Conquest Changes Following 7.4.1

[Traceguy]

17 minutes ago, TobarrDaggermoon said:

Maybe add the skytrooper 25k that was daily again instead of once a week

Yes, please. You have to make up for the CQP you stole from us. With rep tokens out of the picture, we're missing 45,000CQP per day. Rep tokens had to be earned. And since they're worth 8k now, they are not worth the time it takes to earn. So yes. 45k per day is now missing. Extra heroic points is welcome, but mind you it takes 9 heroics to get 45,000 points. Are you listening @EricMusco? NINE. 9 Heroics to get 45,000. That will be 63 more heroics per week to keep up.

Edited March 28 by Traceguy

[captainbladejk]

3 hours ago, EricMusco said:

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. 

You say you're listening to feedback yet here you are again tripling down on this change trying to convince us you're right as you insult the players in the process yet again. So no you didn't hear a thing but are letting it go in one ear and out the other while gaslighting the playerbase. I don't know where you think rep tokens come from but they don't magically appear in inventories, you actually have to farm them out. If I do 10 flashpoints, heroics, quests or what have you and I earn 10 tokens, it makes no difference whether I pop them all now or later, the result is the same and I still did the work your team said I needed to do in order to earn them. If you honestly thought the rep tokens were too easy to get and paying out too much reward, why did your team set the standards that low to start with? Point blank, your team is the one that set those standards of "low effort" and now here you are trying to blame the players for a problem that YOU created and gaslighting the players by saying it's "low effort for high payout." Quite frankly sir you have some nerve. Every person farming out those rep tokens was a butt in a seat engaging with your game. Yet for some reason you feel the need to spit in our faces and tell us we're not doing enough after years of it not being an issue, then belittle us and blame us for a problem YOU created. If you want something that's "low effort" why are you not also nerfing the GSF and Arena, and Warzone objectives since you can quite literally do nothing and get paid full bars of conquest or more? 

As for your claims about "reducing the need for more reputation tracks" yeah I'm calling hot bantha droppings on that one. You stealth nerfed a bunch of stuff because you thought somehow that's going to make players want to grind more or finally play GSF and PVP to increase your precious metrics and you got caught with your hands in the cookie jar. Your actions do not line up with your words. Don't try to dump a bucket of water over our heads and tell us it's raining. If you really believed in the whole "all changes effecting players need to be communicated" as you said before, then you would've made sure these nerfs were listed in the patch notes, or better yet put on the PTS so you could get feedback before you actually pushed it live. What's the point of a PTS if you're not going to use it and just push stuff out? 

Frankly dude, you should be ashamed to come on here and disrespect the playerbase to the degree you have here. If any of my employees disrespected my customers the way you've disrespected everyone here, that employee would be out of a job. I really want to give you benefit of the doubt and hope you don't intend it to sound that way over pure text communications, but it absolutely does.

3 hours ago, EricMusco said:

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.

Low session time is better than no session time as that's a butt in a seat playing your game that's potentially subbed and spending money, so what's the issue here? Even if it's only for say 10 minutes or 20 minutes, that's someone playing your game, logging in and doing stuff. Why should they not have an opportunity to earn a fair amount of points just like the people playing multiple hours per day? Quantity of time spent shouldn't matter as much as quality of time spent. I'll take a fun 10 minute game session over a stressful 10 hour one any day of the week. Trying to punish people for not playing as long as you want isn't going to make them want to play longer. 

3 hours ago, EricMusco said:

• 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)

By your own words, if they're playing a variety of content and sitting in a seat engaging with your game, what's the issue? You previously complained about low session times, yet you're literally complaining here about people in your game playing content. So I have to ask dude, which one is it? Do you want people playing or don't you? Because it's oxymoronic to complain that people are playing your game while also complaining about low session times. Those two things don't go together like you think they do. 

3 hours 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.

So if I'm reading this right, hypothetically speaking if I wanted to do the Makeb daily quests for the patrol, or other choice of patrol areas, I would be able to essentially unlock it on one character, then swap to another on my legacy that hasn't yet gotten to the Makeb daily quests and then do them. If that's how it works then alright you have my attention and this would be a welcome change. 

3 hours ago, EricMusco said:

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.

