Conquest pts for Advance Reputation nerfed

[Stradlin]

9 hours ago, Darev said:

 

Try looking through someone else's eyes.

 

That's certainly a great advice. Clearly,  nerfing such a massive haul of conquest for few minutes of playtime is  a huge issue. Folks who are all enraged about this want as much conquest as possible with as little time an effort invested as possible. For them, game design that makes reaching conq target as fast, effortless and trivial as possible is good game design. Anything making it less trivial, less easy is bad or infuriating game design.  

Seriously,no game mechanic survives  following  such...constructive  feedback. So yeah, it  is just as you say:  It'd def be helpful for people to look at it in wider context beyond  their own narrow "all to me asap"

 

That solo  guild+ guildship stuff you mentioned? I have much of that  going too.  This side of the gane was once  meant for guilds to pursue, goals to be shared and pursued  by entire  communities. Every goal  that you,I or anyone else can reach with little effort solo has been rendered into utterly trivial non-goal  for guilds that actually have people.  All of the conq targets and goals one man guilds achieve  with ease are goals, targets utterly trivialized for small and medium sized guilds.  

Is it "bad" that we all can build our one man vanity ships with ease? Well no, its lots of fun and all. Its just that guilds were given nothing to replace all those utterly trivialized  goals and targets with.  

 

 

Edited March 16 by Stradlin

[Thraka]

4 hours ago, Stradlin said:

That's certainly a great advice. Clearly,  nerfing such a massive haul of conquest for few minutes of playtime is  a huge issue. Folks who are all enraged about this want as much conquest as possible with as little time an effort invested as possible. For them, game design that makes reaching conq target as fast, effortless and trivial as possible is good game design. Anything making it less trivial, less easy is bad or infuriating game design. 

Design by spreadsheet mentality on full display here. Everything is discrete values, not systematic. Things that stick out must get nailed down. Player experience as a whole is meaningless, right?

YOUR personal interpretation is that it was 'out of balance', something that is 100% subjective in the first place, and hardly the simple issue you make it out to be. Ever balance a tire? It isn't done according to aesthetics or symmetry in applying weights. It is done using proper measuring tools and evaluation of the system as a whole. An honest assessment here is that conquest as a whole seemed to be working for everyone. The tire was balanced and turned well. If you remove one of the weights from the tire because it LOOKS asymmetrical, you actually UNBALANCE it.

You can't just view this issue in isolation. If you think this particular award was 'too high for too little effort', what about the awards that are clearly too low? What about the fact that they doubled the amount of conquest players needed previously, which is the real reason people counted on a large daily reward to begin with? You're confining the discussion of an entire system to a single component that was removed. I assure you, as an engineer and a game dev for >30 years, I know this for a fact: removing or modifying a single part from a complex system OFTEN causes said system to blow up and utterly fail, just as it has in this case.

Would you prefer a game dev 'best practices' discussion instead of a tire analogy? Very well. As I mentioned, I've been a game dev for some years, so I will speak as such. You want to modify a working, complex system, like a live game? You identify the problem areas, consider how your changes will affect interacting components, then make a plan to adjust them ALL. You include several of your peers in a discussion about possible unintended consequences of your plan, in the hopes of finding areas you may have been blind to, unexpected interactions outside the scope of your expertise (like, oh, I dunno, breaking logins, breaking the economy, or blowing up conquest, thus pissing off your entire customer base, say?) Once you have thoroughly considered those changes, you work on the system OUTSIDE the production environment, adjust ALL of the pieces, and personally TEST it to make sure the system as a whole seems to be working as you expected. THEN you have an approval process where people who actually understand how those systems interact (someone like, oh, a test team that plays the game for a living) call out problems. And finally, you have a person who assumes responsibility make the final call as to whether those changes should actually go live. Only then do you merge it into the product and put it into the production release. Anything else is asking for an epic disaster, as any professional in this industry would know.

Please don't treat those who disagree with you as if we are ignorant peasants or selfish children who can't possibly understand your superior perspective. We are looking at the whole tire, while you choose to focus on the fact that the weights are not evenly distributed about the center of the wheel. Your personal opinion that the rep reward was too high is meaningless, given that you discuss NOTHING else about the conquest system and how this component interacted. You also seem to have no understanding of why players valued the daily rep reward to begin with, and why it was important to the system as a whole. (Hint, it had them logging in EVERY DAY, and now a lot of them are cancelling their subs).

If you're the expert you would have us believe, let's review your full analysis of the system and how the change you support will interact with the rest of the components. What runoff or unintended effects have you missed? Start by explaining why players valued this feature and why they are upset at its removal without implying said players are stupid, lazy, etc.

