Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1

[EricMusco]

Hey folks,

Following up on my post from last week around our Conquest/Rep changes in 7.4.1 I wanted to set the stage. As you know 7.4.1b is coming tomorrow but before you open the patch notes you will not see any changes yet around Conquests. We are still actively discussing all of the feedback you have been sending our way but I do want to confirm you should expect to see changes in 7.4.1c I just don't have them confirmed yet. I will come back and post them in this thread as soon as I do.

Thanks all.

-eric

[EricMusco]

Hey folks,

I am back to talk about the Conquest changes we are planning for 7.4.1c (stay tuned for a post in the next few days with more details on timing for this patch). Thank you again for the feedback since the original change in 7.4.1. It gave us a lot to chew on internally around our change, our goals for Conquests, and the friction that came out in the feedback you were passing on.

Reminder of what changed and why. In 7.4.1 we reduced the amount of Conquest points earned for the “Advancement: Reputation” objective by a fairly substantial amount. The reason we did this was to reduce the need for more reputation tracks in Galactic Seasons and bring it in parity with other objectives given the relatively low effort required. Since you could (assuming you had rep tokens on hand) simply log in and right click a token for thousands of points. 

Now, coming off of that change we definitely heard some places where this had some knock on consequences that we wanted to take into account:

• Low Session Time Options - Whether this is for someone with a lot of alts or just someone on their main who wanted to dip in for a quick session, that Objective did allow a path for someone to be able to get points during short sessions.
• Supplemental Conquest Points - This runs a little parallel to the first point, but having so many points from the rep objective allowed for someone to be able to get their conquests completed generally by playing a variety of content and supplementing it by gaining rep/using rep tokens (aka quick, repeatable method of getting conquest points)
• Capable Across Alts - Again there is a venn diagram with the above 2 points, but, the rep objective was something that was powerful because someone with many alts could simply login (low session time) to bounce across alts as needed throughout the week to complete conquests.
  • One quick aside on this point before we get to the Conquest change. While we were discussing your feedback we noted one point specifically about Daily Areas and alts. Many Daily Areas required a specific amount of crit path progression before you could access them and so this was a friction point for each alt, especially if you have many of them. We are changing this in 7.4.1c so that the requirement to access Daily Areas is now relevant crit path Achievement (instead of crit path completion on the character), meaning they will now effectively unlock across your Legacy instead of character by character. You are of course still free to unlock them naturally on each character via story completion if you wish, this just gives another path to unlocking them.

Ok, so understanding the feedback we heard and some of the problems we wanted to focus in on for 7.4.1c here are the two changes we currently have planned:

• The infinitely repeatable “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now available at all levels (previously only available from 10-49)
• The “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now worth 2000 Conquest points (up from 1650). 
  • This is 5000 points for those of you with max Stronghold Bonuses

Previously the infinitely repeatable Heroic Conquest objective was not available to anyone above level 49, so these changes should add another inflow of points to players completing those Heroics now. And we also increased the points players earned from that Objective at the same time to supplement it even further.

Heroic Missions are some of our fastest PvE content in the game. They have the added benefits of being soloable, alt friendly, and can be completed while playing other content such as Daily Areas. We felt targeting Heroics allowed us to address the problems raised from the 7.4.1 change while still requiring a bit more direct engagement. 

All of that said, Conquests is definitely a place we are continuing to pay close attention to and plan to make more changes in the future so keep the feedback coming. Thanks all.

-eric
 

[RikuvonDrake]

very sad

[GunqqerFriithian]

8 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

Since you could (assuming you had rep tokens on hand) simply log in and right click a token for thousands of points.

Wow that is… you just reduced a ton of work into a small thing in parenthesis. Rep tokens don't come from nothing, you have to hit the rep cap for something and then do more after that. This is incredibly disingenuous.

[VilianSW]

8 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

(snip)

Ok, so understanding the feedback we heard

(snip)

No. Obviously you did not understand it at all. You've acknowledged the feedback, but clearly without understanding.

[SoontirMorillo]

I love the change. Going for heroics is wonderful. There are some that take less time than clicking a rep token. ^^

Just a joke of course. But well under 30 seconds... there are a few of them.

Love the change.

Keep up the good work.

