When Conquest was first introduced, Conquest was billed as a competition between guilds. The idea was for guilds to do things together, to get on a leader board, and to receive rewards for their hard work (originally only those guilds on the leader board received the weekly rewards). That worked out so well that Conquest was changed so that all guilds that completed their weekly target would receive rewards. Why? Because it became obvious that the idea of a competition between guilds did not work. Guilds could work their hardest and never get on the leader board, and thus would receive nothing for their hard work. So the reward structure was changed.

One thing that did not change were the achievements. To this day the only way to complete the Conquest achievements is to take the top spot on the leader board for that yield size. Just like the old reward structure, that does not work because the top spots on the leader boards are consistently held by a handful of guilds.

What achievements am I talking about? Open your Legacy window. Scroll down to Strongholds. Click on Conquests. Click on Conquer Planets. Choose a planet, Taris for example, and the achievement says:

"Conquer the planet Taris with your guild by topping the guild leaderboard in a conquest event. You must complete your contribution target for the event and log in within 3 days of conquering the planet."

Currently the recommended way to complete these achievements is to guild hop. To jump to whichever guild is in the top spot for the planet that you need, complete the achievement, then hop to another guild for the next achievement. This seems to go against BW's idea of a guild, and the coming changes to guilds will remove guild hoping as an option for completing those achievements.

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9912027#edit9912027

Currently there are advantages to taking the top spot on the leader boards, and Chris Schmidt reveals why having all the rewards at the top is a problem.

Unfortunately - the better the rewards and incentive at the top, the more wintrading and cheating we typically see

https://i.imgur.com/aAKBKfm.png

This was posted to the Theorycrafters Discord, and I realize that in that quote Chris was talking about PVP, but it holds true for Conquest, as well. I am not going to get into whether some guilds are acting unethically or amorally, but there is certainly an incentive to be at the top. Whether they get there ethically and morally, or by some other means, only a handful of guilds can even get on the leader boards, let alone take the top spot.

For example, here is a screenshot (all identifying information removed) that shows the small yield leader board for Star Forge one hour after the start of Conquest this morning.

https://i.imgur.com/RAdxjQA.jpg

On the small yield, one hour after the start of Conquest, there was a guild that already had over two million points. As of the time of this post the top nine guilds all have over one million points (#10 is not far behind) and the guild in the top spot has over 17 million points. The vast majority of guilds can not compete with those numbers. So now to my suggestion.

Taking the top spot on the leader board grants three things:

1. it completes the achievement,
   
2. it allows the guild to remove Conquest Commander shields early, and
   
3. it lists the guild as the conqueror for that planet (and puts their name on that banner that so often gets stuck on the screen and requires a UI reset to remove).
   

1. The Achievements

• Decouple the achievements from the leader boards. Change the achievements to require a set number of completed invasions in order to complete the achievement. For example, the current small yield planet for this week is Mek-Sha. If a guild chooses the small yield and hits their invasion target of 500k Conquest points then they have completed the invasion and the achievement would tick up to 1/X where 'X' is the number of completed invasions necessary to complete the achievement. I suggest no more than five completed invasions.
  
• Decouple the planets from the yields and rotate planets through all yields. Currently planets are tied to yield sizes. Dantooine, this week's large yield planet, will only ever appear on a large yield. All planets need to be able to appear on all yields so that guilds of all sizes are able to complete their achievements.
  

With so few guilds able to take the top spot those achievements are effectively locked away from all other players. Doing these two things will allow all guilds to complete their Conquest achievements.

2. The Conquest Commander's shield

• Change the shield mechanic so that any guild that has completed their weekly invasion has the ability to remove the shield and that ability resets each week with Conquest reset. So long as only a handful of guilds are able to take the top spot, and thus control the planet, they have a lock on those Conquest Commanders. Changing the shield mechanic to be available to all guilds that complete their invasion target opens up those Conquest Commanders to other guilds that may be able to take down a Commander but are not able to due to the conquering guild coming in and jumping in front of them.
  

3. The planetary conquerors

• Keep this, fix the banner so it does not get stuck on the screen and fades out in an appropriate amount of time, but keep the conqueror list and banner. Make taking the top spot on the leader board purely about vanity, but award no other in-game benefit to conquering a planet.
  

The reality is that Conquest has not been about a competition between guilds for quite some time, if it ever was. Putting all of the rewards at the top incentivized guilds to get to the top however they could. Whether every guild reached the top by purely above board means, or unethically and amorally, I will not comment, but the upcoming changes to guilds and the impact on Conquest certainly implies that some less than ethical or moral practices have been afoot. If these three changes were implemented then the achievements would be open to all guilds and their completion would be about the work of the guild and not whether one is able to get into the right guild for the right week, all guilds could, if they are able, be able to take on a Conquest Commander, and all the rewards and incentives would no longer be at the top. Being a conqueror of a planet would be purely about vanity and bragging rights and not about the rewards.