Changing complex systems requires you go beyond first order thinking or risk serious problems.   Don't remove or modify things unless you understand why they exist. That's another basic law of engineering and leadership . It even has a name: "Chesterton’s Fence".

 

[FrontLineFodder]

Thanks for your insight, a good analysis.

 

This point you made sticks out for me, as someone who was logging in every day checking in on the fleet (on SF and SV) on the in-between days when I did not have as much time.

43 minutes ago, Thraka said:

You also seem to have no understanding of why players valued the daily rep reward to begin with, and why it was important to the system as a whole. (Hint, it had them logging in EVERY DAY, and now a lot of them are cancelling their subs).

 

 

since the change however I have stopped activity, This week will be minimal effort, sorting out characters for transfer to SV not focussing on CQ.

[DeannaVoyager]

4 hours ago, Thraka said:

Please don't treat those who disagree with you as if we are ignorant peasants or selfish children who can't possibly understand your superior perspective. We are looking at the whole tire, while you choose to focus on the fact that the weights are not evenly distributed about the center of the wheel. Your personal opinion that the rep reward was too high is meaningless, given that you discuss NOTHING else about the conquest system and how this component interacted. You also seem to have no understanding of why players valued the daily rep reward to begin with, and why it was important to the system as a whole. (Hint, it had them logging in EVERY DAY, and now a lot of them are cancelling their subs).

Agreed.

The reason why rep cqp are meaningless for him is because he plays GSF, which is the only activity where you can get fast, easy points by crashing your spaceship over and over again or afk at the satellites. They are participation points, and while the weekly points can only be done once per day, there's infinitely repeatable points from every match, plus the socialite points. So yes, compared to the massive participation points GSF players can get without much effort, the rep token points probably seem meaningless to him. 

He doesn't get it and he never will, unless GSF points will get the nerf hammer too. Until that happens, his opinion doesn't matter.

 

[captainbladejk]

10 hours ago, Stradlin said:

That's certainly a great advice. Clearly,  nerfing such a massive haul of conquest for few minutes of playtime is  a huge issue. Folks who are all enraged about this want as much conquest as possible with as little time an effort invested as possible. For them, game design that makes reaching conq target as fast, effortless and trivial as possible is good game design. Anything making it less trivial, less easy is bad or infuriating game design.  

Seriously,no game mechanic survives  following  such...constructive  feedback. So yeah, it  is just as you say:  It'd def be helpful for people to look at it in wider context beyond  their own narrow "all to me asap"

And what "wider context" is there to look at oh great one? If you really believe the rep objective was trivial and worthless then you clearly don't play the game as much as you want us to believe. The only part that is "trivial" is the claims process that takes 2 seconds AFTER the work to generate that rep token has already been done. If I farm out 10 flashpoints for 10 rep tokens the result is the same whether I burn those tokens at once or over the course of 10 days. I still did the work to get those tokens as defined by the game itself. This objective has been the way it is for YEARS now, yet suddenly after all this time it's a problem? Yeah no sorry. That's them trying to demand more grind for less reward. The only thing that's "effortless" is the claims process of turning in the rep tokens I've already earned. Whether I farmed our hypothetical 10 flashpoints last night or last year to get those tokens is irrelevant to the fact I did the work. 

Since you seem to think it was "trivial and effortless" define what you think is a "good design". What does a fair balance look like to you? How much work should one have to do in order to generate a rep token they can turn in for conquest? How much should they have to do in order to get conquest? If you can't define what's considered good design and fair balance, you have no grounds to call it trivial and effortless. Also find it funny that you say it was trivial and effortless yet you had no problem benefitting from it yourself. 

I actually have experience creating content for other games and have put out many a successful mod and map over the years for games like Star Trek Armada II, TimeSplitters Future Perfect and others. Some of my most recent stuff being Space Engineers. Some of my old TimeSplitters maps were EA recommended downloads for weeks at the time with sometimes multiple being on that list at once. Whether it's small time modding or AAA studio production the core process is the same, the only difference is scale. 

I learned very quickly I can't force players to do something they don't want to do and I can't force them to play how I want them to play. If I try they're just going to tell me where to go, or just not play my content, or both. If I want them to go to a certain part of a map, use a certain item or so on, I have to answer a couple very basic questions. Why would I ever go there? Why would I ever use that? If I as the developer can't give them sufficient reasons to go to that part of the map or use that item, and I'm the one that created it, I can't expect players to come up with that reason either. If I want players to go to a certain part of a map or such I have to give them reasons to draw them there. It can be a stronger weapon, extra ammo or health packs, extra armor, a sniper rifle and perfect vantage point to pick off foes, an objective to advance the mission or what have you. It doesn't have to be rocket science. It doesn't matter how good I think I did making the map if I want it to be used by as many people as possible, it matters how they think I did. And if they think it's bad, then it's bad. 

