Every month, the community of The Ebon Hawk server gets together, many people from different guilds show up and we discuss the aspects of the game and what we would like to see different or helped along. PvP, PvE, RP, GSF, or otherwise. One subject that came up obviously this month was on the matter of Conquest, for just about everyone, the general consensus was that it isn't balanced properly.

It isn't executed right, crafting spam is out of control, PvE or PvP there are not enough generated points in comparison. Here are some points of interest on what has happened so far with each category:

Crafting

So far it has been the most beneficial point income for generating Conquest points, people start crafting the night before so that they get a large kick off when they log in on Tuesday. Thus giving a large pool of points right off the bat. One guild on our server currently has gone up to 11 million points over the last few days, up to about 4 mil on the first day. Those with deep pockets can very easily generate points in this fashion if they maintain their crafting throughout the week.

PvE

Thus far there are options through HMs, Dailies, Heroics, various bonus bosses, group finder once a day, all varying in value based on what the planet is you're trying to take and which ones you're doing. Some are repeatable, but most are not, so the gain from this can be fast, but only once per toon. (Some are legacy. Such as operations. As well as defeating a number of NPCs as legacy.) Large point gain, but only once.

PvP

Points for wins, points for participation, as well as anything else that falls into that category. While these are all repeatable, the gain from it is very insignificant in comparison to the others. Guilds on The Ebon Hawk that are pvp oriented with larger numbers queue all the time, their count is only a little over a million, that is with other point factors from crafting and PvE counted in as well. In summary, PvP point gain is not worth considering at this point in time.

RP

What conquest? (lol)

So with all those points made, it leads to a few suggestions that we would like to present to fix some of the imbalances. The guilds that were present at the summit a number of ideas came up and many of them would be viable changes to allow for a better experience for players in general, many guilds do not have deep pockets which to pull from to reap the benefits of crafting gains. PvE can only be done so much, and PvP is more difficult to gain the points to remain competitive with the other two categories. (Or even just crafting alone the two cannot compete with it.)

What We Would Like to See

These are a few suggestions that came up over the course:

1. To boost the planet point gain based off of a specific category, such as one being only PvE or PvP or Crafting oriented. Now, that said, yes, there are ones that are currently oriented heavier to one or the other, but you can still use crafting to boost any planetary conquest point gain at this time. Throwing you way into the lead without bonuses if you have an entire guild crafting on mains, alts, and secondary accounts.

2. Don't allow points to be banked, if you want points on Tuesday, you have to craft on Tuesday. You can't craft on Monday, and then claim your crafts on Tuesday and gain a several million point lead within the first couple of hours of claiming a planet.

3. To Tier planets based on the reward gain, some planets have larger rewards than others, like let's say we'll use Corellia, Quesh, and Alderaan as an example. Large guilds could go for Corellia for a large reward and pool alllll their resources into that specific planet because they have the ability to do so. One like Alderaan could be considered a Medium reward where the not as large guilds could compete to claim their rewards there. Lastly something like Quesh, smaller guilds, smaller reward, but still something to work for. You could have more than 3 planets available to do this, such as maybe putting out 6+ available planets to compete for. That way you don't have only the large guilds going for each one. Keep multiple of each category to keep it competitive.

4. Allow guilds to ally with one another to conquest a planet together based on size, most likely not large guilds as they would tip the balance out of whack.

All Said and Done

One point that we want to make clear is that we do not want guilds to be restricted on what they do as a guild, be it any of these categories. But rather that those that are within each of those categories get a chance to actually compete with each other, rather than just being blown out of the water by a category they don't fit under.

If anyone has any suggestions of their own that they would like to present, please feel free to post and make it happen. If you agree with any of the subjects posted here, please comment on it and give your input. Let's get this noticed!

Good thread Bastrus.

I would love to see a tiered system with greater rewards for larger guilds, encouraging large guilds to compete for the grand prize (or one of the nine also-ran prizes). It strikes me as an effective solution that encourages maximum participation without taking anything from either the ability of large guilds to accomplish more, or the intent of the Conquest content. Currently a large guild only has to avoid going head-to-head with another large guild and they can both obtain the same reward at the end.