ETA: I want to attempt to get ahead of any attempts to derail this suggestion. I am not, in any way, asking for changes to be made to how guilds earn Conquest points. I am not asking for changes to the amount of Conquest points that are awarded for activities or the activities that are available. My primary goal is to get the Conquest achievements opened up to all guilds; hence the title. Secondarily, I would like to see the yield leader boards made purely a vanity list and remove the benefits for topping the leader boards. That would be accomplished by altering the Conquest Commander shield mechanic, which would open those Commanders up to other guilds and force some competition over them.

While I fully agree with the majority of your post, there is one point where I would go a step further:

1. The Achievements

• Decouple the achievements from the leader boards. Change the achievements to require a set number of completed invasions in order to complete the achievement. For example, the current small yield planet for this week is Mek-Sha. If a guild chooses the small yield and hits their invasion target of 500k Conquest points then they have completed the invasion and the achievement would tick up to 1/X where 'X' is the number of completed invasions necessary to complete the achievement. I suggest no more than five completed invasions.
  
• Decouple the planets from the yields and rotate planets through all yields. Currently planets are tied to yield sizes. Dantooine, this week's large yield planet, will only ever appear on a large yield. All planets need to be able to appear on all yields so that guilds of all sizes are able to complete their achievements.
  

Here I would remove the ability to select between small, medium and large yield and replace it with an system where you only select a Planet to invade and then your rewards are automatically increased as your guild progresses through the different yields and I also would tie the number of required invasions to the yield that your guild achieves, for example small yield would count as 1 completed invasion, medium as 2 and large as 3. One could even add a 4th tier for the very big guilds, for example 50 million+ points, that gives the same rewards as large yield but grants the achievement instantly. That would mean for sure that some players will still see the need to guild hop but you get the instant gratification crowd everywhere these days.

What I don't have, mostly because I simply don't care about them, is a solution for the conqueror banners since they would, under this proposed system, only ever show the top guilds in the highest yield bracket.

Edit: I forgot to add the reason why I would like to see such an automated system added:

I am the guildmaster of two small guilds (1 imp, 1 rep) for my family and very close friends. Curently we are going for medium yield invasions which we can easily complete with both guilds by Thursday or Friday. We could go for large yield but that would mean that everything would have to go without a hitch (like real life getting in the way). Under the current system the rewards are all or nothing, with my proposed change you would at least get the lower rewards that you qualified for.

I do like the idea of having a sliding reward system, and even thought of that along with being able to choose any planet to invade, but I am not certain of the capabilities and limitations of the game and so tried to keep things as close to the current system as possible.

With regard to the conqueror banner. I really hate the thing and wish we could turn it off, but most of that hate comes from the fact that it so often gets stuck on the screen necessitating a UI reset. If they could fix it so that it faded out within a reasonable time frame, and did so reliably, then I could live with it, but I would love it if it was just killed off. Leave the list of conquerors for the vanity and ego stroking.

While I fully agree with the majority of your post, there is one point where I would go a step further:

 

 

 

Here I would remove the ability to select between small, medium and large yield and replace it with an system where you only select a Planet to invade and then your rewards are automatically increased as your guild progresses through the different yields and I also would tie the number of required invasions to the yield that your guild achieves, for example small yield would count as 1 completed invasion, medium as 2 and large as 3. One could even add a 4th tier for the very big guilds, for example 50 million+ points, that gives the same rewards as large yield but grants the achievement instantly. That would mean for sure that some players will still see the need to guild hop but you get the instant gratification crowd everywhere these days.

 

What I don't have, mostly because I simply don't care about them, is a solution for the conqueror banners since they would, under this proposed system, only ever show the top guilds in the highest yield bracket.

 

Edit: I forgot to add the reason why I would like to see such an automated system added:

 

I am the guildmaster of two small guilds (1 imp, 1 rep) for my family and very close friends. Curently we are going for medium yield invasions which we can easily complete with both guilds by Thursday or Friday. We could go for large yield but that would mean that everything would have to go without a hitch (like real life getting in the way). Under the current system the rewards are all or nothing, with my proposed change you would at least get the lower rewards that you qualified for.

I like this sliding reward system too, and what ceryxp suggested in the previous post. At the moment I'll try ask in advance how much people are planning to play in my small guild to be able to decide what yield to go. We can get medium yield with normal game play, but it's a shame to not get the large yield rewards when we hit 5 million points some weeks. If we have a couple of pvp or gsf players active, large yield is fine. But if it's going to be heroics by a handful of players only, we are not going to reach the large yield target because heroics are not infinitely repeatable like a lot of other objectives are.

With regard to the conqueror banner. I really hate the thing and wish we could turn it off, but most of that hate comes from the fact that it so often gets stuck on the screen necessitating a UI reset. If they could fix it so that it faded out within a reasonable time frame, and did so reliably, then I could live with it, but I would love it if it was just killed off. Leave the list of conquerors for the vanity and ego stroking.

