That's not safe to say at all.

 

• They might have left the game already.
  
• They may feel as though constantly re-airing the same complaint is pointless.
  
• They may simply be tired of dealing with you, specifically, since you're the person who's decided to litigate all of the conquest complaints.
  

Conquestors who are active may have keft the game already? Ummmm, ok....i didnt read past that.....

That argument only holds for one aspect of conquest, that is planetary conqueror titles. The restrictions do not affect larger guilds more for the other aspect of conquest (gaining encryptions). A larger guild has more players than a small guild so they can afford to be limited and still reach their guild points goals.

Its been announced by BW that more guilds are being rewarded.

Its been announced by BW that more guilds are being rewarded.

That was quite a while ago and likely does not represent the current situation. There have been several nerfs to conquest points since that announcement was made. Also, that statement was about fixing the bug that kept people from getting their rewards when conquest reset for the next week.

That was quite a while ago and likely does not represent the current situation. There have been several nerfs to conquest points since that announcement was made. Also, that statement was about fixing the bug that kept people from getting their rewards when conquest reset for the next week.

On the contrary, i believe they have actually added more ways to gain points. PvP was a big area they opened up. Of the top of my head, i cant think of any ways they nerfed since 5.8.

Conquestors who are active may have keft the game already? Ummmm, ok....i didnt read past that.....

The changes to repeatables have been suggested literally since the beginning of the Conquest changes. This thread is full of them. Many people who aired this complaint got sick of waiting for it to be changed and left. Others have stopped airing it because they don't believe that BW will change it; they still play the game but are unhappy about it, yet no longer visit the thread even though they did before. Others have stopped airing it because they don't feel the need to repeat themselves, since it still hasn't been changed; they too continue to play the game but see no reason to engage in this thread. Yada yada yada.

My point is this: you're wrong, and your logic is wrong. There are plenty of reasons for people who dislike the current state of conquest to not bother to participate in this forum thread. You'll have to do more legwork than that to demonstrate that complaints come from a minority, and much more legwork to show that a majority approves of the current situation.

On the contrary, i believe they have actually added more ways to gain points. PvP was a big area they opened up. Of the top of my head, i cant think of any ways they nerfed since 5.8.

I'll use myself as an example of how reduced the rewards are. Since the changes to conquest I have been much less rewarded. Prior to 5.8 I could drag my smallish guild into the top 10 most weeks acquiring between 5 and 7 encryptions each time (overall the guild netted about 10-12 per week) through a combination of crafting, heroics, the kill X enemies objective, and some PVP (WZ or GSF). Now, I am lucky if I can do that more than once a month (get the guild to 200K points) and only get 2 or 3 encryptions because if I have to focus on only one or two alts. We also have not even come close to being in the top 10. If I play multiple alts there is a good chance those points are "wasted" (spread out across too many toons) and they fail to meet their personal goals (which means no encryptions for them). For roughly the same amount of play time (10-15 hrs/week) I am receiving about 1/8 the rewards (getting to the goal half as often and getting 1/4 the rewards each time).

I'll use myself as an example of how reduced the rewards are. Since the changes to conquest I have been much less rewarded. Prior to 5.8 I could drag my smallish guild into the top 10 most weeks acquiring between 5 and 7 encryptions each time (overall the guild netted about 10-12 per week) through a combination of crafting, heroics, the kill X enemies objective, and some PVP (WZ or GSF). Now, I am lucky if I can do that more than once a month (get the guild to 200K points) and only get 2 or 3 encryptions because if I have to focus on only one or two alts. We also have not even come close to being in the top 10. If I play multiple alts there is a good chance those points are "wasted" (spread out across too many toons) and they fail to meet their personal goals (which means no encryptions for them). For roughly the same amount of play time (10-15 hrs/week) I am receiving about 1/8 the rewards (getting to the goal half as often and getting 1/4 the rewards each time).

You make good points, and that is probably why the folks at BioWare don't care about what you say. They count success by how many different guilds get some type of reward, not how many player characters receive rewards. So, as long as more than 30 guilds receive rewards each week, they will use that statistic to try to convince us that the new system is better than the old one.