Lastly if they had done what they said and actually gave us a wider variety of objectives to do as they claimed they wanted, and actually gave us extra objectives to make up the loss of 225k a week, this conversation would be a little different. For that matter if they hadn't tried to hide it and stealth nerf it along with a host of other stealth nerfs and put it in the patch notes that it was going to happen, then yeah it would be a different conversation. But to paraphrase the old saying, don't try to dump a bucket of water over my head then tell me it's raining. Trying to stealth nerf it and pretend it was an "oopsie we forgot" is just ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was them trying to come on here and dev-splain to us why they're right and everyone else is wrong and could never know as much as devs on high. Nah we need them to tell us what we want, because we're not smart enough to figure out what we enjoy and are just too dumb to figure out we're not actually having fun like we think we are. 

[Jeladre]

@JackieKo @EricMusco @KeithKanneg @JoeStramaglia

Please return the 40k conquest for reputation. My little guild survived only thanks to this reputation! Now I have completely lost the desire to play....

[Darittha]

i hate it, when i got through trouble to get all strongholds and get max cq bonus, let me have this objective as it was, not nerf it into oblivion.

[damonskye]

Wow, almost a week later and still absolutely no movement on this, and no follow up from Musco or anyone on addressing this.

I've been an off-and-on customer since beta, I've been quite vociferous about things in the past but I've always managed to find my way back.  However, honestly, this is the last straw for me.  If this CQ thing isn't restored, or something changed to make it less PUNISHING to log in and actually achieve things, in a game that doesn't NEED balance patches because so few people still play anything endgame related, and its developers still resign themselves to fix a "problem" that was never a problem in the first place... this will truly be the end for me.

And I'm not alone.

Figure it out, guys. 

[LJ_Gibbs]

42 minutes ago, damonskye said:

Wow, almost a week later and still absolutely no movement on this, and no follow up from Musco or anyone on addressing this.

 

They don't care.  They are not going to budge.  They are like the kid who is taking their ball and going home. 

[SithLikeTraps]

9 minutes ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

They don't care.  They are not going to budge.  They are like the kid who is taking their ball and going home. 

Let me tell you a story from the days before, when I played World of Warcraft. They gave the players ability to fly and the flying mounts in the first expansion, at that time only for the expansion's area but eventually they spread it to every area, of course you'd have to jump through some hoops to get it but everyone could fly.

Somewhere around 2015 someone of the "effective managers" persuasion decided that it's no good: the players would fly over all those nicely placed annoyingly spongy trash mobs and do a quest in 5 minutes instead of 30, so they declared that there will be no flying, period. The players decided that they didn't agree, and the active subscription numbers hit the bottom. One month later Blizzard "changed its mind". Of course they later invented some tight hoops to jump through to get it in the new areas, and I stopped playing few years later so I'm not sure what the current state of affairs is, but the bottom line is: vote with your wallet. The only thing they really care about is your money, and not getting it is the only thing they can understand. Don't get me wrong: I'm sure that the company's representatives here on the forums actually care and do what they can but I doubt they make the decisions.

[damonskye]

I'm sure the people who actually make the content, artwork, scripting and music for this game still care.

Unfortunately, it's become pretty obvious that the decision makers just don't care, and that's sad.  They're too busy with their BS "balance patches" and redoing systems, and of course creating cartel market items, to actually listen to the frustration of the player base.  People are actually threatening to QUIT over this because it's a big middle finger to the face of players who PAY FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS and still log in on many different characters, even if they don't necessarily engage with the game all the time. 

My time is my time, and I don't need to spend my time doing heroic missions I did over a decade ago because of some short-sighted, boneheaded decision that equates time spent with money spent.  I'm not going to give them another dime of subscription time *or* cartel market coins if this is the way they've decided to "balance" the game.  I hope they hear that: they've lost my money AND my time because of this nonsense.  I hope it's worth it, SWTOR.

Edited March 19 by damonskye

[FrontLineFodder]

Rep tokens are still nerfed

[Traceguy]

25 minutes ago, FrontLineFodder said:

Rep tokens are still nerfed

They haven't updated yet. It's planned for tomorrow, which will likely solely address login issues for some players, and nothing else. We may have to wait until 7.4.1c.

Edited March 19 by Traceguy

[Traceguy]

12 hours ago, damonskye said:

Wow, almost a week later and still absolutely no movement on this, and no follow up from Musco or anyone on addressing this.

 

Well, not true. Eric did follow up. More or less saying "I don't care about you" on Thursday.

