I give up - Why did they ignore all the communication and input on conquest Adv Rep points?

[captainbladejk]

10 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

Can do does not equal intended or desired out come. The devs have reserved the right to modify and rebalance the game at anytime to address things they could not  predict or they don’t like. This clause is literally in the TOS you agree to every time you play the game. They have attempted to greatly reduce the number of points a person could get when they introduced 1 per legacy objectives. When they first appeared conquest was awful. If I remember correctly, they have relaxed quite a bit.

There's the white knighting defense and gaslight right on schedule. Simply because you can do something as a developer doesn't mean you should. Along that same vein of thought, just as they have a legal right to make changes to something, I have the legal right to withdraw my financial support of their products and to encourage others to do the same. Once again we can survive without them, they can't survive without us. You also prove once again you have zero clue how game development works or what constitutes intended or not. 

If you program a feature to do A B and C but somehow it also does D, that's not intended and is a bug. If you program it to do A B and C and it does exactly that, then it's working as intended. If later I decide it needs to do A B C and D, then adding D is a change and update like a game getting an expansion. This doesn't mean the game wasn't suddenly working as intended before, it means that new content was added because the goal posts moved.

For years the rep token gave 43k points because that's literally what it was programmed to do, so yes it was in fact working as intended whether you like it or not. If they thought it was doing too much they've had literal years to fix it but chose not to. They were the ones who said "if you do x amount of work to get a rep token we'll give you 43k for it" and established the baseline of work demanded to get the 43k. If they thought it was giving out too much reward for too little effort, you don't throw a hissy fit and blame the players for using the system the way you designed it to be and nerf the rewards, you make it harder to get the tokens to start with. Blaming the players like they're doing is like a restaurant giving a choice of Coke or Pepsi with purchase of a meal then getting mad when people pick Pepsi over Coke. Like dude, if you didn't want people picking Pepsi then why did you give people the option to do that in the first place. This is quite literally the devs setting the standards, getting mad that players played to those standards, then throwing a hissy fit and getting mad about it and gaslighting people when they get called on it. 

As someone who has developed content and items for other games, I'll use my Space Engineers mod as one example. Currently my weapons in that mod deal a minimum of 15% above vanilla values, and strongest armor gives 10x the amount of durability vanilla armors do. If I wanted to I could buff the weapons to do 50% above vanilla values and cut the durability of the mod armor in half, I have the right to do that. If I wanted to make the custom thrusters suck up 20x the power they do now meaning folks will need more reactors, I can do that. If I want to make it so you need 5x the amount of material to keep the modded reactors going, I have the right to do that. While I have the legal right to do those things, it doesn't mean I should. If my goal is to get as many people to use my mod as possible, then I won't just go around nerfing things willy nilly. On top of that it means I will also listen when people tell me they want something and I can reasonably provide it, such as dude that asked for the Railgun turrets and custom solar panels. I was under no obligation to actually give him those things. However if I wanted to keep him subbed and folks like him I needed to do that or have a picture perfect explanation as to why I couldn't. It cost me nothing but a little time to add those items, I keep him as a sub and draw more folks to my mod, he gets his railguns and solar panels, everyone wins. Contrary to popular belief there does not need to be a loser in a business transaction. 

The devs here claim they want as many people playing as possible, yet their actions suggest otherwise due to their ignoring the vast majority of their players saying "hey this sucks, change it back." If you want to make your game or content as successful as possible, it's not about what you want, it's about what the players want. 

[AFadedMemory]

11 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

Simply because you can do something as a developer doesn't mean you should.

I am well aware that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's beneficial. I am simply stating that a single person completing the 5 millions large guild conquest was most likely not the indented outcome. In other words just because you could use the 45k objective to complete conquest on 50 toons each week does not mean the devs intended for you to do so regularly. 

Is it possible to do? It was, probably still is. Was it by design? Simple answer... conquest and GS have to be easy enough for the average person to do, but hard enough that it isn't completed on many toon/server regularly, thus increasing time spent in game with a sub or money on CC.  Outliers that can preform better than the majority/average person have always existed and should be consider. In this cause it appears the devs felt the risk was minimal only to find out the "outliers" were a higher percentage then the devs wanted/expected because of this rep objective mechanic. Does that create a need to nerf things? If the mechanic is generating behaviors or consequences that puts the game in red or just breaking even categories yes. (that's the simple answer. that doesn't factor the inflation generated by the rewards farmed through the event. that doesn't factor the impact of free cc, and items generated by them, on micro transaction, it doesn't factor the impact of farming on attitude and new player retention etc.)

