Conquest

[Griefious]

Is there any plans to revamp Conquest to make it possible for smaller guilds to actually win? If not, maybe consider this as an option. Making it so only mega guilds can win isn't really enticing. It is very difficult for new or small guilds to be able to get a foothold and survive in this game because most people want to join a guild with all the perks, titles, mounts, rewards few people actually want to have to work for these things from scratch. Making it so smaller guilds could actually win Conquest would go a long way to resolving this issue.

I suggest basing conquest on guild size so you don't have a 50 member guild competing against a 1000 member guild. Let the Mega Guilds compete against each other.

[xordevoreaux]

make it possible for smaller guilds to actually win.

Explain "win."

 

If you mean will a guild of 20 active people ever blast a guild of 1,000 active people into outer space and take the top spot on the large-target leader board?

No.

 

Make 9th place?

No.

 

Make 8th place?

Good luck.

 

Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, not the other way around.

 

Any in-game contortion that would allow a 20-person or even a 100-person guild to outperform a guild with 1,000 active members all hauling large numbers in conquest would bring a flood of rage on the forums saying how stupidly backward that is.

Edited January 12, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[SteveTheCynic]

Any in-game contortion that would allow a 20-person or even a 100-person guild to outperform a guild with 1,000 active members all hauling large numbers in conquest would bring a flood of rage on the forums saying how stupidly backward that is.

More to the point, the people participating in the flood of rage would be right.

[xordevoreaux]

OP, read: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=1000475

[ThanderSnB]

Having a guild that gets a high ranking on leaderboard does help with recruiting, but there's quite a few players that don't like those large guilds. A lot of those conquest guilds don't have much of a community. People just park their alts there and get their 50k conquest points each week to get titles. So you need to focus on creating a good community in your guild where players will make friends and want to stay simply to hang out with their friends.

 

Now I haven't created a guild and don't have personal experience, but I would start with a focused guild. For example, a PvE guild might focus on uprisings and flashpoints in the beginning because they don't require a large group and you can fill the empty spots with the group finder. Be an active presence in your guild every day during set times, whenever you have your free time. Keep guild chat active by chatting about the game or just small talk if there's nothing else to talk about. Schedule events around the guild's focus activities. Discord seems to be important too. Once the guild has enough regular members, they can start Story mode operations, adding hard mode and nightmare mode as players get experienced.

 

It would be best if you were an expert in the activities your guild focuses on. If not, join an established guild (it can be an alt), and learn from experts until you can teach others everything to know about the activities you do (PvE or PvP or eventually anything if the guild keeps growing).

Edited January 13, 2022 by ThanderSnB

[xordevoreaux]

ThanderSnB, your idea of focus is a good one, and not just for recruiting, but retention. Conquest guilds are a dime for a hundred. If all a guild has to offer is running conquest, they've no ability to distinguish themselves from every other guild also running conquest.

 

Role-play guilds have a bit of a quirk. They're off to the side as far as conquest goes. The game to them is just a backdrop to tell their story. The more interesting their story, the stickier that guild's retention rate for people interested in that story.

 

Non role-play guilds must offer something beyond "we do conquest" and "we do ops." Some guilds specialize in nightmare or hard mode, some guilds offer themselves up as casual or target a subset of the player population (gay, people who work full time, people in a particular time zone, people speaking a particular language, etc.) while others have funny little quirks (gotta be a body type four Cathar, cause we're the <Fat Cats>!)

 

 

and i've no idea if <Fat Cats> is even a guild, and if it is, sorry for the misrepresentation

 

So as far as focus goes, identify and purpose and sticking to them is important.

 

So I agree, focus is good.

 

Having a guild that gets a high ranking on leaderboard does help with recruiting

There are 3 conquest targets this week. That's 30 guilds max hitting the leader boards. Those are the same guilds that always hit the leader boards.

 

I'm gonna guess there's more than 30 guilds on most servers, and those other guilds never, if ever, hit the boards, or if they do, it's briefly before they're knocked off. The boards are clogged by the big boys one week to the next and that's just the way life is.