  

On 3/14/2024 at 2:13 PM, EricMusco said:

The Conquest Change

This is surely the place we saw the most feedback here in the forums following the patch yesterday. First off, why did we even make this change? Well, this Objective is quite a bit outsized in just how many points you get relative to its effort. Not that we don’t want a range of Objectives, some of which can be completed very easily/quickly. But this Objective was a very large amount of points for what was required of you, and that’s why we ultimately nerfed it.

In connection to the first section is that although we lowered the points from this Conquest, our goal was to add in new objectives so that players who were jumping in for quick sessions and progression through Galactic Seasons, could then also be gaining Conquest points (the new Objectives focus on gaining GS levels).

Now, all of that being said, we definitely hear your feedback. We know that we hit this Objective pretty hard. And although it may have been needed to pull it into balance, we are actively discussing what adjustments we can make and I will let you know once I have those details.

 

We have to wait for them to talk about 7.4.1c

 

On 3/13/2024 at 1:12 PM, EricMusco said:

7.4.1c in the next 2-3 weeks. We are tracking a variety of emerging issues for these patches such as Ancient Armaments and Conquest/Rep change.

 

Edited March 19 by Traceguy

[Tecwinux]

Back when Conquest was 50k I printed out marking sheets to ensure I could get 10 characters through conquest every week.
When it got nerfed to 100k and made a lot harder I only did conquest on like 3 chars.
When they removed the conquest decorations from the rewards of conquest I kept doing conquest on 1-2 chars because its a convenient bonus in addition to the 200k galactic seasons objective.
Now its no longer convenient and theres honestly not really a reason to keep doing it. All the rewards from it are easier to get elsewhere. For techfrags running OPs, for conquest comendations running H2s and for Credits litteraly anything else (the 25k dont even cover your repair bill). Well there are flagship plans but they dont have any use for me, just for my guild.

I doubt anyone from BS is going to come here and explain why. It does feel a lot like the all too familiar game of how much can you nerf a system before its no longer used. I feel sorry for smaller guilds, since those will be effected the most.

I've read in this thread this was rebalancing - I can asure you this stealth nerf had nothing to do with balance. Nothing was changed except those 45k. Its simply another thumbscrew to ensure the grind. 100k conquest points are:
-On 6 planets: 75 kills and 1 heroic
-8 story missions so about a planet
-about 5 FPs, starfortresses or Daily Areas
-2 to 3 operations
-3vet uprising
-a lot of PvP
If you want to reach the 200k for galactic seasons on one server you can. If you want to farm those 100k on multiple characters or are doing galactic seasons on multiple servers you better not have a life cuz youre going to need to grind. A lot. Considering the reward this comes very close to outright wasting your time.

Im hoping they roll this back or at least dont make any more terrible decisions of this level. The camel is already loaded with the promised combat update that never came, the reduced droprates in FPs, the invisible walls and exhaustion zones, the ridiculous prices for paint in the cartelmarket, the worthless armor and now this crap and Im not keen to find out how much straw is yet to be added.

[Stradlin]

On 3/16/2024 at 2:54 PM, Thraka said:

 Ever balance a tire? It isn't done according to aesthetics or symmetry in applying weights. It is done using proper measuring tools and evaluation of the system as a whole. An honest assessment here is that conquest as a whole seemed to be working for everyone. The tire was balanced and turned well. If you remove one of the weights from the tire because it LOOKS asymmetrical, you actually UNBALANCE it.

 

Would you prefer a game dev 'best practices' discussion instead of a tire analogy? Very well. As I mentioned, I've been a game dev for some years, so I will speak as such. You want to modify a working, complex system, like a live game? You identify the problem areas, consider how your changes will affect interacting components, then make a plan to adjust them

 

Changing complex systems requires you go beyond first order thinking or risk serious problems.   Don't remove or modify things unless you understand why they exist. That's another basic law of engineering and leadership . It even has a name: "Chesterton’s Fence".

 

 

Assuming you have something like railshooter rep left to ding, then 7 minutes of gameplay over two days brought  a character to conquest target. All this from rather straightforward soloable space pve content.  Perhaps most notably,certain rep tracks make things very unfair for people who have already maxed those reps. I've slacked with railshooter and few other bars and still have these left to ding til foreseeable future. This gives me a huge advantage over somebody who has been more diligent and maxed easy rep bars already. Many established legacies have everything maxed and are simply excluded from conq via rep. Maxing a reputation bar  is punishing for somebody who cares for conquest. Have fun balancing rest of the tires when one is in such condition.