Can the nerf cause game leaving behavior that puts the game in red? Sure. However I believe the target demographic is people who spend money on Cartel Coin regularly. I doubt people who do this on a regular basis have the time or drive require to exploit the 45k conquest objective. thus the nerf shouldn't be that damaging to those people.

Once again I'm not saying the devs are the best devs on the planet and they never make mistakes. The fact that they put the rep token objective at 45k in the first place was a mistake. if they did not do that peeps would most likely not be complaining about it but farming GSF or PVP instead🤣

[captainbladejk]

1 hour ago, AFadedMemory said:

I am well aware that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should or that it's beneficial. I am simply stating that a single person completing the 5 millions large guild conquest was most likely not the indented outcome.

If it wasn't an intended possible outcome they would've capped the amount of points you could earn each week just like they do with how many reputation points you can earn in a week, but they didn't. If they didn't intend for a single person to be able to earn 5m points as a possibility they would've already restricted these huge guilds from putting up 100m+ points per week or more. 5m points by one person is just as valid as 5m points put up by 10 people or 100. You really need to quit worrying about what other people are doing to earn their conquest. If a guy wants to put up 5m points by himself, who are you to say he can't or it's not intended?

 

1 hour ago, AFadedMemory said:

In other words just because you could use the 45k objective to complete conquest on 50 toons each week does not mean the devs intended for you to do so regularly. 

This right here proves you have zero clue what you're talking about because you could only use the tokens 7 times in a week since it was a daily objective. If someone is hitting it more than that they're either running multiple servers or there's some exploits going on. If the devs didn't want people using the token so much they should've limited it to a once a week thing or how many times you could use it in a week. Them getting mad at players for using an objective they gave them is like a parent offering to take a kid out for ice cream then getting mad when the kid orders a flavor they as the adult don't like then trying to punish the kid. You don't get to do that. Even if we said for sake of argument you could use it 50 times in a week, again who are you to tell people they can't do it or shouldn't be able to? 

 

1 hour ago, AFadedMemory said:

Can the nerf cause game leaving behavior that puts the game in red? Sure. However I believe the target demographic is people who spend money on Cartel Coin regularly. I doubt people who do this on a regular basis have the time or drive require to exploit the 45k conquest objective. thus the nerf shouldn't be that damaging to those people.

For the love of the Force read a dictionary before you post junk like this. Using the rep tokens was NOT an exploit at all. The system was designed to allow stockpiling of tokens and to pop it 7 times in a week. So yes it was working as intended. If the devs didn't want people stockpiling tokens or using the rep objective 7 times in a week they shouldn't have given those options to start with. 

If they want to get people spending coins there's an easy way to do that, LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR PLAYERS ARE TELLING YOU THEY WANT. Spitting in their faces and telling them they're playing wrong isn't how you get them to open their wallets which is what they've done here. 

1 hour ago, AFadedMemory said:

Once again I'm not saying the devs are the best devs on the planet and they never make mistakes. The fact that they put the rep token objective at 45k in the first place was a mistake. if they did not do that peeps would most likely not be complaining about it but farming GSF or PVP instead🤣

No their mistake is in nerfing the payout instead of making the tokens harder to get. Their second mistake is continuing to maintain an over 1m point gap between pvp and pve. What you and they need to get through their heads is that people who don't want to play pvp or GSF are not going to play GSF or pvp. If I wanted to deal with an unbalanced nightmare of toxicity that is pvp I would go back to CoD or WoW's pvp scene. I can count on one hand how many pvp folks on these forums and in game I can actually stand, but that's neither here nor there. Point being you can't make people do what they don't want to do, and if you have to try to force people to play your way, you are in the objective wrong. When you pay my sub then you can have a say in how I play. Until then you need to stay in your own lane and quit worrying so much about how other people play. 

[Stradlin]

7 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

 

Once again I'm not saying the devs are the best devs on the planet and they never make mistakes. The fact that they put the rep token objective at 45k in the first place was a mistake. if they did not do that peeps would most likely not be complaining about it but farming GSF or PVP instead🤣

 

I encourage everybody  to imagine some alternative universe where clicking  rep tokens has  never given  more than 2k-8k conq  or something.  In this alt. universe, conq gains from rep is basically comparable to  gains from things like  "ding a level" or "rank up a crew skill".    In this alternative universe, is there  some massive activist movement busy  arguing how it is completely unnatural for rep gain to give only 2k-8k conq instead of 45k?

(spoiler:nope,there isn't. At 8k it sits pretty comfortable with conq given from feats of similar nature.)

