PVE and Conquest

[Oblivz]

Greetings, Bioware Dev Team. 

I have a suggestion that will undoubtedly take time to deliberate and potentially implement but one I think would nonetheless be a boon to the game and worth the time. 
The problem as I see it is this: 

Uprisings (content that the majority of players don't care about or only do for achievements) are the highest earning PVE objectives outside of a few weeks while the PVP modes have CQ objectives for completing their weeklies that can be done every single day. 

This gives PVP and GSF a privileged position in the CQ meta, one that I don't think they deserve. It also forces people to play these game modes when they really don't want to and it ruins both those game modes for that very same reason.

Before I get hounded by hordes of PVP and GSF players, I'm interesting in balancing Conquest, not in shafting either PVP or GSF. There's just no reason to make PVE so unpalatable other than a sad attempt at artificially propping up PVP and GSF. 

 It also makes PVE'ers a negative factor in a Conquest guild rather than a benefit and a reward for a guild catering to those kinds of players. 

As an example, completing a vet or MM operation earns you 29,125 and 43,875 points respectively and is only repeatable once a day. 

Therefore, I have a suggestions on how you can potentially change this:

• Bring the flashpoint weeklies into play as a CQ objective and be competitive with the other Achiever objectives (there's already an objective in the game files introduced all the way back in 2.9 when CQ first came into the game called Flashpoints: Achiever, it would need some point adjustments to fit the current CQ climate of course). 

I would however suggest to keep this confined to the 71-80 level bracket to avoid having old problems repeat themselves, like low level players earning far too many points compared to max level. 

While we're on the topic of level brackets, I would suggest some form of rebalancing so max level players can actually compete with lower levels. One way you could potentially do this is to introduce some of the objectives reserved only for low level players into the max level bracket.    

• Introduce a 3x repeatable weekly for operations or something similar and an objective for completing that weekly like the other Achiever objectives in the game. Obviously a higher difficulty should give more points. 

A problem however arises in regards to operations and progression. If you don't complete the operation, you won't get your points and the weeklies would reset every Tuesday so unless you complete it by the end of the week, you would lose out on the chance of getting those points.
Perhaps you could introduce a per boss reward but limit the points gained by lower difficulties and also maybe have it be daily repeatable to prevent farming. 

• Redesign the piloting objectives for GSF so they encourage actually trying vs our current self-destruct climate. They technially do so already but only in theory. In practice, people just self-destruct and switch to a ship class they might not know that well.

In addition, you would also have to rework the season objectives because they cause their own problems with people farming medals instead of just playing to win and/or having fun.
 

• Boost existing PVE conquest objectives for completing operations on Veteran and Master Mode. There is little reason why Master Operations are giving 46k per person when completing one, especially if you're progging, can take weeks if not months.   

• Re-adjust points for event-specific objectives like Flashpoint: Pinnacle to bring the CQ weeks more in line with their original intent. 

• Anything else you can think of. 

I see various benefits to this being introduced: 

1. Alleviate the current problems regarding GSF. 

There's nothing more frustrating for a GSF player than being saddled with a ops group that will hug a single objective point in Domination and leave the other two unattended or players self-destructing in TDM amongst other things. While I have not experienced the latter on the Darth Malgus server for the longest time, I can't imagine that's everyone's experience, especially not on the US servers. What I have noticed however is a severe lack of actually caring and people simply being there to participate.

It probably won't fix the problem as people still have reasons to do GSF (most notably gearing) but it could definitely give PVE'ers an alternative that makes them headbang the wall less which I surmise is a significant portion of the people who play Starfighter. 

 

2. Reconcile the differences between different sections of the playerbase. 

These changed will mostly be a welcome addition for the PVE'ers among us and make PVE relevant in CQ. This would give them an actual place and relevancy in Conquest guilds as well. 

3. Enjoyability

This should hopefully improve the game experience and make Conquest more bearable even for those who are only after capping their personal/guild targets for the week by not forcing them into content they clearly don't want to play. 

4. Conquest weeks feeling the same

This should help sharpen the focus of each week by having something like Flashpoint Havoc actually be focused on Flashpoints.