[Traceguy]

47 minutes ago, EricMusco said:

• The infinitely repeatable “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now available at all levels (previously only available from 10-49)
• The “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now worth 2000 Conquest points (up from 1650). 
  • This is 5000 points for those of you with max Stronghold Bonuses

I'm crying. This is not as good as the rep tokens, but this is solving the nightmare I've gotten myself into by creating a bunch of worthless alts under level 49 just to earn CQP for a guild. This is also going to have a bonus side effect of getting more people into visiting planets and doing heroics. Right now, my legacy can only do 1 heroic per day on Balmorra for example before anymore heroics on any alt becomes pointless. Now we can be on Balmorra all day long. (Using Balmorra as an example)

Any chance you can make the taskmaster that levels 1-49 get available to everyone too?

EDIT:

And please, give more points for defeat enemies. After 75 enemies, we get a collective 12k points. (4k for 25, 8k for 50). Move that to 15k.

 

 

Edited March 28 by Traceguy

[Saeten]

so, they don't understand and are not increasing the advance rep cq points and are discontinuing GS rep tracks so now there is another conquest objective nullified for those that have maxed legacy, reputation, strongholds, etc. "Go do heroics" is not an answer....  and unwelcomed.

[Traceguy]

5 minutes ago, Saeten said:

so, they don't understand and are not increasing the advance rep cq points and are discontinuing GS rep tracks so now there is another conquest objective nullified for those that have maxed legacy, reputation, strongholds, etc. "Go do heroics" is not an answer....  and unwelcomed.

I never expected them to return it based on each followup the devs have made regarding the issue since the day of 7.4.1.

A real crime is removing GS Rep though. One problem for me is that after this many years of playing, the GS Rep was one of the few ways left I could rely on for having a rep track for a good portion of the year. The 45k was amazing, but it is only a matter of time before I completely depleted every rep track in the game. I'm already doing areas like Kessan's landing to get some. However, the 8k points from rep is so worthless, that I won't even bother. I wish they would make rep worth at least 20k.

 

Edited March 28 by Traceguy

[KyraMalakai]

So you read ou feedback and learn nothing. Once again you know best how we should play our game.
You reduce the points because it was a "low session time option", did the token appear out of thin air?!! No, we had to play the game to get them you didn't hand them around like candy.
The season had an achievement tied to spending them so I had zero once the seasons ended, most players have only a couple of tracks left and this time you didn't even added them with the seasons so how many players were really abusing the rep track, my guess not that many but don't worry I have a fealing that moving forward any new daily area with a rep track is going to be empty as soon as players finish the story as there will be no reason to keep playing the dailies, afterall recent daily areas have a joke of conquest points attached to them.
Making the heroics objective repeatable is not a solution you are just trying to sidestep the fact that you are not backing down on the rep nerf, that you didn't even talked about and are trying to herd us to heroic now, like we are kids needing direction on what to do next.

[lostwisdomjei]

Yeah... terrible news --- just another example of how the DEV Team didn't listen.   Are you trying to make people quit SWTOR?   I had several people on my raiding team quit since 7.4.1 with these changes and lackluster GS with the deco reward after completing 100 weekly events.   New games are out weekly and we need to retain players not give them reasons to leave over POOR Dev team decisions.  I would encourage the DEV TEAM to LISTEN to the player base or continue to chase players off so you can prove all those game reviewers right about SWTOR moving into maintenance mode.

SAD NEWS

[Exly]

Maybe next time instead of trying to sneak changes like this past us by waiting to tell us about them either after they are put in place or in the patch notes hours before they are implemented, you could take the more respectful approach and let us know about the changes ahead of time.  

In this case you could have told us that you would be making this change in the February live stream, and we could have given you our feedback long before the change was implemented.  Then you could have better explained your reasoning behind the change and would have learned from us why we opposed it.  That would have given you the opportunity to rethink the change, and maybe avert the unnecessary drama associated with your decision to keep us from learning of your plans. 

[Medullah]

1 hour ago, EricMusco said:

 

• Capable Across Alts - Again there is a venn diagram with the above 2 points, but, the rep objective was something that was powerful because someone with many alts could simply login (low session time) to bounce across alts as needed throughout the week to complete conquests.
  • One quick aside on this point before we get to the Conquest change. While we were discussing your feedback we noted one point specifically about Daily Areas and alts. Many Daily Areas required a specific amount of crit path progression before you could access them and so this was a friction point for each alt, especially if you have many of them. We are changing this in 7.4.1c so that the requirement to access Daily Areas is now relevant crit path Achievement (instead of crit path completion on the character), meaning they will now effectively unlock across your Legacy instead of character by character. You are of course still free to unlock them naturally on each character via story completion if you wish, this just gives another path to unlocking them.

