You 'say' it is a minor issue.. I tend to disagree... Bioware, if they're collecting/gather reports on the right information will actually 'know' how points are accumulated. In my guild last week a majority of my 50k conquest points came from running the guild operation and killing the final boss. With only a 54% SH bonus I might add.

So like what, 40,000 points? The OP is talking about people with MILLIONS of points. 40k may be big for you, but it's small potatoes.

You 'say' it is a minor issue.. I tend to disagree... Bioware, if they're collecting/gather reports on the right information will actually 'know' how points are accumulated. In my guild last week a majority of my 50k conquest points came from running the guild operation and killing the final boss. With only a 54% SH bonus I might add.

On a crafting week if the majority of points you made came from running last boss lockouts that is somewhat baffling. Crafting weeks the best points are from crafting. Lockouts are certainly fun to do and fill in the time but on a crafting week they shouldn't be the majority of your points. That's just looking at your bonuses and figuring out the best way to put down points in a week. If you have no crafters then yeah, lockouts would probably be second best unless you love to pvp, pvp is always a great way to get points as well, no matter the week.

I don't see last boss lockout runs as a problem.

However, I am all-for increasing the difficulty of the last bosses in order to weed out the undergeared and the bads from farming last bosses.

So like what, 40,000 points? The OP is talking about people with MILLIONS of points. 40k may be big for you, but it's small potatoes.

I don't think the OP really appreciates the effort it takes to spin up millions of points crafting. You don't just set your characters and walk away. On a war supply week, like last week, you log on every character cooking every hour to an hour and half to drop points and re-load. If you don't have enough bonded, etc made up you make up more on others while that is happening.

All of that tends to be happening while you are doing other things like Ops, flashpoints, pvp, gsf, whatever floats your boat there. A friend of mine mentioned that she never really stops, no matter what she's doing if she has a comp available they are at least out on a crafting mission getting white mats, since it is cheaper to get it that way than buy from the vendor. I'm not quite as dedicated as that personally.

It's also a never ending process, so all of that is interrupted by life. You know, making lunch, doing laundry, picking up your kids, whatever.

If the OP doesn't like crafting weeks that's another question entirely, but it IS time consuming and does require you to be online for 'most' of the process. Not all, yes. But most.

Now, invasion force weeks are another issue entirely, and frankly I wouldn't even blink if those went away. Invasion forces are quite literally making something that is actually worth something to combine it into something that is worthless, all for points. Invasion forces are a black hole of money sink.

Rambling I guess but my point is, if I have one, not sure if I do anymore, is that crafting weeks take a massive amount of online activity in preparation to do that 'offline' activity. No other conquest objective requires that really.

Conquest wise the points might not have an effect that huge, though I see enough guilds big on conquest only doing those runs all the time, not full runs.

Didn't they change a similar mechanic with the flashpoints, when people farmed for example Battle for Ilum endlessly? Then why keep it with operations?

In the end though, it's probably the combination of how conquest points and command experience points for the weekly quests are awarded. Points vs time maxing at its best.

In my opinion it would be better to grant both depending on how much you did of the full operation.

Weekly quests should entail to kill all bosses of an operation, if you are unable to do it in HC/NIM, then do the rest in SM if you want the points so dearly. Don't know if a staged quest like with that Eternal Championthingy on Zakuul would work here or were too complicated.

Or there could simply be something like 'kill [number] different operations bosses' that strictly counts the kills a character does, no matter the difficulty. Since lockout hinders people from going in there again there might be the possibility of like only doing first boss runs in every ops, but in the end that would be more effort than simply play one or two complete operations.

We also already have cxp tokens dropping from bosses, why not add something similar for conquest, that way it might allow raiding guilds to gain points with their non SM teams too. It simply awards players doing ops, no matter how far they get in which mode.

Currently it's only GF operations that award anything for conquest.

All in all, the way it is now it's not about having fun in operations, its only about maximizing points.

Well, since CXP most of the game is, but there are better solutions that would net the same amount of points for doing the whole activity as intended, without increasing this rush and skip mentality.

At least it's my guess that it never was part of the CXP or conquest idea, to use any shortcut possible and skip game content left and right.

Another effect I witness lately, new players also don't learn the operations, as little one might learn in SM these days. An increasing number of people not knowing their way around in operations (literally they don't know where to go), only knowing last bosses ad nauseam, but having no idea of the rest slowly starts to show by now. And it's a lot harder to teach people who think they know it all, because they know said last bosses ad nauseam.

So like what, 40,000 points? The OP is talking about people with MILLIONS of points. 40k may be big for you, but it's small potatoes.