 

This current Conquest-on-roids is  quite motivating playstyle for extremely driven  people who feel like they want to bring something like 15-50 characters to target each week. I've done some of that few years back, I can def see the charm in it. It isn't for everybody though. Huge portion of playerbase isn't into juggling such an insane amount of alts each week just for conquest. Everything that a dedicated player can do 20-50 times on 20-50 different  chracters each  week is utterly trivial for a casual player to do 1-3 times a week on 1-3 characters. Therefore, whole conquest system as it currently strands is utterly trivial for an individual character.

 

It is def extremely valid to speak of a balancing tires or care needed when changing complex systems, on that we agree. Current state of matters of conq system  became a thing back in 2019.  Back then, stated purpose of devs wasn't  to turn conquest into some insane hyper conquest on 'roids type of a thing we now have. Instead, the stated purpose of devs  was to make sure low level characters can participate in conquest too.  Notes of the  Conq patch  that changed everything talks all about low level characters. I believe that truly was their sole intention. Their reasoning prolly went something like this:

Let's make conq available for low level chars too! -> Ok, well what do low level characters do? Storylines and planetary missions!-> Let's make sure these give great conquest for low level characters to enjoy!->We'll lock these type of conquest objectives behind level restrictions so they are exclusive to low level characters! -> Oops, seems like low level characters are now vastly superior in earning conquest->Eh, let's remove level restrictions then and make em available for all! 

...And presto'  crazed conquest system on roids where dinging 20-50 characters a week became a thing. Initially, for a long while we had a completely insane, obscene situation where game discouraged people away from multiplayer content, soloable stuff gave faster and better conquest. All too slowly they atleast brought multiplayer stuff to same approximate ballpark.

All of this happened entirely by accident I think. Or ratrher, as a side product. It isn't terrible, as stated I've done some of that in past and see the charm. And I see how it can be useful for the game. Those driven to ding 40 characters a week can sometimes bring quite a bit of life to the game. However, it is utterly undeniable it completely trivilized striving for conquest target on an individual character. Reaching conq target is meaningless for everybody who doens't play dozen(s) of alts each week. Having goals and objectives turned  trivial is bad, at least if you replace them with nothing. Conquest stopped being something you'd have to pursue if you play just a few characters and have no guild related conq aspirations to worry about. 

 

Same hammer of trivialization hit all guilds just as well. There are all these people(my self included) who can reach at least the small yield conq target on their one man vanity  guild with relative ease. Everything a single casual  player can reach with relative ease is utterly trivial for actual guilds with actual people in them, Small and medium yield targets were meant to be a nice goal and a measuring stick for small and medium sized guilds to pursue. These got trivialized and nothing was offered in return. Reaching weekly  experience cap was a pretty legit challenge for larger guilds once. This is all but gone too, moderately active small to medium guild makes just as much weekly xp as busiest conq guilds in the world do.

 

 

 

Edited March 19 by Stradlin

[TobarrDaggermoon]

Going to add my bit. I see a lot of people mentioning the increase of conquest from 50k to 100k but unless my memory fails even more than usual wasn't it 25k back in the days of last boss lock out?

Yes this nerf has affected me as  I'm only in a guild with my GF and we hit the medium yield both sides each week with the amount of alts we have but after getting used to trying to make the yield last week I decided I don't need the extra work so will be going to small yield and playing a lot less and enjoying the free time I have outside of this game. 

Will we unsub? Who knows we both enjoy Star Wars and were old enough to see the original in the cinema (for me) movie theatre (for her) but we both have said the extra time outside of the game would give us an opportunity to find another game we enjoy. 

[Ryukomaru]

Player 1:  Plays 1 Character all week, gets 1.5 million conquest points for their small conquest guild.  800 tech frags (500+300 new week)

Player 2:  Plays 15 characters all week and gets 100k  on each character in the same small conquest guild. 12,000 tech frags

 

Anyone see the actual issue as to why people wanted those easier conquest points, why they play so many characters?  If you are gearing up, and need to improve those implants, buy tacticals, etc....

 

[TahliahCOH]

7 hours ago, Traceguy said:

They haven't updated yet. It's planned for tomorrow, which will likely solely address login issues for some players, and nothing else. We may have to wait until 7.4.1c.

Hopefully, that comes before my current sub expires because if this is not fixed, I am out. There are plenty of game options out there, and I'm perfectly happy to play something else and to invest my real world money in another one. This really is the straw that breaks the camel's back for me (on top of all the other onerous things devs have done to our QOL in the game and to our powers).

I played like ten years ago and then quit for about eight years before coming back, so my attention is easily distracted. Maybe in eight or ten years, I'll check it out again. If it's still around. If not, shrug.

[Thraka]

4 hours ago, Stradlin said:

All of this happened entirely by accident I think. Or ratrher, as a side product. It isn't terrible, as stated I've done some of that in past and see the charm. And I see how it can be useful for the game. Those driven to ding 40 characters a week can sometimes bring quite a bit of life to the game. However, it is utterly undeniable it completely trivilized striving for conquest target on an individual character.

