Jump to content

Conquest Changes in 5.10


EricMusco

Recommended Posts

  • Dev Post

Hey folks,

 

With all of the Guild Changes coming in Game Update 5.10, we also wanted to make some changes to Conquests. As you will learn later today on PTS, Guild Leveling and Perks are tied directly into Conquests, so there is no better time than this update to make some changes.

 

Goals

Before we dive into the specifics we want to ensure that you understand what we are trying to achieve with Conquests in 5.10. Keep these goals in mind as you review the planned changes.

  • We want to continue to ensure you expect weekly consistency in Conquest Objectives. We are doing this for three reasons:
    • We heard your feedback from our first round of Conquest changes that you felt that there should be Objectives in every Conquest for most gameplay styles.
    • With Guild Perks, players will have the ability to add new Daily Repeatable Conquest Objectives to fit their Guilds playstyle.
    • Guild XP is tied to Conquest Points and so you need to know what to expect in each week’s Conquest reliably.

    [*]Create methods to allow players to earn more Conquest points.

    [*]Incentivize Guilds to commit earlier to prevent “planet sniping.”

 

Changes

  • The following Objectives have been added to every Conquest:
    • Complete any Chapter (repeatable)
    • Complete any round of the Eternal Championship (repeatable)
    • Complete Round 10 of the Eternal Championship (daily)
    • Defeat enemies anywhere, you must complete step 1 before you can complete step 2, etc:
      • 1: 100 Enemies (daily)
      • 2: 125 Enemies (daily)
      • 3: 250 Enemies (daily)

      [*]Obtain 8 badges in a Warzone (repeatable)

    [*]The following Objectives have been removed”

    • Defeat Imperial / Republic Guards

    [*]Guilds will now earn a small bonus on all Conquest points earned once they have committed to a planet. The team is trying to balance the bonus % between offering incentives to Guilds for committing early, and not “planet sniping” but we also don’t want to punish Guilds who don’t immediately commit. I am still working with the dev team on locking down the exact bonus but will get it for you next week.

 

In addition to the changes above, there are a number things that are a part of Guild Leveling and Perks which will also impact Conquest. Definitely take a look at those posts!

 

Please let us know your thoughts as Conquests are a big part of the Guild changes in 5.10. Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

Edited by EricMusco
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The number of "kill" on planet objectives is too high.

 

50/100/150 is already quite grindy. Increasing this makes the solo aspects of the objective system worse.

 

Please consider many Conquest-oriented players do Conquest on their multiple characters, perhaps capping one per day, or sometimes even 2 if possible on certain weeks. It's already an extremely uninspired activity, to simply go kill mobs on planets, and increasing it only makes this flaw in Conquest worse.

 

Remember back in the pre-launch days when James Ohlen used to talk about quest design for SWTOR, and it didn't want to revolve around going out and killing 12 boars like in WoW?

 

This was for story purposes, but also in part for the general feel of playing the game. Even though Conquest doesn't carry a story, the same psychology applies in the sense the player feels the gameplay is lowered in the worst possible way, running around planets killing mobs of 3 or 4 for points.

 

This doesn't mean we don't appreciate the "kill" objectives - it allows for some solo-oriented play that results in significant point gains, alongside the group activities we can queue for.

 

But please keep Conquest kill objectives where they are. 250 kills per day to get it done is WAY too high, especially in areas that don't have a high density of mobs. Players will quickly navigate to areas of planets that do, and the result will be groups stealing kills from one another, or going somewhere that takes a really long time to get to 250 kills. Solo players that can't get in a group are put in a worse situation as well, as sometimes other people will deny invitations or offers to group up.

 

Either result, and the general design, isn't an improvement or something that helps retain players. Conquest in general does, but the tedious objectives need to remain reasonable. 50/100/150 isn't fun by any means, but we can accept it as reasonable. Increasing this to 250 is even more mind-numbing and really bad gameplay.

 

Please don't take this change live.

Edited by arunav
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is nothing in here about returning some conquest objectives that could be considered alt-friendly, such as turning Craft an Invasion Force into a once per day per character objective, instead of the once per day per legacy it is now.