No the OP is talking about GUILDS with millions of points.

I don't think the OP really appreciates the effort it takes to spin up millions of points crafting. You don't just set your characters and walk away.

 

It's also a never ending process, so all of that is interrupted by life. .

 

Rambling I guess but my point is, if I have one, not sure if I do anymore, is that crafting weeks take a massive amount of online activity in preparation to do that 'offline' activity. No other conquest objective requires that really.

Exactly what I was trying to say. The amount of effort that goes into a push for crafting, is immeasurable. The HOURS and DAYS and WEEKS of preparation to make "millions of points" is astounding.

Personally, I dislike that crafting is such a major factor, but it is...and for all the activity it provides to players, I think it would be a very unwise move to adjust it without thinking of all the unintended consequences that might have. It's a HUGE credit sink. It's a HUGE material sink. The selling and buying of mats drives a major portion of the GTN.

No the OP is talking about GUILDS with millions of points.

Right...GUILDS doing last boss lockouts are "nice" points, but they're dwarfed by what crafting allows.

The main concern I have is that we are exchanging a 15 minute activity in conquest(once the lockout is obtained) with an hour to an hour and a half one. If all other factors remain the same that puts every single activity at a higher point/time spent ratio than operations. This will result in fewer operations being done because when people are doing conquest they are focusing on efficiencies, just like in cxp.

Conquest activities 'can' be teaching activities but to put the burden of teaching operations on a conquest activity is a bit much. Guilds teach new people. The folks who don't know how to do an operation are, not always, but very often, absolutely opposed to joining a guild. They want to do ops, but they don't want to socialize. Their reasons are their own and perfectly valid for them but bottom line if you want to learn ops you need to join a guild that does them. Guilds that do Ops have teams that do them regularly. These runs are in addition to conquest activities. The teaching mechanism is not joined to conquest.

Exactly what I was trying to say. The amount of effort that goes into a push for crafting, is immeasurable. The HOURS and DAYS and WEEKS of preparation to make "millions of points" is astounding.

 

Personally, I dislike that crafting is such a major factor, but it is...and for all the activity it provides to players, I think it would be a very unwise move to adjust it without thinking of all the unintended consequences that might have. It's a HUGE credit sink. It's a HUGE material sink. The selling and buying of mats drives a major portion of the GTN.

 

Right...GUILDS doing last boss lockouts are "nice" points, but they're dwarfed by what crafting allows.

Shrug. Crafting only matters for 2 or 3 conquest weeks, every other week it is capped at 1 craft per legacy, which at max will get you like 4k points. Nothing to sneeze at, but certainly not a major factor except in those weeks. When it was unlimited every week, it was a problem, but occasionally? Nah, not a problem.

Shrug. Crafting only matters for 2 or 3 conquest weeks, every other week it is capped at 1 craft per legacy, which at max will get you like 4k points. Nothing to sneeze at, but certainly not a major factor except in those weeks. When it was unlimited every week, it was a problem, but occasionally? Nah, not a problem.

And each Operation is capped at once per toon.

You 'say' it is a minor issue.. I tend to disagree... Bioware, if they're collecting/gather reports on the right information will actually 'know' how points are accumulated. In my guild last week a majority of my 50k conquest points came from running the guild operation and killing the final boss. With only a 54% SH bonus I might add.

As in an earlier post. I don't like the lockout runs much and hardly participate in them, but people who believe that all of a sudden the guilds who will win conquest will drastically change if they changed this are very mistaken imo.

The conquest oriented guilds will still win as they will still focus on it, the lockput run players will just move to do to whatever is the new best thing, and on DM the difference in score between the top 3-4 guilds and the rest is usually so big that the rest will still be without hope unless.. they also start focussing on conquest which they currently are not doing.

We will know tomorrow but from what I saw in the screenshot of the stream I don't expect much difference in conquest at all in the sense that the winner of a planet will still be the same as it is now. Unless the rewards for a large planet are hugely better than for a small planet the first place will still be sortof reserved on each planet, as typically the large guilds also don't compete much with one another, there is sort of a pecking order I guess. The top guild picks a planet, number 2 guild waits untill they can see what planet nr1 guild took and takes a different planet, nr3 guild then does the same...

Only on rare occasions the top guilds will compete with one another for first place. The only way to change this would be to make the difference in rewards between ending say number two or three on the large planet and number 1 on a small or medium planet huuuge, otherwise I think not much will change at least not in the odds of any but the existing big/conquest guilds ever having a shot at winning a planet.