Conquest post 4.0 illustrates that the loudest voices will win in the end, but I feel like i need to say this, because nobody else is.

Guilds are supposed to exist for people with similar goals to join together to accomplish something fun. With 4.0 you made it so that only the 500 man, super impersonal guilds can compete in conquest under any circumstances. Now you want to double the guild member limit?

Why punish small guilds for staying small? Why not let people do full conquest goals on more than one character, rather than restricting all the non-pvp goals to once a week? Let small guilds do great things again! Stop giving super preferential treatment to the big guilds where nobody knows more than 5 or 10 other people!

Can I have some of what you are smoking?

Conquest has and always will be for big guilds.

I think increasing the size of guilds is good, however when it comes to guild activities then yes size should not matter to a large degree. I agree OP at the moment it does. Also small guilds will suffer more as member leave to the larger guilds.

At the moment we know size can be 1000, GM's have more abilities to organize there guild. Don't remember anything else been said that makes a difference to small guilds. If you cannot do conquest now, then makes no difference after the change,as you still wont do conquests.

So smaller guilds are not losing out (except if member leave) but larger guilds do gain.

Not all that fair, but who said life is fair.

I'm in a small guild, we regularly used to be in the top 10 during 5 planet weeks due to a concerted effort by people like myself who hit the conquest target on multiple toons (10 toons was my record).

The changes to crafting killed that stone dead, we simply don't bother with conquest now as we cant complete.

Can I have some of what you are smoking?

 

Conquest has and always will be for big guilds.

So, and when comes a thing like Conquest for smaller guilds ? Or are you calling them "peasants" ?

Conquest post 4.0 illustrates that the loudest voices will win in the end, but I feel like i need to say this, because nobody else is.

 

Guilds are supposed to exist for people with similar goals to join together to accomplish something fun.

Is that so?

Why punish small guilds for staying small? Why not let people do full conquest goals on more than one character, rather than restricting all the non-pvp goals to once a week? Let small guilds do great things again! Stop giving super preferential treatment to the big guilds where nobody knows more than 5 or 10 other people!

Because that's the way conquest works. If you don't like it, ignore it.

You know that Alts are very popular in this game, and some guilds attract people with a lot of alts, and the guild limit increase helps those guilds as well.

Any issues with conquest aren't directly related to Max guild size, as much as they are related to the design of conquest itself, even if some of the issues might be exasperated by them.

Guilds are supposed to exist for people with similar goals to join together to accomplish something fun.

Guilds are merely a group of people, whether they exist to have "similar goals", or "accomplish something fun" is purely up to the membership of the guild. Some guilds simply exist to get the experience bonus.

So, and when comes a thing like Conquest for smaller guilds ? Or are you calling them "peasants" ?

You sound like an SJW Simply saying that conquest is for large guilds, in no way implies that anyone is a "peasant". Get a grip.

it's worth noting that with the 40 alt cap, a guild with 1000 members could be as small as 25 actual people.

Seriously, there are people that create 40 republican characters on 1 server? Or 40 empire characters?

Seriously, there are people that create 40 republican characters on 1 server? Or 40 empire characters?

RL loyalty to the fictitious Sith Empire, pal.

Seriously, there are people that create 40 republican characters on 1 server? Or 40 empire characters?

Not realistically, no.

Conquest post 4.0 illustrates that the loudest voices will win in the end, but I feel like i need to say this, because nobody else is.

 

Guilds are supposed to exist for people with similar goals to join together to accomplish something fun. With 4.0 you made it so that only the 500 man, super impersonal guilds can compete in conquest under any circumstances. Now you want to double the guild member limit?

 

Why punish small guilds for staying small? Why not let people do full conquest goals on more than one character, rather than restricting all the non-pvp goals to once a week? Let small guilds do great things again! Stop giving super preferential treatment to the big guilds where nobody knows more than 5 or 10 other people!

This came up on another recent thread, and I still shake my head as I consider it here again.

What makes you think, that spreading membership of any Guild community among multiple guilds is suddenly going to help any guild achieve success in Conquest? Larger guild communities are currently scattered among multiple guilds, which means they can realistically take the top ten list on multiple planets each week. Or take up multiple spots on the top ten leaderboards of a specific planet. Regardless, smaller guilds are still competing with the efforts larger communities put forward. Numbers are numbers, wherever they happen to be gathered.

What these changes will effect more than anything, though, is easing the simplest management issues involved in supporting a guild's membership. Spending hours of time jumping between mutiple guilds to take care of members' characters invites, achieve proper rank and roster management, and allocating effective key distro and permissions among multiple ships and banks is disadvantageous to the player-base. What Bioware is doing is bringing their changes to character creation and management in line with Guild support structures, is all.

And heck -- it's not even enough! Our own guild still needs to maintain multiple guilds, even with the cap on characters doubled. We're hoping to see more changes as the game continues to progress, is all.

Seriously, there are people that create 40 republican characters on 1 server? Or 40 empire characters?

Yes. Even create multiple accounts so they can have MORE than 40!

The topic of what changes ought to come to conquests stands on its own, regardless of guild size and questions of "who conquest is for". The entire conquest system has been in major need of some reworking since day one.

I've written this all out in other posts here, but some of my thoughts on how conquests ought to be structured:

* The most important bullet point of them all = "once per legacy" objectives SUCK. All "once per legacy" crap needs to be eliminated and replaced with the more reasonable limitation of objectives which award points for completion of specific daily / weekly missions. If they fix nothing else about conquests, they MUST find every way possible to fix this.

The foundation - What puts the "conquest" in conquest?

* They need a mission terminal on each planet / daily zone called something like "Conquest Mission Terminal". They could build these up from what is currently the heroics terminals on each planet and the terminal with the dailies / weeklies on each dailies zone.

