could you give some additional information on what this "refactored character creation system" is?

 

Ty DD

[Phazonfreak]

I confess that I didn't quite understand how you intend to manage "multi character " drops in 7.0, I quote:

 

"Existing, returning and new players can look forward to improvements in creating their next Star Wars character through a refactored character creation system."

 

could you give some additional information on what this "refactored character creation system" is?

 

Ty DD

 

What they mean is that with the coming separation of story and combat class and the introduction of Combat Styles, we will be able to pick two Combat Styles at the same time out of the entire Tech or Force pool, hence removing the need to have as many cross-faction alts around as before in order to cover every single Combat Style.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Phazonfreak

[TalLura]

Yeah see, I get it. But Bioware has to deal with reality.

 

There are only three options when it comes to the current hyperinflation.

 

Option 1: Just let hyperinflation happen.

 

Option 2: Reduce credit rewards for in-game activities.

 

Option 3: introduce credit sinks that remove credits.

 

No other option besides 2 and 3 will remove enough credits from the system to have any noticeable effect on hyperinflation.

 

If they follow option 1 they will lose some players because people will be frustrated that they can't buy anything cool with their credits. Sure they're making a lot of them, but the credits aren't worth anything.

 

If they follow option 2, which they are, they will lose some players who are used to getting more rewards.

 

If they follow option 3, they will lose some players because the only way for option 3 to work is for those credit sinks to be so large and so attractive that they pull literally billions of credits out of the system.

 

I don't know that there's a good option here. I would probably focus on option 3, but that's just a guess.

 

(A side point: Inflation in an MMO is good. It means people are playing the game. But hyperinflation is not good, because it gets to the point where people start to feel that credits are worthless.)

 

One way they could force a max price would be limiting amount of credits subs can have in inventory at one time, lets say 1 Billion is the inventory cap. The price of Hyper-crate can no longer go past this, it would not stop people having **** tons of credits but it would to an extent push prices down. If you can only sell something fro 1billion max people will slowly undercut the prices and eventually things will start to fall , maybe not a lot but a bit.

 

but i dont think Bioware would ever do that

[TalLura]

So my question for you David (which lets face it we all know you aren't going to bother answering because at this point you guys don't care and are totally deaf to the community) is,

 

Why should i still sub? or give this game a penny more?

 

the only reason i'm still subbed is to conquest cap by playing alts. you just removed that, i may as well sub for 1 month to do the new story which will takes less than a day as normal then unsub because it will be 8 months till anymore story comes and my alts are going to be pointless and unplayed.

 

if the new changes make playing the game the way i want that much harder to point i cant keep up with game and daily life. I will also cancel my sub.

Currently i dont play each day and sometime only 1 or 2 days a week i will be online. but i like how i have been able to do missions at my own pace. with changes to weekly i feel like the way i play is going to have to dramatically alter. I really disliked the forced daily in galactic season and annoyed that game is shifting to grind grind grind, NOT PLAY YOUR WAY AT ALL

Edited November 7, 2021 by TalLura

[rylixav]

Why not just ban anyone who wants to play anything except Operations? It would be a lot more direct than all these changes and would accomplish pretty much the same thing.

[Blakinik]

Hi all,

 

Following up from Musco’s post last week, I wanted to swing around and chat about some of the 7.0 changes we are making to Conquest. We want to provide you all a heads up on these coming changes, and also go into some of the thoughts and reasoning behind them.

 

 

I want to talk about the 'economic' impact statement being made. In particular, I want to focus on the comment that a single objective generated 64 billion credits in 6.0. I'm sorry but that is not the issue. What you are referring to is a symptom of a greater issue and not the problem itself.

 

The greater problem isn't the introduction of credits but systematic removal of all "outlay" avenues to reduce the credits in the economy. Aside from a few 1-off instances of credit removal of significant consequence (i.e. guild Flagships at 50 mill per ship as an example) there hasn't been any significant opportunities to remove credits. Yes there are some transactional extractions like the GTN fee; but overall, once an item is sold to a vendor the credits remain in circulation. In fact, aside from the GTN fee, the money spent on a the GTN is a direct transfer from player to player.

