7.0 Conquest Changes

[AsmodeusDark]

From what one has been reading from all these changes coming with "7" you main plan is to make normal human players leave this game... well well done looks like you shall do as you wish... one plays to enjoy not bloody work i do that for 50 + hours a week in RL as it is..cheers looks like that DELETE buuton will have to be pressed .. not that you seem to care but it in the end will save me 9 quid a month...

[corsacalin]

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.

 

Update to the Personal Conquest Goal

As some of you may have noted from our most recent PTS, the goal for Personal Conquest will be increased from the previous 50,000 points to 100,000 points for “Legacy of the Sith”.

 

There are numerous facets to Conquest we have been reviewing:

• The economic impacts the system has had over the 6.0 era
  
• The engagement impacts of the system and how that has affected not just the individual player but how it has affected the greater community as a whole
  
• How Conquest is going to be tied into the 7.0 systems and gameplay loops

 

We want to ensure that Conquest remains a viable and enjoyable loop for all types of players, while also ensuring that it is promoting a healthy relationship for players and the connecting systems.

 

We believe the starting point of all of this is in the rate of which Conquest can be completed. This rate has an immediate and direct effect on every facet mentioned above.

• It contributes to how many additional credits are being generated per week across the game
  
• How many Guild Flagship Encryptions can be obtained and thus how rapidly a Guild can progress their Flagship
  
• How many characters a player decides to run through the Conquest cycle
  
• Which Conquest Objectives players favor in order to maximize their goals

 

All of these are a direct result of the rate in which Conquest can be completed. What we have seen throughout 6.0 was that the rate of Conquest completion was not contributing to these facets in a healthy manner. It was increasing the rate of acquisition for what should be long term goals for players, promoting a playstyle of interruptive play as players hit their Conquest target and then swap out their characters, creating social pressures to participate in Conquest as often as possible, and adding to the on-going economic changes we have seen in the game over the past year.

 

We reviewed various goal amounts, both with their impact on the systems currently and soon to be associated with Conquest, but also with the player experience in mind. After this review, we found that 100,000 was the best bridge between the goals of maintaining the health of these systems while minimizing the impact for all players. We want to maintain that Conquest is an enjoyable system which rewards you for doing virtually anything the game has to offer, while also proactively working to ensure we can provide a healthy and responsible symbiotic relation to the economy, and additional systems and progression tied around it. We want to ensure that Conquest is still a system where players feel that they can run it with multiple characters each week, but that it is not the only way to enjoy Conquest.

 

Update to Objective Rewards

Starting with 7.0, Conquest Objectives will no longer reward experience or credits for completing them. We are making this change to help reduce the number of credits being generated in the game, as well as removing the experience loop Conquest has had in the past.

 

While Conquest is not solely responsible for some of the economic shifts we have seen in the game, it is definitely a strong contributor. The credit amount for individual Objectives was never considered high; however, over time those values begin to add up to a non-zero impact sum.

 

As an example of this, one of the more completed Objectives, “Missions: Story Time”, has generated nearly 64 billion credits into the economy alone. This is not taking into consideration the Credits players earned for completing the Story Mission itself (which could exponentially expand this value). As you can see, the combination of the Objective Credit reward with the Mission Credit reward is generating more credits into the game than necessary.

 

The removal of the experience reward is being done to help contribute toward the health of the leveling process, while also removing a self-generating loop in Conquest where completing Conquest Objectives would grant experience to level a player up. This would complete the ‘Advancement: Gain a Level’, ‘Advancement: Gain 5 Levels’, or ‘Renown: Rank Up’, thus gaining a player more experience. This loop in combination of the impact on the leveling experience are the reasons we are removing experience rewards from Conquest Objectives.

 

We want to maintain that the activity you are doing is the focal point and should provide the Credits and experience reward; not the Conquest Objective itself.

 

We hope this helps shine some light on the intent of the 7.0 Conquest changes!

 

I don't want to talk extra but i let this note here. There is a clique in this game that refuse to accept the changes because the inflation is in their benefit. Regarding the new changes, i am sure that at this point a slow deflation is necesary and yes many will suffer but it's necesary.

[WaywardOne]

You're taking out the credits. You're removing the solid matrix resource reward. You're removing tech fragments (I'm assuming). You're removing the exp & renown rewarded. And you're making it much harder to complete conquests. Why not just remove the system?

[JattaGin]

What we have seen throughout 6.0 was that the rate of Conquest completion was not contributing to these facets in a healthy manner. It was increasing the rate of acquisition for what should be long term goals for players, promoting a playstyle of interruptive play as players hit their Conquest target and then swap out their characters, creating social pressures to participate in Conquest as often as possible, and adding to the on-going economic changes we have seen in the game over the past year.

