Savage...10/10

In a previous post your empirical evidence were pictures showing armoring vs no armoring. Another user used the exact same method of empirical evidence except showing DPS gear vs Tank gear to debunk your point. You purposefully ignored that user because he made an insult. Just because people make insults does not make their argument invalid. To say no one has provided empirical evidence is false and especially when your qualification for empirical evidence was re-used by another poster. You made this long post and didn't even address specific points about developer interviews talking about tank stats being broken, acknowledging that player vs NPC damage is different, etc. You're right, maybe we are all wrong, but just as our arguments aren't convincing to you, your arguments aren't convincing anyone. You can argue group think all you want, but you'd think at least one person would've taken your side if your arguments had merit.

Hind sight is 20/20 and guild infrastructure was setup well before conquest came about. I think there is valid reasons to have different toons in different guilds, obviously from a faction standpoint. Though alts aren't really affected if you're doing one toon per faction. However, with the little dev team that SWTOR has left, I don't expect them to account for all possibilities. I mean do you really think they intended guilds to have multiple versions of the same guild winning conquest on multiple planets because people could put alts in different guilds? Maybe BW should've accounted for the possibility, but you can't believe that was the intended design. There was the DvL event (unfortunately I wasn't subscribed for that), but before that I don't know that there was any incentive to make alts beyond seeing all the class stories and maybe getting rep or gear faster for ONE toon since multiple weeklies would allow for more rep and opportunities to run ops. To say the game was designed around alts at the start though is a bit much. I don't think any MMO is designed around alts more than they would like to give players options that fit their play style. SWTOR is different in that it came from a solo RPG background, so I get people wanting to see all the stories. As far as endgame though, I don't honestly believe the developers intended all players to have multiple level 50 toons, or to even see all the stories especially initially. I can't really argue with your last point. What you say is true from my experience if you spend those 15-20 hours on multiple toons. However all I generally do is PVP, GSF and OPs so I guess I'm playing and have been playing the way BW wants me to. In that I am biased. I mentioned in my previous post there are some things I won't understand because I hate heroics and always thought crafting to win conquest was stupid. On these points we are going to just disagree. I will say GSF, PVP, FP, and OPs are the actual content that force you to group. The major gripe when this game first came out was there wasn't enough of that (there wasn't even GSF at all). Group content imo, is the key to mmo sustainability. This game is unique in that it features excellent story in the solo and leveling process. However, as BW found out, a lot players once done with their solo stuff leave. Also, to say smaller guilds aren't helped by the changes is not true. Maybe it doesn't help them in the way you want it to, but they have clear goals to hit instead of moving targets based on the top ten. Guilds know what the numbers to hit are and it is now stagnant allowing it to be easier to gain encryptions and build out guild ships. Before guilds would make pushes and be screwed because some guild came in in the last hour and kicked them out of 9th or 10th place. That effort was totally wasted in the previous system. Having read a lot of gripes in this thread, it's clear to me I play the game differently than a lot of people. That's OK. I mentioned what I thought were reasonable solutions to accommodate players with multiple toons while still allowing people with limited time to play to have an impact on conquest. I'd be curious on peoples thoughts about that.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think when I say high member guilds, I really mean high legacy member guilds. I believe that correction would solve you issue from reading your response. Maybe even have a qualifier of members that have logged in the past 30 days. Again I don't think the new system is perfect, but it definitely addressed a lot of the issues I personally had with it. I still think the new system can be better and I think people that casually play the game should have opportunity to really participate in conquest. I think we generally agree on that.