 

So, the only guilds helped by recruiting (by hitting the boards) don't need to recruit. They're where they need to be. They have momentum.

 

If you want to recruit and your guild will never be (or is rarely) on any leader board:

 

https://swtorfancommunity.com/guild/

https://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=309

 

Little secret: Recruit when you want to have others on to play with. If you play 4PM weekdays, don't recruit 6am on a Sunday morning.

Edited January 13, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[Griefious]

By your logic big guilds should win everything PvP, GSF, Ops just because they have the numbers. A smaller guild can be just as active and have more skilled players than a larger guild. They don't deserve to "win" because they are smaller? I'm Sorry but that's Malaraky!

 

Explain "win."

 

If you mean will a guild of 20 active people ever blast a guild of 1,000 active people into outer space and take the top spot on the large-target leader board?

No.

 

Make 9th place?

No.

 

Make 8th place?

Good luck.

 

Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, not the other way around.

 

Any in-game contortion that would allow a 20-person or even a 100-person guild to outperform a guild with 1,000 active members all hauling large numbers in conquest would bring a flood of rage on the forums saying how stupidly backward that is.

[Griefious]

First of all size has nothing to do with skill small guild PVP groups beat large guild PVP groups all the time! Second I am not saying that a 20 person guild should beat a 1000 person guild. I am saying a 20 person guild should go up against other 20 person guilds. A 1000 person guild should go up against other 1000 person guilds. A 20 person guild shouldn't have to compete against a 1000 person guild. It would make conquest more viable and challenging for everyone involved and would increase conquest participation by guilds. So many guilds don't do conquest at all. Why?, because they know they have no chance in winning period, so why try?

 

 

 

More to the point, the people participating in the flood of rage would be right.

[xordevoreaux]

By your logic big guilds should win everything PvP, GSF, Ops just because they have the numbers. A smaller guild can be just as active and have more skilled players than a larger guild. They don't deserve to "win" because they are smaller? I'm Sorry but that's Malaraky!

 

Read again.

 

Any in-game contortion that would allow a 20-person or even a 100-person guild to outperform a guild with 1,000 active members all hauling large numbers in conquest would bring a flood of rage on the forums saying how stupidly backward that is.

 

100 active players cannot defeat 1000 active players in conquest, and this conversation at no point revolved around PvP, GSF, or Operations. Just. Conquest.

Edited January 13, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[xordevoreaux]

And regarding this:

 

I suggest basing conquest on guild size so you don't have a 50 member guild competing against a 1000 member guild. Let the Mega Guilds compete against each other.

 

What you propose is called bracketing. It's in all manner of sports, from swimming (C time to AAAA time) to wrestling (14 official weight classes for high school) on and on.

 

So.

 

What do you propose for bracketing for guilds beyond the tiers of targets we have now?

 

Bracketing produces pyramids, with the majority of the not-so-great competitors at the bottom base of the pyramid, and a few unquestioned champs crowning the top of the pyramid.

 

All bracketing would do is stuff a bunch of welter-weight guilds into the same bracket, and of those, only a few will make the leader board for their bracket, especially in weeks with very few planets to choose from, such as this week, where there are only three.

 

The rest of the guilds in that huge bracket are still cast-asides in any competition.

 

So how granular would you make the bracketing, how narrowly would you divide guilds into brackets in other words, so everyone goes home a winner?

 

Because for anything less than that in such a scheme, whoever doesn't go home a winner will be on this forum screaming to the high heavens that the devs rebracket to favor their guild.

[DWho]

When people talk about small guilds winning conquest, I think (my opinion) what they are really saying is they want a way to gain the conquest titles without having to join one of the super conquest guilds.

 

A simpler solution would be to make the planetary conquest titles available in some manner other than just finishing number 1 on the leader board (leave the other perks - special travel, the Planet Conquered by Plaque, etc for the top guild so there is still something to strive for). Perhaps something like generating 50 million conquest (or some other reasonable number). Then the super conquest guilds could still have their leaderboard competition and players would not be forced to join one of the super guilds just to get the titles.