 

Issue now will simply be those with money will be at a significant advantage over those without. Example of this is as a player since launch, I have significantly more resources than someone that started last month on average. Where the "inflation" would act as a sort of equalizer enabling a new player to acquire credits rapidly to reduce the relative gap in credits, this is now removed. Instead you will face issues with new players will gain at a reduced rate compared to existing players. This will be more pronounced given existing players will will still be able to trade items at pre-7.0 levels and effectively lock out those that join post 7.0. This is because they will still have their respective credits and the new player will not have these reserves to lean back upon.

 

What you need to so is simply create effective outlays where they can remove credits form the economy permanently. A short term solution might be something like allowing for the exchange of in-game currency for something like cartel coins for a limited time. in doing so, you would have an opportunity for those with billion of credits to extract these from the in-game permanently at a set ratio. Another option would be to have a progressive GTN fee where the higher the value the greater the fee. I don't think this would be as effective however given that people can always do trades outside of the GTN via chat channels and exchanges. Finally could impose a series of "credit gates" in order to progress you need to pay similar to the cost associated with levelling at the start of the game (i.e. cost to advance form 75 to 76 would be like 5 million credits and so on). However, most of these would have incremental negative impacts upon newer players over older players given they are subject to the same rules.

 

I'm not saying any of my solutions solve the problem, but that your proposed solution in credit injections for 7.0 doesn't solve the problem - it just shuffles the chairs on the deck of the Economic Titanic. Without focusing on both, you are literally trading one economic problem for the next.

 

Blak

[TrixxieTriss]

One way they could force a max price would be limiting amount of credits subs can have in inventory at one time, lets say 1 Billion is the inventory cap. The price of Hyper-crate can no longer go past this, it would not stop people having **** tons of credits but it would to an extent push prices down. If you can only sell something fro 1billion max people will slowly undercut the prices and eventually things will start to fall , maybe not a lot but a bit.

 

but i dont think Bioware would ever do that

 

Or BioWare can just put a cap on how much can be traded from player to player. Then they can increase the cap on the GTN and increase the GTN tax progressively to a higher percentage for the higher sales. Which would also remove large sums of credits from the game with each large sale.

[Pricia]

One way they could force a max price would be limiting amount of credits subs can have in inventory at one time, lets say 1 Billion is the inventory cap. The price of Hyper-crate can no longer go past this, it would not stop people having **** tons of credits but it would to an extent push prices down. If you can only sell something fro 1billion max people will slowly undercut the prices and eventually things will start to fall , maybe not a lot but a bit.

 

but i dont think Bioware would ever do that

 

Yep, 1b cap for subscribers. That would save a bunch of the issues (including all the GTN tax that is lost because people can't sell anything over 1b on the GTN).

 

Also, those CQ changes are going to stink for new players.

[fabsus]

i like the changes much, even if i have tons of toons.

 

conquest today is a meaningless grind, just for some gear crates, materials and flagship plans.

the tasks are ultra casual and you can finish a toon in under 10 minutes with 150% sh bonus.

once you finished a toon, there is an inner pressure to change the toon. i once helped somebody

to level via heroics and we just did a run through all stock planets. i finished so many toons, in most

cases 2 per planet. this kills a bit the joy for both.

 

it's also not seldom, that you are running an operation with about 70% of the operation done, the first

one asking if you could change toon, because conquest is done. acutally this is a quite normal

behavior for many players. but i can understand it.

 

also i have some toons for same daily goals like riding a taxi, change ability points, giving gifts...

just by doing this crappy stuff, they did 30-40 levels in just 10 weeks. and all i did was stupid stuff,

that really shouldn't be rewarded at all. (depending on exp boosts).