 

So, you found out exactly what your player base gave you as a massive feedback when you introduced these changes in the first place. Remember when pretty much everyone warned you about exactly this? Probably not. I'm loling hard right now. Pathetic. Seriously.

 

Apart from that, I thank you for this. It makes it so much easier to finally leave. You take away pretty much everything I enjoy in this game. I assume, on purpose, since I don't play the game your way.

 

Luckily, I anticipated such a change, and had prepared a "last weeks" plan for my chars. I will have my one-man-guildship fully unlocked at the beginning of December. Not that it matters anymore.

 

I'm the GL of my guild, and if anyone of my guildies are reading this, YOU ARE IN NO DANGER of being booted from either Empire's Destiny or There Is Only Peace because you choose to log on and play the game your way, when you want to, how you want to, even if that means zero conquest points sitting there playing space barbies in your stronghold. Knock yourself out.

 

For that, I salute you.

 

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.

 

I totally feel you. I'm really struggling with immediately uninstalling vs. still finishing my guildship before 7.0. At the end, I paid until early January. So I guess I should play a bit more.

 

From what one has been reading from all these changes coming with "7" you main plan is to make normal human players leave this game... well well done looks like you shall do as you wish... one plays to enjoy not bloody work i do that for 50 + hours a week in RL as it is..cheers looks like that DELETE buuton will have to be pressed .. not that you seem to care but it in the end will save me 9 quid a month...

 

Well said.

 

To all you ladies and gentlemen who are in the same boat as me: They want us out. It's so obvious. So let's all go. As hard as it may be. They couldn't be much clearer on their intention: They want a different player base than us.

[Baletraeger]

They couldn't be much clearer on their intention: They want a different player base than us.

 

And that player base will require less dev work and will spend way more on CM than we do right now, just like the mobile games they are trying to emulate.

[TrixxieTriss]

And that player base will require less dev work and will spend way more on CM than we do right now, just like the mobile games they are trying to emulate.

 

More likely they won’t have a player base left unless their intention with 7.x changes is to launch on Xbox and Steam Deck next year.

They seem to be purposely driving the remaining legacy players from the game.

And we all know from past experience that BioWares expansions never bring in enough players to replace those that leave.

So come February, I predict the game will have way less players than now (as usual).

 

Edit: also, less dev work means they won’t need to employ as many devs. I wonder if BioWare employees realise that?

Edited November 5, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[BHWolf]

This is a genuine question, as I feel I must be missing something.

 

"Update to Objective Rewards

Starting with 7.0, Conquest Objectives will no longer reward experience or credits for completing them."

 

Regardless of whether I think Bioware are approaching the issue of inflation correctly, I can understand there is an apparent desire to address it. However, if Conquest is also no longer granting experience what will be the point of it?

[KoriVash]

Well, I guess this was always going to happen at some point, that BW would change conquest back to a point I will just not bother with it, just as I did in the past. Conquest was good for a while, but as they say "all good things"

 

As for inflation! well this change will do nothing to address the issue. Players will be getting less flag ship plans so these will just sky-rocket on the GTN. There may be less credits in the game but all that means is players will just be more picky on what they buy, Flag ship plans will just become the most expensive items on GTN, while cartel items will fall. Not sure who that will benefit more. Probably not BW.

 

Whatever changes you make BW are up to you, but please just stop pretending you doing this for the playerbase benefit.

Edited November 5, 2021 by KoriVash

[Damask_Rose]

Update to the Personal Conquest Goal

As some of you may have noted from our most recent PTS, the goal for Personal Conquest will be increased from the previous 50,000 points to 100,000 points for “Legacy of the Sith”.

 

Why did you tie solo gearing to Personal Conquest when you knew you were making it take twice as long for half the reward? That was incredibly mean spirited.

 

We want to ensure that Conquest remains a viable and enjoyable loop for all types of players, while also ensuring that it is promoting a healthy relationship for players and the connecting systems.

 

All I saw in this post are negatives. What is being done to keep it enjoyable? Are there going to be new rewards to replace the ones removed to keep it worth it? Are you going to at least add in more tiers of resource node decorations since those are pretty much the only reward left? And no, the new hideous gear grind doesn't count. That is just another negative.