They could just move the conqueror banner to the planetary load screen. All planets have it. Load screens are up for about the same (intended) amount of time as the current banner, and it would automatically disappear as usual once the planet has loaded. They could also put more info on it than just the current conqueror if they wanted since you can't really do anything else during a load screen so it doesn't matter if you cover up 80% of the screen.

That said, I don't know if there might be some reason why the load screen for each planet may be required to be a static image. If there is a reason currently, this may require a bit of a rework that may introduce more problems/bugs than it solves.

Conquest is a competition between guilds. It isn't a competition between small guilds, and it never has been since its inception in 2014.

There have been several suggestions over the years to somehow scale points to the number of persons in a guild, to make all guilds viable. This hasn't been implemented, and there are probably good reasons why from BW's perspective.

Guild-hopping isn't required at all to get conquest achievements done. You do need to join a viable guild, however. Create an alt or designate one of your current alts as the one you complete these achievements on. The rest of your characters can all be in your main guild, i.e. the overwhelming majority of your time in-game can be spent in your own guild with those you prefer completing content with.

The larger guilds on the server I play on are generally welcoming. The one that typically wins requires 100k points for a given week, which can be finished in less than 30-45 minutes currently. At the end of the week's conquest, you get the achievement for the invaded planet.

While you may not have done much to win the planet, others in that guild collectively will have, and they deserve the win, as it isn't easy to organize and run a guild of that size, and it takes a lot of effort to beat other competitive guilds.

In other words, the achievements are earned in Conquest. You wouldn't be posting about Ops, FP, PVP, or GSF achievements you don't currently have access to by asking BW to change them, right? That would make the entire point of the achievements moot.

I likely won't ever get certain NiM Ops achievements because I don't have the patience to complete them in a progression group any longer. I'll only have the ones before Gods and Dxun.

And that's fine - it's a part of the game I don't engage with at the level required anymore, and accordingly I don't expect to gain the achievements for them. I don't expect BW to change the standards by which they are granted. Relating it to Conquest and your OP suggestion, it would be as though I were asking for the NiM achievement because I finished the SM version of the Operation X times. Using your Mek-Sha example, 500k points can be earned by a single player in 1 evening. Why should your guild get the conqueror title for that, when others have actually competed against other guilds, earning hundreds of millions of points for it, and won?

Conquest is finally in a good place, after years of changes. Lately, we see a lot of conquest posts, most of which have spilled over from guilds competing and the losing guild complaining, often with claims of cheating that actually have no merits and are false. The upcoming changes regarding the recruitment of low-level players are welcome, however.

Those are the result of a few guild leaders abusing other players and the spirit of the Conquest system. It would be very unfortunate to overhaul the way the entire Conquest system works because of a handful of irresponsible, cheating players. Since you brought up PVP, ranked players who cheat are dealt with - BW doesn't change the entire ranked PVP system because of cheaters or win traders.

Not all achievements can be attained without putting in the proper effort. Conquest is no different. Build your guild up to be large and competitive like the leadership of competitive guilds have done, which is a huge undertaking, or join one with an alt if the achievements are that important to you and you don't feel like putting in the effort into making your own guild competitive enough to win. The large guilds that have topped the leader boards have changed over the years many times, and you can certainly build yours to be the next one, if playing an alt in a larger guild isn't an option for you for whatever reason.

Conquest is a competition between guilds. It isn't a competition between small guilds, and it never has been since its inception in 2014.

Conquest has not been a competition between guilds since BW decided that only awarding the weekly rewards to those guilds that are able to get on the leader board was a bad idea and opened those up to all guilds that complete their weekly invasion. Further, if only one, two, or a handful of guilds are ever able to top the leader boards that is not a competition. That is a monopoly.

There have been several suggestions over the years to somehow scale points to the number of persons in a guild, to make all guilds viable. This hasn't been implemented, and there are probably good reasons why from BW's perspective.

What are you even talking about? As I said:

I am not, in any way, asking for changes to be made to how guilds earn Conquest points.

In other words, the achievements are earned in Conquest. You wouldn't be posting about Ops, FP, PVP, or GSF achievements you don't currently have access to by asking BW to change them, right? That would make the entire point of the achievements moot.

 

I likely won't ever get certain NiM Ops achievements because I don't have the patience to complete them in a progression group any longer. I'll only have the ones before Gods and Dxun.

Funny you should say that, "the achievements are earned in Conquest," because my exact suggestion is that guilds are able to earn the achievements by their own work. Also, what do OPs, FPs, PVP, or GSF have to do with this? Do the large guilds lock you out of doing that content? Do the large guilds somehow prevent a small guild of dedicated friends from doing any of those? No, but they do lock out all other guilds from completing the Conquest achievements.