5. Force Conquest guilds to broaden their horizons.

If implemented, it will force Conquest guilds to reconsider PVE's role in Conquest grinding and be considered a reward for organizing raids, providing supplies to raiders, having a good guild atmosphere surrounding raiding etc. 

As it currently stands, most Conquest guilds get away with far too little work in my opinion to give people what they want, not least of all the mass invites that is still on-going
(but let's not open that can of worms in this post). 

CONCLUSION

This isn't scripture. These are my personal observations and suggestions and therefore, LISTEN TO THE PLAYERS THAT WILL RESPOND TO THIS POST AND NOT JUST ME.

However, I would remain weary of people's intentions as some people have interests that run counter to any form of change to Conquest. 

I won't argue what point values are best here either as I have certainly do not have a clue how you balance it the best way. I'm not a game designer, I'm a guild master and player. 
What I do see, however, is problems that could  at least be mitigated by some of these proposed changes. 
 

Best Regards to the Dev team. 

[DeannaVoyager]

17 hours ago, Oblivz said:

• Bring the flashpoint weeklies into play as a CQ objective and be competitive with the other Achiever objectives (there's already an objective in the game files introduced all the way back in 2.9 when CQ first came into the game called Flashpoints: Achiever, it would need some point adjustments to fit the current CQ climate of course). 

I would however suggest to keep this confined to the 71-80 level bracket to avoid having old problems repeat themselves, like low level players earning far too many points compared to max level. 

While we're on the topic of level brackets, I would suggest some form of rebalancing so max level players can actually compete with lower levels. One way you could potentially do this is to introduce some of the objectives reserved only for low level players into the max level bracket.    

This. Flashpoint queues (master mode) are dead. The longest time I've spend q'ing was a bit over an hour, then I gave up, and we need two for the weekly. Only first one counts as conquest objective, so that character will not even be capped if they ever manage to get two pops from the GF. 

 

Regarding level brackets: when we have a few specific flashpoints as conquest objectives for extra points, remove the requirement to do it in MM. Most of them can be completed by players using wet noodles as weapons, but there are some with actual brain & dps checks.  By limiting the extra points to MM only means you can't do them unless you have a premade, because the queue is dead and there's not enough competent players around even if you happen to get a pop. I've been in a few MM FPs where the tank and the healer are doing more damage than the dps. Yet those people are expected to do MM and they are nowhere near that level. So add the FP specific points to veteran modes as well. 

 

17 hours ago, Oblivz said:

• Introduce a 3x repeatable weekly for operations or something similar and an objective for completing that weekly like the other Achiever objectives in the game. Obviously a higher difficulty should give more points. 

A problem however arises in regards to operations and progression. If you don't complete the operation, you won't get your points and the weeklies would reset every Tuesday so unless you complete it by the end of the week, you would lose out on the chance of getting those points.
Perhaps you could introduce a per boss reward but limit the points gained by lower difficulties and also maybe have it be daily repeatable to prevent farming. 

And this.

But the first suggestion needs the weekly requirements to be adjusted as well. With 7.0 they changed the weeklies so that you need to kill all bosses with the same character or it doesn't count to completion. This is beyond stupid as there are bosses where you need specific classes. We would also need ALL the ops back to the terminal, as they were before 7.0. The conquest guilds can still farm last bosses for conquest: they don't count for the weekly, but they count for conquest. So changing the requirements only hurt legitimate raiders instead LB farmers. I like the idea of getting CQ points per boss. 

18 hours ago, Oblivz said:

3. Enjoyability

This should hopefully improve the game experience and make Conquest more bearable even for those who are only after capping their personal/guild targets for the week by not forcing them into content they clearly don't want to play. 

Yeah... Before 7.0 I was still doing a lot of conquest, because I could do it easily on multiple alts, there was no stress about being able to reach the personal target. 100k requirement with the current objectives is too much for lvl 80 pve players. Revert the personal goal back to 50k, and guild goals back to 200k, 1mil  and 2mil points. Currently I rather not play at all, than play a character I can't cap anyhow by playing the content I enjoy. 

[NeoBlakkrstal]

Bump