 

What we have seen throughout 6.0 was that the rate of Conquest completion was not contributing to these facets in a healthy manner. It was increasing the rate of acquisition for what should be long term goals for players, promoting a playstyle of interruptive play as players hit their Conquest target and then swap out their characters, creating social pressures to participate in Conquest as often as possible, and adding to the on-going economic changes we have seen in the game over the past year.

 

These all sound like made up excuses to justify the changes after the fact. I didn't even know individual conquest objectives gave out credits. I bet you could have pulled those and few people would have noticed. Or you could have, you know, put in credit sinks instead of stripping conquest of most of its rewards. What is wrong with "interruptive play". Alcoholics LIKE playing multiple characters often in one play session. Why the f do you care how many characters we play and how often we switch between them? News flash! I'm still going to play that way, just now ignoring conquest completely. Only people in very competitive conquest guilds have any pressure to complete conquests. If that bothers them, find a different guild?

 

After this review, we found that 100,000 was the best bridge between the goals of maintaining the health of these systems while minimizing the impact for all players. We want to maintain that Conquest is an enjoyable system which rewards you for doing virtually anything the game has to offer, while also proactively working to ensure we can provide a healthy and responsible symbiotic relation to the economy, and additional systems and progression tied around it. We want to ensure that Conquest is still a system where players feel that they can run it with multiple characters each week, but that it is not the only way to enjoy Conquest.

 

That is a whole lot of double speak. 100k means Conquest is not worth doing, and certainly not with multiple characters. Having next to no rewards means conquest is not worth doing. Conquest without easily achieved rewards is not enjoyable. How is any of what you are doing keeping conquest enjoyable and rewarding? You have listed in great detail how you are gutting conquest without one word as to what you are doing to keep it viable.

 

While Conquest is not solely responsible for some of the economic shifts we have seen in the game, it is definitely a strong contributor. The credit amount for individual Objectives was never considered high; however, over time those values begin to add up to a non-zero impact sum.

 

After all these years you just now ran the math behind Conquest rewards? Really?

 

The removal of the experience reward is being done to help contribute toward the health of the leveling process, while also removing a self-generating loop in Conquest where completing Conquest Objectives would grant experience to level a player up. This would complete the ‘Advancement: Gain a Level’, ‘Advancement: Gain 5 Levels’, or ‘Renown: Rank Up’, thus gaining a player more experience. This loop in combination of the impact on the leveling experience are the reasons we are removing experience rewards from Conquest Objectives.

 

You screwed up the "health of the leveling process" long ago. Everyone is over-leveled all of the time and it never bothered you until now. Conquest exp is trivial compared to all of the other changes made to rush people to max level as fast as humanly possible. I'm just floored you are even claiming this a concern! And you are removing renown, so renown rank up won't be a thing anymore. (And renown is only earned by max level characters anyway, so no impact on leveling there...)

[robwettengel]

Regarding Conquest, would it be possible to means test whether or not credits are rewarded? Say, for instance, that the bottom three quintiles of players in the economy (that I am assuming are holders of average credit balances and lower), continue to receive the full credit payout for completing CQ activities. Those in the top two quartiles would not receive any credits, unless their total credit balance drops into the third quartile or lower. The credit balance would be calculated by adding up the total amount held by the account across all servers and legacies--including legacy banks. This calculation could be performed weekly when CQ resets.

 

But stripping away XP rewards from CQ has nothing to do with inflation. The two are not connected and it would be like a supermarket limiting the number of cucumbers a person can buy because of inflationary pressure upon apples.

[BRKMSN]

Gotta love the people that cry for Bioware to "do something" about "inflation." Congrats, whiners! You deserve this nonsensical solution.

 

CM armor Set A is equal in value to CM armor Set B. To facilitate trades, we have placed a value on in game credits as barter. 4 years ago, Set A was obtainable for 1.5M credits. Today, Set A is obtainable for 300M credits. Set A is still worth the same as Set B. If you trade the sets straight across, there is no change in value over those 4 years.

 

The only thing that has changed over those 4 years is credits generated by the game. Rather than making ample credit sinks such as character perks (for example - Speeder piloting 6: 100M credits), the only idea they keep falling back on is to make the game play less rewarding. This will not bring current prices down nor will it stop them from increasing.

[Farferello]

It feels like they're trying to make the game as non alt/solo friendly as they possibly can. First they limit the Weeklies you can do to try and funnel everyone into the same location, and then they double the Conquest points needed. Both Conquest/Weeklies are what solo players will have to rely on to be able to gear up, and they've made it as hard as possible to do so to make it take even longer, whilst also telling us we need to play what they want us to play.