And that's fine - it's a part of the game I don't engage with at the level required anymore, and accordingly I don't expect to gain the achievements for them. I don't expect BW to change the standards by which they are granted. Relating it to Conquest and your OP suggestion, it would be as though I were asking for the NiM achievement because I finished the SM version of the Operation X times.

Twelve friends can form a guild and complete every OP. Those same twelve friends can not, unless something unethical or immoral is occurring, compete with the large guilds to complete their Conquest achievement. The two situations are not even comparable.

Conquest is finally in a good place, after years' of changes. Lately, we see a lot of conquest posts, most of which have spilled over from guilds competing and the losing guild complaining, often with claims of cheating that actually have no merits and are false. The upcoming changes regarding the recruitment of low-level players are welcome, however.

Again I will quote my post:

I am not, in any way, asking for changes to be made to how guilds earn Conquest points. I am not asking for changes to the amount of Conquest points that are awarded for activities or the activities that are available.

I do not care what has been asked for in other threads. That is not relevant to this thread. Please remain on topic.

Those are the result of a few guild leaders abusing other players and the spirit of the Conquest system. It would be very unfortunate to overhaul the way the entire Conquest system works because of a handful of irresponsible, cheating players. Since you brought up PVP, ranked players who cheat are dealt with - BW doesn't changed the entire ranked PVP system because of the cheaters.

Actually, it was Chris Schmidt, Design Director for the game, who brought up PVP and acknowledged that having rewards at the top invites poor behavior. Further, they have changed PVP to address the actions of "a handful of irresponsible, cheating players." Why do you think vote kick was removed?

Not all achievements can be attained without putting in the proper effort. Conquest is no different. Build your guild up to be large and competitive like the leadership of competitive guilds have done, which is a huge undertaking, or join one with an alt if the achievements are that important to you and you don't feel like putting in the effort into making your own guild competitive enough to win. The large guilds that have topped the leader boards have changed over the years many times, and you can certainly build yours to be the next one, if playing an alt in a larger guild isn't an option for you for whatever reason.

Complete your invasion target and get the achievement. How is that not putting in the effort? All other achievements require you to put in the effort. The Conquest achievements require you to both put in the effort and be in one of the handful of guilds that are able to top the leader board. No guild can prevent me from completing any other achievement, and no other achievement requires me to join a specific guild so that I can complete it. The requirements for the Conquest achievements do not simply require you to put in the effort. I am asking that that be changed.

Final thoughts. My suggestion consists of two parts: opening the achievements to all guilds and opening the Conquest Commanders to all guilds. The first part, the achievements, does not affect you, or any other player, or any guild in the least. What does it matter to you if small guilds are able to complete those achievements? The second part, the Conquest Commanders. Currently all guilds must wait out the Conquest Commander's shield except the one that topped the leader board. My suggestion would open those Commanders up to all guilds, give all guilds the ability to take down the shield if they have completed their invasion target for the week. That kinda sounds like there would be actual competition between guilds to 1) complete their invasion target as quickly as possible, and 2) get to the Commander first before another guilds does. Ya know, like some actual competition between guilds instead of just the handful that can currently take down the shield.

I think a lot of the suggestions in the OP make a lot of sense. I won't pretend I've thoroughly vetted every single detail of ceryxp's proposal, but the general theme of 1) removing the "Named Commander Orbital Strike shield removing ability" and 2) the "Conqueror of [planet]" achievements and legacy titles from the leaderboards makes sense at this point in the game. The super mega guilds that dominate the leaderboard likely already have their flagships fully unlocked and all the achievements. I can only speculate as to the motives now.

I guess they could, in theory, dominate the GTN market for encryptions. However the conquest point changes over the years have made large yield planets accessible to pretty much any guild now, in terms of getting the guild goal. With enough patience, and alts, a guild can easily earn the frameworks at a decent enough rate to obivate the need to buy encryptions. So, if the motive is financial, its very limited in scope.

So if its not financial, could it be to lock out other guilds from the achievements? Maybe, but then these guilds would not have alternate guilds and pretty open recruiting. They don't really seem to care if people only join their guilds to earn the conquest achievements. So if they don't restrict recruitment, then by definition the motive can't be to lock out other guilds.

So that only brings us to prestige or attention. If that's the only motive left, then there should be no objection to disconnecting shield-strike and achievement titles from the leaderboard.

When Conquest was first introduced, Conquest was billed as a competition between guilds. The idea was for guilds to do things together, to get on a leader board, and to receive rewards for their hard work (originally only those guilds on the leader board received the weekly rewards). That worked out so well that Conquest was changed so that all guilds that completed their weekly target would receive rewards. Why? Because it became obvious that the idea of a competition between guilds did not work. Guilds could work their hardest and never get on the leader board, and thus would receive nothing for their hard work. So the reward structure was changed.