 

This is really awesome and low key one of the best things added in a while.  Could you guys maybe review the points for the newer daily areas and make them more attractive for Conquest runs?  As it stands right now I do Iokath almost every week multiple times because it's by far the biggest points to time ratio for doing content.  I would love to do Voss, Ruhnuk, Manaan and Kessen's Landing more often but it's just not worth the time now that I've maxed out my reputation, especially now that my alts who are way behind in story will be able to do them.  

[frutepy]

I like the change, but why is there still no conquest for Kessen's landing?

If you're going to use conquest as a bribe to get people to play things, why not create a weekly space mission that gives a bunch of conquest to replace the rep conquest we would get from those? Or special conquest objectives for the exploration objectives? Increase the amount for the planetary bonus series since those take enough time to be worth more if you're concerned about that.

I didn't expect you to put the rep tokens back to where they were, but we still don't have near enough added objectives to make up for their loss.

[XBKWG]

5 minutes ago, Exly said:

Maybe next time instead of trying to sneak changes like this past us by waiting to tell us about them either after they are put in place or in the patch notes hours before they are implemented, you could take the more respectful approach and let us know about the changes ahead of time.  

In this case you could have told us that you would be making this change in the February live stream, and we could have given you our feedback long before the change was implemented.  Then you could have better explained your reasoning behind the change and would have learned from us why we opposed it.  That would have given you the opportunity to rethink the change, and maybe avert the unnecessary drama associated with your decision to keep us from learning of your plans. 

I very much support this statement. Even though the GS Rep was a convenient way (that I myself used in a heavily optimized way ) to get conquest points, compared to other conquest goals it was indeed op (even considering the work to get them). The amount  of the nerf is debatable but 43k was certainly out of line. 

Broadsword, please learn from this and other recent communication goofs (looking at you, (un-)cancelled cartel market sale). Involve us, we are happy to contribute!

[Traceguy]

11 minutes ago, Medullah said:

As it stands right now I do Iokath almost every week multiple times because it's by far the biggest points to time ratio for doing content.

How many points does Iokath reward, and how long does it take? I just know from the War on Iokath story, it's a planet I never want to voluntarily return to.  I think CZ is the best as it takes maybe 10 minutes for get both "Defeat Enemies" objectives, and the Weekly, which is about 30k when all is said and done. And then Ossus on a stealth character should be able to get 6 missions for the weekly completed in 15 minutes, which pays around 30k too.

 

Edited March 28 by Traceguy

[Screaming_Ziva]

1 hour ago, EricMusco said:

• One quick aside on this point before we get to the Conquest change. While we were discussing your feedback we noted one point specifically about Daily Areas and alts. Many Daily Areas required a specific amount of crit path progression before you could access them and so this was a friction point for each alt, especially if you have many of them. We are changing this in 7.4.1c so that the requirement to access Daily Areas is now relevant crit path Achievement (instead of crit path completion on the character), meaning they will now effectively unlock across your Legacy instead of character by character. You are of course still free to unlock them naturally on each character via story completion if you wish, this just gives another path to unlocking them.

If I'm reading this right, all of my characters on my legacy can now do the Kessen's Landing daily (and weekly) missions without doing the Kessen's Landing story?  Even ones that are way way behind in the story?

If so, this is a great change.

[TepeshT]

Why are the devs incapable of doing math? Seriously, this does not make up for the amount of conquest points lost from reputation (and no, your "Galactic Seasons conquest objectives" do not count because they are not alt-friendly since you can't choose which character you'll get them on). As many others have pointed out, both in the earlier thread and this one (do you listen? do you read? evidently not), make Taskmaster or Galactic Rampage available all weeks, on characters of all levels. Do the math and give us an amount of conquest equal to the amount you took away. Listen to your players, lest we all leave.

[Saeten]

2 minutes ago, XBKWG said:

compared to other conquest goals it was indeed op

This is simply not true. Just look at PvP conquest points. Or just giving a companion a gift. There was absolutely no reason to nerf Rep cq points. It was not OP. They just did some statistics (there are lies, damn lies and statistics) to justify making it harder to get conquest and thus rationalizing their ploy to "get" people to play more for less. For those of us who have maxed out rep, strongholds, legacy and other objectives we can no longer get conquest points, this was an overkill and atrocious change. Now they want us to "Go Do Heroics"....  Lame change. i will just play less now.