Speaking for myself as a member of a large-ish PVP guild, we have a difficult time placing, even when running continuous warzones (ranked and unranked). We also focus quite a bit on crafting, but unfortunately don't maintain what I would consider the resources necessary to compete with a large guild. This is fine, we are who we are and I'm good with that.

I know that Conquest is still a work in progress and that there a lot of ideas are flying around. The rumor-mill says that current ideas are to "nerf" the ability to repeat warzones for Conquest. This doesn't resolve the problem, it simply shifts even more of the Conquest content to crafting. Large guilds that are able to effectively pool and manage their resources will simply be able to continue getting 14 million Conquest points, and increase the separation between them and the PVE/PVP guilds.

Crafting

 

So far it has been the most beneficial point income for generating Conquest points, people start crafting the night before so that they get a large kick off when they log in on Tuesday. Thus giving a large pool of points right off the bat. One guild on our server currently has gone up to 11 million points over the last few days, up to about 4 mil on the first day. Those with deep pockets can very easily generate points in this fashion if they maintain their crafting throughout the week.

I know by the time Veritas actually landed on Voss two hours into the event, Army of Light already had a 560k lead in the first hour. By the end of day one, the lead had flipped about three times between the two guilds with Veritas taking the final lead for 5.6 million points (from crafting and objectives) to 4.3 million points. We expected another heavy day of crafting but started to see that Army of Light wasn't pushing out the numbers anymore like day one so by the end of the second day we stopped crafting, and just focused on doing objectives alone.

Reason we where able to push out the numbers because we had two weeks of building up stock to craft invasion forces which gave us a lot of burst when they finished crafting. I alone had 750 invasion forces set aside to craft but only actually crafted 500 of them within the first two days. We have 146 active accounts in the guild but of those only 30 actually are participating in the events.

I alone had 750 invasion forces set aside to craft but only actually crafted 500 of them within the first two days.

Now THAT is pod racing! That's some impressive crafting

1. To boost the planet point gain based off of a specific category, such as one being only PvE or PvP or Crafting oriented. Now, that said, yes, there are ones that are currently oriented heavier to one or the other, but you can still use crafting to boost any planetary conquest point gain at this time. Throwing you way into the lead without bonuses if you have an entire guild crafting on mains, alts, and secondary accounts.

Not sure I follow what this means. Each planet does provide a bonus to a certain aspect of the game and preferred gamestyles are cycled each week. Seems this is already in game...

2. Don't allow points to be banked, if you want points on Tuesday, you have to craft on Tuesday. You can't craft on Monday, and then claim your crafts on Tuesday and gain a several million point lead within the first couple of hours of claiming a planet.

Absolutely not. Last minute crafting is tactical for those trying to stay on the boards or push into the boards.

3. To Tier planets based on the reward gain, some planets have larger rewards than others, like let's say we'll use Corellia, Quesh, and Alderaan as an example. Large guilds could go for Corellia for a large reward and pool alllll their resources into that specific planet because they have the ability to do so. One like Alderaan could be considered a Medium reward where the not as large guilds could compete to claim their rewards there. Lastly something like Quesh, smaller guilds, smaller reward, but still something to work for. You could have more than 3 planets available to do this, such as maybe putting out 6+ available planets to compete for. That way you don't have only the large guilds going for each one. Keep multiple of each category to keep it competitive.

Planets having different rewards are possible I suppose. Not sure it needs to be changed, but sure.

4. Allow guilds to ally with one another to conquest a planet together based on size, most likely not large guilds as they would tip the balance out of whack.

It would be abused... you would have super alliances; which, to be fair, how is that different from a mega-guild anyways?

As a member of a guild that has won two weeks by primarily crafting...I think crafting needs a nerf. There is absolutely no way to compete without a huge amount of crafting at this point. We had several members out farming materials in week two rather than out actually playing content. It's silly points that are possible crafting compared to any other avenue.

