Conquest pts for Advance Reputation nerfed

[ShadowyKai]

Quote

They made a problem out of something that has remained unproblematic for years.

Well, it's been my observation that fixing what isn't broken seems to be the developers' specialty.

As of now, I can no longer log in to the game, so once again, they've also broken what wasn't broken.

Edited March 13 by ShadowyKai

[Gibbanator]

On 3/12/2024 at 1:48 PM, TahliahCOH said:

So you personally complained that we had it too easy with reputation advancement cq  . . . or know a single soul who did? NOT.

I never did that. maybe re read. not once did I say we had it to easy.. your posts here is just toxic. I think your making things up as you go along. your so smart.. Not

 

[Samcuu]

31 minutes ago, damonskye said:

The actual problem: the reason people were using reputation gains to complete conquest is because there's almost no repetitive content that's worth doing.  I mean, really... the same 10+ year old heroic missions?  The same old "kill X mobs" we've done for eyears?

This is an interesting paragraph. You see a lot of ppl mention in here that they are/were doing conquest on 12 to 20 toons per week. In order to get that much conquest points you have to do old content eventually even after u turn in ur rep token for 50k. So ppl are apparently fine doing the old content, however there has to be a fine line you can't cross. I think about the old adage of the mule pulling the cart with the carrot dangling in front of him. There has to be a reward or nothing will get done. I think the issue is they've crossed the line of the work u have to put in for the reward. 

I've already related my anecdote, which is doing about 12 toons a week. That 50k you used to get was a nice big head start, so doing a few daily areas and heroics I've done countless times didn't feel as much of a grind as it does now. That bar feels agonizingly slow these days and it's not a good feeling which is clearly turning off a lot of players. 

Having said that I don't think new content would change things. There's new daily areas like Manaan and Ruhnuk which I completely skip..in fact I've never done the dailies at all in those areas because as a true mmo'er many times we take the path of least resistance. I'm there to finish conquest so I'm going to do cz and ossus because it takes me 10 minutes and I get plenty of conquest in a short amount of time.

Again I just feel like the devs aren't in touch with their player base. I know there used to be a program where they'd take recommendations from their more "influencer" type players with YouTube channels or who stream. Not so sure if that's still a thing, but with them making decisions like these maybe they should start getting recommendations from ppl who are playing the game on a consistent basis.  

[brutin]

So in the recent dev post about upcoming patches is this comment on this issue "I’ll be back later today or early tomorrow with a follow-up post about our internal conversations following your feedback on the Conquest/Rep changes. "

[damonskye]

4 minutes ago, brutin said:

So in the recent dev post about upcoming patches is this comment on this issue "I’ll be back later today or early tomorrow with a follow-up post about our internal conversations following your feedback on the Conquest/Rep changes. "

Yeah, we'll see where that goes.

As I said earlier, their "solution" was a solution to a symptom of a problem (people taking the path of least resistance) instead of a solution to the actual problem (people are sick and tired of the same old repetitive content we've had for 10+ years).  If their "solution" is to make logging in even LESS rewarding, without investing a ton of time doing stuff we've done forever, then their "solution" is a failure.

And let's all remember that the lifeblood of the game is our subscriptions and cartel market purchases.  The conquest rep change made it 100% more likely I'll let my subscription lapse when it's over, because right now I'm just keeping the pilot light on until 7.5 and ensuring that I don't get removed from my guild (which is at the cap).  I'm sure I'm not alone.

[Thraka]

1 hour ago, damonskye said:

The reactionary approach to this by the developer team is predictable, and yet complete nonsense.  This overreaction was a solution a problem that wasn't *THE* problem. 

Their perceived problem: people were completing conquest objectives through reputation gains, and so it was something to nerf, in order to get people to do more content.

The actual problem: the reason people were using reputation gains to complete conquest is because there's almost no repetitive content that's worth doing.  I mean, really... the same 10+ year old heroic missions?  The same old "kill X mobs" we've done for eyears?

This is SWTOR's real problem: the lack of meaningful content.  Log-in incentives aren't meaningful.  "Date night" is not meaningful.  Galactic seasons is not meaningful.

But now, this nerf.