1. Thank you for reading my post. I commend you on that, I know it was a long read. 2. Yes I've done conquest. A bunch of times before I stopped playing and for a few weeks since I came back. Ironically, my guild (Rebellion on Satele Shan) was winning Nar Shadaa last week on Sunday so perhaps I'm biased on this (I don't know if we actually won as I went on a trip Sunday morning.) Still I believe my guild to be very casual and we went for the medium threshold yield. As of Sunday I was the 3rd highest toon in my guild for CQ at 42k. I did actually do Herocis, since the CXP was ridiculous for it, but I justified that because I was queuing for ranked pvp and that can take forever. I'm on a trip right now so I can't give you the total active accounts. I do know my guild leader just recruits various people to build up the guild and cleans out inactives after 30 days. We generally have a bunch of active accounts likely contributing to conquest from just normal gameplay. My one toon got a ton of conquest points doing mainly PVP and GF, with a couple heroics. Granted I really just play that one toon so that perhaps helps the alt argument. That's the thing though. My opinion is going to be different from anyone that plays a ton of alts as I never personally understood the point of it. I get seeing all the stories, and maybe having an advanced class per faction (you know with FOTM and all), but at most in my most ideal situation that's 16 toons. Again, that's my perspective on it. It is what it is. People were creating tons of alts well before conquest. I think conquest supplemented those players, but I think it went a little too far for reasons mentioned in my previous post. I find it odd you ask if I've done conquest when you don't even address my major gripe with the previous system of guilds having multiple versions of the same guild. I wouldn't know about that facet nor have participated in it had I not actually done conquest and had a grasp of how to get achievements for it previously.

Mildly annoyed is a better representation of how I feel than shafted. The wording to me does matter in the sense it got me to get excited when they promoted "Subscriber rewards" only to find it was something I already had. It's truly trivial in the scheme of why I play the game though. I agree with this. Was more or less commenting about people being super upset because "exclusive" and other people are getting companions they should "never" get. As if other people having Nico and Shae affect their game play. Petty. I subscribe because I enjoy the game, not rewards. That is icing on the cake. I just would rather if they add icing, they find a better way to make everyone happy. I used the word veteran to showcase that long-term players aren't getting anything out of this deal despite it saying "subscriber rewards". Does it really impact me? Not really because like most of you I realize the subscription covers my access not random perks they may or may not give me. Adding veteran rewards would probably solve some of this stuff, but it wouldn't impact me personally as to why I subscribe. Again really don't care in the scheme of things, but BW could've done this better.

LOL, CM related, the only thing they fix on the fly.

Yeah, I'm super curious to see how the address the skank tank issue. I thought was the on of the main reasons they got rid of skill trees. I think the only real solutions is to take protection and guard out of PVP. I don't see you how nerf skanks without impacting PVE in any other manner. I supposed we'll find out.

I don't know that you actually disagreed with his argument in your post. I say this because I've done what you've done, but sometimes the cable company says f off (some of us don't have multiple options). In the SWTOR case, I believe the threat would be since you're doing this, I'm going to find another game, to which I don't believe anyone is actually leaving over this. Perhaps a better analogy would be a credit card promo that gives new customers a 50,000 point bonus while existing customers get squat and when you signed up a year earlier you only got 20,000 points. The point is companies do this or similar promotions all the time to imply exclusivity. I can't tell you all the times a credit card company, cable company, video game company, etc, has said sign-up by x date to get a reward, to only have a new promotion that is the exact same thing the next month or a few months. I'm not saying it's right, but legally I guarantee there is nothing wrong with it. More importantly, I think for the company the net positive of new customers feeling like they didn't miss out trumps existing customers that have stayed without any hint of a reward. People can argue about what was implied until they are grey in the tooth, but and the end of the day what are we going to do about it. Again I don't think anyone is unsubscribing over this, and if they are the net of additional subscribers is likely much more. EDIT: For the record, as someone that already has Nico and Shae, I feel shafted, but not because I care that new subs are getting them or I thought exclusivity was forever. More because they called it "subscriber rewards", yet veterans that are subs aren't getting squat. If they had named the promotion something else that doesn't imply (ironic I'm using imply...I know) all subscribers, like I don't know "new subscriber" rewards, I'd feel less shafted because of my points above and just deal with it. Don't tell me all subscribers are getting rewards when that clearly isn't the case. Well maybe they'll give old subs an additional Nico and Shae, but you get the point.