I have to disagree with your assumption that PvE is more efficient than PvP though. They are actually pretty balanced in my opinion once they took the repeatable FPs out in week 2. It's about the same amount of time for a group of 4 to finish a PvP match as it is to complete a daily FP, but you can continue doing more matches where there's a limit to the FPs. The reason that you see PvP guilds towards the bottom, I would suspect, is that they generally have fewer active members and are likely not doing the crafting to go along with the PvP points.

I tend to agree that crafting feels a bit too influential even outside of the recent, crafting focused invasion. The claim that PvP is not a meaningful contributing factor is nonsense though if we're comparing it to PvE. ML_DoubleTap addressed that sufficiently. The underlying issue is that both feel overshadowed by the role that crafting plays.

All that said, I think we need to let a few more of these play out before suggesting changes since different conquests emphasize different elements and the newness of it all is driving people to behaviors that may not be sustainable over the long haul.

All that said, I think we need to let a few more of these play out before suggesting changes since different conquests emphasize different elements and the newness of it all is driving people to behaviors that may not be sustainable over the long haul.

I definitely agree, that crafting is going to die down more so as the weeks continue as no one can sustain that ability week after week after week. And eventually even the so-called mega guilds will burn out allowing the smaller guilds getting toward the top spots. Each weeks objectives will affect guilds based on there compensation and we seen in week 2 what happens when you eliminate player vs. environment repeats in-light of player vs. player repeats. Next week according should be less crafting and more focus on warzones with 4 of the 5 planets giving a bonus to that.

Not sure I follow what this means. Each planet does provide a bonus to a certain aspect of the game and preferred gamestyles are cycled each week. Seems this is already in game...

True however, a guild doing pvp to get on the leader board for a "pvp-planet" will still be trumped by those guilds able to craft their way into the top ten. This idea would have the effect of establishing heavy bonuses designed to encourage a certain type of activity such as pvp over any secondary point acquiring methods.

Absolutely not. Last minute crafting is tactical for those trying to stay on the boards or push into the boards.

I like this input. A guild not using crafting to obtain and maintain the top 10 may not be aware of this.

Planets having different rewards are possible I suppose. Not sure it needs to be changed, but sure.

It certainly doesn't HAVE to be changed, however, it is pretty established that the guilds who are most effective at utilizing their large rosters to most efficiently craft will hold the the top 10 spots. That's fine if that's what Bioware wants, I'm certainly not going to cry about it and will still do my best to compete. This is just to brainstorm ideas that:

a) provide bigger rewards to those guilds that have shown they can roll with the big boys, and

b) open up the playing field, possibly allowing second or third tier guilds the opportunity to be viable in the Conquest system.

It would be abused... you would have super alliances; which, to be fair, how is that different from a mega-guild anyways?

A fair comment, and personally, this is not my favorite option. Though keep in mind that guilds with 100 to 150 members, who are quite good with PVE end content, or PVP ranked, are currently feeling that they are being manhandled out of the content because they cannot compete with the numbers game.

Appreciate the input!

I have to disagree with your assumption that PvE is more efficient than PvP though. They are actually pretty balanced in my opinion once they took the repeatable FPs out in week 2. It's about the same amount of time for a group of 4 to finish a PvP match as it is to complete a daily FP, but you can continue doing more matches where there's a limit to the FPs. The reason that you see PvP guilds towards the bottom, I would suspect, is that they generally have fewer active members and are likely not doing the crafting to go along with the PvP points.

Yeah, I'm not sure PVE is more efficient, particularly since many of the quests are not repeatable. I'd love to see more PVE options that can be repeated. PVP, however, is not as lucrative as is generally believed (I know you're not saying it is), even though it's repeatable.

If you figure you have 16 or so people running steadily, waiting for pops, and in matches that will range from 15 to 30 minutes each (dependent on map and skill level), you are looking at probably an average of 48,000 points an hour (3 warzones). If these teams pull a full 8 hour gaming day, that's about 384,000 points. A full 6 days of PVP will accumulate 2.3 million conquest points. There are also PVP weeklies which probably amount to another 100k guild-wide. This is probably a bit better than you can pull off doing PVE.