 

if you want to do as many points as possible at the moment, you are forced just to grind casuals stuff,

because more skilled tasks are not rewarded enough. and this will change, with finishing operations

for 100k w/o sh bonus. that is a good sign for me. it is just wrong, that i could do 5x more conquest

points by doing planetary kills, compared to run an operation in master mode and doing a timerun.

 

with the new changes you still can do multiple toons, but you can focus on the stuff you like,

not the grind you are innerly forced to progress your toons. so this is a small light for me for 7.0.

 

 

regarding the inflation this won't help at all. as long as there is no real credit sink,

there won't change anything. and the most ideas won't effect the players with

hundreds of billions of credits. so maybe a way could be to give limited subscription

for credits without cartel coins payout. for example 1 week = 1 billion ¢

Edited November 8, 2021 by fabsus

[BRKMSN]

Yep, 1b cap for subscribers. That would save a bunch of the issues (including all the GTN tax that is lost because people can't sell anything over 1b on the GTN).

 

Instead of selling full armor sets, they can sell them piece by piece, forcing people to simply go to their legacy bank for more credits for the rest of the pieces. So instead of buying a set with just a couple clicks, it may now take a few minutes of moving credits around and juggling legacy bank, GTN and mail. While doing that, another buyer may come in and purchase one of the pieces you needed to get the full set.

 

Sellers can do the same thing with hypercrates, bundles, etc...

 

Supposedly, this whole issue is about "inflation." If prices are continuing to rise where people are selling sets by piece for totals exceeding 1 billion credits, then nothing has been accomplished. As long as no additional effective credit sinks are added to the game, inflation will continue regardless of game-play credit reward reductions.

 

They can start getting a grip on inflation by moving many of the Amplifier type gains to Character perks (not legacy perks). Same with some of the guild perks (Sprinter, Space Pirate, etc... can all become character perks that cost much more than the guild perk versions that are time-limited). The next step would be adding some cool things to in game vendors instead of making all new, cool things CM items. These things should have high costs reflecting the times. There are a lot of potential decorations in the game that they could make available for credit purchases. The character appearance customization should be set up to accept CC or high amounts of credits. A tax should be considered on the player to player trade feature keeping it in line with the GTN. They could add a "fund the War effort "conquest objective that is purely a credit sink. They can add a couple more credit sink achievements like the pirate incursion event has.

 

Not doing any of these things and simply nerfing credit rewards is lazy and completely misses the target.

[robwettengel]

An effective credit-sink should not be a one-off thing. It should be regularly removing credits from the game to keep the credit supply within a target range. I have two sinks in mind. The first, would take CM armor sets, decos, etc. and put them on vendors (separate out by type: armor, deco, crystal, etc.) and put these items on sale for a limited time only--say the weekend that, historically, the CM does the least business on to protect the profitability of the game. A more regular credit sink could be taking deprecated armor sets, weapons, and their schematics and making them available on vendors within the Fleet Cartel Bazaar. I would recommend charging 75-100 million per set of CM armor, a couple million per crystal, weapon or deco, but any deco bundles should cost as much as armor sets. The regular sales of deprecated gear could have equal prices for the gear and the corresponding schematics--perhaps 250K a piece to match Sylas Fleetfire and the high-end companion gifts? This hits the Space Barbie (and we ALL do this to some extent) crowd and crafters.

 

It seems obvious that no one on the Dev team has a sufficient enough background in economics. I am definitely not saying that I do (I took macroeconomics in undergrad as an elective). The idea that a single repeatable CQ achievement would pump 64B credits into the economy strikes me as ludicrous--and we can only wonder how many credits CQ put in overall during 5.0. The Dev team needs to establish a range for the overall credit supply in the economy, and have equations already in place to monitor this M and then the game code could automatically adjust credit rewards for activities accordingly.

[MacCleoud]

I understand some of these changes are seen as "necessary" at the personal level. With these increases, are the guild level requirements moving up as well?