I think the developers are really going to regret this decision.  In their effort to entice more players to log in and do repetitive content, by nerfing the reputation conquest amount, what it will ACTUALLY do is persuade players to log in even less because the time sink just isn't worth the trouble.

I hope their decision was worth it.  I have a feeling this is one more nail in the coffin for this game.

 

I would argue that in general, the conquest rewards are too low, and the few outliers to that are overused. People use rep, companion influence, and CZ-198 runs because they are efficient and one can complete conquest in less than an hour for a character that way. Meanwhile, doing something like flashpoints gets a miserly award. Why is Socialite 1 a measly 30k and can only be completed once per day? Shouldn't running 3 flashpoints, which is a minimum of a half hour, more if you run stuff besides Hammer Station, likewise get you most if not all of the points needed for conquest? Why is a veteran operation a similar value? They are non-trivial, and take time and effort. Even if you run 8 flashpoints and hit Socialite 2, you STILL might not hit 100k, depending on what else you hit as part of it.

The awards are all over the place, and wildly disproportionate to effort, so of COURSE people choose the path of least resistance. You would think it sends a clear message that players don't want to invest huge amounts of time per character devoted to conquest, and the devs should increase the stingy conquest rewards for the primary activities like ops, flashpoints, etc. Instead, some genius lowers the most efficient options and breaks the primary gameplay of half the playerbase. Absolutely unbelievable.

 

 

Edited March 13 by Thraka

[TahliahCOH]

42 minutes ago, Gibbanator said:

I never did that. maybe re read. not once did I say we had it to easy.. your posts here is just toxic. I think your making things up as you go along. your so smart.. Not

Ah, the desire to play the grammar card here is strong. But I am stronger. 

[orntcg]

I'm very disappointed with the reputation nerf. I'm a grown-up person; I have a job, and I can't play every day for a few hours. Because of my unstable schedule, I don't engage in group activities. I have a small guild of two (me and my friend), and we try to hit 500k conquest to level our guild and unlock our guild flagship. The reputation bonus was extremely helpful to us. Now I have no idea how we would be able to get to 500k.
I used to get 3–4 toons to 100k and then did some activities on the last one to ensure the guild got enough points. Now the amount of grind has increased, and what for? What's the point of this change? To make the lives of solo players and small guilds more difficult?

[damonskye]

53 minutes ago, Thraka said:

I would argue that in general, the conquest rewards are too low, and the few outliers to that are overused. People use rep, companion influence, and CZ-198 runs because they are efficient and one can complete conquest in less than an hour for a character that way.

And THAT is the real problem here.

People don't want to PLAY the game... they feel like they have to complete a CHORE.  Rep, companion influence and CZ-198 are the path of least resistance to do that.

And who's fault is that?  It's certainly not the fault of us players, that's for sure.

[TahliahCOH]

1 hour ago, brutin said:

So in the recent dev post about upcoming patches is this comment on this issue "I’ll be back later today or early tomorrow with a follow-up post about our internal conversations following your feedback on the Conquest/Rep changes. "

This could be promising . . . if they actually listen to us and revert it to the way it was. Guilds are already suffering (I know my many are on my alts because I will simply not log on at all if I can't complete the cq for the guild). Let's see what happens, they may see that this really impacts more than they thought and reconsider. Fingers crossed.

I mean there is no rep at all in this Season, so it seems doubly stupid to nerf the cq reputation daily.

[Traceguy]

1 hour ago, Thraka said:

Why is Socialite 1 a measly 30k and can only be completed once per day? Shouldn't running 3 flashpoints, which is a minimum of a half hour, more if you run stuff besides Hammer Station, likewise get you most if not all of the points needed for conquest? Why is a veteran operation a similar value? They are non-trivial, and take time and effort. Even if you run 8 flashpoints and hit Socialite 2, you STILL might not hit 100k, depending on what else you hit as part of it.

There are CQP for the first vet flashpoint of the day, and also CQP for your first usage of Group-Finder without a filter. The total gain here is 30k CQP. This is actually one of my favorite starts to the day. If you keep going, after socialite I, you're at 60k, and after socialite II, you're now over 100k. Depending on the flashpoint, you may pick up an extra 1k-2k CQP per flashpoint from kills, along with the +600CQP from mission/objective completion.