It's a start, but I have to ask, what exactly took so long for stuff like this to be unlocked? For that matter why was it locked to 49 and below to start with?

3 hours ago, EricMusco said:

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
 

This and the daily area thing above on their own are not enough, not by a longshot. There is still a MASSIVE disparity between points available for PVE objectives vs what's available for PVP and GSF objectives. As I've said and will continue to say, the universe will die of heat death before you ever see me in PVP and GSF. I have no desire to play those game modes but hold no ill will to those that do. However simultaneously as I said above, if you want low effort stuff you can quite literally sit AFK in some of those matches and just talk or what have you and get full bars of conquest. 

Assuming 5k per heroic that's 20 heroics to max a toon out. Assuming 2k per heroic that's 50 to max a toon out on conquest. Who in their right mind is going to do 50 heroics on a toon to max their conquest? Talk about insanity. Now I realize that most folks will supplement with some of the higher payouts to knock that number down, but good grief dude. This is supposed to be a game, not a second job. 

Next the line in bold there just stinks of an attitude of "take these crumbs and go away peasants". It's arrogant, rude and condescending to no end. This is not enough on its own again, not by a longshot. People were already engaging with your game to earn rep tokens to start with, but apparently that wasn't good enough even though you didn't have an issue with it for years. Then you complained about it not being enough and punished players for playing to standards you all set, then belittled and outright gaslighted the players by calling their play "low effort". Then you complained about "low session times" and in the very next point complained about people playing your game at all and doing a variety of objectives to complete stuff.

Dude you really need to hire a publicist or step back and think how what you post sounds over pure text, because quite frankly this is one of the most outright disrespectful posts I've ever seen come from a game dev towards their players. Whether you intended it to be that way your not is irrelevant to how people take it. Quite frankly I don't appreciate the condescending tone of your post nor do others here. If you're really listening as you say, then first you need to apologize to the players for belittling them and talking down to them. Then you need to revert this nerf completely. People are straight telling you that you got it wrong, and trying to convince them they're the ones who are wrong isn't the way to go. 

[Thraka]

So basically, nothing? We still have to play much longer now to meet the same conquest numbers than before the nerf? Seriously, that's the plan?

I can only speak for myself, but I play(ed) SWTOR specifically because I don't want to play That Other Game with the all the grind and 'balancing' against casual players. I logged in every day and paid you hundreds of dollars a year both in sub and buying cartel coins, and so did my friends. Now we don't log in at all because you've  made the game a huge drag.

Why on earth do you guys think people will pay you when you have severely degraded the value of your product to the point that is is no longer worth our time?

I need two hands to count the number of subs you've lost just amongst the people I know, and I doubt we are special snowflakes. I think this is a colossal blunder, but hey, it's not my problem anymore.

 

[Saeten]

1 minute ago, captainbladejk said:

You say you're listening to feedback yet here you are again tripling down on this change trying to convince us you're right as you insult the players in the process yet again. So no you didn't hear a thing but are letting it go in one ear and out the other while gaslighting the playerbase. I don't know where you think rep tokens come from but they don't magically appear in inventories, you actually have to farm them out. If I do 10 flashpoints, heroics, quests or what have you and I earn 10 tokens, it makes no difference whether I pop them all now or later, the result is the same and I still did the work your team said I needed to do in order to earn them. If you honestly thought the rep tokens were too easy to get and paying out too much reward, why did your team set the standards that low to start with? Point blank, your team is the one that set those standards of "low effort" and now here you are trying to blame the players for a problem that YOU created and gaslighting the players by saying it's "low effort for high payout." Quite frankly sir you have some nerve. Every person farming out those rep tokens was a butt in a seat engaging with your game. Yet for some reason you feel the need to spit in our faces and tell us we're not doing enough after years of it not being an issue, then belittle us and blame us for a problem YOU created. If you want something that's "low effort" why are you not also nerfing the GSF and Arena, and Warzone objectives since you can quite literally do nothing and get paid full bars of conquest or more? 