 

Doubling the personal goals is going to be very interesting because you are going to decrease the amount of flagship encryptions on the market. (which as of last night were 2 million per on Star Forge). This decrease is going to increase the price due to lower supply. You are also going to decrease the amount of credits hitting market (which probably needs to be left as is but put in an increase in credit sinks). This is going to greatly increase the power of the larger guilds and significantly hurt the smaller guilds.

 

I have given up most of the group play as almost all of my guildies have left the game for one reason (gear grind) or another (conquest changes) through 5.X and 6.X. I just finished my one-man-guildship last week, so the conquest changes won't effect me too much. However, I still haven't seen any information on the guild quota.....or I just missed it....But my concern is for some of the smaller guilds that are trying to get their ships built out. If you increase the personal quota and leave the guild quota, at least they will still be able to get their plans, albeit a lot slower, without having to fork over insane amounts of now non-existent credits to guilds that are just collecting them to sell.

[MacCleoud]

The idea that a single repeatable CQ achievement would pump 64B credits into the economy strikes me as ludicrous--and we can only wonder how many credits CQ put in overall during 5.0.

 

I would not doubt that single objective alone put that many credits in. I know lots of people that would just spam KoTFE Chap 1 after completing it because it took all of 8-minutes to complete. That 64B is also across all 5 servers so that is around 12.8B a server.

 

As for the part about regular credit sinks, that is a must in all games. Inflation has gotten so out of hand that there is little way to get it back under control without a significant one time sink and several ongoing sinks.

 

Gear repairs is usually a good place in many games to get the credit sinks, however, with everyone being over geared after they leave the starter planet due to level sync's the last two xpacs, no one dies so gear repairs are not as expensive. I think allowing people to purchase copies of their CM decos they already own, up to 4 would be a good sink as well. This one is a little more difficult because you have to be able to separate, and track, how many are from CM and how many are from credits tied to each CM purchase. Purchasing old CM goods off a vendor for large amounts of money could be good as well.

[MacCleoud]

Has this already been implemented on PTS fully? I see that the personal conquest is up to 100K, but I am not a member of a guild on PTS so I am not sure on that side of it. Right now all the missions seem the same, so just checking to see if this hit the PTS.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

Has this already been implemented on PTS fully? I see that the personal conquest is up to 100K, but I am not a member of a guild on PTS so I am not sure on that side of it. Right now all the missions seem the same, so just checking to see if this hit the PTS.

 

The objectives aren't really changing much. No more renown obviously (or exp for lower level characters), and no credits for objective completions. Rewards are changed to be in line with the new gearing system. Past that, most of the objectives are staying the same. There had been some confusion before about objectives being lowered, but that wasn't the case.

[KaraPeters]

Am I reading this right where it seems like as an alt-a-holic solo only non-guilded player that I should just ignore conquest now after 7.0? Generally I would do CQ on all my toons (11 on current server) and sell the solid item on the broker, but it seems like there isn't really any reason to do CQ at all after these changes. No exp, no credits, no guild to please. I don't really need much in the way of high end gear if I don't do any kind of PVP or Ops. My toons are at 306, but I'm a self-reliant crafter. Mostly for me CQ has been a mini goal for me each week. I think what keeps me playing MMORPGs is completion of mini goals and long term goals. I have been in and out of the game since it launched, and I love story content, but I tend to play as though it's an offline RPG where I can buy and sell by chance.

[Akushii]

Removing credit/exp is a good start, but we will need more to bring the inflation under control. As some people have already suggested, we need a method of continuous credit sink. However, we have to be careful on how we do this. We can't have a forced credit sinks as you have a mix of new players that don't have much credit as well as billionaires.

 

My suggestion:

Introduce a vendor that sells random cartel market dye for ~50million. As well as selling 'popular' dyes (Black/Black, Black/White etc.) for 100/200 million credits. Obviously adjust the price accordingly, these are some preliminary numbers I'm throwing out. You can even introduce random cartel market armor sets for 100 million credits or something.