[xordevoreaux]

First of all size has nothing to do with skill small guild PVP groups beat large guild PVP groups all the time! Second I am not saying that a 20 person guild should beat a 1000 person guild. I am saying a 20 person guild should go up against other 20 person guilds. A 1000 person guild should go up against other 1000 person guilds. A 20 person guild shouldn't have to compete against a 1000 person guild. It would make conquest more viable and challenging for everyone involved and would increase conquest participation by guilds. So many guilds don't do conquest at all. Why?, because they know they have no chance in winning period, so why try?

 

You still have not defined winning.

Reaching the leaderboard at all?

Hitting number 1 on the leaderboard?

 

What is it about winning that you want? What is winning? Planetary titles? Growing the guild?

What do you expect for winning? Your guild name splashed across the screen? Bragging rights? Because if you follow my other thread, hitting the leader board < > growing a guild.

 

Are you therefore asking the devs to make bracketing a thing just for the sake of bragging rights for tiny guilds to say look at us, TWO WHOLE GUILDS in our competition bracket and we won number one! Woohoo!

 

What do you want?

Edited January 13, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[Griefious]

I stated what I wanted what you are talking about is semantics. You are exaggerating. Here is the reality on servers right now there are maybe 2-3 large conquest guilds per server. What I have seen is they weekly split up the conquest so they don't compete against each other. The same 2 0r 3 guilds win every week. Very seldom will you actually see all the large conquest guilds going for the large prizes. You see them splitting up the field so the large guilds don't really compete against each other. By bracketing conquest by guild size you will get more guilds competing period as it won't be a lock every week as to who will win. Basically what the large conquest guilds are doing now amounts to trading wins in PvP. Never truly competing.

[xordevoreaux]

I stated what I wanted what you are talking about is semantics. You are exaggerating. Here is the reality on servers right now there are maybe 2-3 large conquest guilds per server. What I have seen is they weekly split up the conquest so they don't compete against each other. The same 2 0r 3 guilds win every week. Very seldom will you actually see all the large conquest guilds going for the large prizes. You see them splitting up the field so the large guilds don't really compete against each other. By bracketing conquest by guild size you will get more guilds competing period as it won't be a lock every week as to who will win. Basically what the large conquest guilds are doing now amounts to trading wins in PvP. Never truly competing.

 

So how granular would you make the bracketing, how narrowly would you divide guilds into brackets in other words, so everyone goes home a winner?

 

Because for anything less than that in such a scheme, whoever doesn't go home a winner will be on this forum screaming to the high heavens that the devs rebracket to favor their guild.

 

It's a question worth repeating because it's a question worth answering. You're suggesting something without thinking through the consequences.

Edited January 13, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[xordevoreaux]

Two (strike that) Three examples of consequences:

 

Scenario One:

 

Gabriel was a varsity wrestler in my high school sitting right on the line between two weight divisions. He could either fill up on water before the weigh-in, and be placed in one weight category, or dehydrate himself the entire day before and wind up at weigh-in at the lower category. He played that game all the time depending who he knew at the other high schools were in a particular weight category he expected he'd be matched up against who were on the roster for the next competition. If he didn't like the competition, in went the water, out went the water.

 

The SWTOR equivalent of that:

Guild A loses to Guild B the prior week. So prior to the next Tuesday, Guild A yanks a few alts/members out and wind up in the competition bracket beneath the guild they lost to. Now they're in a different, smaller bracket, different competitors, and competing against smaller, perhaps less capable guilds, and just cheesed the bracketing process for their own gain. Guilds can use alts like ballast, adding and removing them as necessary to fit into the competition bracket they desire.

 

Scenario Two:

 

On Monday, an unwary guild gets several invite requests from players, or a competing guild has someone on the inside capable of inviting people. Those invites are pumpkins, all from a competing guild, all tossing alts into a competitor's guild to occupy member slots, thereby bumping the targeted guild into the next higher competition bracket (and subsequently out of the bracket of the competing guild) the following Tuesday.