 

You brought a much better discussion to the table here, and you raise valid points. Here, then, is the heart of our disagreement: I have no interest in playing a single character, and I strongly suspect a HUGE segment of the player base feels the same. I could play some other game if that was what I wanted. I specifically chose this game because it was alt friendly.

Most everyone I know has at least one of each class on both sides, and at a minimum wants to be able to meet conquest on all of their characters in a reasonable amount of time per week. The game strongly incentivizes having those 8 characters, because of the huge focus on story, achievements, etc. And conquest on all 8 characters gives them rewards in parity with ops players or PVP'ers in a similar amount of time, perhaps a bit less.

Up to now, the conquest rewards were aligned with that, and there were truly options for all play choices. A player who wanted to focus on a single character could PVP or do ops to get plenty of tech frags playing about an hour, maybe a little more, per day, AND get conquest to boot. But for people who don't or can't do ops, conquest on multiple alts was a viable alternative. You come in and get conquest on one, maybe 2 characters a day, it's not a huge time sink, and you can somewhat keep up on tech frags. (I won't bother to address the 30-40 characters, that doesn't have anything really to do with the discussion. the rep bonus was good for 300k a week, which accounts for 3 characters. That's a big chunk for our hypothetical 8 character players (37%), but not so much for people spending the time to do 30 characters a week (10%). 

Now, you can argue about the intent of conquest, but it's not really relevant. The reality was that, intended or not, players who don't want or are unable to do ops had an alternate path for progression. You can't get quite as good gear top end, but you can get close. And as with the other paths, you get out of it what you put into it. Daily play for a reasonable period of time, an hour or a little more, gets you reasonable rewards per week: for 8 characters, that was 4k tech frags and 1600 commendations. That is not in any way out of line. That's weeks of playing to max a single implant.

Only now even that modest goal is no longer possible, and that's why conquest players are angry and unsubbing. (Yes, I unsubbed, and wouldn't even be posting save for the fact they pulled this crap 2 days after my sub renewed, so I might as well post my displeasure before my sub closes.) This new change pretty much halves tech frag and commendation gathering for people who focus on conquest as opposed to pvp or ops. They can no longer keep up playing for a similar amount of time, because the conquest rewards were not sufficient without the rep bonus. As you note, many sources of conquest were no longer available to the most veteran of players. No conquest for level ups, none for legacy advance, etc.

The rep bonus acted as a balancing weight. By popping it off, the wheel is now unbalanced. People object not because they are greedy or lazy or selfish: again, lets note, our typical 8 alt player gets 1600 comms and 4k tech frags per week. An ops player gets 2k for a single completed SM op. Now, with this change, for their 1 hour or a little more per day, conquest players get only 1000 comms and 2500 tech frags per week, barely enough for a single upgrade on an implant even at reduced prices, longer if you haven't hit that milestone yet.

Now, such a character might also get tech frags for guild conquest, but then, so might a pvp/op player, so it's a wash. And then, the op/pvp player will ALSO likely hit his conquest reward as well.

How is 4k tech frags and 1600 concoms 'too much' and overpowered, such that it should be nerfed to half that, or require over 2 hours a day in playtime instead of one? Because that's the actual result of the rep increase bonus.

As I said, actual balancing requires us to look at the whole system, not just one discrete value.

[LJ_Gibbs]

They do not care.  They will not change it.  Why?  Because people say they will leave... but they don't. 

 

They want everything to be more difficult because they need us to stay subbed.  Because they have given us nothing to actually keep us subbed.

 

I have said it 100 times.... this game has fed off the Star Wars IP for far too long.  Would have been closed down 8 years ago if it didn't have the IP.

[Stradlin]

14 hours ago, Thraka said:

 

I have no interest in playing a single character, and I strongly suspect a HUGE segment of the player base feels the same. I could play some other game if that was what I wanted. I specifically chose this game because it was alt friendly.

Most everyone I know has at least one of each class on both sides, and at a minimum wants to be able to meet conquest on all of their characters in a reasonable amount of time per week. The game strongly incentivizes having those 8 characters, because of the huge focus on story, achievements, etc. And conquest on all 8 characters gives them rewards in parity with ops players or PVP'ers in a similar amount of time, perhaps a bit less.

 

Yeah people usually end up in piles of people who share somewhat similar approach to the game. Vast majority of my friendlists are people who like GSF. Vast majority of TOR doesn't play it. I'm sure there are huge amount of people who like to ding conq on 8-20 characters or something. I bet you are also certain there is a huge amount of people who don't really play that many characters on weekly basis. Conquest is quite meaningless for them now. It is normal for a new player who knows nothing of the system to ding conq targets with complete ease for months without even trying. Conq target is easily reached without even knowing such goal is there to pursue.  Play one or two characters and it just isn't a goal to chase or specific type of gameplay you'd have to care about. 

