Since 5.9 conquest is almost in the same state as before (which means that it is possible to reach the personal target on a couple toons without a ridiculous effort---although this is partially due to a bug which resets daily conquest targets in an irregular pattern) with the additional bonus that it has a nicer interface and we seem to get our rewards as we should.

There is one huge problem though and that is that only a few large guilds on each server can win a planet. Consequently, what you need to do to get the conqueror achievements is

1) Join a large guild.

2) Do a small amount of grinding to reach your personal target.

This should be compared to the sitaution pre 5.8 where a lot of guilds every now and when had opportunities to win a planet. So, my question to the dev team is simply:

Is this what you want conquest to be? Should it be a grind to earn the guild rewards or should it be a competition between guilds to fight for conquering planets or at least make it to top-ten?

Of course, I hope that the answer is no, and that competition between all kinds of guilds is brought back into the conquest system. Fortunately, there are plenty of things that could be done within the new conquest system:

• Return of the crafting week. Some people might not have liked crafting weeks, but I don't see what is wrong that dedicated players gather crafting materials fpr a long time and then generate a huge amount of conquest points in one particular conquest week (which does not need to recur that often).
  
• Total war means total war. Pre 5.8 total war meant that all planets in the conquest system (currently 19 planets) were up, which means that a lot of guilds got the chance to win.
  
• Conquerors are busy after conquering a planet. Another way of opening up for other guilds to win would be to block the winner of a planet from participating in the competition of other planets until their planet is up for conquest again. These guilds should still get guild rewareds if they reach the guild target during the following weeks, but they should not be included in the top ten list.
  
• Fight for honor. Competition is pointless if one team has a huge advantage, whereas fighting against an opponent on your own level can be---dare I use this word?---exciting. The difference between large and small yield is obviously too small to motivate large guilds to compete with other large guilds. Increase the difference, for example by adding more rewards to large yield and drastically reduce the rewards for small yield---or maybe even introduce an honorary yield where the only reward the guild get is the achievement if they win a planet.
  
• Small groups of heroes that make a difference. The placing in the top-ten list does not need to depend on the total conquest points for a guild. Another option would be to use the average number of conquest points for the 5 best players in the guild (small yield), 20 best players (medium yield) or 100 best players (large yield). This would allow small groups of heros to fight a much more numerous opposition (in true Star Wars spirit) on low yield planets.
  
• Force persuade. A more drastic measure to make guilds of similar size compete is to add a maximum guild size (for example counted as active accounts) for a guild to invade planets with lower yield.
  

Some of the suggestions above obviously require that the yield of the planets are rotated between conqeust weeks, so that for example Alderaan is not forever a large yield planet.

What do you say fellow players? Do you care about winning planets? Do you have other suggestions how to bring back competition in the conquest system?

To back up some of my statemetnts above, I have some statistics about winners since 5.8:

DARTH MALGUS

Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield

20/3...........Wardens of the Republic .............Stroke my Wookie......................Untempered dread

27/3...........Nova Squadron ®.......................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm

..................Stroke my Wookie (i)

3/4 ............Stroke my Wookie........................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm

10/4...........Wardens of the Republic ® ........Dantooine Enclave ®................Stroke my Wookie

..................Darkstorm (i)................................Cult of the Dread Masters (i)

17/4...........Wardens of the Republic..............Stroke my Wookie .....................Darkstorm

24/4...........Darkstorm...................................Wardens of the Republic ...........Stroke my Wookie

1/5.............Stroke my Wookie........................Wardens of the Republic............Darkstorm

8/5.............Wardens of the Republic..............Stroke my Wookie .....................Darkstorm

15/5...........Stroke my Wookie........................Stroke my Wookie......................Wardens of the Republic

22/5...........Stroke my Wookie........................Stroke my Wookie......................Wardens of the Republic

29/5...........Stroke my Wookie.........................Rapid Serenity ®......................Wardens of the Republic

......................................................................Darkstorm (i)

5/6.............Stroke my Wookie.........................Darkstorm.................................Honour

12/6...........Stroke my Wookie.........................Honour......................................Stroke my Wookie

SATELE SHAN

Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield

20/3...........Galaxy Knights..............................Crimson Order...........................Blitzkrieg

27/3...........Galaxy Knights ®.........................Rebellion..................................Dark Galaxy Knights

..................The Steel Court (i)

3/4 ............Galaxy Knights..............................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Far Far away

10/4...........Galaxy Knights ®.........................Crimson Order ®.......................Blue Moon

..................The Steel Court (i)........................Harbringers of Valhalla (i)

17/4...........The Steel Court ...........................Galaxy Knights............................Harbringers of Valhalla

24/4...........Galaxy Knights.............................Harbringers of Valhalla................Blitzkrieg

1/5.............The Steel Court............................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Dark Galaxy Knights