Man, a year ago I thought I'd never post on these forums again, yet here I have subscribed again and ready to rock. There is a TL;DR at the bottom for those of you that want to complain about things but not read a detailed argument. I've read through portions of this thread and I've got my own thoughts on this. I'm a player who was quite excited about conquest when it first came out, but my interest waned when I realized the effort it would take my guild to get top 10 and god forbid first place (particularly on weeks where there were only a few planets). The above being said and having been away from the game for nearly a year, I must say at a glance the changes do seem for the better in my mind. I cannot relate to the guys that were grinding mats for a year in, or doing Heroics daily in ~20 person guilds trying to win planets. I definitely didn't have the time nor the patience to commit to something like that and I'd rather be caught dead than soloing heroics. It seems those guilds have the biggest problems with these changes. The bigger guilds, I honestly don't see how the changes really impact them beyond personal conquest points/rewards on multiple toons. They, as a guild, still can win planets easily enough. There seem to be two issues; effort vs reward and accessibility to actually win planets. The effort vs reward, I tend to agree that needs to be tuned. The two issues, however, aren't mutually exclusive and I'll try to address my thoughts on both in a coherent manner. Effort vs reward impacts the smaller guilds proportionately to their accessibility to win planets. I don't normally seriously play on multiple toons and getting your personal objective on one toon for the week seems just as easy if not more easy to do than it was prior to the changes. I think I hit my personal objective last week on Wednesday just doing PVP and GF for ops. It seemed to be a real grind for me as more of a casual player to hit on even one toon prior to this. If you have alts though, I guess I can see the problem as while getting your goal on one toon might be simple, doing it on multiple becomes more of a grind as you don't get the weekly bonuses per toon anymore. I know I'm just repeating what most you already have written, but it's important to address the multiple toon issue as I think from BW's standpoint it was kind of killing the point of conquest. That and BW has always tried to make changes to give casuals an easier time as they account for the mass majority of players. BW is at least consistent when it comes to that (see "subscriber" rewards and getting Nico and Shae, oh wait I already have them if I'm not a casual subsriber...) While I do believe the effort of small guilds should be rewarded, I think the proportion of people putting the kind of effort mentioned above to win conquest via crating and farming mats for over a year is likely incredibly small to the game population. Like I said, I would never grind mats for a year etc; that doesn't seem fun to me ( I realize that's not the case for a lot of you posting). The other issue I've seen addressed about alts were users complaining that the conquest changes impacting their ability to help multiple guilds in conquest. I don't think BW would give much merit to that argument as I believe that was not the point of conquest. While I don't give the multiple toons in multiple guilds argument much merit I think it's important to address because even though I don't like it, I definitely took advantage of it with a certain guild on the old Harbinger who had like 5 imp versions and 3 pub versions of the same guild. They would win multiple planets in the same week because #alts. I have many friends who would just put random toons in that guild depending on the planet they were going for, meet the conquest goal and get the conqueror achievements. Hell, even I did it as it seemed that would be the only way to do it (w/o doing the crazy year of gathering up of mats to make a push against them). Since alt gains were nerfed it has had a largely negative impact on the guilds that had multiple versions of the same guild. That I think is a good thing and I'm happy not see a certain guild in the top 10 on all the planet leaderboards, especially with there being only three planets to invade currently. The side effect, of course, is that the smaller guilds that were effectively doing the same thing but with all of their toons in only one guild were punished as well. I think for casual players or players that mainly use one toon, the changes are for the better. I think it's realistic now that you can create a guild, properly recruit and have a chance at the top 10. I think actually winning a planet is still hard, but it should be hard. Effectively the reward goes to the guild with the most unique AND active users. I've always thought that's how conquest should be. Some guilds are always going to be small or just a tight-knit group. BW has made it possible for those guilds to get rewards by hitting a certain threshold that isn't a moving top 10 target. While I think those rewards should be tuned, at least it's easier to get the guild reward. I believe it's more than likely that guilds that were just friends are getting conquest rewards for the first time, though only BW really has the data on this. I really need to emphasize the point about guilds with the most active AND unique users part. The old system and the new system aren't much different in the sense that guilds that have the most passioned and active users are going to win a planet. The biggest positive change to me is since the biggest rewards are now per legacy, conquest should (and I emphasize the word should) allow people with limited time or just casual players to have an impact on conquest. It also pretty much killed the idea of getting guilds that had multiple versions of said guild the ability to win multiple planets per week with their multiple versions. Many users may not agree (and passionately so) about my argument above, but I only use it for conquest specifically. If a user has unlimited time to play the game, they've still got a huge leg up on casuals in almost every other facet of the game, especially individual facets like gearing up for ops, being good at PVP, decorations, etc.; weekly and daily rewards per toon for GF, PVP, and Heroics are the same, if not better. BW made a calculated decision to make conquest more accessible to everyone. That doesn't mean winning conquest, but it does mean a small casual guild's ability to upgrade a guild ship, gain guild rewards, and maybe place in the top 10. A small active guild can still beat a large inactive guild, it's just a bit harder now; recruit and problem solved. At the end of the day, if a larger guild has the same proportion of active users as the smaller guild and all the accounts in both guilds put in the same amount of effort the larger guild is still going to win. The only difference is now you've got to put a lot of extra work if you really want to impact the guild as an individual past 1 toon per faction. From my perspective, that's a good thing. Keep in mind I don't think the new system is perfect, but I still believe it addressed a lot of problems. I think there should be active member caps (like the way they count if your guild gets exp and rep bonuses) and if your guild has over a certain number of active unique accounts, they can't invade lower tier planets. The ways it's currently setup doesn't let smaller guild really have a shot if you're going let large guilds go for small yield planets. That needs to be addressed. Rewards need to better as well; perhaps you get scaled rewards based on how many toons you hit the personal objective with to address the lower CQ points you get with additional toons. That way it doesn't impact the overall guild as much while still granting the individual a better reward to account for their efforts. I'm sure my opinion won't be super popular, but I also think the peeps that would agree with me aren't necessarily viewing the forums. Debate on. TL;DR - Changes are generally for the better and guilds that had multiple versions of the same guild are largely nullified since alt conquest rewards were nerfed. There should be member caps so high member guilds cannot go for small yield planets. Casual or limited time players can now have more of an impact on conquest since most big CQ rewards are once per legacy. Now the biggest impact of CQ on a guild is from the first toon being used. There is diminishing returns for alts but they should get better personal rewards for each toon they bring to the personal CQ objective to account for that. BW has always wanted casual players to be able to experience as much of the game as possible. They are consistent in their design decisions to make that so, so this really shouldn't be surprising.