The amount of points specifically for Socialite 1 and 2 come close to be about 10k per flashpoint. Not counting the 30,000 from the first vet flashpoint, and random group finder usage,  you can run Hammer Station 8 times in a row and get 80,000CQP from Social 1 and 2.

It is unfairly paid though. The weekly for GSF requires at most 4 games, and will pay like 140,000 conquest points. On top of that, you earn Socialite I just for playing GSF 3 times, and you get 6k CQP per round + an extra 9k per win. There are no CQP paid for beating a flashpoint or completing Searching For Allies.

 

 

 

Edited March 13 by Traceguy

[TahliahCOH]

15 minutes ago, damonskye said:

People don't want to PLAY the game... they feel like they have to complete a CHORE.  Rep, companion influence and CZ-198 are the path of least resistance to do that.

And who's fault is that?  It's certainly not the fault of us players, that's for sure.

But that's the thing, we could hop on to an alt, pop a rep token, craft some stuff, increase rep with a comp, grind out a few heroics, and then switch to a toon we actually play. It was win-win, smaller guilds got their weekly cq, and we could still play the game, not grind out cq.

I won't do the grind, I will just shelve those toons and focus on two. At least I would run some heroics or do some FPs to get the other half of the cq before. Now, no way. Grinding out the remaining cq after the 7k (instead of 45k) just won't happen. And clearly I am not alone in this sentiment.

[Thraka]

3 minutes ago, damonskye said:

And THAT is the real problem here.

People don't want to PLAY the game... they feel like they have to complete a CHORE.  Rep, companion influence and CZ-198 are the path of least resistance to do that.

And who's fault is that?  It's certainly not the fault of us players, that's for sure.

I think people do want to play, but the things they want to do award crappy conquest points. For me, I have 8 characters, one for each class, something we are strongly encouraged to do. And I want to hit my 100k with all of them without spending my whole life at the game. An hour a day, maybe a little more depending on my schedule, should be enough to do that, but with the nerf, it no longer is.

When I play, I want to do a few flashpoints with friends, or maybe a SM op, a group activity of some sort that gets me FP1's or OP1's, something to advance my character, if only a little bit. I would wrap up with some gear management/upgrades if possible. Ideally, this happens in about an hour. But if I spend an hour running three flashpoints or a single op, I still haven't completed conquest for even one character. I am not even close, and therein lies the rub: people use the 'easy' conquest rewards to supplement the miserly awards for the activities they actually enjoy, the ones that allow them to advance their characters and play with friends.

The rewards for the primary activities in the game are too low. It's just that simple, IMO. The reason people are reacting so strongly about this nerf is because it now prevents them from being able to enjoy the game, and requires them to do the chores you mention above. And many, myself included, don't see that as something worth paying for.

 

[TahliahCOH]

3 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

The amount of points specifically for Socialite 1 and 2 come close to be about 10k per flashpoint. Not counting the 30,000 from the first vet flashpoint, and random group finder usage,  you can run Hammer Station 8 times in a row and get 80,000CQP.

But that's a whole other problem! I can't stand doing Socialite BECAUSE you always end up in HS. And fgs, grinding that out three or eight times in a row is just . . . completely and totally boring. I would rather just pop a rep token and call it a day than yawn through umpteen Hammerstations. I don't GSF and I don't PVP, and nothing the devs do will ever make me do those because I personally hate the first and am, admittedly, not good at the second. And have zero desire to get good at it.

I don't like being herded like this. At all.

[Thraka]

7 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

There are CQP for the first vet flashpoint of the day, and also CQP for your first usage of Group-Finder without a filter. The total gain here is 30k CQP. This is actually one of my favorite starts to the day. If you keep going, after socialite I, you're at 60k, and after socialite II, you're now over 100k. Depending on the flashpoint, you may pick up an extra 1k-2k CQP per flashpoint from kills, along with the +600CQP from mission/objective completion.

The amount of points specifically for Socialite 1 and 2 come close to be about 10k per flashpoint. Not counting the 30,000 from the first vet flashpoint, and random group finder usage,  you can run Hammer Station 8 times in a row and get 80,000CQP from Social 1 and 2.