 

Edited April 14 by Stradlin

[AFadedMemory]

6 hours ago, captainbladejk said:

If it wasn't an intended possible outcome they would've capped the amount of points you could earn each week just like they do with how many reputation points you can earn in a week, but they didn't. If they didn't intend for a single person to be able to earn 5m points as a possibility they would've already restricted these huge guilds from putting up 100m+ points per week or more. 5m points by one person is just as valid as 5m points put up by 10 people or 100. You really need to quit worrying about what other people are doing to earn their conquest. If a guy wants to put up 5m points by himself, who are you to say he can't or it's not intended?

 

This right here proves you have zero clue what you're talking about because you could only use the tokens 7 times in a week since it was a daily objective. If someone is hitting it more than that they're either running multiple servers or there's some exploits going on. If the devs didn't want people using the token so much they should've limited it to a once a week thing or how many times you could use it in a week. Them getting mad at players for using an objective they gave them is like a parent offering to take a kid out for ice cream then getting mad when the kid orders a flavor they as the adult don't like then trying to punish the kid. You don't get to do that. Even if we said for sake of argument you could use it 50 times in a week, again who are you to tell people they can't do it or shouldn't be able to? 

 

For the love of the Force read a dictionary before you post junk like this. Using the rep tokens was NOT an exploit at all. The system was designed to allow stockpiling of tokens and to pop it 7 times in a week. So yes it was working as intended. If the devs didn't want people stockpiling tokens or using the rep objective 7 times in a week they shouldn't have given those options to start with. 

If they want to get people spending coins there's an easy way to do that, LISTEN TO WHAT YOUR PLAYERS ARE TELLING YOU THEY WANT. Spitting in their faces and telling them they're playing wrong isn't how you get them to open their wallets which is what they've done here. 

No their mistake is in nerfing the payout instead of making the tokens harder to get. Their second mistake is continuing to maintain an over 1m point gap between pvp and pve. What you and they need to get through their heads is that people who don't want to play pvp or GSF are not going to play GSF or pvp. If I wanted to deal with an unbalanced nightmare of toxicity that is pvp I would go back to CoD or WoW's pvp scene. I can count on one hand how many pvp folks on these forums and in game I can actually stand, but that's neither here nor there. Point being you can't make people do what they don't want to do, and if you have to try to force people to play your way, you are in the objective wrong. When you pay my sub then you can have a say in how I play. Until then you need to stay in your own lane and quit worrying so much about how other people play. 

This is my last response to ya.  If bs wanted to stop credit selling all they would have to do is make it so credits could not be exchanged between players. Why don’t they do this? People would stop play the game. I would not be playing the game. I’d bet real money you would not be playing the game.

“Credit Selling must be acceptable and is intended by bs since I can exchange credits with peeps.” That’s pretty much your argument. 

if you don’t understand the pros an cons to hard caping stuff your shouldn’t be in charge of game mechanics. Allowing people to believe they can farm conquests on 20 toons while making it difficult to do is a better business strategy then hard locking it to 5, 7, or whatever amount they deem sustainable. 

It doesn’t matter if you think it’s an exploit or not. It matters if BS does, and based on their expressed reason for the nerf I wholeheartedly agree it was and needed to be addressed. In other words I’m still gonna play the game and give bs my money. 

[Jdast]

TL;DR: For PvE-oriented Conquest players, the game should be renamed SWTOH or Star Wars: The Old Heroics.

The alternatives to playing SWTOH are to aim for smaller Planetary yields and play less, or be 'lured' into PvP and GSF - something not even the most powerful Tractor Beam in the Galaxy will pull me into despite the gross disparity in Conquest Point (CQP) acquisition. 

I have chosen the 'play less' route, have switched my subscribtion status to Preferred, am boycotting Cartel Market (CM/ Space Barbie) purchases, and am just slowly advancing my Alts through the story. 

There are two viable solutions for my playstyle: 1) restore the CQP Reputation nerf so I can move on to PvE activities I enjoy; or 2) significantly boost CQP rates for non-old Heroic PvE activities. In other words, go back to Play Your Way.

First, let's state the obvious: Several posters in this thread have an ulterior motive -- transparently so. Their primary, if not sole, objective is to make sure PvE CQP aquisition rates aren't readjusted so as not to compete with PvP and GSF rates for fear those modes would be negatively impacted. This isn't necessarily a bad thing per se and it is not entirely unexpected for players to advocate / lobby for more resources to be devoted or make those modes more attractive as they prefer those activities.

Some players have gone the SWTOH route and proven demonstrably (they brought receipts) that you can still rack up a lot of CQP points even in non-Heroic Pinnacle weeks. Arguably, they have shown that if you put in the time, you can achieve even more than the pre-Advance Reputation CQP nerf. There is nothing wrong with this play style and it is hardly my place to impose my in-game goals on others. 