So much this! What usually happens is that players that don't know any better get frustrated by the the two mezzes. Instead of instantly starting to cap once the second mezz is done and they have a full white bar timer to withstand a third mezz, they waste time using AOE trying to find the stealther. *Protip the whitebar always outlasts the cap timer when capping right away. Once they've lollygagged around for a while, conveniently letting their whitebar go away, they somehow assume the stealth just left the node for $h!ts and giggles and attempt to cap again. Now the stealther just repeats the process and the dopes trying to cap are typically none the wiser. While my above scenario accounts for just one person trying to cap, two+ people at the node should always be able to cap. Another annoying scenario you see (well typically not annoying for me since I watch the stupidity while doing this on my Op) is where two players know there is stealth in the area. Instead of both trying to cap, forcing the stealth to play his hand (because the mezz only works on one person at a time), one player will lollygag around giving the stealth even extra time to manage their mezzes. Point is, SPAM cap and you'll force the stealth out. Two players should allow two soft stuns to complete the cap. You could try to DPS them down, but as long as they have the combat stealth option available CC is the best strategy once you get them out of stealth.

I'm a pub and I'll definitely be there. I'll see if I can find a few guys to join as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a big cluster when this HK-55 Bonus chapter comes out because of they can't even calculate sub time in terms of getting my cartel coins on the right date. If it is a cluster I hope the customer service has improved since I last I had to use it.

I buy 2 or 3 crates each time a pack comes out, but I never actually open the crates. Those revenge crates were selling for 35 mil the other day. Sell two of those and you've got the vented light saber and some change. If you're really patient, you hold on to those crate and few months to a year after embargo, you're selling those crates for 50-100mil with the current inflation in game. Sold a Nightlife: Star Cluster crate for 58mil on GTN two days ago. Yeah I had it in my bank for almost a year if not more, but I took those creds and bought that saber. I've been doing this for about a year and a half so obviously i'm starting to reap the benefits, but you gotta start somewhere. TL-DR - Buy crates, sell on GTN. Never open them.

Icesmúrf / Sniper / Marksman/Engineering (haven't decided yet) / Empire Will be transferring my toon from Harb.