 

People see conquest and GS alike  basically just as a reward track or a gear dispenser, when it was meant to be something much more relevant and interesting to overall health of the game as a whole.

Conquest was once an overarching system that heavily encouraged people to scatter to most all directions multiplayer aspects of this game had to offer. Idea, intent was that you'd do it all together with your guild. Obv all of this changed  for good several years back, there isn't real emphasis on multiplayer anymore, and communial aspects  of it became soloable. It is bit of a cycle really:Multiplayer content needs other people to even happen. So when you are in matchmaker, groupfinder or in some LFG channel, you are valuable to other people sitting in these same pools with you. Something like 11 players might not even get to play the content they want to, unless you feel it is worth it ti hop in to the pool with them. So it makes sense for players and devs alike, to make sure this type of stuff has some legit, exciting rewards. Then, quite understandably, somebody who essentially plays TOR as a single player game takes a look at all those rewards and goes " hey wait a minute I want all that good stuff too." Enough noise about this, devs give in and make sure multiplayer content doesn't really differ from soloable content in rewards. Most people are happy! Just that now, most people have no real carrot to deal with learning curves and other demands involved in the multiplayer stuff.  Then gradually, devs come to realize " hey wait a minute, multiplayer aspects of  our MMO give no exciting rewards that'd not be more simple and fast to earn via doing some soloable vanilla era planetary  missions on Tat. Let's give the multiplayer bits  some attention!"...And so the great cycle of life  continues.

 

 

Again, major issue with reputation conq reward is in its..backwards nature I mentoned in 1st sentences of the post you quoted. More established the legacy is, harder it is to enjoy the huge conq haul of easy to access rep tokens.  Since you've already maxed all the easy reps out, like as not. My still unfinished railshooter pve rep tokens give me a massive advantage over anyone who has the space pve rep bar maxed out. 

Edited March 20 by Stradlin

[Zisoo]

On 3/12/2024 at 4:52 PM, MishaCantu said:

Conquest is the major reason for me to log in every day in between Galactic Seasons and new story content. My friend and I have a small guild and this will make conquest much harder to achieve. This nerf has taken away my incentive to log in and play on multiple toons. This hurts the game and I don't see the point of why this change was done. 

Similar for me. At the moment due to a variety of things i have extremely little gametime but kept my account active, a paid one, and being grateful to my guild for having me despite me having so little to offer it i logged in daily to ensure a few of my characters hit the 100k so my guild received its flagship commendations from me and for the characters i have used in the past but completed the storyline etc, the tech fragments made it easier for them to catch up with the level cap increases ie relics over time.

With this change, bar the 1 character i am playing on (levelling), i have very little interest in logging in each day now as i cant get anywhere near the 100k needed and although it does not affect my own gameplay really its guilds i am thinking of with this change

 

[Thraka]

11 hours ago, Stradlin said:

 

Yeah people usually end up in piles of people who share somewhat similar approach to the game. Vast majority of my friendlists are people who like GSF. Vast majority of TOR doesn't play it. I'm sure there are huge amount of people who like to ding conq on 8-20 characters or something. I bet you are also certain there is a huge amount of people who don't really play that many characters on weekly basis. Conquest is quite meaningless for them now. It is normal for a new player who knows nothing of the system to ding conq targets with complete ease for months without even trying. Conq target is easily reached without even knowing such goal is there to pursue.  Play one or two characters and it just isn't a goal to chase or specific type of gameplay you'd have to care about. 

 

People see conquest and GS alike  basically just as a reward track or a gear dispenser, when it was meant to be something much more relevant and interesting to overall health of the game as a whole.

Conquest was once an overarching system that heavily encouraged people to scatter to most all directions multiplayer aspects of this game had to offer. Idea, intent was that you'd do it all together with your guild. Obv all of this changed  for good several years back, there isn't real emphasis on multiplayer anymore, and communial aspects  of it became soloable. It is bit of a cycle really:Multiplayer content needs other people to even happen. So when you are in matchmaker, groupfinder or in some LFG channel, you are valuable to other people sitting in these same pools with you. Something like 11 players might not even get to play the content they want to, unless you feel it is worth it ti hop in to the pool with them. So it makes sense for players and devs alike, to make sure this type of stuff has some legit, exciting rewards. Then, quite understandably, somebody who essentially plays TOR as a single player game takes a look at all those rewards and goes " hey wait a minute I want all that good stuff too." Enough noise about this, devs give in and make sure multiplayer content doesn't really differ from soloable content in rewards. Most people are happy! Just that now, most people have no real carrot to deal with learning curves and other demands involved in the multiplayer stuff.  Then gradually, devs come to realize " hey wait a minute, multiplayer aspects of  our MMO give no exciting rewards that'd not be more simple and fast to earn via doing some soloable vanilla era planetary  missions on Tat. Let's give the multiplayer bits  some attention!"...And so the great cycle of life  continues.