The problem is that the new system is not alt friendly, and does limit the number of players characters that can receive rewards, and as a result has is harmful to the game. On the other hand it makes the game more of a grind for players, and to them that is a good thing (even if they lose subs), so they are satisfied because doing so allows them to achieve their internal objectives, even if meeting those objectives makes the game less fun and less rewarding for us to play.

Snip... and as a result has is harmful to the game.

Snip... On the other hand it makes the game more of a grind for players, and to them that is a good thing (even if they lose subs), so they are satisfied because doing so allows them to achieve their internal objectives, even if meeting those objectives makes the game less fun and less rewarding for us to play.

Let me fix that for you. For them it “may” seem a good thing because they equate grind to people playing longer and hence retain more subs.

The problem is the philosophy is flawed and they fail to see it. I would even go as fas as saying it’s institutional blindness and they honestly don’t understand the psychology of their player base for this game.

I understand the whole grind idea and in moderation and with more stuff to do (Alts), it can keep people playing longer.

But at some point, too much grind becomes less fun. Being stuck grinding only one or two Alts is boring. This is the part they can’t see and it’s not only conquest that’s the problem.

CXP grinding is also tedious and not fun if you like to play multiple Alts. It makes you feel like you need to just concentrate on one Alt at a time, which can take some people 3-6 months to fully gear.

This and the lack of consistency in content, bugs and lack of understanding what players need to stay subbed is why so many people continue to leave the game.

I do get that they are running the game on fumes, but there are things they can do.

If they eased up on the things they can control, people would be having more fun and would be less likely to have burn out from grind fatigue.

Lower some of the grind and people don’t feel like it’s a second job they are paying to do. People go to work to earn money, not pay the company for the privilege.

If they lowered the grind, people are less likely to need to take “holidays” (unsub for a bit) or “change jobs” (find another game).

You can get bored playing the same old content over and over with nothing new. But playing multiple Alts can give you a small change in routine. So seeing they can’t give us regular new content, the next best way to offer some “extra” things to do is to make the game more Alt friendly and less grindy.

That means changing all conquest activities so they can be done on all Alts.

Lowering the gear grind by increasing the rate of better gear drops from CXP crates, especially tier 4 crates, which are basically pointless.

They could also encourage people to play other parts of the game that aren’t played anymore since they introduced this race to lvl 70 philosophy, because once you’ve done all the lvl 70 content over and over, what else is there to do.

Here are some examples.

They should incentives people to play lower brackets of pvp. There are many suggestions that have been presented to them on how to do that. But they continue to stay silent on the subject.

They could make planetary story arcs replayable like heroics and add them to events or conquest randomly.

There is so much they could do with the little resources they have that would improve player enjoyment and give people other stuff to do than the same old grind.

If people have a bigger variety of things they can enjoy, they are more likely to stay engaged in the game longer and stay subbed. Bioware don’t have the resources to continually give us more content. But the do have it within their power to tweak and change what the game already has available and to make it more fun. The changes would also be minimal when compared to making major patches or expansions.

Honestly, at this point, what would it hurt to try, it’s not like people aren’t already bored and leaving. What have they got to lose?

The changes to repeatables have been suggested literally since the beginning of the Conquest changes. This thread is full of them. Many people who aired this complaint got sick of waiting for it to be changed and left. Others have stopped airing it because they don't believe that BW will change it; they still play the game but are unhappy about it, yet no longer visit the thread even though they did before. Others have stopped airing it because they don't feel the need to repeat themselves, since it still hasn't been changed; they too continue to play the game but see no reason to engage in this thread. Yada yada yada.

I get why people don't bother posting on the topic, but I also feel it doesn't help when people just lurk and write nothing when they themselves dislike the new conquest system. I agree though, many people feel defeated and just don't think it will do any good so they don't express their opinion on the matter now.

Personally I don't even focus on conquest and I probably have written more posts supporting the legacy restrictions being lifted off than 99% of the supposed conquest players on the game. I believe that legacy restrictive conquest removes incentive to play alts which as a side effect lessens participation in WZs, FPs, OPs with less gameplay on a whole. This means it has a negative effect on the game overall imo. This is why I support lifting legacy restrictions.