 

I brought this up during the last livestream because it was occuring what had previously been considered a crafting week for conquest on alts. However when the conquest changes went into place, alt-friendly conquest went with it.

 

Just to reiterate what we are seeing:

Daily repeatable quests like Inventor, or Heroic Mission, or Socialite i believe, give paltry 200-300 cxp per completion. When combined with the once per day objectives like Craft and Invasion Force, they can be a little more bearable, but you can only do those once per day per legacy. So if I have 10 alts and I craft an Invasion Force on each, only one will the 1500 cxp, the rest get squat

 

Can you please finally address the alt-unfriendly nature of most of the conquest objectives, ie. the once per day per legacy objectives.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[*]The following Objectives have been added to every Conquest:

  • Complete any Chapter (repeatable)
  • Complete any round of the Eternal Championship (repeatable)
  • Complete Round 10 of the Eternal Championship (daily)
  • Defeat enemies anywhere, you must complete step 1 before you can complete step 2, etc:
    • 1: 100 Enemies (daily)
    • 2: 125 Enemies (daily)
    • 3: 250 Enemies (daily)

    [*]Obtain 8 badges in a Warzone (repeatable)

 

The number of enemies is pretty much irrelevant, since with a low amount of gameplay you can do 250 a week easy.

 

However, the new things on the list are... simply the most unplayable things in the game. Chapters? Really? Eternal championship maybe, for strange ppl that like standing around while some lady shouts on the background but.. chapters?!?! Why!?!? I swore I shall never play them again, that boring the are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm reasonably pleased with the proposed changes, though I will echo the call for removing legacy limits on conquest objectives. If the object is to encourage people to play all aspects of the game, then let us play all aspects of the game - which includes the ability to run multiple alts without overly penalizing our other alts.

Also, any changes to crafting objectives? (asked the crafter...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey folks,

 

Changes

  • The following Objectives have been added to every Conquest:
    • Complete any Chapter (repeatable)
    • Complete any round of the Eternal Championship (repeatable)
    • Complete Round 10 of the Eternal Championship (daily)
    • Defeat enemies anywhere, you must complete step 1 before you can complete step 2, etc:
      • 1: 100 Enemies (daily)
      • 2: 125 Enemies (daily)
      • 3: 250 Enemies (daily)

      [*]Obtain 8 badges in a Warzone (repeatable)

    [*]The following Objectives have been removed”

    • Defeat Imperial / Republic Guards

    [*]Guilds will now earn a small bonus on all Conquest points earned once they have committed to a planet. The team is trying to balance the bonus % between offering incentives to Guilds for committing early, and not “planet sniping” but we also don’t want to punish Guilds who don’t immediately commit. I am still working with the dev team on locking down the exact bonus but will get it for you next week.

 

-eric

 

Can you clarify the section regarding adding 'Defeat enemies anywhere'? Is this in addition to the planet rampages already in the conquest system?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The higher numbers of characters to be killed would be too much if it were like the present rampage where your only purpose on that planet is to kill your quota. If, under this new system, you chose to repeat a chapter, it would be hard not to kill 250 enemies. Run a flashpoint? or an Ops (if kills in Ops count)? Again, 250 would be easily reached. I, for one, like adding purpose to the rampage--and the chance for variety as well.

 

I think in practice this will turn out to be a wonderful change to conquest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For our weekly personal rewards, can we please have some amount of the crafting mats that will be in the MM operation.

I’ve no problem with more dropping in the Operation, but it’s a little unfair that other players will be locked out of gathering mats.

This would provide a route to getting those mats and would also mesh with your plans for conquest and guild XP.

It’s a win-win for everyone.

Edited by Totemdancer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Changes are positive.