8/5.............Harbringers of Valhalla.................Galaxy Knights...........................Dark Galaxy Knights

15/5...........Harbringers of Valhalla.................Blue Moon..................................Shadowed Republic

22/5...........The Steel Court ...........................Harbringers of Valhalla...............Dark Galaxy Knights

29//5..........The Steel Court...........................The Eternal Order ® .................Galaxy Knights

.....................................................................The Guild Next Door (i)

5/6.............Galaxy Knights.............................The Steel Court...........................Crimson Order

12/6...........The Steel Court...........................The Eternal Order.......................The Eternal Ordér

STAR FORGE

Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield

20/3...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

27/3...........The Sanctuary ®.........................The Courageous.......................You Aint Sith

..................Unchained Wrath (i)

3/4 ............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

10/4...........The Sanctuary ®.........................Je'daii Reborn............................You Aint Sith

..................Unchained Wrath (i).....................The Courageous

17/4...........The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath......................The Courageous

24/4...........The Courageous.........................The Sanctuary............................Unchained Wrath

1/5.............The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath......................The Courageous

8/5.............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

15/5...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

22/5...........The Sanctuary..............................Unchained Wrath.......................The Courageous

29/5...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary ®.......................The Veritas Brotherhood

.....................................................................The Courageous (i)

5/6.............Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

12/6...........Unchained Wrath.........................The Sanctuary............................The Courageous

THE LEVIATHAN

Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield

20/3...........Les wookies mal rases.................La Brigade..................................Quo non Ascendet

27/3...........Les merchømbres ®...................TDM...........................................Les wookies mal rases

..................SPARTE (i)

3/4 ............SPARTE......................................Les wookies mal rases...............The Knight Shadow

10/4...........Les wookies mal rases ®............Les merchømbres ®..................Légion Jedi

..................SPARTE (i)...................................Black Soul (i)

17/4...........La Brigade....................................Les wookies mal rases..............SPARTE

24/4...........SPARTE......................................TDM..........................................Les wookies mal rases

1/5.............SPARTE.......................................Les wookies mal rases..............Abbadon

8/5.............Les wookies mal rases..................SPARTE....................................Légion Jedi

15/5...........SPARTE.......................................Les wookies mal rases..............Les Aventuriers Stellaires

22/5...........The Knight Shadow.......................Les wookies mal rases..............SPARTE (S)

29/5...........Les wookies mal rases..................Quo non Ascendet ®................TDM

......................................................................SPARTE (i)

5/6..............SPARTE......................................The Républic Défender..............Les wookies mal rases

12/6............Les wookies mal rases.................The Knight Shadow....................Family Burger

TULAK HORD

Start day ...Large yield ..................................Medium yield..............................Small yield

20/3...........Koosai.........................................Abgesandte der Macht..............Glücksbärchi GmbH

27/3...........The Conqueror Fleet ®...............The Big Jedi Theory..................Glücksbärchi GmbH

..................Koosai (i)

3/4 ............Koosai ..........................................Glücksbärchi GmbH................Abgesandte der Macht

10/4...........Glücksbärchi GmbH ®.................The Conqueror Fleet ®...........Toxic Dragon

..................Koosai (i).......................................Ultio Extorrium (i)

17/4...........The Conqueror Fleet....................Koosai.....................................Glücksbärchi GmbH

24/4...........The Conqueror Fleet....................Abgesandte der Macht.............Koosai

1/5.............The Conqueror Fleet....................Glücksbärchi GmbH..................Koosai

8/5.............Koosai .........................................The Conqueror Fleet................Masters of the Universe

15/5...........Koosai.........................................Endless Power..........................The Conqueror Fleet

22/5...........The Big Jedi Theory.....................Glücksbärchi GmbH..................Koosai

29/5...........Koosai.........................................Treek goes Mekka ® ..............The Conqueror Fleet

......................................................................alles (i)

5/6.............Koosai.........................................Treek goes Mekka....................Endless Power

12/6...........Koosai..........................................Incredible-Kings.......................The Conqueror Fleet

Well-written post, hope you get attention and some feedback from the devs. It's good to see some people still have the energy to try to get conquest back to a better place, at least a more fun place than it is now.

Conquest should be improved upon, it's been neutered and it's spirit crushed.

This game needs all facets to be considered worthwhile, and the last few patches did exactly the opposite of what we were told they would do for conquest; that being making it more competitive for smaller guilds AND alt-friendly.

Wait until Stroke My Wookie opens their 3rd guild. Then you will have all three planets won by them every week.

Apart from that, I completely agree with the OP.

Since 5.9 conquest is almost in the same state as before (which means that it is possible to reach the personal target on a couple toons without a ridiculous effort---although this is partially due to a bug which resets daily conquest targets in an irregular pattern) with the additional bonus that it has a nicer interface and we seem to get our rewards as we should.