 

I've unsubbed. I was willing to give things a go but every new Dev post that comes out has made me sadder to the point I'm not even playing the game anymore. I login for the login reward and then quit. I was super excited when 7.0 was first announced in the livestream and we were told that we could swap to a different combat spec. I was excited that my light sided Warrior/Inquisitor could swap to the combat specs of their Jedi counterpart - and then that excitement was quickly snuffed out as every new snippet of information about what was being changed came out, to the point I no longer feel like playing any of my characters, let alone all the new ones I had planned to make for 7.0 initially.

 

If you're just trying to drive your solo players away then good job, you've accomplished it.

[Lakemine]

It feels like they're trying to make the game as non alt/solo friendly as they possibly can. First they limit the Weeklies you can do to try and funnel everyone into the same location, and then they double the Conquest points needed. Both Conquest/Weeklies are what solo players will have to rely on to be able to gear up, and they've made it as hard as possible to do so to make it take even longer, whilst also telling us we need to play what they want us to play.

 

I've unsubbed. I was willing to give things a go but every new Dev post that comes out has made me sadder to the point I'm not even playing the game anymore. I login for the login reward and then quit. I was super excited when 7.0 was first announced in the livestream and we were told that we could swap to a different combat spec. I was excited that my light sided Warrior/Inquisitor could swap to the combat specs of their Jedi counterpart - and then that excitement was quickly snuffed out as every new snippet of information about what was being changed came out, to the point I no longer feel like playing any of my characters, let alone all the new ones I had planned to make for 7.0 initially.

 

If you're just trying to drive your solo players away then good job, you've accomplished it.

 

Find out who benefits from these changes, and you will see which player base they want to focus on.

[Lakemine]

And that player base will require less dev work and will spend way more on CM than we do right now, just like the mobile games they are trying to emulate.

 

YEP! I called it day 1 when they announced 7.0. EVERYONE I talked too (but my mom ) disagreed with me,and even got kicked from a few discords for it.

 

Yet......sadly here we are.

 

And I know people will accuse me of "You just want to be right all the time!", no.......no I don't. I'm a pessimist. So if i'm right, it means people are unhappy and suffer. I WANT to be wrong and proven incorrect.......yet with each new dev post (barring the storyline overview one from Charles. That was good ), they continually prove me correct. And its honestly depressing.

[Lakemine]

The only thing I agree with is the credit situation. But you still didn’t need to remove all of them because new players will suffer. You don’t need to remove XP and you don’t need to double the goals. This will ruin conquest for us.

 

I’m sorry David, but it seems each time you guys post something about 7.0 it makes us want to play it less and less. This post about Conquest being Nerfed into the ground is the last straw for us.

We (My family) won’t be subscribing to the game once 7.0 is released and you can see from our logins to the game that ever since 7.0 was announced, we’ve played about 90% less than we usually play.

 

There is only two things we looked forward to with 7.0 and you’ve ruined those with every subsequent announcement of how you are going to wreak the things in this game we love.

So this is adios from my family. We loved swtor, but you’ve killed it for us.

 

edit: Dear BioWare, my family and I have now made the decision to unsubscribe as of today. I’ve just filled in your exit questionnaire with a list of reasons. Hopefully you’re still reading them and paying attention to how many people are going to quit. I think you’ll have quite a lot more to read if you don’t make a course correction to your proposed changes for 7.0.

 

Yep Same. My sis left months ago, and my moms just ended hers. My sub doesn't end till later, so I can't just end it now, like I would like too to prove a point.

[TrixxieTriss]

Yep Same. My sis left months ago, and my moms just ended hers. My sub doesn't end till later, so I can't just end it now, like I would like too to prove a point.

 

Sadly, my own two hour delay to talk to my sister this morning meant that my sub renewed for 90 days before I could cancel it. Even so, my wife and sis cancelled theirs before it renewed. But I still went through my own cancellation process and left feed back. If for some magical reasons they postpone and walk back on some of these decisions, I can always activate it again.

[TrixxieTriss]

Gotta love the people that cry for Bioware to "do something" about "inflation." Congrats, whiners! You deserve this nonsensical solution.

 

There is literally a whole other thread with many more sensible ideas on how to combat inflation. You can’t blame the players because BioWare ignore player feedback. Inflation is terribly broken, it needs to be fixed, just not how they are doing it.

[ceryxp]

Sadly, my own two hour delay to talk to my sister this morning meant that my sub renewed for 90 days before I could cancel it. Even so, my wife and sis cancelled theirs before it renewed. But I still went through my own cancellation process and left feed back. If for some magical reasons they postpone and walk back on some of these decisions, I can always activate it again.