But other parts of PvE aspects of the game should be boosted -- significantly -- particuarly given the relative time and difficulty of those objectives in comparison to doing 'Man with the Steel Voice' on Hutta, talking w/ Bow La (female Twilek), cleaning the water, and getting a minimum of 5K CQP per character.

Some players will be 'lured' into doing Heroics or doing PvP and GSF. I am not one of those players. If the content isn't fun and interesting, I don't play it, regardless of the reward.

Time will tell if this was the right strategic business decision on the part of Broadsword. For my small guild, it was the wrong one. I'm not playing SWTOH and I'm certainly not doing PVP or GSF in this game (I enjoy PvP in other games). The engine for PvP is awful and the controls in GSF are so horrid I avoid it like the Rakghoul plague.

SWTOR doesn't exist in a vacuum. There are several credible competitors, even within just the MMORPG genre, where advancing Alts is far more enjoyable. Guess where my money will go? 

Dasty

Edited April 14 by Jdast
Stupid Typos!

[captainbladejk]

5 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

This is my last response to ya.  If bs wanted to stop credit selling all they would have to do is make it so credits could not be exchanged between players. Why don’t they do this? People would stop play the game. I would not be playing the game. I’d bet real money you would not be playing the game.

“Credit Selling must be acceptable and is intended by bs since I can exchange credits with peeps.” That’s pretty much your argument.  

Just when I thought I had seen it all you post one of the most disingenuous and slanderous statements I've ever read. Your entire argument is little more than a strawman and false equivalency fallacy all rolled into one. Before I get into this I should thank you in part for proving my point for me that you don't punish the collective playerbase for a problem, you attack the problem itself. Now first up, you do not get to sit here and try to put words in my mouth. You're sitting here trying to compare the illegal activity of credit selling to changing a personal mechanic in a video game. The fact you think the two are even remotely comparable shows you don't know anywhere as much about game development as you've wanted others to believe. 

Credit/gold selling is illegal in virtually every game out there by the legally binding contracts you agreed to in the ToS to play the games, not to mention other laws about lost sales, contract interference and so on. To stop credit sellers it's actually very simple, ban the players engaged in it, then let Broadsword's legal department sue the credit selling companies out of business. That's how you put a stop to something like that. There is a HUGE difference in an actual illegal activity vs a programmed game mechanic.

As for the line in bold, my argument has been the same from the start. The devs deliberately programmed the rep token to grant 43k, and programmed the system to allow you to stockpile tokens so you're not having to farm them every second of every day, and programmed it so you could use it up to 7 times per week. Those are deliberate actions and standards they themselves put forth, meaning guess what, it was an intentional act and doing exactly what they programmed it to do. That's how programming works, is you have to tell the system what you want it to do. Now after the fact years later they've decided that wasn't intentional and have been throwing a temper tantrum that players used the options they were given and blamed and have gaslighted players for a problem they as devs created. We never told the system to give 43k for a rep token or drop as often as some of them do, the devs did that, but I as the player am somehow the problem for using an option they gave me? Nah dude that's classic gaslighting behavior just like an abusive spouse that keeps saying "why do you make me do this". 

5 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

if you don’t understand the pros an cons to hard caping stuff your shouldn’t be in charge of game mechanics. Allowing people to believe they can farm conquests on 20 toons while making it difficult to do is a better business strategy then hard locking it to 5, 7, or whatever amount they deem sustainable. 

You should take your own advice on this one and stay away from any decision making regarding game mechanics because you clearly don't understand how game development works at the small time/indie level or at the AAA studio level. I've been creating content for games for 20 years now with some of my maps for games being some of the most downloaded ever, along with my recent Space Engineers creations being used by the largest private French server that exists. My work speaks for itself. Now if you want to compare resumes in this area, we can do that but I assure you I'm going to win.

What you refuse to understand about game development is that you are responsible for what players are able to do/not do in a game. If I'm making content and don't want people having infinite uses of a certain item, I'm going to limit that item. If I don't want someone using an item infinitely but refuse to limit that item, that is 100% my own fault for giving it infinite uses to start with and again for refusing to limit it. If I'm serious about people having the option of infinite uses I need to be prepared that some people will use it infinitely. To punish people for using an option I gave them is foolish and dishonest. 

As a prime example, for Space Engineers I had to create custom ammo types to achieve my goals for my mod. I didn't want people ammo racking folks to death who use my custom ammos, as to me ammo racking is one of the most unfun and unskilled ways to win/lose to exist in games even if it can be realistic. Since I didn't want that to happen I disabled the ability of my ammos to be ammo racked to start with. Again this is not rocket science. 