 

One thing that did not change were the achievements. To this day the only way to complete the Conquest achievements is to take the top spot on the leader board for that yield size. Just like the old reward structure, that does not work because the top spots on the leader boards are consistently held by a handful of guilds.

 

What achievements am I talking about? Open your Legacy window. Scroll down to Strongholds. Click on Conquests. Click on Conquer Planets. Choose a planet, Taris for example, and the achievement says:

 

"Conquer the planet Taris with your guild by topping the guild leaderboard in a conquest event. You must complete your contribution target for the event and log in within 3 days of conquering the planet."

 

Currently the recommended way to complete these achievements is to guild hop. To jump to whichever guild is in the top spot for the planet that you need, complete the achievement, then hop to another guild for the next achievement. This seems to go against BW's idea of a guild, and the coming changes to guilds will remove guild hoping as an option for completing those achievements.

https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9912027#edit9912027

 

Currently there are advantages to taking the top spot on the leader boards, and Chris Schmidt reveals why having all the rewards at the top is a problem.

 

https://i.imgur.com/aAKBKfm.png

 

This was posted to the Theorycrafters Discord, and I realize that in that quote Chris was talking about PVP, but it holds true for Conquest, as well. I am not going to get into whether some guilds are acting unethically or amorally, but there is certainly an incentive to be at the top. Whether they get there ethically and morally, or by some other means, only a handful of guilds can even get on the leader boards, let alone take the top spot.

 

For example, here is a screenshot (all identifying information removed) that shows the small yield leader board for Star Forge one hour after the start of Conquest this morning.

https://i.imgur.com/RAdxjQA.jpg

 

On the small yield, one hour after the start of Conquest, there was a guild that already had over two million points. As of the time of this post the top nine guilds all have over one million points (#10 is not far behind) and the guild in the top spot has over 17 million points. The vast majority of guilds can not compete with those numbers. So now to my suggestion.

 

Taking the top spot on the leader board grants three things:

1. it completes the achievement,
   
2. it allows the guild to remove Conquest Commander shields early, and
   
3. it lists the guild as the conqueror for that planet (and puts their name on that banner that so often gets stuck on the screen and requires a UI reset to remove).
   

 

1. The Achievements

• Decouple the achievements from the leader boards. Change the achievements to require a set number of completed invasions in order to complete the achievement. For example, the current small yield planet for this week is Mek-Sha. If a guild chooses the small yield and hits their invasion target of 500k Conquest points then they have completed the invasion and the achievement would tick up to 1/X where 'X' is the number of completed invasions necessary to complete the achievement. I suggest no more than five completed invasions.
  
• Decouple the planets from the yields and rotate planets through all yields. Currently planets are tied to yield sizes. Dantooine, this week's large yield planet, will only ever appear on a large yield. All planets need to be able to appear on all yields so that guilds of all sizes are able to complete their achievements.
  

With so few guilds able to take the top spot those achievements are effectively locked away from all other players. Doing these two things will allow all guilds to complete their Conquest achievements.

 

2. The Conquest Commander's shield

• Change the shield mechanic so that any guild that has completed their weekly invasion has the ability to remove the shield and that ability resets each week with Conquest reset. So long as only a handful of guilds are able to take the top spot, and thus control the planet, they have a lock on those Conquest Commanders. Changing the shield mechanic to be available to all guilds that complete their invasion target opens up those Conquest Commanders to other guilds that may be able to take down a Commander but are not able to due to the conquering guild coming in and jumping in front of them.
  

 

3. The planetary conquerors

• Keep this, fix the banner so it does not get stuck on the screen and fades out in an appropriate amount of time, but keep the conqueror list and banner. Make taking the top spot on the leader board purely about vanity, but award no other in-game benefit to conquering a planet.
  

 

The reality is that Conquest has not been about a competition between guilds for quite some time, if it ever was. Putting all of the rewards at the top incentivized guilds to get to the top however they could. Whether every guild reached the top by purely above board means, or unethically and amorally, I will not comment, but the upcoming changes to guilds and the impact on Conquest certainly implies that some less than ethical or moral practices have been afoot. If these three changes were implemented then the achievements would be open to all guilds and their completion would be about the work of the guild and not whether one is able to get into the right guild for the right week, all guilds could, if they are able, be able to take on a Conquest Commander, and all the rewards and incentives would no longer be at the top. Being a conqueror of a planet would be purely about vanity and bragging rights and not about the rewards.

 

 

ETA: I want to attempt to get ahead of any attempts to derail this suggestion. I am not, in any way, asking for changes to be made to how guilds earn Conquest points. I am not asking for changes to the amount of Conquest points that are awarded for activities or the activities that are available. My primary goal is to get the Conquest achievements opened up to all guilds; hence the title. Secondarily, I would like to see the yield leader boards made purely a vanity list and remove the benefits for topping the leader boards. That would be accomplished by altering the Conquest Commander shield mechanic, which would open those Commanders up to other guilds and force some competition over them.