Fair comment about the crafting. We do more than we ever have before, but it's no where near as effective and efficient as many of these top 10 guilds, and frankly, that type of effectiveness should be rewarded.

That makes me even more enthusiastic about the tiered planets. A larger guild would have to consider if they should go after big money on Corellia, or if strategically they will be better off sticking to a mid-tier plane like Makeb.

I definitely agree, that crafting is going to die down more so as the weeks continue as no one can sustain that ability week after week after week.

Week after week? No. But close to it. Aisthesis wasn't really contested on our planet this week, and we had a guild meetup, so we basically coasted through without doing very much. If we had actually been pushed hard (say, if we were on the same planet as you), we could have broken the 10 mil mark without even sweating, and probably a lot higher. And by "not sweating" I mean "sustainably". I mean, the crafting bonuses were really good this week, and Voss in particular was insane all around, but even still. The crafting rates from the first week were unsustainable, but I think something very close to it would be.

I think we would see a lot less crafting points if any of the PvE objectives were seriously repeatable. Or, say, if there were any points whatsoever for killing bosses on Hard or Nightmare Mode…

 

I think we would see a lot less crafting points if any of the PvE objectives were seriously repeatable. Or, say, if there were any points whatsoever for killing bosses on Hard or Nightmare Mode…

I still don't think you'd see a decline in crafting points. The difference between crating points and PvE .. even if they're massively repeatable .. is the fact that you don't have to be in game and you can have multiple characters gaining points at a time. There is just no way any other objectives can compare with someone crafting on 10+ characters every 5 hours or so.

In my opinion the crafting time for all war supplies should be increased to what Invasion Forces are. This will throttle the ability to gain huge points by a decent amount at least. Our GM scored 1.95mil points week 2..a week with no crafting bonus. Take the Battle of Ilum "exploit" and assume you run that every day for 18hrs a day(leaving 6 hours for sleep ). At 2k points per run and about 5 runs per hour that's 540 runs through the FP for 1.08mil. Not even spending all waking hours running through a FP that was considered an "exploit" can come in much over half of what crafting on a non-bonus week could do. Granted, for us it's probably the only way we can keep up with guilds that have several more active characters than us...I still don't like the idea of crafting being the tipping point for Conquests.

First off,

As Bastrus originally said the way to winning is by far crafting. Not only this week, with the insane Voss bonus, but for week 1 and 2 as well. You literally cannont compete if you are a PvP/PvE guild who meet up nightly and runs for 4 or 5 hours.

For example:

Thanks to the Dulfy guide I knew that this week there was going to be a crafting bonus, and also that the individual conquest points would be lessened to 25k. Monday night I sent out my 5 comps, each crafting 5 Invasion Force (IF) each. Log in Tuesday night, and whammo, personal quest was done, literally stomped on my fellow guildies who had ran pvp/pve all day, I only increased it from there. From alts crafting the Matts needed for the IFs, to my main crafting IFs all day long. So in 3 days I was over 300k conquest points. Crafting is and for the forseeable future will remain the key to winning the weekly Conquest.

Secondly,

PvP is nowhere near as lucrative to earning conquest points as is PvE. All you have to do is look at the Conquest Objectives, there are an outstanding amount more of PvE oriented objectives than there are PvP. The only reason PvP guilds have even placed in the Top 10 so far is because they have spent every opportunity they could get PvPing.

The issue with PvP is that you are facing actual other Human players. If you know the mechanics and have the gear you literally put in the time and you succeed in the PvE op. In PvP, you get the PvE players who show up with little or no gear thinking they can just throw down their rotation on an enemy player not realizing that other player wearing those certain guild tags know exactly how that PvEr thinks and ends up burning the carebear down while he is still trying to mouse-click through his rotation.