 

Something like this doesn't force everyone to dump their credit, but it will certainly encourage billionaires to spend their credit. We all know that the true endgame in MMORPG is fashion/decos.

 

You can also introduce items like boosts. You can sell speed boosts that increase your speeder movement by say 20% for an hour. Sell each boost for like 1 million gold. Introduce more 'fancy' sparkle powders, fireworks, jawagrams and other toys that can drain credits.

[ceryxp]

I would not doubt that single objective alone put that many credits in. I know lots of people that would just spam KoTFE Chap 1 after completing it because it took all of 8-minutes to complete. That 64B is also across all 5 servers so that is around 12.8B a server.

 

I think they tried to put out that 64 billion number to make it seem like that source was greater than it actually is. 12.8 billion average for a server is chump change spread out across all of the players who earned those credits via that objective.

 

12.8 billion divided by 24 months is 533.33 million credits per month. 533.33 million divided by 30.4 (the average # of days per month) is 17.544 million per day. 17.544 million divided by 1000 players is 17,544 credits earned by each of those one thousand players. Seventeen thousand credits earned per day by 1000 players gives us 12.8 billion credits over two years. When you break it down it becomes obvious that that is an insignificant source of credits.

 

Of course, anyone who has given economics more than a passing glance can tell you that the problem is not so much that 12.8 billion credits were added to the game. The problem is that there was nothing to remove those credits from the game. If there were proper credit sinks in this game and 12 billion credits were removed via sinks then it would have been a wash.

 

Their problem, time and again, is that they suck as making repeatable credit sinks. For so long they have relied upon the GTN tax (which they also nerfed with guild perks) and repair costs whilst simultaneously removing credit sinks and ignoring good repeatable sinks such as making the appearance modification terminal a purely credit transaction.

Edited November 8, 2021 by ceryxp

[MacCleoud]

Of course, anyone who has given economics more than a passing glance can tell you that the problem is not so much that 12.8 billion credits were added to the game. The problem is that there was nothing to remove those credits from the game. If there were proper credit sinks in this game and 12 billion credits were removed via sinks then it would have been a wash.

 

Their problem, time and again, is that they suck as making repeatable credit sinks. For so long they have relied upon the GTN tax (which they also nerfed with guild perks) and repair costs whilst simultaneously removing credit sinks and ignoring good repeatable sinks such as making the appearance modification terminal a purely credit transaction.

 

I completely agree. I was typing on my phone so didn't go into the depth there of the 64B not being that much influx over the course of 2 years. The problem comes in where we have LOTS of objectives that give 64B across 2 years and very little way to get credits out of the system. There has to be a way to remove credits at a closer rate than credits are put into the game.

[robwettengel]

Some--or all--of you may find it inexplicable that I forgot that CQ awarded credits per completed objective. I am sure that I was aware of this fact when my legacy's net worth on SF was less than a 100 million, but as it has grown into the billions and is now over 10 billion, it seems to have slipped my mind. Credits have taken on a much more abstract quality for me over the years.

 

The 64 billion credits for CQ "Story Time" is still ludicrous. Not because of the amount (which I had initially been stunned by), but because it was unlimited double-dipping on rewards. This was 64 billion creds that didn't need to exist, unless CQ rewards like this are going to only be limited to prevent the spamming of chapters and the generation of too many credits far too easily. If they wanted to do something like this with KotFEET, there should have been a limit that "Story Time" would only be awarded for a run of each chapter on each difficulty mode per CQ.

 

Stripping CQ credit rewards could certainly help reduce the credit supply, but I don't believe that all credit rewards should be done away with because it unfairly penalizes new players and those that lack much of a credit balance because they only play intermittently. Instead of doing away with them for everybody, employ means testing and have whether or not a credit reward is granted is based upon a player's wealth between all their characters and legacy bank. Should this also be applied account wide? I don't know, but I definitely think it should apply to one's whole legacy on a server.