This is partially the players fault for not taking the time to express their unhappiness with the conquest system in it's present iteration. If even 10% of the players that enjoy conquest wrote in support of wanting legacy restrictions lifted it would make a big impact on BW to consider changing it. People are lazy, can't be bothered, or self-defeated and so change doesn't occur.

People rather whine and cry on the game instead of complain in writing on the forums that can help change happen. This isn't an autocratic government policy where voicing opinion has no affect, it's a game and BW and the devs have shown willingness to change things when people complain about it. People need to step up to the plate and voice their opinions on the forums and/or in personal PMs to Eric or others who may listen to them.

There are plenty of reasons for people who dislike the current state of conquest to not bother to participate in this forum thread. You'll have to do more legwork than that to demonstrate that complaints come from a minority, and much more legwork to show that a majority approves of the current situation.

I also believe more people are unhappy with the new conquest than are happy. When conquest was changed all you had to do was ask in general chat, guild chat, anywhere. A very strong "conquest sucks now" was expressed.

Recently, if you ask I think the expression will be "it still sucks, just not as bad as it was when they first changed it."

I guess people's laziness takes over and they don't bother asking for anymore changes, they are content with a lesser version of conquest just as long as it's not as bad as it was when 5.0 first dropped the new conquest on us. If people settle for less, you can't really help them then, I guess. The saying, "you can take the horse to water but can't make it drink" comes to mind.

Only BW knows how many people are participating in conquest vs those who arent. If active conquesters arent here complaining, then its safe to ssy they are likely ok with the current system, even if there are aspects they may not agree with. If forum population is your data, its a minority.

1. You don't have to be actively involve in conquest to gain points in conquest. So it would be difficult for BW to decide who is "actively" involved.

2. Are these happy conquesters Subs or FP? If they FP they can't post in the tread so can't know their opinion. If they are subs then BW should state that majority of the paying fan base support the new system. (I highly doubt they can state this conclusively.)

3. Like you stated BW is the only one who can really state player data. Therefore you can't say a population is ok with the current system if you don't know who or how many there are. (I know that I assumed that the paying fanbase wants conquest changed, but that is because there are several post and thread, made by subs, supporting this in almost every section of the forums.)

The changes to repeatables have been suggested literally since the beginning of the Conquest changes. This thread is full of them. Many people who aired this complaint got sick of waiting for it to be changed and left. Others have stopped airing it because they don't believe that BW will change it; they still play the game but are unhappy about it, yet no longer visit the thread even though they did before. Others have stopped airing it because they don't feel the need to repeat themselves, since it still hasn't been changed; they too continue to play the game but see no reason to engage in this thread. Yada yada yada.

I think if people are truly passionate about a cause or belief, they will do everything they can to follow through. We obviously have the passionate crowd on the forums. Those that participate in conquest are willing to accept the current state the way it is. They put their money where their mouth is. We have had many people put their money where their mouth is and left the game too, but many more people have stayed, with only a small percentage willing to continue fighting their passionate cause.

BW looks at data for validation. Maybe they see 95% of the population still participating in conquest despite the complaints, the threads, the people who left, and the threats. Their data shows the system is more rewarding in nearly every aspect except the end-game (planetary conquerer and encryptions)), like all other aspects of the game. Combine that all together (if the data shows that), and that illustrates the system may not be perfect, but isnt bad enough to need changing (like the old system).

My point is this: you're wrong, and your logic is wrong. There are plenty of reasons for people who dislike the current state of conquest to not bother to participate in this forum thread. You'll have to do more legwork than that to demonstrate that complaints come from a minority, and much more legwork to show that a majority approves of the current situation.

People can come up with any reason to dislike something. They need to validate why it needs to change and actually come up with a reasonable change, though.

Do you realize that the restrictions affect larger guilds more?

 

A guild with 5 members will be affected by restrictions only 5 fold.

A guild with 200 members will be affected 200 fold.

 

Innate number of members will, and should, benefit the guild with more members, to an extent.

Lets assume that the members of each guild are individual players, who are actively competing. the small guild would stands no chance of competing even with the restriction currently applied. Any restriction that would upset this would be unfair, because all player would not be treated equally.

Guilds should prosper by their ability to recruit member. Even with the alt character restriction removed each individual sub player would have the same opportunity/access to recruit or create characters as another paying sub.