100% agree with everything

I don't disagree with you in principle but why would a large guild then care about Conquest?

To remove the shield from the commanders which you would not bother killing if there was no conquest reward?

Right now, big guilds spend large amounts of credits (and/or resources) to keep their first place.

If you remove the titles from that, you should introduce something interesting to fight for.

Otherwise you are just saying "lets give everyone that titles"

While I fully agree with the majority of your post, there is one point where I would go a step further:

 

 

 

Here I would remove the ability to select between small, medium and large yield and replace it with an system where you only select a Planet to invade and then your rewards are automatically increased as your guild progresses through the different yields and I also would tie the number of required invasions to the yield that your guild achieves, for example small yield would count as 1 completed invasion, medium as 2 and large as 3. One could even add a 4th tier for the very big guilds, for example 50 million+ points, that gives the same rewards as large yield but grants the achievement instantly. That would mean for sure that some players will still see the need to guild hop but you get the instant gratification crowd everywhere these days.

 

What I don't have, mostly because I simply don't care about them, is a solution for the conqueror banners since they would, under this proposed system, only ever show the top guilds in the highest yield bracket.

 

Edit: I forgot to add the reason why I would like to see such an automated system added:

 

I am the guildmaster of two small guilds (1 imp, 1 rep) for my family and very close friends. Curently we are going for medium yield invasions which we can easily complete with both guilds by Thursday or Friday. We could go for large yield but that would mean that everything would have to go without a hitch (like real life getting in the way). Under the current system the rewards are all or nothing, with my proposed change you would at least get the lower rewards that you qualified for.

Scaled rewards would be great for small guilds. +1...plus all the other changes by op.

Scaled rewards would be great for small guilds. +1...plus all the other changes by op.

I like the idea of scaled rewards, but not sure how it would work in practice . Agree with this thread.

+1

I support this post's original purpose/comment: Opening up Achievements.

Today, I just saw in 30 minutes after I set my guild's invasion target on a small yield planet, a leader-board guild also set the same planet as their target and establish a 5.9 million point lead ahead of the guild that was bumped down to second place. While my guild was in fourth place, we had a thin chance of pulling ahead prior to the leader-board guild invading this small-yield planet. There were numerous other planets both small and medium yield it could have invaded, but it chose the one that gave it the largest numerical gap between first and second.

The leader-board guild would have had to earn approximately 1 million points per hour prior to setting invasion, after maintenance, to come in with that kind of lead. It is a guild that has no fewer than four branches participating in this week's Conquest and it regularly wins Conquest every month if not every week or so with at least one of its branches.

Opening up the achievements means that smaller guilds won't continuously be choked out of wins by guilds like this that become perpetual motion machines since a dozen large guilds with multiple branches can effectively take over a conquest with 24 planets relatively easily let alone at any other time.

A couple of weeks ago I proposed a slightly different idea were instead of x number of wins it was simply a secondary higher goal to reach in a single week however I do like your idea of spreading it out over a few weeks. How do you imagine the "win it 5 times" counter to work? Is it per player or per guild?

I went a step further with my suggestion as I propose removing all trace of the guild vs guild system. I'm not saying to change the objectives and I don't think you are either but we clearly both believe that the way people win should change and I think it's the perfect opportunity to end to years of conflict, abuse and bad blood.

The conquest system has bred countless dramas between players. The most recent manifestations being the rise of the mass ninja inviting guilds, the people slave driving new players to reach 200-300k to beat their rivals and the disgusting abuse of the forum and support system we've been seeing over the last few weeks. This game's history has shown us that as long as there is a player vs player aspect then the devs will always be playing a losing game of wack-a-mole catchup, despite their best intentions. Now is the time to break the cycle.

Well writ and well done!

For those few saying "participation rewards blah"... thats not what is being proposed. You still have to put in the work, you still have to meet the min requirement several times before youre qualified for the achievement. However, this would finally give ALL guilds a fighting chance at completing it. Not everyone wants to remove an alt from their tight knit group/guild just to throw them into a uber large guild for weeks if not months until you get the achievements you need. Its a huge morale booster when youre able to get it with the people you care about, your own guildies. This would make that possible. BUT you still have to work towards it which I believe we can all agree on.

The reign of the uber large guilds with tons of alt and sister faction guilds needs to stop. Also need to state that i have nothing against large guilds, I used to be in several which I truly enjoyed. But when you have a large guild always winning first on every planet available week after week (via alt guilds).... it gets old real quick. Dont get me wrong, Im all about good fair competition, but I just dont see that happening.

Well writ and well done!