As for your claims about "reducing the need for more reputation tracks" yeah I'm calling hot bantha droppings on that one. You stealth nerfed a bunch of stuff because you thought somehow that's going to make players want to grind more or finally play GSF and PVP to increase your precious metrics and you got caught with your hands in the cookie jar. Your actions do not line up with your words. Don't try to dump a bucket of water over our heads and tell us it's raining. If you really believed in the whole "all changes effecting players need to be communicated" as you said before, then you would've made sure these nerfs were listed in the patch notes, or better yet put on the PTS so you could get feedback before you actually pushed it live. What's the point of a PTS if you're not going to use it and just push stuff out? 

Frankly dude, you should be ashamed to come on here and disrespect the playerbase to the degree you have here. If any of my employees disrespected my customers the way you've disrespected everyone here, that employee would be out of a job. I really want to give you benefit of the doubt and hope you don't intend it to sound that way over pure text communications, but it absolutely does.

Low session time is better than no session time as that's a butt in a seat playing your game that's potentially subbed and spending money, so what's the issue here? Even if it's only for say 10 minutes or 20 minutes, that's someone playing your game, logging in and doing stuff. Why should they not have an opportunity to earn a fair amount of points just like the people playing multiple hours per day? Quantity of time spent shouldn't matter as much as quality of time spent. I'll take a fun 10 minute game session over a stressful 10 hour one any day of the week. Trying to punish people for not playing as long as you want isn't going to make them want to play longer. 

By your own words, if they're playing a variety of content and sitting in a seat engaging with your game, what's the issue? You previously complained about low session times, yet you're literally complaining here about people in your game playing content. So I have to ask dude, which one is it? Do you want people playing or don't you? Because it's oxymoronic to complain that people are playing your game while also complaining about low session times. Those two things don't go together like you think they do. 

So if I'm reading this right, hypothetically speaking if I wanted to do the Makeb daily quests for the patrol, or other choice of patrol areas, I would be able to essentially unlock it on one character, then swap to another on my legacy that hasn't yet gotten to the Makeb daily quests and then do them. If that's how it works then alright you have my attention and this would be a welcome change. 

It's a start, but I have to ask, what exactly took so long for stuff like this to be unlocked? For that matter why was it locked to 49 and below to start with?

This and the daily area thing above on their own are not enough, not by a longshot. There is still a MASSIVE disparity between points available for PVE objectives vs what's available for PVP and GSF objectives. As I've said and will continue to say, the universe will die of heat death before you ever see me in PVP and GSF. I have no desire to play those game modes but hold no ill will to those that do. However simultaneously as I said above, if you want low effort stuff you can quite literally sit AFK in some of those matches and just talk or what have you and get full bars of conquest. 

Assuming 5k per heroic that's 20 heroics to max a toon out. Assuming 2k per heroic that's 50 to max a toon out on conquest. Who in their right mind is going to do 50 heroics on a toon to max their conquest? Talk about insanity. Now I realize that most folks will supplement with some of the higher payouts to knock that number down, but good grief dude. This is supposed to be a game, not a second job. 

Next the line in bold there just stinks of an attitude of "take these crumbs and go away peasants". It's arrogant, rude and condescending to no end. This is not enough on its own again, not by a longshot. People were already engaging with your game to earn rep tokens to start with, but apparently that wasn't good enough even though you didn't have an issue with it for years. Then you complained about it not being enough and punished players for playing to standards you all set, then belittled and outright gaslighted the players by calling their play "low effort". Then you complained about "low session times" and in the very next point complained about people playing your game at all and doing a variety of objectives to complete stuff.

Dude you really need to hire a publicist or step back and think how what you post sounds over pure text, because quite frankly this is one of the most outright disrespectful posts I've ever seen come from a game dev towards their players. Whether you intended it to be that way your not is irrelevant to how people take it. Quite frankly I don't appreciate the condescending tone of your post nor do others here. If you're really listening as you say, then first you need to apologize to the players for belittling them and talking down to them. Then you need to revert this nerf completely. People are straight telling you that you got it wrong, and trying to convince them they're the ones who are wrong isn't the way to go. 

There are some great points here. Although it's a bit rough on Mr. Musco, whom I assume did not post this without others reviewing and approving, it's points are true to Broadsword and the entire management. To not come out and specifically state they are not reversing their decision in any way, nor stating that they are changing things to "get" players to play more for less is disappointing and leading to extreme frustration.

[TahliahCOH]

29 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.