Are we asking for a fair playing field or something else? because if we want fair then these current restriction are pointless. I know BW mentioned a few other motives for the changes. I don't recall them stating if those desired outcomes came to pass.

I'll use myself as an example of how reduced the rewards are. Since the changes to conquest I have been much less rewarded. Prior to 5.8 I could drag my smallish guild into the top 10 most weeks acquiring between 5 and 7 encryptions each time (overall the guild netted about 10-12 per week) through a combination of crafting, heroics, the kill X enemies objective, and some PVP (WZ or GSF). Now, I am lucky if I can do that more than once a month (get the guild to 200K points) and only get 2 or 3 encryptions because if I have to focus on only one or two alts. We also have not even come close to being in the top 10. If I play multiple alts there is a good chance those points are "wasted" (spread out across too many toons) and they fail to meet their personal goals (which means no encryptions for them). For roughly the same amount of play time (10-15 hrs/week) I am receiving about 1/8 the rewards (getting to the goal half as often and getting 1/4 the rewards each time).

Did it ever occur to you that encryptions were never intended to be gained at such a rapid pace? If not, i can see why you may not understand the need for a change. Planetary conquest title and encryptions are the end game rewards of conquest. Their frequency has been decreased to come in line with most other end game items, and all the other rewards have been increased conquest wide to benefit more guilds.

Your personal example may be an outlier to the average, too.

You make good points, and that is probably why the folks at BioWare don't care about what you say. They count success by how many different guilds get some type of reward, not how many player characters receive rewards. So, as long as more than 30 guilds receive rewards each week, they will use that statistic to try to convince us that the new system is better than the old one.

Lol, its a guild vs guild contest. I would expect it to benefit guild s over players.

The problem is that the new system is not alt friendly, and does limit the number of players characters that can receive rewards, and as a result has is harmful to the game. On the other hand it makes the game more of a grind for players, and to them that is a good thing (even if they lose subs), so they are satisfied because doing so allows them to achieve their internal objectives, even if meeting those objectives makes the game less fun and less rewarding for us to play.

It has been discussed multiple times how opening up more alt play would be detrimental to the game too. Every action or change affects both sides of the spectrum, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not

Did it ever occur to you that encryptions were never intended to be gained at such a rapid pace? If not, i can see why you may not understand the need for a change. Planetary conquest title and encryptions are the end game rewards of conquest. Their frequency has been decreased to come in line with most other end game items, and all the other rewards have been increased conquest wide to benefit more guilds.

 

Your personal example may be an outlier to the average, too.

I don't think his example is an outlier.

Before the most recent server merge, when I could place in the top 10 with ease with my (essentially) Private guild on POT5 I was able to earn 10-20 encryptions every week under the pre-5.8 system. Granted, that's with two accounts, but by the time the severs merged I had 3 frameworks and enough encryptions for 5 more gathering dust in my banks.

If they were intended to be rare, they wouldn't drop like candy off of commanders.

I believe they are intended to reward guild activity, be it from commander hunts or conquest participation.

Let me fix that for you. For them it “may” seem a good thing because they equate grind to people playing longer and hence retain more subs.

 

The problem is the philosophy is flawed and they fail to see it. I would even go as fas as saying it’s institutional blindness and they honestly don’t understand the psychology of their player base for this game.

 

I understand the whole grind idea and in moderation and with more stuff to do (Alts), it can keep people playing longer.

But at some point, too much grind becomes less fun. Being stuck grinding only one or two Alts is boring. This is the part they can’t see and it’s not only conquest that’s the problem.

 

CXP grinding is also tedious and not fun if you like to play multiple Alts. It makes you feel like you need to just concentrate on one Alt at a time, which can take some people 3-6 months to fully gear.

 

This and the lack of consistency in content, bugs and lack of understanding what players need to stay subbed is why so many people continue to leave the game.

 

I do get that they are running the game on fumes, but there are things they can do.

If they eased up on the things they can control, people would be having more fun and would be less likely to have burn out from grind fatigue.

 

Lower some of the grind and people don’t feel like it’s a second job they are paying to do. People go to work to earn money, not pay the company for the privilege.

If they lowered the grind, people are less likely to need to take “holidays” (unsub for a bit) or “change jobs” (find another game).