 

I pulled the trigger on both of my accounts this morning. On my main I used almost all 2000 characters explaining why I was leaving and what it would take to get me back as a subscriber.

[Pricia]

I don't want to talk extra but i let this note here. There is a clique in this game that refuse to accept the changes because the inflation is in their benefit. Regarding the new changes, i am sure that at this point a slow deflation is necesary and yes many will suffer but it's necesary.

 

Yeah except that most people's complaints have NOTHING to do with the credit part of the changes.

[Pricia]

Yep Same. My sis left months ago, and my moms just ended hers. My sub doesn't end till later, so I can't just end it now, like I would like too to prove a point.

 

You can. They still know how many people are dropping their subscription.

 

I canceled mine, it doesn't renew until February so it will be really up to them whether I renew or not. I don't really see a point to subscribe when I was mostly subscribing for purple gear (won't get it by soloing) and 13+ alts (which I won't have time to do CQ with anyway because of the changes).

[TrixxieTriss]

You can. They still know how many people are dropping their subscription.

 

I canceled mine, it doesn't renew until February so it will be really up to them whether I renew or not. I don't really see a point to subscribe when I was mostly subscribing for purple gear (won't get it by soloing) and 13+ alts (which I won't have time to do CQ with anyway because of the changes).

 

 

Yeah, you can always go into the sub section and cancel the auto renew and provide reasons and feedback now,

Edited November 6, 2021 by TrixxieTriss

[khamseen_air]

If they still have those weeklies available and I can get conquest point like currently, it won’t be too bad. My issue is that with how they worded the ‘press release’ on the changes it gave me the distinct impression that if that area wasn’t one of the ‘focus’ areas that the weeklies wouldn’t be available. I took the reduced rewards as just doing the dailies and getting those rewards.

 

That's how I take it too, that you will still be able to go to a planet and do the daily missions there but the weekly missions for those locations will only be available on the 'chosen' weeks. Since most of the weekly wrapper missions can only be picked up from the activities UI rather than from a terminal etc then it's highly probable we just wont have access to those weekly wrapper missions unless they are active that week.

 

Also they have said in a post that GF will only have selected flashpoints available each week which is going to seriously hamper getting into flashpoints other than the ones they want us to do each week. Add that to the fact that you need to do 5 or 3 flashpoints (vet or mm) for the weekly, which now resets if you don't complete it each week, and it's all just so dumb.

[TrixxieTriss]

That's how I take it too, that you will still be able to go to a planet and do the daily missions there but the weekly missions for those locations will only be available on the 'chosen' weeks. Since most of the weekly wrapper missions can only be picked up from the activities UI rather than from a terminal etc then it's highly probable we just wont have access to those weekly wrapper missions unless they are active that week.

 

Also they have said in a post that GF will only have selected flashpoints available each week which is going to seriously hamper getting into flashpoints other than the ones they want us to do each week. Add that to the fact that you need to do 5 or 3 flashpoints (vet or mm) for the weekly, which now resets if you don't complete it each week, and it's all just so dumb.

 

What I don’t like about the flash point situation is what if you have 2-3 friends you exclusively play with and don’t need group finder? Do you miss out on completing the weeklies and therefore miss out on getting the gear?

 

I hate group finder for pve. I’ve never liked it or used it much. Nearly every experience I’ve had is bad. Not only that but I don’t need it to complete most flash points because my wife and sister play with me.

 

So why should I have to queue random that takes me away from my family or add some random to our group we don’t need or want?

 

The whole thing is poorly thought out!

[DWho]

They should just revert back to planets giving planet level rewards instead of character level rewards. A flesh raider on Tython dropping 270 rated gear which can be reverse engineered for tech fragments or sold for creds dumped a lot more credits into the game than conquest ever did. Inflation took off with that change.

 

It should be 1xp for completing a mission you are 10 levels over and you should get credit rewards commensurate with the planet level.

[Damask_Rose]

What I don’t like about the flash point situation is what if you have 2-3 friends you exclusively play with and don’t need group finder? Do you miss out on completing the weeklies and therefore miss out on getting the gear?

 

I hate group finder for pve. I’ve never liked it or used it much. Nearly every experience I’ve had is bad. Not only that but I don’t need it to complete most flash points because my wife and sister play with me.

 

So why should I have to queue random that takes me away from my family or add some random to our group we don’t need or want?

 

The whole thing is poorly thought out!

 

At one time it was pretty common to que for group finder for the extra rewards and then kick the extra player so a companion could be used in that spot. I don't know if that is still common or not, but the upcoming changes will certainly encourage this.