Even if its an even splattering of Rep PvPers vs Imp PvPers you have to face against other human players, who have no pre-known mechanics, or specific attack patterns, all the while attempting to keep a watchful eye on those who dont know how to PvP. This takes time, time in which a group of PvErs who know their stuff can plow through an ops or a tactical FP.

Now, so far in these 3 weeks a different aspect of the game has been focused on. I reserve my judgement until after the Death Mark Conquest starting tomorrow, which is PvP focused. (Cant wait for the influx of clueless Rep carebears rushing to a hasty and messy death at feet of the Imp PvP guilds.)

**I'll make a prediction. At the end of next week, the Close of the Death Mark Conquest, more Imp guilds will be in the Top 10 than Rep guilds**

But not to totally derail this thread, I personally like the tiered reward idea (just like ranked WZ rating!!!!!!). Of course only the 1st place guild would get the "Conqueror of ___(Insert planet here)_____" title, but the tiers still make sense. Something could very easily be implemented like

Tiers:

1

2

3

4 - 6

7 - 10

or

1

2-3

4-6

7-10

or

1

2-4

5-10

I have to disagree with your assumption that PvE is more efficient than PvP though. They are actually pretty balanced in my opinion once they took the repeatable FPs out in week 2. It's about the same amount of time for a group of 4 to finish a PvP match as it is to complete a daily FP, but you can continue doing more matches where there's a limit to the FPs. The reason that you see PvP guilds towards the bottom, I would suspect, is that they generally have fewer active members and are likely not doing the crafting to go along with the PvP points.

The claim that PvP is not a meaningful contributing factor is nonsense though if we're comparing it to PvE. ML_DoubleTap addressed that sufficiently.

....Yeah, I can't agree with these after the patch coming this week.

"Warzone Conquest Objectives have been redesigned:

• Ranked Warzones: The Proving Grounds” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Killing Fields” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Front Lines” now awards 250 points for any single unranked warzone match and is repeatable (down from 500).
  
• Warzones: Total Domination” now awards 500 points for any single warzone match victory and is repeatable (down from 1,000).
  
• Warzones: Destroy the Enemy” now awards 2,000 points (up from 1,000)."
  

In my opinion the crafting time for all war supplies should be increased to what Invasion Forces are.

Personally, I like this idea.

....Yeah, I can't agree with these after the patch coming this week.

 

 

 

"Warzone Conquest Objectives have been redesigned:

 

• Ranked Warzones: The Proving Grounds” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Killing Fields” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Front Lines” now awards 250 points for any single unranked warzone match and is repeatable (down from 500).
  
• Warzones: Total Domination” now awards 500 points for any single warzone match victory and is repeatable (down from 1,000).
  
• Warzones: Destroy the Enemy” now awards 2,000 points (up from 1,000)."
  

There I go spouting off like an idiot. The above statement just killed the entire point of next week's conquest.

No one here has requested the ONE thing we really need.

A muffin button.

....Yeah, I can't agree with these after the patch coming this week.

 

 

 

"Warzone Conquest Objectives have been redesigned:

 

• Ranked Warzones: The Proving Grounds” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Killing Fields” now requires playing 10 matches. Its point value has increased to 3,000 and it is no longer repeatable.
  
• Unranked Warzones: The Front Lines” now awards 250 points for any single unranked warzone match and is repeatable (down from 500).
  
• Warzones: Total Domination” now awards 500 points for any single warzone match victory and is repeatable (down from 1,000).
  
• Warzones: Destroy the Enemy” now awards 2,000 points (up from 1,000)."
  

I don't believe the patch notes were up yet when I made my post. If they were I hadn't read them yet

However, even with that, this week anyways PvP is still just as efficient as PvE if not moreso. Lets say you have 3 characters and 3 hours a day to play. Assume an 8v8 pvp match takes 20min between queuing and the match itself and arena is 10 min.

A PvE player should be able to get all 3 daily FPs in on 3 characters within 3 hours, but that would be about all they'd get done if they're queuing. So that's 9 daily FPs for 1000 each for a total of 9k/day. Add in the FP weeklies for each character and that's another 6k for the week or 60k total for the week.