It is unfairly paid though. The weekly for GSF requires at most 4 games, and will pay like 140,000 conquest points. On top of that, you earn Socialite I just for playing GSF 3 times, and you get 6k CQP per round + an extra 9k per win. There are no CQP paid for beating a flashpoint or completing Searching For Allies.

 

 

 

Now check the math: after socialite 1 plus the others, how many points do you need? More than half again as much, BUT it's exactly enough to be covered by a rep advancement. This is why people are ticked off.

[khamseen_air]

2 hours ago, damonskye said:

The reactionary approach to this by the developer team is predictable, and yet complete nonsense.  This overreaction was a solution a problem that wasn't *THE* problem. 

Their perceived problem: people were completing conquest objectives through reputation gains, and so it was something to nerf, in order to get people to do more content.

The actual problem: the reason people were using reputation gains to complete conquest is because there's almost no repetitive content that's worth doing.  I mean, really... the same 10+ year old heroic missions?  The same old "kill X mobs" we've done for eyears?

This is SWTOR's real problem: the lack of meaningful content.  Log-in incentives aren't meaningful.  "Date night" is not meaningful.  Galactic seasons is not meaningful.

But now, this nerf.

I think the developers are really going to regret this decision.  In their effort to entice more players to log in and do repetitive content, by nerfing the reputation conquest amount, what it will ACTUALLY do is persuade players to log in even less because the time sink just isn't worth the trouble.

I hope their decision was worth it.  I have a feeling this is one more nail in the coffin for this game.

This is excellently put. 

The thing they fail to realise is that we don't want to play the same daily content we've played hundreds, if not thousands, of times to get a measly 30k CQP. The rep tokens giving so much allowed an offset, skipping almost half of the requirement for a character's personal target. 

For a lot of us, that option only existed during GS runs because all other reps are maxed out anyway so bringing in the nerf and not including a reputation track with GS6 means it's just more grind of the same stuff we've already done.

Heck, even the GS6 'story' mission is more grind of stuff we've already done. The last GS 'story' missions weren't exactly stellar, but at least they were different. I picked up the first one for GS6 last night and it's literally just "do these 3 flashpoints you've already played to death".... Instantly untracked the mission and decided it's not happening. 

Normally during GS I play a lot more than I do outside of GS because I log in daily to use a rep token and while I'm on (because I've now almost hit the half way mark on that toon) I decide to just run a few bits to hit CQ target on that character.

Yesterday I completed all 7 weekly objectives on one character and still was only at about 50% of personal CQ target so I had to go grind out more dailies and by the time I finished I decided I wasn't going to bother with conquest on any other toons or the GS daily objective this time round. So now instead of feeling like it's worth playing 5 or 6 days a week, I'll only play 1 day a week. 

[Traceguy]

10 minutes ago, TahliahCOH said:

But that's a whole other problem! I can't stand doing Socialite BECAUSE you always end up in HS. And fgs, grinding that out three or eight times in a row is just . . . completely and totally boring. I would rather just pop a rep token and call it a day than yawn through umpteen Hammerstations. I don't GSF and I don't PVP, and nothing the devs do will ever make me do those because I personally hate the first and am, admittedly, not good at the second. And have zero desire to get good at it.

I don't like being herded like this. At all.

I totally agree. Doing hammer station 8 times a day, every single day per week is not fun.  Unless I'm power leveling a toon to level 80, I just can't stand doing it over and over.

[damonskye]

16 minutes ago, TahliahCOH said:

But that's the thing, we could hop on to an alt, pop a rep token, craft some stuff, increase rep with a comp, grind out a few heroics, and then switch to a toon we actually play. It was win-win, smaller guilds got their weekly cq, and we could still play the game, not grind out cq.

Exactly.  I was leveling two characters and have a bunch of alts, but with this, I have to spend the limited amount of time I can actually play on only the characters I need CQ on, just so I don't get behind on gearing.

Is that fun?  No.  It's a chore.

[damonskye]

1 minute ago, khamseen_air said:

The thing they fail to realise is that we don't want to play the same daily content we've played hundreds, if not thousands, of times

That is exactly my problem with SWTOR, in one sentence.

[TahliahCOH]

11 minutes ago, damonskye said:

Exactly.  I was leveling two characters and have a bunch of alts, but with this, I have to spend the limited amount of time I can actually play on only the characters I need CQ on, just so I don't get behind on gearing.