 

You can get bored playing the same old content over and over with nothing new. But playing multiple Alts can give you a small change in routine. So seeing they can’t give us regular new content, the next best way to offer some “extra” things to do is to make the game more Alt friendly and less grindy.

 

That means changing all conquest activities so they can be done on all Alts.

Lowering the gear grind by increasing the rate of better gear drops from CXP crates, especially tier 4 crates, which are basically pointless.

They could also encourage people to play other parts of the game that aren’t played anymore since they introduced this race to lvl 70 philosophy, because once you’ve done all the lvl 70 content over and over, what else is there to do.

 

Here are some examples.

They should incentives people to play lower brackets of pvp. There are many suggestions that have been presented to them on how to do that. But they continue to stay silent on the subject.

They could make planetary story arcs replayable like heroics and add them to events or conquest randomly.

 

There is so much they could do with the little resources they have that would improve player enjoyment and give people other stuff to do than the same old grind.

 

If people have a bigger variety of things they can enjoy, they are more likely to stay engaged in the game longer and stay subbed. Bioware don’t have the resources to continually give us more content. But the do have it within their power to tweak and change what the game already has available and to make it more fun. The changes would also be minimal when compared to making major patches or expansions.

 

Honestly, at this point, what would it hurt to try, it’s not like people aren’t already bored and leaving. What have they got to lose?

There is nothing in the rules that says you need to play this game every day of the week, all hours of the day. With all MMOs, eventually long time players will get to a point where they only enjoy new content. Thats fine, and thats part of the cycle of MMOs. BW, amd any MMO company, would be foolish to break aspects of the game to cater to a small percentage of the population.

If you complete your alts by wednesday, and can in no way possible, cap any more alts based on restrictions, and arent having fun afterwards, then you are welcome to play another game until conquest resets next week or a fun event arises via discord, etc.

You are not bound to the game.

Its been announced by BW that more guilds are being rewarded.

This is a completely meaningless statistic to measure on. This isn't a critique of you, because Bioware was using this as a goalpost.

The rules changed on how guilds were rewarded with 5.8.

Pre 5.8 you HAD to be in the top 10 to get rewards.

Post 5.8 you only have to reach the minimum goal to get rewards.

So, the highest number of guilds getting rewards, pre 5.8, was 10 per invasion planet.

Now...it's infinite.

Saying more guilds now are getting rewards doesn't mean anything at all.

That being said, this was the ONLY good change with the 5.8 system.

There is nothing in the rules that says you need to play this game every day of the week, all hours of the day. With all MMOs, eventually long time players will get to a point where they only enjoy new content. Thats fine, and thats part of the cycle of MMOs. BW, amd any MMO company, would be foolish to break aspects of the game to cater to a small percentage of the population.

 

If you complete your alts by wednesday, and can in no way possible, cap any more alts based on restrictions, and arent having fun afterwards, then you are welcome to play another game until conquest resets next week or a fun event arises via discord, etc.

 

You are not bound to the game.

"So if you don't like it, leave"

That's your response to a subscriber?

It's a good thing you aren't in charge of anything.

There is momentum now, so interacting with ignored people can be lessened.

 

What are some suggestions you see that could improve conquest as a whole?

 

1. Remove the "once per day per legacy" restriction for normally repeatable content (such as heroics, as an example).

2. ??? add suggestions

The once per legacy has got to go. It stops people from continued playing and has a run-on effect. If I stop running my alts through groupfinder, PvP queues, etc and so do others, well, less of those activities will be going on for everyone regardless of conquest. It's counterproductive to gameplay full stop.

1. You don't have to be actively involve in conquest to gain points in conquest. So it would be difficult for BW to decide who is "actively" involved.

If you do an ops or fp that qualifies as a conquest task, you need other people to do it that may be involved in conquest. If its just happening to kill enough npcs to get rampage, then perhaps the achievement of getting rampage leads them to attempt other conquest-inclusive tasks. Activity is activity, whether direct or indirect. If points are gained, you participated.

2. Are these happy conquesters Subs or FP? If they FP they can't post in the tread so can't know their opinion. If they are subs then BW should state that majority of the paying fan base support the new system. (I highly doubt they can state this conclusively.)

I will assume BW knows how to isolate that data if its important.