Now a PvP player queuing only for unranked...cuz ranked doesn't pop well on our server should be able to get 4-6 matches per hour. That's 12-18 matches a day...we'll go with 15. Now assume that since you're in a PvP guild you win 75% of your matches. At 15 matches per day you'll get 3750 for participation and you'll win around 11 for another 5500. That's 9250 per day then you add in the weekly points (Complete 10 wz, 100 killing blows, weekly unranked mission on 3 toons) for another 8k. That's 63,500 per week. Pretty darn close and I think I was probably being conservative on amount of matches played per hour and win percentage for some of the better PvP guilds.

The other important thing to remember is that strictly PvP players are getting points for what they'd be doing already. Trust me, if not for Conquests, I don't touch the GF for FPs or Operations and I'm certainly not doing Heroics on old planets. My preferred activities these days are HM/NiM operations and PvP...a single NiM progression night can take up the entire 3 hour window and doesn't account for any points.

This week is pretty much the litmus test for me. If crafting heavy guilds manage to knock the actual PVP guilds way down/off the leaderboards this week (and I think that's exactly what's going to happen even without the crafting bonus) then I'm pretty much going to give zero ****s about conquests going forward.

I mean, come on. During GSF week, <Saberwing> was on Corellia which had only the GSF bonus and we got third. That was with 12-16 aces flying every night (at least until we realized it was pointless, anyway). Part of that was all of the derp with the easy FP bonuses, but a lot of that was sheer crafting numbers. I really don't think it's going to be any different for the groundpounder PVP heavy guilds this week, especially since they've listened to the forum whiners and nerfed the PVP rewards.

I hope I'm wrong though. It would be nice to see more PVP guilds up there than have been in the last few weeks.

This week is pretty much the litmus test for me. If crafting heavy guilds manage to knock the actual PVP guilds way down/off the leaderboards this week (and I think that's exactly what's going to happen even without the crafting bonus) then I'm pretty much going to give zero ****s about conquests going forward.

 

I mean, come on. During GSF week, <Saberwing> was on Corellia which had only the GSF bonus and we got third. That was with 12-16 aces flying every night (at least until we realized it was pointless, anyway). Part of that was all of the derp with the easy FP bonuses, but a lot of that was sheer crafting numbers. I really don't think it's going to be any different for the groundpounder PVP heavy guilds this week, especially since they've listened to the forum whiners and nerfed the PVP rewards.

 

I hope I'm wrong though. It would be nice to see more PVP guilds up there than have been in the last few weeks.

You know, PvP players have the ability to craft too. While I do think crafting needs a hefty nerf and I've said it several places...it is the premier way to score points and if you want to place well you need to be doing it. I'm not a crafter, GF FP'er, GF OP'er, Voss Heroic'er, etc .... but I do those things because they were efficient ways to score points. It stands to reason that you won't win if you're only doing exactly what you would be doing without the conquest event. You may place, but to win you need to actually focus on conquest objectives themselves. If I played only the way I normally do I'd probably have about 20k points a week and that's generous. Because I actually focused on things that scored points though I've averaged around 600k points each week.

You know, PvP players have the ability to craft too. While I do think crafting needs a hefty nerf and I've said it several places...it is the premier way to score points and if you want to place well you need to be doing it.

Oh I agree. It is the best way to score points. But should it be? Even on weeks when crafting isn't supposed to be the focus? Should people who craft tons be able to beat out PVP guilds on PVP week? Or FP heavy guilds on FP week? Or GSF guilds on GSF week? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of the entire conquest system?

I mean, look. If it was crafting that tipped guilds over the edge by say like 10 thousand points, then I wouldn't have an issue with it. But when it just flat out beats everything else by several million points? That ****'s not fun to play. It's the most passive part of the game, ffs, and if it continues to be the way to win, I'm checking the hell out. I'm just not interested in contests that measure who has the deepest pockets/most crafting alts. Life is way too short to be spending hours and effort on something that I find completely tedious.