 

Edit: And wonderful, I thought of a third one:

 

Let's say Bioware sets up a situation with bracketing wherein guild member slots aren't counted toward or against brackets if the person joined less than a week out from a weekly conquest rollover. So August 1st of 2022 is a Monday, meaning by this prior-week lockout rule that it will be the 9th, not the 2nd, before any invites on the 1st count toward bracketing, thereby eliminating scenario #2 above, or at least buying time (a week) for the targeted guild to kick out all the pumpkins.

 

But the reverse is also useful. On Monday, August 1st, 2022, a guild has 8 (or however many they want) of its top-performing, hardest-hitting, best-tanking, best-healing players /gquit, making them ineligible for contributing to either conquest or the bracketing count until the 9th. They all rejoin immediately.

 

Those top players aren't contributing to slot counts, not directly contributing to conquest, but are still fully functional and still able to carry their weaker comrades through hardmode ops and whatever else they participate in — but now the guild's in a lower bracket, facing potentially weaker competition.

 

Edit 2: And it gets even better:

With the scenario above, if Bioware made an additional rule that players who /gquit still contribute to their last guild's slot count a whole week, all they must do on Monday, August 1st, 2022, is /gquit their main guild, join their trash alt guild, /gquit that immediately, rejoin their main guild, all within minutes. Now their trash guild is the most previous guild that they quit from.

Rule subverted, and off they go to carry their comrades in hard mode in a lower bracket.

 

 

Guilds are competitive enough that they'll work the math, just like Gabriel did, to defeat bracketing, any way they can.

Edited January 13, 2022 by xordevoreaux

[Griefious]

Very simple put a cool down on /gquitting a guild and rejoining that same guild of say a 10 days, So if you quit a guild you cannot rejoin that guild for 10 days. Not difficult at all really. Also make legacy wide so you can only actually gain conquest on one character per legacy. You can change the character from week to week but only the character you choose for the week is eligible to put conquest points towards the guild conquest goal. Each character can still get personal conquest done though.

 

Two (strike that) Three examples of consequences:

 

Scenario One:

 

Gabriel was a varsity wrestler in my high school sitting right on the line between two weight divisions. He could either fill up on water before the weigh-in, and be placed in one weight category, or dehydrate himself the entire day before and wind up at weigh-in at the lower category. He played that game all the time depending who he knew at the other high schools were in a particular weight category he expected he'd be matched up against who were on the roster for the next competition. If he didn't like the competition, in went the water, out went the water.

 

The SWTOR equivalent of that:

Guild A loses to Guild B the prior week. So prior to the next Tuesday, Guild A yanks a few alts/members out and wind up in the competition bracket beneath the guild they lost to. Now they're in a different, smaller bracket, different competitors, and competing against smaller, perhaps less capable guilds, and just cheesed the bracketing process for their own gain. Guilds can use alts like ballast, adding and removing them as necessary to fit into the competition bracket they desire.

 

Scenario Two:

 

On Monday, an unwary guild gets several invite requests from players, or a competing guild has someone on the inside capable of inviting people. Those invites are pumpkins, all from a competing guild, all tossing alts into a competitor's guild to occupy member slots, thereby bumping the targeted guild into the next higher competition bracket (and subsequently out of the bracket of the competing guild) the following Tuesday.

 

Edit: And wonderful, I thought of a third one:

 

Let's say Bioware sets up a situation with bracketing wherein guild member slots aren't counted toward or against brackets if the person joined less than a week out from a weekly conquest rollover. So August 1st of 2022 is a Monday, meaning by this prior-week lockout rule that it will be the 9th, not the 2nd, before any invites on the 1st count toward bracketing, thereby eliminating scenario #2 above, or at least buying time (a week) for the targeted guild to kick out all the pumpkins.