After the last gearing change (to 336), there is no real reason to keep gearing up on multiple toons. I got most of my alts up to 336, and they sprung 340/44 on us. Shrug. You don't need that for 99% of the content in the game. You don't really even need 336 for it. I am gearing up my mains (imp and pub) this time, and that's it. I don't run most of my alts in ops, so who needs anything past 336? Or really 330. Or even 320.

I did it last time, not going there this time. Unless you are doing guild-organized specialized runs that require 340, shrug. It's just not worth it (credit wise or improved stats wise). If you can play your toon, you don't need to have the bestest available gear on any but your mains (and really, that's just a vanity thing, too, since you don't need it on them either, heh).

[VegaMist]

57 minutes ago, khamseen_air said:

Heck, even the GS6 'story' mission is more grind of stuff we've already done. The last GS 'story' missions weren't exactly stellar, but at least they were different. I picked up the first one for GS6 last night and it's literally just "do these 3 flashpoints you've already played to death"....

This so much! I missed GS1. For GS2-4, I did these little companion stories on EVERY toon I had - they were different and didn't take much time. I liked GS2 one the best, and then every next one was progressively more boring, but still felt like worth doing. Then GS5 came and the story was SO silly, I only did it twice - once on imp, once on pub. I thought it couldn't go any lower and then - drum roll - GS6 shows up, and the very first quest will take more of my time than all previous GS quests combined, and there is NOTHING new in it (it felt so lazy).

Yes, the stronghold itself is beautiful. The fact that it comes with permanent squatters is a bit creepy (one is there to begin with and it sounds like others will be arriving soon or perhaps are hiding in the locked rooms). I understand why they added a quest giver there - it's creepy nonetheless. And the wind follows you even after you leave... or switch toons... until you log out... (this bug has already been reported).

Edited March 13 by VegaMist

[damonskye]

38 minutes ago, TahliahCOH said:

After the last gearing change (to 336), there is no real reason to keep gearing up on multiple toons.

Situational.  Tech frags lead to purchasing implants.  Conquest helps unlock the tech frag vendor.  Please remember that many players (myself included) may not have been playing when 7.0 came out and have been playing catch up for months.

[DeannaVoyager]

1 hour ago, TahliahCOH said:

But that's a whole other problem! I can't stand doing Socialite BECAUSE you always end up in HS. And fgs, grinding that out three or eight times in a row is just . . . completely and totally boring. I would rather just pop a rep token and call it a day than yawn through umpteen Hammerstations.

This.

 

1 hour ago, khamseen_air said:

The thing they fail to realise is that we don't want to play the same daily content we've played hundreds, if not thousands, of times to get a measly 30k CQP. The rep tokens giving so much allowed an offset, skipping almost half of the requirement for a character's personal target. 

 

And this. 

They doubled the personal goal requirement (from 50k to 100k) at the beginning of 7.0, which was a huge mistake. If you are playing lowbies you are probably good (as long as you have full SH bonus). They have infinitely repeatable this and that, they have taskmasters and they can do veteran mode flashpoints for extra conquest points, while level 80 will have to do the same in MM.  Conquest is very unbalanced, and making it even worse doesn't help retaining the playerbase.

[TahliahCOH]

14 minutes ago, damonskye said:

Situational.  Tech frags lead to purchasing implants.  Conquest helps unlock the tech frag vendor.  Please remember that many players (myself included) may not have been playing when 7.0 came out and have been playing catch up for months.

Cq is important in so many ways, I agree. This is yet another reason that I don't get what the heck the devs were thinking in removing (for all intents and purposes, since no one is going to build on 7k for a guild or their own tech frags for (and who has TIME?) this? It hurts everyone and helps no one.

The most galling part of this is that Season 6 doesn't even HAVE reputation. At all. SO what the AF?

[TahliahCOH]

1 hour ago, khamseen_air said:

This is excellently put. 

The thing they fail to realise is that we don't want to play the same daily content we've played hundreds, if not thousands, of times to get a measly 30k CQP. The rep tokens giving so much allowed an offset, skipping almost half of the requirement for a character's personal target. 

I'm out of likes again, so I will just note here that you and @damonskye are exactly right. This is a bridge too far for me, and I just won't.