 

  • Complete any Chapter (repeatable) - I dont think it will be used as main source, but a nice bonus for players doing KOTFE/KOTET for first time - they won't have to worry that they are "missing" on conquest while doing this.
  • Complete any round of the Eternal Championship (repeatable) - good way of bringing this content back. Not everyone will like to do this, but it is a great way to add some reward to EC, because now there are not many reasons to actually run this aside from Bowdaar alert.
  • Complete Round 10 of the Eternal Championship (daily) - Nice that running harder rounds up to the end will give more rewards than first few easy rounds!
  • Defeat enemies anywhere - I suppose it stacks with rampages, so players will complete this while doing rampages. Or while doing heroics, opses, or flashpoints (one especially comes to my mind...). Or just doing anything really, so again it is nice way to provide players with some conquest points while, for example, doing class/planetary story missions on character, so again player will not feel like he is missing out on conquest.
  • Obtain 8 badges in a Warzone (repeatable) - nice pvp objective, one that promotes not leaving wz in advance and makes player do their best on whatever role they are playing.

 

Removal of Defeat Imperial / Republic Guards - well very few did this objecive anyway and if we did in a guild, it was usually only once per week anyway, not daily. The added objectives make up for it.

 

I still wonder about guild perks that will allow more conquest objectives. Will those perks also Cycle / will there be more of them added over time, like you mentioned in post about perks?

 

I can totally imagine that those perks will bring back some "old" features, like repeatable heroic on certain planets, or perhaps repeatable objective for daily heroic : planet (like complete 3 heroic missions on VoS). Maybe there will be repeatable objective to complete any ops (last boss runs anyone? :) ) or perhaps an infinitely repeatable crafting objective. Even if those perks don't exist now, they can be added later into Cycled guild perks... so there is hope for us :p

 

While I would love to see some additional objectives (like solo space missions objectives on weeks with lots of GSF objectives), I understand that it is probably not easy to balance it into existing conquest weeks.

 

I also don't see BW changing conquest drastically again (like remowing legacy restrictions, no matter how much we wish for it), so I am happy that there are at least some improvements made, so capping toons will be easier for most of players.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey folks,

 

With all of the Guild Changes coming in Game Update 5.10, we also wanted to make some changes to Conquests. As you will learn later today on PTS, Guild Leveling and Perks are tied directly into Conquests, so there is no better time than this update to make some changes.

 

Goals

Before we dive into the specifics we want to ensure that you understand what we are trying to achieve with Conquests in 5.10. Keep these goals in mind as you review the planned changes.

  • We want to continue to ensure you expect weekly consistency in Conquest Objectives. We are doing this for three reasons:
    • We heard your feedback from our first round of Conquest changes that you felt that there should be Objectives in every Conquest for most gameplay styles.
    • With Guild Perks, players will have the ability to add new Daily Repeatable Conquest Objectives to fit their Guilds playstyle.
    • Guild XP is tied to Conquest Points and so you need to know what to expect in each week’s Conquest reliably.

    [*]Create methods to allow players to earn more Conquest points.

    [*]Incentivize Guilds to commit earlier to prevent “planet sniping.”

 

Changes

  • The following Objectives have been added to every Conquest:
    • Complete any Chapter (repeatable)
    • Complete any round of the Eternal Championship (repeatable)
    • Complete Round 10 of the Eternal Championship (daily)
    • Defeat enemies anywhere, you must complete step 1 before you can complete step 2, etc:
      • 1: 100 Enemies (daily)
      • 2: 125 Enemies (daily)
      • 3: 250 Enemies (daily)

      [*]Obtain 8 badges in a Warzone (repeatable)

    [*]The following Objectives have been removed”

    • Defeat Imperial / Republic Guards

    [*]Guilds will now earn a small bonus on all Conquest points earned once they have committed to a planet. The team is trying to balance the bonus % between offering incentives to Guilds for committing early, and not “planet sniping” but we also don’t want to punish Guilds who don’t immediately commit. I am still working with the dev team on locking down the exact bonus but will get it for you next week.

 

In addition to the changes above, there are a number things that are a part of Guild Leveling and Perks which will also impact Conquest. Definitely take a look at those posts!

 

Please let us know your thoughts as Conquests are a big part of the Guild changes in 5.10. Thanks everyone.