3. Like you stated BW is the only one who can really state player data. Therefore you can't say a population is ok with the current system if you don't know who or how many there are. (I know that I assumed that the paying fanbase wants conquest changed, but that is because there are several post and thread, made by subs, supporting this in almost every section of the forums.)

While there may be more complaint posts than those in favor of current conquest, it doesnt stop me (and BW, more importantly) to look at those complaints with a critical eye to see if the changes requested are something that will bring the game back to its admittedly broken state, or possibly worsen it beyond that.

I encourage anyone to post their views, but bully effort doesnt always force change, and rightly so.

Did it ever occur to you that encryptions were never intended to be gained at such a rapid pace? If not, i can see why you may not understand the need for a change. Planetary conquest title and encryptions are the end game rewards of conquest. Their frequency has been decreased to come in line with most other end game items, and all the other rewards have been increased conquest wide to benefit more guilds.

 

Your personal example may be an outlier to the average, too.

You're funny. You suggest that they unintentionally allowed for encryptions to be earned at a faster pace for 3 1/2 years. I wonder, what do you suggest made them allow conquest to be as alt friendly as it was before 5.9 if it was not their intent.

You would be better off to argue that they now want the game to be less alt friendly, and more of a grind, and don't care that people may not like what they are doing, and might unsub as long as they are happy with what they are doing.

Also, they could have made the single change of replacing the need to finish in the top 10 with the need to meet a certain point threshold to allow more guilds to get conquest. None of the other changes were necessary to achieve that goal.

Lets assume that the members of each guild are individual players, who are actively competing. the small guild would stands no chance of competing even with the restriction currently applied. Any restriction that would upset this would be unfair, because all player would not be treated equally.

 

Guilds should prosper by their ability to recruit member. Even with the alt character restriction removed each individual sub player would have the same opportunity/access to recruit or create characters as another paying sub.

 

Are we asking for a fair playing field or something else? because if we want fair then these current restriction are pointless. I know BW mentioned a few other motives for the changes. I don't recall them stating if those desired outcomes came to pass.

You have to start somewhere when creating a balanced conquest system.

Step 1 baseline - we can only assume a player has 1 toon. Therefore the baseline point system will be on a player vs player 1:1 ratio. If a guild is willing to manage more players, they should innately benefit from those members.

Step 2 - we understand many people have alts, so we will open up the ability for players to cap multiple toons (even in different guilds), but not so much that it makes step 1 baseline irrelevant. Therefore, we will place a soft cap (via legacy) .

Most of the complaints have stemmed from the old, and admittedly broken system. If you take a moment to look at this as a brand new system with some familiar features, you may understand why it is the way it is.

I don't think his example is an outlier.

Before the most recent server merge, when I could place in the top 10 with ease with my (essentially) Private guild on POT5 I was able to earn 10-20 encryptions every week under the pre-5.8 system. Granted, that's with two accounts, but by the time the severs merged I had 3 frameworks and enough encryptions for 5 more gathering dust in my banks.

 

If they were intended to be rare, they wouldn't drop like candy off of commanders.

I believe they are intended to reward guild activity, be it from commander hunts or conquest participation.

Commanders are on a fairly long respawn (3hrs, and 6 hrs for named), and illustrate that if encryptions are what you are after, it doesnt have to be linked to conquest completion.

This is a completely meaningless statistic to measure on. This isn't a critique of you, because Bioware was using this as a goalpost.

 

The rules changed on how guilds were rewarded with 5.8.

Pre 5.8 you HAD to be in the top 10 to get rewards.

Post 5.8 you only have to reach the minimum goal to get rewards.

 

So, the highest number of guilds getting rewards, pre 5.8, was 10 per invasion planet.

Now...it's infinite.

Saying more guilds now are getting rewards doesn't mean anything at all.

 

That being said, this was the ONLY good change with the 5.8 system.

To you, its apparently meaningless. To BW, its beneficial to the game.

"So if you don't like it, leave"

 

That's your response to a subscriber?

 

It's a good thing you aren't in charge of anything.

Nobody said leave. You have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you cant find something to do, you decide how you spend the remainder of your time. Complain, sit around afk in game...play another game....the choice is yours, and is not BWs problem.