 

For those few saying "participation rewards blah"... thats not what is being proposed. You still have to put in the work, you still have to meet the min requirement several times before youre qualified for the achievement. However, this would finally give ALL guilds a fighting chance at completing it. Not everyone wants to remove an alt from their tight knit group/guild just to throw them into a uber large guild for weeks if not months until you get the achievements you need. Its a huge morale booster when youre able to get it with the people you care about, your own guildies. This would make that possible. BUT you still have to work towards it which I believe we can all agree on.

 

The reign of the uber large guilds with tons of alt and sister faction guilds needs to stop. Also need to state that i have nothing against large guilds, I used to be in several which I truly enjoyed. But when you have a large guild always winning first on every planet available week after week (via alt guilds).... it gets old real quick. Dont get me wrong, Im all about good fair competition, but I just dont see that happening.

 

Agreed !!!

OP pretty much has a handle on it ...

IMO probably one of the better suggestions on the subject. At the very least something that the development team could review and incorporate it into their own way of doing things !!

How do you imagine the "win it 5 times" counter to work? Is it per player or per guild?

These are personal achievements that are completed through a guild activity.

I image just a slight change to the achievement. Currently they state:

"Conquer the planet Taris with your guild by topping the guild leaderboard in a conquest event. You must complete your contribution target for the event and log in within 3 days of conquering the planet.

0/1 Conquer of Taris"

My suggestion would change that to:

"Conquer the planet Taris with your guild by completing the conquest goal in a conquest event. You must complete your contribution target for the event and log in within 3 days of conquering the planet.

0/5 Conquer of Taris"

Each time your guild chooses to invade Taris, regardless of the yield, and you meet your personal Conquest goal, and your guild completes their invasion by meeting their Conquest goal, then the counter would tick up by one. Basically, if you receive the weekly guild Conquest rewards then your achievement counter would go up.

Under this system the guilds that are able to hit five million Conquest points would still have an easier time to complete their achievements, but all guilds would eventually be able to complete the achievements. For example, if the planets are CZ-198 is on the small yield, Balmorra is on the medium, and Alderaan on the large yield. A guild that can hit five million+ CP can choose any planet to invade in order to tick up the achievement count for their guild members. A guild that can only complete the small yield will choose CZ-198, and any guild member that has not completed the conqueror achievement for CZ will get a tick on their achievement. Now let us say that the next week Alderaan is on the small yield and CZ is on the large. Now that small guild can continue to choose the small yield and anyone in the guild that has not completed the conqueror achievement for Alderaan will get a tick.

I like what you're proposing quite a bit.

I have a question.

I've always considered the "conqueror of...." title to be the ultimate goal for conquest.

Not the Commander hunts.

I suspect many people do conquest, trying to hop from guild to guild, chasing those titles (which as you mentioned will soon be MUCH MUCH more difficult).

I would argue that a second counter be implemented.

If you manage to be in a guild that wins a specific planetary invasion 10 times (meeting the guild and personal goals, not being number one on the leader board) then you should get the title.

10 times for each planet...would take years and persistence that I think would be worthy of the title.

I like what you're proposing quite a bit.

I have a question.

 

I've always considered the "conqueror of...." title to be the ultimate goal for conquest.

Not the Commander hunts.

 

I suspect many people do conquest, trying to hop from guild to guild, chasing those titles (which as you mentioned will soon be MUCH MUCH more difficult).

 

I would argue that a second counter be implemented.

If you manage to be in a guild that wins a specific planetary invasion 10 times (meeting the guild and personal goals, not being number one on the leader board) then you should get the title.

10 times for each planet...would take years and persistence that I think would be worthy of the title.

I believe that is exactly what he is proposing. The title comes from the completion of the achievement. To give all guilds a chance at completing it, they are proposing that a guild just meet the goal, the player must meet their personal goal as well to get progression towards that achievement. Thus removing the need to be in a guild that wins first place. However, to keep competition alive, the guilds who win first place will still have their banner displayed on the planet they win.

Adjusting the timer on the commanders will give more guilds a chance at obtaining conquest points and encryptions and battle plans for their guild. Currently only a select few guilds control the commanders.

Edited to add: Welcome back to the forums Darev!

I like what you're proposing quite a bit.

I have a question.

 

I've always considered the "conqueror of...." title to be the ultimate goal for conquest.

Not the Commander hunts.

 

I suspect many people do conquest, trying to hop from guild to guild, chasing those titles (which as you mentioned will soon be MUCH MUCH more difficult).

 

I would argue that a second counter be implemented.

If you manage to be in a guild that wins a specific planetary invasion 10 times (meeting the guild and personal goals, not being number one on the leader board) then you should get the title.

10 times for each planet...would take years and persistence that I think would be worthy of the title.

There are 24 planets to be conquered. If they stick with three yields (small, medium, and large) each week, and rotate the planets so that they all appear in each yield at least once before repeating then it would take between 2.3 years (5x) and 4.6 years (10x), if starting from 0, to complete all of the conqueror achievements for a guild that can only hit small yield with dedicated play and completing Conquest each week.