Also Ziost, daily doable in 10-15 mins. Also Chapter 2 for "complete a chapter," doable in 10-15 mins. Black Hole and Section X are also relatively fast (especially on a stealth toon). These were the things I did quickly to add to the previous rep cq bonus (along with the crafting missions and comp increases). I am not doing Heroics I've done a thousand times, even at 5k a pop, because it doesn't come anywhere close to closing the from the increase of cq from 50K to 100k or the removed rep cq bonus. I'm out.

[TahliahCOH]

8 minutes ago, Traceguy said:

Are you listening @EricMusco? NINE. 9 Heroics to get 45,000. That will be 63 more heroics per week to keep up.

Which I am not going to do. Period. This is not a response to our complaints, it's the devs telling us what THEY want. I don't give a raging turdball what THEY want. This is completely unacceptable.

[frutepy]

Their logic of nerfing it because it takes so little time for conquest doesn't track at all. There's a special mission you can get at a certain point in the story regarding stealth droids for whichever faction you're supporting. You have to kill/plant 20. It takes forever because of respawn times. The amount of conquest I get for that? 2-3k.

They seem to be misunderstanding the issue that if they don't undo the nerf, they need to add enough things to make up for it. There isn't enough that was added to make up for it even with infinite time.

I have a small guild that really can't make any high conquest targets right now. Please actually get the point we are trying to get across to you.

[nameinvalidoruna]

My expectations were low, but you still managed to disappoint me.

[iamnotacrook]

Im happy with the upcoming change because heroics and dailys is basically all i do, but its still far from okey. What about those who do flashpoints and star fighter and pvp stuff?

[captainbladejk]

1 hour ago, Saeten said:

There are some great points here. Although it's a bit rough on Mr. Musco, whom I assume did not post this without others reviewing and approving, it's points are true to Broadsword and the entire management. To not come out and specifically state they are not reversing their decision in any way, nor stating that they are changing things to "get" players to play more for less is disappointing and leading to extreme frustration.

If people can't handle criticism then they shouldn't take jobs like the one he has. If dude hadn't come on here and tried to dev-splain yet again why he's right and we're wrong, and tried to talk down to everyone, I wouldn't have responded the way I did. You don't get to disrespect people then not expect some blowback. Personally I would like to know who his boss is so I can make a customer complaint. 

Edited March 28 by captainbladejk

[darkmatterboy]

Recent studies show 96 percent of customers will not complain, and 91 percent will simply never return.

So, if you see all these posts about the players not happy, remember, 96% of your community didn't comment.   I can tell you that every player I talk to is upset over this and the current direction of SWTOR.    So, either listen to your players or continue to encourage your existing players to seek other games.   I have already seen a decrease in the population.   

[DawnAskham]

Adding the ability to access newer daily areas on alts is a plus, repeatable heroics is a plus, but neither address the loss of the reputation conquest point change.

Also interesting that repeatable heroics is simply a return to the original format (they were repeatable originally), before all the years of compounded nerfs that reduced the number of objectives and limited most of those remaining to once per day per legacy while also increasing the point required.

Now how about adding back all the other lost PVE and crafting objectives, as well as returning any that were originally repeatable to be repeatable.

Maybe, just maybe, I'd consider resubbing - for now though, I'm going to catch up on other games (including several with 10 year anniversaries this year that appear to be actually celebrating their anniversaries - I still don't know how you all screwed up the SWTOR 10 year thing so badly).

Edited March 28 by DawnAskham

[TahliahCOH]

23 minutes ago, captainbladejk said:

There is still a MASSIVE disparity between points available for PVE objectives vs what's available for PVP and GSF objectives.

Precisely, so we know he is lying about "parity with other objectives." If he were telling the truth, they would have BUMPED rep cq to be on par with what PVP and GSF get, not removed the PVE rep cq (effectively, who cares about 5k?). I am so over this game right now, it's not even funny. I may not even play out the remainder of my sub at this point.

[TahliahCOH]

27 minutes ago, Thraka said:

I need two hands to count the number of subs you've lost just amongst the people I know, and I doubt we are special snowflakes. I think this is a colossal blunder, but hey, it's not my problem anymore.

Add me, someone you don't know, but get out those toes because there are a LOT of us who are just done. One nerf too many, the last straw on the camel's back, this game isn't about or for the player base at all. It's all about what THEY want, what THEY "intend" and THEIR "goals." Screw that.