 

-eric

 

I think these are good changes but pretty please ensure you tune that guild sniping avoidance thing very well and wise! I would actually prefer you do this the hard way (and only fair way in my eyes), basically like it was in the old system:

 

"You commit, you get a bonus from that very moment on, that easy, you don't commit and you simply don't get any bonus until you do, AND most important, if you don't commit until Friday morning you are out of the contest altogether for this week."

 

I think anyhting else ends up being a crap solution.

 

 

BTW, does the new "kill amount x mobs" objective replace the planet specific ones? I hope so.

 

And another BTW: Can you PLEASE replace that 100 % useless guild internal character based conquest ranking with a legacy based one? Who came up with that nonsense anyway to make it char based - this makes no sense at all and has no purpose...! :-)

Edited by Khaleg
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still misses the elephant in the room...activities such as those repeatable once per day should be PER CHARACTER, not per legacy.

 

I don't find it fun or engaging trying to map out once per day activities against characters to make sure a character with a chance at capping conquest is the one who ticks over the requirement for conquest - and adding more generic once per day activities such as 'kill x random enemies' just makes it that much more difficult to manage.

 

I also don't like the fact that the current system penalizes players who spend a lot of hours in game a few days a week over those that spend less total hours, but do so playing an hour or two every day.

 

Either make conquest a legacy wide activity with legacy caps, or make conquest activities character based - and balance it such that players spending similar hours a week can easily reach similar conquest goals, regardless of whether they spend the time over a couple of days or spread out over the week.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven’t been able to get on to look at these changes, but I am going to echo a few other posters. Of the changes listed I don’t see any improvements to multiple alt usage/ points gained on the same day. Please make the standard “unlimited” instead of the once per day per legacy.

 

If I want to get 400 points for each heroic mission listed, I want to be able to do it on as many toons as I can when I can log in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For our weekly personal rewards, can we please have some amount of the crafting mats that will be in the MM operation.

I’ve no problem with more dropping in the Operation, but it’s a little unfair that other players will be locked out of gather the mats.

This would provide a route to getting those mats and would also mesh with your plans for conquest and guild XP.

It’s a win-win for everyone.

 

I like this idea - it would put the MM gods mats on the same level as the ranked pvp mats. I.e. just add the MM gods mats to the same crate the transmatter thingies are in for each reward level

Edited by KendraP
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still misses the elephant in the room...activities such as those repeatable once per day should be PER CHARACTER, not per legacy.

 

I don't find it fun or engaging trying to map out once per day activities against characters to make sure a character with a chance at capping conquest is the one who ticks over the requirement for conquest - and adding more generic once per day activities such as 'kill x random enemies' just makes it that much more difficult to manage.

 

I also don't like the fact that the current system penalizes players who spend a lot of hours in game a few days a week over those that spend less total hours, but do so playing an hour or two every day.

 

Either make conquest a legacy wide activity with legacy caps, or make conquest activities character based - and balance it such that players spending similar hours a week can easily reach similar conquest goals, regardless of whether they spend the time over a couple of days or spread out over the week.

 

Are they keeping that system of one per legacy or changing it. I’ve not seen it announced either way (but I might have missed it).

Reading the dev posts, I got the feeling they may change that because of all the negative feed back they got about limiting it to just one Alt. I’ve no proof of course, it’s just something that would make sense.

If they aren’t doing that, then I’m with you. They need to change it so it’s the same for every Alt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I haven’t been able to get on to look at these changes, but I am going to echo a few other posters. Of the changes listed I don’t see any improvements to multiple alt usage/ points gained on the same day. Please make the standard “unlimited” instead of the once per day per legacy.

 

If I want to get 400 points for each heroic mission listed, I want to be able to do it on as many toons as I can when I can log in.

 

As someone who has to work each day, and has a private life window of only 4-5 hours before he has to get to bed because day starts eartly, I'm just not able to have this "as many toons as I can". My private life woindow is simply too short. I can have that only - because of that - for 1 toon per week, 2 if things are reaklly great. Nothing more.

 

So, from this point of view. legacy bases is okay, since I'm not able to play with more than 1-2 toons consistently anyway - because my private life window allows me only up to 1 - 2 1/2 hours for playing each day.

 

As a student, so long ago, I had so much more time at hands - I could play 5 hours per day if I wanted to.