* Conquest Mission Terminals would contain tons of daily and weekly missions for activity in that location. Anything like: Heroics. Planetary rampage. Regional rampages. Priority targets (named guys who are mentioned in planetary achievements). World boss mission(s). Recon missions styled after the GSI dailies. Crafting / trade missions to deliver war supplies / prefab kits / assembly components / etc. to NPCs on the planet. Invasion mission (kill enemy commander and some faction base guards). Mission to defend a forward bunker (could be a new base for each faction added to each shared world map) against a few waves of NPC attackers. PVP missions which count kills in areas near commanders and forward bunkers. And anything else that they can think to add.

* For every planet covered in a conquest week, there would need to be a conquest objective granting points for completion of any mission on that planet's Conquest Mission Terminal. Planets with the GSI dailies should also count missions from that planet's GSI terminal.

* Scoring? Maybe scale the point value down to something like 100 points, but the bonus for selecting that planet as your target could be x5 and they could also have a disclaimer that weeklies and other select missions on the terminal count twice.

The core - What basic elements should all conquests have outside of on-planet activity?

* This selection of objectives would be infinitely repeatable grinds for all possible aspects of gameplay. If at all possible, all of these objectives ought to be scaled to give as close as possible to equal payout for equal time invested. Account for average queue times, average run length, average match length, etc. Ideally, as an example, 4 solid hours devoted to flashpoint runs ought to produce a comparable number of conquest points to 4 solid hours devoted to warzones. But this would be very hard to ensure with any accuracy so it won't be perfect.

* I'd propose that one core objective should state that it grants points for every 3 large boss kills... with a list of disclaimers establishing that solo FP kills count x1, tactical FP kills count x2, HM FP kills and SM op kills count x3, HM op kills count x4, and nightmare op kills count x5. Maybe also have something in there allowing world bosses to count for a kill and maybe SM instanced bosses (Golden Fury / Eyeless / etc.) count x2 and HM instanced bosses count x3. Oh, and in the current state of the game they'd also have to slot in the solo and heroic Star Fortress kills somewhere appropriate. And later on we'll also have Eternal Championship matches to consider placing in this list.

* That effectively covers many different levels of PVE activity with an infinitely repeatable objective that effectively scales itself somewhat to the difficulty and length of the content that you're taking on. (Most flashpoints are 3 bosses, although I think False Emperor has something like 7 bosses and on the other end of the scale you've got KDY which only puts you up against 1 boss per run. Any bonus bosses skipped or anything that players might skip for any other reason is credit towards this objective that you're not getting. Operations are typically either 5 or 7 bosses so that will just naturally add up to more points per run than a 3-boss flashpoint.)

* I'd propose that the warzone core objective and the starfighter core objective each ought to be based off of medals in some way. (Potential class balance issue for that in warzones though?) Award conquest points for every X medals earned in warzones. Award conquest points for every Y medals earned in starfighter. Scale X and Y around what an average player is expected to earn within an average match.

* I'd propose that crafting can be acknowledged here as well but it needs to be carefully metered. Maybe you need to earn credit for 30 "items" per each completion of the crafting core objective, but certain items will count for more towards that goal based on the level and type of materials used. (So stuff like grade 1 assembly components which are cheap and fast to produce only count x1 towards your 30 items, but more expensive items like universal prefabs or invasion forces or whatever else will give much more credit towards it.)

The themes - aka The part that they already got right except for certain situations...

* Each conquest has its own unique theme and emphasis. Some weeks might be a "flashpoint week", an "operation week", a "crafting week", a "warzone week", a "starfighter week", or whatever else. Or we also get some weeks with just a few select flashpoints or operations highlighted instead of it being all flashpoints / operations.

* The conquest system already covers this with additional objectives that give extra points for the specific things that the week is meant to be using as its theme. However...

* It lacks recognition of activity in other events that run alongside specific conquest weeks. Death Mark goes with Bounty Week, except there have never been any objectives in Death Mark giving conquest points for running bounties. The Gree event has its own dedicated conquest week, but the only event activity ever acknowledged by it is the "once per legacy" points for Xeno. Likewise, the Rakghoul event's conquest weeks only ever acknowledge Eyeless on a "once per legacy" basis. What's the point in having conquest weeks named after / lining up with these other events if we can't earn a few points doing the event dailies and can't even get points for the event boss on more than one character?

Scoring, competition, and Reward structure - What else could they have done?

* I say that the conquest system should have added a control terminal to the personal starships which would allow players to select a region on a planet as their legacy's target for the week, just as guilds can select a planet as their guild's target for the week.

* So players would be earning points towards three totals: personal, legacy, and guild. Players could be eligible for a bonus towards their legacy earnings and a bonus towards their guild earnings depending on target selection, as two separate bonuses that affect two separate things. Those bonuses also contribute to the personal total, but overlaps between them do not stack with each other. Also, give a stronghold bonus from player strongholds towards the personal and legacy totals and give a stronghold bonus from the guild stronghold and guild ship towards the guild total.

* Legacies would compete on a top 10 list for each region of a planet just like the guilds do for the planet as a whole.

* I propose that rewards should have been tiered across multiple target values. So you might only need to reach a causal-friendly 10k personal conquest points for the easiest but smallest conquest reward, then a medium sized prize package is somewhere around 20k or 30k personal conquest points, and a large prize is somewhere around 40k or 50k points. Players with different levels of time and dedication will have these different benchmarks that they can try to reach on a character within a week. Those rewards would all be received instantly upon reaching the required personal targets, just like how the personal reward already works. Instant rewards should also be received for reaching certain quotas in guild contribution. Although this would be a somewhat lightweight prize (similar to the medium personal reward). The meaty guild rewards that are conditional on placing in the top 10 would of course still need to wait until the week has passed.