[septru]

The typical BioWare double down, even after the whole community tells you this is a bad idea.  

[meddani]

2 hours ago, GunqqerFriithian said:

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.

dude, they don't play their own game, how do you (the devs) not know this?! lmao!

[Darittha]

thank u for bringing back infinite repeatable heroics. pve conquest has been hell for me with many alts. this will ease my burden and ofc the big change - to legacy unlock daily areas for all alts is just amazing. im glad you finally showed some love to pve players since pvp ppl always had their infinite objectives around and not us. great changes coming i cant wait.

[RushNFour]

I have literally defended the dev team and this game from almost the beginning.  When the game went free to play only 11 months after launch (update 1.5 I think), I defended the decision.  When they shifted the game to a single player online hybrid (4.0-5.0) I defended them.  Always defending and supporting, until 7.0 that is.

This post will likely get me in trouble and I don't care, I don't plan on returning after this anyway.

Since 7.0 every decision that has been made has been absolutely baffling, I cannot defend it anymore.  I have never seen a more arrogant dev team in my life AND I'VE PLAYED WOW.  Even Blizzard realized that alienating your player base is the quickest way to the unemployment line.  Seriously, do any of the devs REALLY play this game?  Because anyone with more than 2-3 characters can all agree all of these changes since 7.0 SUCK.  But go ahead, keep telling us WE are wrong, and watch your game burn to the ground.  I am done, there is no coming back from this, you guys don't get it and you never will.  Thank you for giving me (mostly) 12 years of fun, but this game is clearly not for me anymore.  Watch my 'session time' go from my usual 20+ hours a week down to zero.

[HobbesToo]

Thank you for the update.

[Thraka]

3 minutes ago, TahliahCOH said:

Add me, someone you don't know, but get out those toes because there are a LOT of us who are just done. One nerf too many, the last straw on the camel's back, this game isn't about or for the player base at all. It's all about what THEY want, what THEY "intend" and THEIR "goals." Screw that.

For me, the entire point of the game was to be able to play 8 alts and hit conquest on all of them playing 4-6 hours a week. I and my friends were ideal users. We consistently paid month after month, demanded little in terms of resources, and spent additional money buying coins so our alts could have cool weapon tunings, or mounts, etc. We made lesser alts to play with other friends we recruited, and again, spent coins to make sure even the lowbies had some style. It makes absolutely no sense that BS would come after what seems to me a huge subsection of players who are reliable customers. I can't understand what benefit they imagine they will get that will offset the loss of that steady income. That's what I would really like to hear explained.

 

[Nommaz]

Don't know why you couldn't make a post like this for the APAC server when we literally begged for one, it might have made all the difference! 
Just shows the importance to you of the APAC region. 

 

[Smegaman]

Yeah thanks, but this change just doesn't make the up reduction in reputation cq points. 

[recalcitrantIre]

1 hour ago, TepeshT said:

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.

are you

galactic rampage and taskmaster are an enormous amount of conquest points, if i'm paying attention during those weeks, I set my personal guild invasion to medium (2m points) instead of small (500k) because the amount of extra points from just playing the game is so colossal

[CliffRedemption]

Hey @EricMusco,

What are your thoughts on a player completing an entire R-4 Veteran Mode operation and receiving zero conquest points? 0. There is also no [WEEKLY] attached to your most recent raid content. Is this intentional, and for new players, how would a player know to even stroll towards Mek-Sha to find the raid? It seems there are low indications in the actual game that the most recent Operation Actually Exists.

It is nice to see that you removed people right clicking an item to earn reputation, as that requires zero effort. Would you consider adding an infinitely repeatable conquest for 100,000 points for players who complete a Master Mode raid? Beyond a single completion, there is no incentive for players to do CHALLENGING content, in a GROUP environment for conquest. Simply put: Players do not earn Conquest Points for playing the highest difficulty content together.

[TobarrDaggermoon]

1 hour ago, frutepy said:

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.

I agree with you that there are many conquest objectives that offer very few points for time spent (more than you mentioned) that should be increased to make it worthwhile to do. There are some missions I have never done more than once because time doesn't equate to points.