The maths:

(24 planets * 5 completions) / 52 weeks in a year = 2.3 years (~28 months)

(24 planets * 10 completions) / 52 weeks in a year = 4.62 years (~55.5 months)

In my opinion, two years of dedicated play and completing Conquest each and every week of the year is sufficient time to earn the conqueror achievements.

If they doubled the number of yields each week (so 2x each of small, medium, and large) then I could see making the achievement require ten completions. Then it would take 2.3 years to complete all of the achievements if someone has characters in two guilds (such as one Pub side and one Imp side). Of course, someone could have characters in six guilds that, collectively, complete each of the yields and complete all 24 achievements much more quickly.

I think five completions is sufficient, but if BW increased the number of yield targets per week then I could see requiring more.

There are 24 planets to be conquered. If they stick with three yields (small, medium, and large) each week, and rotate the planets so that they all appear in each yield at least once before repeating then it would take between 2.3 years (5x) and 4.6 years (10x), if starting from 0, to complete all of the conqueror achievements for a guild that can only hit small yield with dedicated play and completing Conquest each week.

 

The maths:

(24 planets * 5 completions) / 52 weeks in a year = 2.3 years (~28 months)

(24 planets * 10 completions) / 52 weeks in a year = 4.62 years (~55.5 months)

It's actually half that time. It's not hard with ordinary gameplay for a *single* player to crank two guilds (whether that's one each side or two on one side, but one each is easier) to the small yield, so you could get two counts for a single week, one for each guild. (Depending on whether you can get two counts for one planet by being in two guilds, naturally, but for Total Galactic War weeks there are multiple small-yield planets each week.)

It's actually half that time. It's not hard with ordinary gameplay for a *single* player to crank two guilds (whether that's one each side or two on one side, but one each is easier) to the small yield, so you could get two counts for a single week, one for each guild. (Depending on whether you can get two counts for one planet by being in two guilds, naturally, but for Total Galactic War weeks there are multiple small-yield planets each week.)

You are right. The more characters spread out in more guilds completing Conquest would make it faster. Someone could have, assuming only three yields per week and a requirement of ten completions, 30 characters in different guilds that are targeting each of the three yield sizes and, if the planets aligned with the yields, could complete all of the achievements in only a few weeks. But realistically that has always been true for achievements. The more characters one has focusing on an achievement the faster they can complete it.

Actually, something I had not considered is would those completions count per character or per guild. Meaning, if a players has five characters in a guild, and all five of those characters complete their personal goal, and the guild completes the invasion goal, would that count as five completions for the achievement or just one since all five characters are in the same guild? That would dramatically reduce the amount of time to complete these achievements. A personal guild that only targets the small yield, but that has five to ten characters in the same legacy, would need, again assuming planets rotate without repeats, 24 weeks to complete the achievements if it counted per character.

Certainly some more consideration needs to be given to this. I do not thing that it should take years to complete these achievements with dedicated play, nor do I think it should be something that someone with multiple characters in multiple guilds targeting all three yields should be able to do in only a few weeks, either. In my opinion, one to two years of dedicated play to complete these achievements is sufficiently lengthy enough to merit the title of Conqueror. I leave it to BW to suss out the details.

You are right. The more characters spread out in more guilds completing Conquest would make it faster. Someone could have, assuming only three yields per week and a requirement of ten completions, 30 characters in different guilds that are targeting each of the three yield sizes and, if the planets aligned with the yields, could complete all of the achievements in only a few weeks. But realistically that has always been true for achievements. The more characters one has focusing on an achievement the faster they can complete it.

 

Actually, something I had not considered is would those completions count per character or per guild. Meaning, if a players has five characters in a guild, and all five of those characters complete their personal goal, and the guild completes the invasion goal, would that count as five completions for the achievement or just one since all five characters are in the same guild? That would dramatically reduce the amount of time to complete these achievements. A personal guild that only targets the small yield, but that has five to ten characters in the same legacy, would need, again assuming planets rotate without repeats, 24 weeks to complete the achievements if it counted per character.

 

Certainly some more consideration needs to be given to this. I do not thing that it should take years to complete these achievements with dedicated play, nor do I think it should be something that someone with multiple characters in multiple guilds targeting all three yields should be able to do in only a few weeks, either. In my opinion, one to two years of dedicated play to complete these achievements is sufficiently lengthy enough to merit the title of Conqueror. I leave it to BW to suss out the details.

All good points. I guess it depends on what Biowares goal is.

Personally I think they would need to limit it to one completion per legacy / guild per week. So If you had 5 characters in a guild it would only count as one. Otherwise the process could probably be done in under a month if you have 5 characters on each different guild that gets the achievement.

Where as if it was 1 achievement per guild that counts towards legacy, then it would take 5 times as long. Which is probably how Bioware would prefer it. So as to give people something to strive for over longer periods is their usual MO.