 

 

Again, major issue with reputation conq reward is in its..backwards nature I mentoned in 1st sentences of the post you quoted. More established the legacy is, harder it is to enjoy the huge conq haul of easy to access rep tokens.  Since you've already maxed all the easy reps out, like as not. My still unfinished railshooter pve rep tokens give me a massive advantage over anyone who has the space pve rep bar maxed out. 

 

This is all very well and good, but it is still just what YOU personally think conquest SHOULD be. That doesn't really interest anyone except...well, you. I pointed out what it IS, a source of tech frags and conquest commendations for people who don't play ops or pvp. The fact that you think endgame conquest should be all things to all people is, IMO, just some weird desire you have that doesn't square with reality. You think that a game that actively encourages alt play shouldn't cater to alts? That doesn't make sense to me. People who want to focus on a single character can do so, and they have multiple alternatives. But if they choose to focus on conquest, the system is pretty obviously built for an entire legacy, not a single character. Legacies are major features of the game, and it's nonsense to suggest they should not be a focus.

So I really don't understand your assertions here. I pointed out that conquest serves as a third leg for endgame advancement. Multiple, comparable paths that support varying levels of difficulty and varying styles of play having comparable results is precisely what you would want for a healthy game.

I get it that you don't think so. I sense the strong whiff of "MMO elitist" coming on now, where your entire concept is based around locking out solo and small group players from progression. And yes, I do believe that's the entire motivation for this change, which is EXACTLY why I unsubbed, and exactly why I think everyone else who is annoyed about this should do the same. It seems clear to me that the wrong people have gotten control of the game are are dead set on making it more like "The Other MMO" (which I left to play this game).

You totally ignored the main thrust of my post, btw, and I think, as noted above, I can see why. Address why 4k tech frags and 1600 concoms is too much for conquest focused players, and needed to be nerfed. More to the point, address why you think  it's too much for solo and small group players, which is your real argument here, isn't it? I'd wager that you object to there actually being progression for those players at all.

Would you care to also comment on why MMO's in general are dying out, and how it relates to the desires both of younger gamers who don't want to grind forever to get to the fun part, and older gamers who have actual life responsibilities and are unwilling to prioritize being a sweaty try hard over things like work and family?

And finally, could you address what is likely to happen to a game these days that forces interaction with the ever more toxic randos in groupfinder? You note above how you want the design to do just that. Not me, man. I won't pay to be abused by jerks in a groupfinder. I play with friends only. I won't pay for a game that demands I do otherwise to advance.

Edited March 20 by Thraka

[Stradlin]

3 hours ago, Thraka said:

 

This is all very well and good, but it is still just what YOU personally think conquest SHOULD be. That doesn't really interest anyone except...well, you. I pointed out what it IS, a source of tech frags and conquest commendations for people who don't play ops or pvp. The fact that you think endgame conquest should be all things to all people is, IMO, just some weird desire you have that doesn't square with reality.

I can imagine there's endless amount of conquest changes that inevitably frustrate anyone who thinks conquest is nothing except dispenser for tech frags and tokens. It is kinda like saying smart phone is a device made  for looking at tik tok videos.  I mean, yeah you can do it, and sure that is prolly most popular use for it, but it was once  build to do much more than that. So not every update Apple pops out revolves around optimizing the feed of cat memes.It might not be the only thing Apple cares about and they might have plans and ambitions besides tiktok related functions for their iphones. 

 You can be sure devs don't see it just as a simple reward track for people to chase, nor do most people who actually like the system.

When it comes to how well or poorly "my desire of what conquest is" squares with reality..well,  look through all the  different mechanics and features  of the system as a whole. Maybe start with all the numerous  interesting ways conquest interacts with guilds.  Whole original DNA of conquest system revolves almost  exclusively  around communal aspects of the game. It was all about encouraging people to do stuff with people.  Huge portions of all of this are out of balance or trivialized in multiple different ways..but they're still there. It'd make perfect sense to make this aspect of the system bit  more balanced and less trivial again.

I'm not interested of tech frags and how quickly or slowly people get them,  you can talk about that stuff with somebody who actually enjoys gearing up in SWTOR.  Gonna pass some TED talk about  life, times and current state of MMos too.

 

 

Edited March 20 by Stradlin