 

There is one huge problem though and that is that only a few large guilds on each server can win a planet. Consequently, what you need to do to get the conqueror achievements is

 

1) Join a large guild.

2) Do a small amount of grinding to reach your personal target.

 

This should be compared to the sitaution pre 5.8 where a lot of guilds every now and when had opportunities to win a planet. So, my question to the dev team is simply:

 

Is this what you want conquest to be? Should it be a grind to earn the guild rewards or should it be a competition between guilds to fight for conquering planets or at least make it to top-ten?

Of course, I hope that the answer is no, and that competition between all kinds of guilds is brought back into the conquest system. Fortunately, there are plenty of things that could be done within the new conquest system:

 

 

• Return of the crafting week. Some people might not have liked crafting weeks, but I don't see what is wrong that dedicated players gather crafting materials fpr a long time and then generate a huge amount of conquest points in one particular conquest week (which does not need to recur more that often).
  
• Total war means total war. Pre 5.8 total war meant that all planets in the conquest system (currently 19 planets) were up, which means that a lot of guilds got the chance to win.
  
• Conquerors are busy after conquering a planet. Another way of opening up for other guilds to win would be to block the winner of a planet from participating in the competition of other planets until their planet is up for conquest again. These guilds should still get guild rewareds if they reach the guild target during the following weeks, but they should not be included in the top ten list.
  
• Fight for honor. Competition is pointless if one team has a huge advantage, whereas fighting against an opponent on your own level can be---dare I use this word?---exciting. The difference between large and small yield is obviously too small to motivate large guilds to compete with other large guilds. Increase the difference, for example by adding more rewards to large yield and drastically reduce the rewards for small yield---or maybe even introduce an honorary yield where the only reward the guild get is the achievement if they win a planet.
  
• Small groups of heroes that make a difference. The placing in the top-ten list does not need to depend on the total conquest points for a guild. Another option would be to use the average number of conquest points for the 5 best players in the guild (small yield), 20 best players (medium yield) or 100 best players (large yield). This would allow small groups of heros to fight a much more numerous opposition (in true Star Wars spirit) on low yield planets.
  
• Force persuade. A more drastic measure to make guilds of similar size compete is to add a maximum guild size (for example counted as active accounts) for a guild to invade planets with lower yield.
  

 

Some of the suggestions above obviously require that the yield of the planets are rotated between conqeust weeks, so that for example Alderaan is not forever a large yield planet.

 

What do you say fellow players? Do you care about winning planets? Do you have other suggestions how to bring back competition in the conquest system?

The conquest changes have failed. People arent interested in it since it is all about quantity over quality, and all the same large guilds winning on big and medium planets by using clone guilds. Not interested in that garbage too especially when pvp gives so low points

just here to say... without the reset bug conquest would still be atrocious for alts

Could not agree more. The bug is the only thing making it tolerable for some...even that isn't enough for many though.

Changing the way you get the 1st place title (and all the stuff that goes along with that) wasn't on their list of things to change.

Back when the game had less populated servers, if you stayed on them, for awhile it was fairly easy for smaller guilds (5-10 active players) to win 1st place occasionally. Now, not so much, as the OP stated you HAVE to join the large conquest guild in order to have a chance at getting the titles if you want them.

With the way they are designing the current conquest system, where objectives are legacy based and you can't repeat as many of them as you used to be able to, guilds with more alts than live players are at a severe disadvantage.

My only suggestion to the Devs would be to make all three of the planets available as a choice for each of the three tiers via a drop down menu.

For example, Rishi was the Medium tier choice this week, yet the largest conquest guild on Star Forge chose it for the title, instead of going for the large tier rewards.

If the devs let you choose the planet AND the difficulty you could have a total of 9 guilds win a 1st place spot.

Rishi Small/Medium/Large along with the other two planets with each of the 3 difficulty options.

Maybe that reduces the level of competition too much for the devs/players tastes. I don't know.

It's just an idea.

Could not agree more. The bug is the only thing making it tolerable for some...even that isn't enough for many though.

I also agree.

Could not agree more. The bug is the only thing making it tolerable for some...even that isn't enough for many though.

Yeah lol thanks to the fix to the legacy bug its now a swap instance possible reset bug... so inconsistent.

Just make the dailies per toon and its perfectly fair. Though i admit i dont particularly enjoy wasting time grinding 150 kills on 3 planets multiple times a day.

But alas, the days of conquest being a pleasurable side activity came to an end.

Yeah lol thanks to the fix to the legacy bug its now a swap instance possible reset bug... so inconsistent.

 

Just make the dailies per toon and its perfectly fair. Though i admit i dont particularly enjoy wasting time grinding 150 kills on 3 planets multiple times a day.

 

But alas, the days of conquest being a pleasurable side activity came to an end.