[Traceguy]

4 minutes ago, Screaming_Ziva said:

If I'm reading this right, all of my characters on my legacy can now do the Kessen's Landing daily (and weekly) missions without doing the Kessen's Landing story?  Even ones that are way way behind in the story?

If so, this is a great change.

I agree. I've forgotten to address it already, but this is a huge win. I have toons that I would like to bring along to end game areas like Ossus, but it has been a burden that I'm not able to do daily areas on some alts without having done the story on each of them. This is half the reason I ask the devs to add an option to skip past Ossus on alts.

Edited March 28 by Traceguy

[Medullah]

3 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

How many points does Iokath reward, and how long does it take? I just know from the War on Iokath story, it's a planet I never want to voluntarily return to.  I think CZ is the best as it takes maybe 10 minutes for get both "Defeat Enemies" objectives, and the Weekly, which is about 30k when all is said and done. And then Ossus on a stealth character should be able to get 6 missions for the weekly completed in 15 minutes, which pays around 30k too.

 

Iokath is 15-20 minutes depending on if you're a stealther.  The weekly is 50k points (compared to 20k for CZ-198).  I made a few videos showing how to do the weekly quickly I can look up and link if you'd like.  

[ObiWanStefann]

Wow --- so having people complete conquest (even with the rep boost) feeling a sense of accomplishment is a bad thing?   Your post seems to micromanage players like you are so concerned about people getting to the path of completing conquest.   Why should it matter to the developer team and why create extra hoops for people to jump through?  Please understand that most people in the TOR community are grown adults working and playing swtor is for fun and NOT a second job.  I do agree with the above post about the team not being honest with the players by telling us about this ahead of time.   Trust is a very powerful thing!   GREAT job on making most of your player base upset over this change.   I used to log on every single day, but after this change, i barely log on.   I spent hundreds of dollars last year in the cartel market and probably will not do that going forward with the current thought process of the dev team.  

Make players happy and stop doing petty things to upset everyone.   I want to see swtor succeed but not fail over petty developer team decisions that makes everyone upset.   Lastly, please start actually listening to the people that play and pay for this game.

Sincerely,

A concerned player on the verge of quitting

[TobarrDaggermoon]

Why did so many of us use the reputation conquest after you raised it double to 100K you should ask yourselves. Or double from 25k to 50k and we lost last boss lock out which encouraged myself and others I know to try tanking and healing to help out the guild I was in back then stay in the top 10 of guild conquest when only the top 10 got a pay out on the rewards.  Maybe add the skytrooper 25k that was daily again instead of once a week and as others have mentioned why no conquest for Kessan's Landing....I did it once and haven't touched it since because I don't earn more than 8k for doing the story.

[TahliahCOH]

This response is infuriating, and I am furious. You've clearly understood nothing that we've been discussing in the rep cq nerf threads. As a result, this do a bunch of heroics "fix" is simply not good enough. If you want to bring rep cq "in party" with other cq objectives, you should be bumping it up to at least 200k since that's what PVP and GSF "earn" for doing pretty much nothing.

I unsubbed yesterday and will remain unsubbed, since I won't play preferred (mostly due to the one million credit cap), I just won't play at all after my sub time runs out next month. Great going, team. 

[Chartnight]

• Low Session Time Options - Whether this is for someone with a lot of alts or just someone on their main who wanted to dip in for a quick session, that Objective did allow a path for someone to be able to get points during short sessions.

WOW --- so having alts with low session times is a bad thing?   I found that having alts increases players engagement with the game.   Certainly in swtor, it increases cartel market coins to unlock collections for alts.   Why micromanage this  --- why care?   Having people log on should be a win for the game.   Just reading this post makes me scratch my head and makes me even more concerned and upset over the future direction of swtor.   I feel this issue should be elevated to the executive producer.    Making the whole community upset is not a win or the right direction for a game that has been out for greater than 10 years.     If you continue to micromanage every little thing to disengage the community, people will continue to leave.    I think it is a bad business decision when this happens.

 

BTW, I never comment on any post but I feel so strongly about this that I had to.   Very frustrated as good paying customer and advocate of the game.

Edited March 28 by Chartnight