6 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

It doesn’t matter if you think it’s an exploit or not. It matters if BS does, and based on their expressed reason for the nerf I wholeheartedly agree it was and needed to be addressed. In other words I’m still gonna play the game and give bs my money. 

And the line in bold is where you're objectively wrong if they value keeping my money. If they want to keep money coming in from customers they're going to meet certain demands of those customers, or those customers will withdraw support. So yes it actually does matter what the customers think in this instance. 

Now as I've said from the start, if you want to keep playing, you do you. I refuse to give them the same amount of money for less game. If they actually added all those extra objectives they promised instead of just 2 crumbs to offset this, then we might be having a different discussion. Not to mention if they hadn't lied to the players and gaslit everyone in the process. But again you do you. 

For the final time I'm also going to ask this, since you agree with nerfing the rep token and dictating to other people how they should be allowed to play, when are we nerfing GSF and pvp by similar amounts since you can literally afk and do nothing to get full bars of conquest? Afterall if you're concerned about balance as you say then you can't have one drastically outperforming the other. 

[TahliahCOH]

1 hour ago, captainbladejk said:

Now as I've said from the start, if you want to keep playing, you do you. I refuse to give them the same amount of money for less game. If they actually added all those extra objectives they promised instead of just 2 crumbs to offset this, then we might be having a different discussion. Not to mention if they hadn't lied to the players and gaslit everyone in the process.

This is where I am at, as well. I'm not grinding out Heroics I've done a bazillion times at 5k a pop, even the one click, one kill, ones. I just won't. The global economy is crap right now, and I don't need to keep paying real world money for a game that is going way off the rails (this is only the latest insult! Add in the Quick Travel fees, the fees for exiting your own SH (which cost MILLIONS to unlock), the exorbitant repair costs, the power nerfs (including nerfs to our Tacticals, some of which were so onerous I had to rebuild my toons).  And I'm just done.

I can't justify paying real money for a game that constantly tells me it hates players like me (solo cq PVEers). Paaaaayyyyy MOAR, DO moar HEROICS, Nudge, Do PVP and GSF!

No, thank you. I can spend my real world money on other things . . . like food and electricity.

[Saeten]

Title updated to reflect the state of the issue....;

[AFadedMemory]

6 hours ago, Saeten said:

Title updated to reflect the state of the issue....;

One could argue they didn’t🤣 people have agreed and said it was too many points and that they like the heroic changes.

[Traceguy]

14 hours ago, Saeten said:

Title updated to reflect the state of the issue....;

8 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

One could argue they didn’t people have agreed and said it was too many points and that they like the heroic changes.

The change to heroics objective turned out better than it could have considering that heroics now give 10,400 CQP once per planet. There's no need to do 9 extra heroics to get the 45k CQP missing from the the token. 

However, I would argue they haven't given up yet, at least, if they have, we do not know that yet. The last update was 7.4.1c, we haven't had any since, and that was also the same time in which Eric said

  

On 3/28/2024 at 1:23 PM, EricMusco said:

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.

 

If we see nothing in 7.5, or thereafter, that would be a sign Broadsword has given up.

Players seem to be the one's who have given up because everyone stopped coming up with feedback, and switched over to arguing over PVP and GSF offering too much CQP to people who AFK.

Edited May 1 by Traceguy

[GuigeekRhadamant]

On 3/23/2024 at 8:22 PM, DawnAskham said:

They aren't going to come out and admit the change was to reduce CC from seasons in the hope it drives additional revenue to meet their financial targets even though anyone with a clue knows this is why the change was made.

If they planned ahead of time (most likely) to make the change and have baked in the changes to revenue from the change and sent that up the line to management, they probably can't just revert without a plan to get that revenue from somewhere else.

 

too bad for them, I'll still do the GS on all servers and won't buy CC

Quote

So get ready for even more CM items, FOMO sales, or some new in-game unlocks that cost CC, along with increasing cost to unlock items such as seasons items (from 10 to 80), and even more recolored junk categorized as 'platinum' (versus bronze / silver which cost significantly less in CC to unlock) so they can charge more to unlock.

Exactly! Noone did mention that before, that always triggered me

Edited May 1 by GuigeekRhadamant

[LJ_Gibbs]

10 hours ago, AFadedMemory said:

One could argue they didn’t🤣 people have agreed and said it was too many points and that they like the heroic changes.

What people?  5 people?

[AFadedMemory]

1 hour ago, LJ_Gibbs said:

What people?  5 people?

Still would mean they listened to input.