I don't mind the mindless grinds of doing multiple rampages.

I managed to do 14 pairs of toons this past week across 3 different servers and 5 guilds.

One of them even won Rishi, the last planet I needed for the Galaxy Conqueror title.

So...now...my participation in conquest will directly relate to two things...

FUN....and the rewards.

I don't mind the mindless grinds of doing multiple rampages.

I managed to do 14 pairs of toons this past week across 3 different servers and 5 guilds.

One of them even won Rishi, the last planet I needed for the Galaxy Conqueror title.

 

So...now...my participation in conquest will directly relate to two things...

FUN....and the rewards.

Oh ive capped about 10 toons myself thanks to the inconsistent bug. Its inconsistency is an irritant and i personally find the grindfest a totally boring effort I'd much rather spend doing actual content, however old.

But again, i can deal with a grindfest until i get what i need out of it - the stupid ship expansions. After that I'm done pushing for it.

Now, were they to make it to where conquest objectives were fun again it might encourage me to try parts of the game i dont do particularly often and keep me around the conquest part simply for something to do. For instance, i used to frequent a MM uprising a week to get fast conquest points and cxp. Now i dont remember the last time i did an uprising, period. Before, I'd probably do a group finder op run or two a day. Now? why bother when im better off running around seemingly random planets killing 150 npcs mindlessly.

Dear Developers:

When conquest is only FUN because of BUGS, you're doing it wrong. Worse, when it's only TOLERABLE because of BUGS, you have failed utterly.

Please start listening to the community that has been repeating themselves about this since 5.8. You are NOT DONE fixing this mess if you actually do intend to make it enjoyable for people to play, as fair for most guilds as possible, and something that people will stick around in your game to do while they wait for the super slow trickle of content to arrive.

We who have been trying our best to politely get your attention and point out the problems are getting to the point where we aren't feeling so polite anymore. For me, it meant cancelling a nearly 7 year subscription to your service. Wake up! Respond, even if it is to say something that people don't really want to hear (like: "We've heard you but your suggestions go against our design goals for conquest"). That is really the only decent thing to do here, and you keep failing to do it.

.

Dear Developers:

 

When conquest is only FUN because of BUGS, you're doing it wrong. Worse, when it's only TOLERABLE because of BUGS, you have failed utterly.

 

Please start listening to the community that has been repeating themselves about this since 5.8. You are NOT DONE fixing this mess if you actually do intend to make it enjoyable for people to play, as fair for most guilds as possible, and something that people will stick around in your game to do while they wait for the super slow trickle of content to arrive.

 

We who have been trying our best to politely get your attention and point out the problems are getting to the point where we aren't feeling so polite anymore. For me, it meant cancelling a nearly 7 year subscription to your service. Wake up! Respond, even if it is to say something that people don't really want to hear (like: "We've heard you but your suggestions go against our design goals for conquest"). That is really the only decent thing to do here, and you keep failing to do it.

 

.

Hear hear PennyAnn! I second every point you make here.

I suggested resurrecting WorldPvP by designating 1 world a PvP zone. WPvP would effectively curb conquest guilds.

-Pick 1 conquest world, disable the PVE instance

-all conquest objectives require actually setting foot on the planet, no more lockouts

-remove all gear progression and mats from instanced PvP, and put them in conquest (because WPvP is unbolstered)

-15% exp/cxp boost while flagged, as in WOW-Warmode

I know this steps on some players, but nothing is more dead than lore-based, faction war.

I don't get the devs, quite frankly. If your objective was to make conquest to be on a more even playing field regarding guild sizes, then tying points to legacy is the worst thing you can do. Plus it kills alts.

Then again: as far as I see it there is no way to remove the advantage big guilds have except for crippling the options for said big guilds (like calculating the conquest points based on guild averages or max players or...), which I am pretty sure would lead to players just skipping conquest for good.

The issue as I see it right now is simply the achievements: you need to be first to get it. So to mitigate that it might help to simply add more planets into the selection, so when selecting wisely you might win even if you are smaller.

Problem as I see it: as in PvP the rewards should not only go towards the winner, it should only be a matter of numbers, because otherwise either participation rates will drop or people will flock to the winning side - it's just like gravity.

Suggestion: you simply make the achievement for conquering a planet guild individual and add a high target value based on accounts or alts (added members or alts after a week of conquest has started should not add to the conquest numbers). That way the guild can do conquest as a guild event and work for it. It will not be competitive, but then again: there is no way for a small guild to beat a large one, if the latter really goes for it.

The list above of conquerors since 5.8 has now been updated to include all servers. Clearly only a few guilds have the capacity to win planets. It also seems as large guilds will prefer to invade small yield planets rather than compete with other large guilds for the large rewards.

I can understand that the developers are busy with other parts of the game right now, but it would really be appreciated if they could comment if this is what they wanted with conquest.