 

I also don't like the fact that the current system penalizes players who spend a lot of hours in game a few days a week over those that spend less total hours, but do so playing an hour or two every day.

 

I don't want to be penalized over those who have so much time they can play with 5+ toons per week, and get their character's points full with each one of them.

Edited by AlrikFassbauer
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do love that you added the Eternal Championship to conquest.

 

But as a primary tank player, I'm concerned I can't do enough DPS to get sprint champion after the nerfs.

 

Agree with this. I will never do enough DPS to manage it on my tank.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looking from the outside, I see no help for small guilds.

 

^ This.

 

There is no appreciable benefit for small guilds from this change. Combined with the Guild Perks stuff, it's pretty grim - the gaps will just get bigger. If you wanted to kill of small guilds, why not just do it directly?

 

I mean, let's be real. Chapters are a time-sink (and honestly I'm already sick of having slogged alts through them). Even if they continue to reward the current amount, the ratio of time invested to reward is poor - and if they are changing them to repeatable, my bet is the reward amount is going down. Kill 100/150/200 is not repeatable, and again based on present payouts not an appreciable gain in earnable points (though at least it is a gain, so yay?). EC? Ugh, another boring timesink that is not likely to reward appreciable points (but another miniscule gain, so yay?). PvP - ok, that's potentially nice for folks who PvP, but it seems like 8 medals is not nearly the time sink that the other PvE activities represent. It's a valid comparison to make because that list of PvE activities is pretty solo-oriented. [Yes, you *can* group for EC, but why? Who wants to do the same boring 10 fights ad infinitum?]

 

I see no changes to repeatability of any other activities mentioned. I watched the stream, and the noises made there sure suggested there would be changes along those lines as well. Why not make some of the group-oriented PvE activities also repeatable? Or the event-related ones, like the Gree or plague missions? It is so frustrating to only get credit for one of those missions - it makes me feel like I'm wasting my time if I go on to complete any more than one an evening.

 

I'm the gm of a small PvE-oriented guild. We already don't make our conquest goals because of the strangle on repeatability by alts. This not only fails to help us in that regard, but means we also won't be able to reap any of the benefits of the coming Guild Perks as well since you've tied them to a system we can't win. And before the 'maybe you should just dissolve and join a large guild; crowd piles on, why do you feel entitled to tell others how to play? BioWare claims that they " understand that many players like to play with just their small circle of friends in small Guilds, and so the system needed to work for everyone." I'm here to tell them that, as currently proposed, it will not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Bioware,

 

do you remember the HUGE discussions that happened on this forum and elsewhere during the Spring when you introduced your conquest revamping? Do you remember how much negative feedback you got and that many people said that they would leave?

 

Now look at how little interest this yellow thread created so far. That's the result of what happened in the Spring. Many players left. And the remaining ones barely care for conquest anymore.

 

I suppose, you could call the new system a success? No haters anymore.

 

I myself am honestly completely "meh" about it. You could grant me 20.000 conquest points for doing old content I have done already in 2012. I still wouldn't do it. The only thing I am interested in at this point is new content. That's why all that matters to me is that Ossus will be good (from what I heard so far, it could be). I'm completely indifferent to anything else you do, like conquest or guild updates.

 

That's my feedback on that topic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Has anyone had a chance to actually get in and see the changes yet? I am traveling this week and won’t be able to get in until most likely the 19th or 20th. I am pretty vigilant with my conquest. The last few weeks I have been hitting upwards of 150k a week on my own so I am anxious to get in and see how these changes may effect the way I run my weeks.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why are you going out of your way to punish solo players? I play multiple alts, nothing in here to benefit me, in-fact all of it penalizes me and my preferred play style. This also greatly penalizes small family run guilds and now solo guilds which there are many such guilds now, made up of single players multiple alts. I am not asking you to take away any improvements for group players in what ever form that takes. Just stop with the solo player hate you have adopted.

 

Simply put, the way this game is heading it is no longer solo friendly which it is still being advertised as. Is our sub no longer wanted?

Edited by TalleraLane
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...