 

But the reverse is also useful. On Monday, August 1st, 2022, a guild has 8 (or however many they want) of its top-performing, hardest-hitting, best-tanking, best-healing players /gquit, making them ineligible for contributing to either conquest or the bracketing count until the 9th. They all rejoin immediately.

 

Those top players aren't contributing to slot counts, not directly contributing to conquest, but are still fully functional and still able to carry their weaker comrades through hardmode ops and whatever else they participate in — but now the guild's in a lower bracket, facing potentially weaker competition.

 

Edit 2: And it gets even better:

With the scenario above, if Bioware made an additional rule that players who /gquit still contribute to their last guild's slot count a whole week, all they must do on Monday, August 1st, 2022, is /gquit their main guild, join their trash alt guild, /gquit that immediately, rejoin their main guild, all within minutes. Now their trash guild is the most previous guild that they quit from.

Rule subverted, and off they go to carry their comrades in hard mode in a lower bracket.

 

 

Guilds are competitive enough that they'll work the math, just like Gabriel did, to defeat bracketing, any way they can.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Griefious

[Darev]

Is there any plans to revamp Conquest to make it possible for smaller guilds to actually win? If not, maybe consider this as an option. Making it so only mega guilds can win isn't really enticing. It is very difficult for new or small guilds to be able to get a foothold and survive in this game because most people want to join a guild with all the perks, titles, mounts, rewards few people actually want to have to work for these things from scratch. Making it so smaller guilds could actually win Conquest would go a long way to resolving this issue.

I suggest basing conquest on guild size so you don't have a 50 member guild competing against a 1000 member guild. Let the Mega Guilds compete against each other.

 

Why?

There's only ONE spot that counts for anything in game, and that's the top spot.

You get a title for the win that week.

You get to kill specific NPC's early due to some "shield negating" thing I barely ever paid attention to.

 

There's literally zero difference between spot 2 and spot 10, or even 11 out to infinity, as far as actual rewards are concerned.

 

Now...people who care about getting the titles will have a problem with what someone called bracketing...20 person guild vs. only 20 person guilds....the reason is that certain titles/invasion planets are ONLY available in the small section...others are ONLY available in the medium selection...same with large.

 

The ultra large conquest guilds, if they need the title for the small invasion..they need to be able to choose it regardless of how many people are in the guild.

 

Until THAT mechanic is changed by the devs, we're stuck with the system we have.

[Griefious]

Planet conquerors get titles, mounts, and special abilities.

 

Why?

There's only ONE spot that counts for anything in game, and that's the top spot.

You get a title for the win that week.

You get to kill specific NPC's early due to some "shield negating" thing I barely ever paid attention to.

 

There's literally zero difference between spot 2 and spot 10, or even 11 out to infinity, as far as actual rewards are concerned.

 

Now...people who care about getting the titles will have a problem with what someone called bracketing...20 person guild vs. only 20 person guilds....the reason is that certain titles/invasion planets are ONLY available in the small section...others are ONLY available in the medium selection...same with large.

 

The ultra large conquest guilds, if they need the title for the small invasion..they need to be able to choose it regardless of how many people are in the guild.

 

Until THAT mechanic is changed by the devs, we're stuck with the system we have.

[xordevoreaux]

VAlso make legacy wide so you can only actually gain conquest on one character per legacy.

7.0 will be alt-hostile enough (if you've been following the issue there with a max of 3 alts on conquest for gearing in 7.0) which has people up in arms over that, one character completing conquest will never fly.

[Darev]

Planet conquerors get titles, mounts, and special abilities.

 

I didn't know about the mount.

 

According to the description, you can only use it on the conquered planet WHILE your guild is in control.

To me, that's not very useful.

 

The ability (starfighter flyby) is to knock out shields, which is used for whatever version of commander hunting that has the shielded NPC, allowing the guild "early access" to kill it before the shield wears off over a couple of days.

 

The titles, to me, by far, are the most important things, since you get to keep them "forever" as they're tied to your legacy.

 

Which brings me back to the problem of having a tiered / bracketed system like what the OP is asking for...see my previous post in this thread for that.