Star Wars The Old Republic (SWTOR) revamped Conquest again in update 6.1.1., trying to make it more relevant to everyone. However, the changes worsened old issues and created new ones.
In this article, we will present our analysis of Conquest and our recommendations for SWTOR.
We assume that players came to SWTOR to have a "Star Wars experience" -- that's why SWTOR is using the Star Wars intellectual property at all. This is accomplished by investing time in a character, taking them through story arcs as well as the "mini stories" that give context and meaning to the more independent activities such as PvP matches, Flashpoints, and Operations. These experiences put them in or help them visualize being in a Star Wars episode or movie.
However, when players see that Conquest rewards are by toon, it is natural to want to maximize their rewards. Why score 200,000 Conquest points on a single toon when you will get the same reward for 50,000 points? Instead, why not spread play over four toons and get four times the rewards? Immersing yourself in the Star Wars experience on a single character becomes a handicap, and this is counter to what they came to experience.
Further, as Conquest objectives become easier to obtain, there is pressure to jigsaw together disjointed activities to optimally get the required score on different toons. Again this undermines the Star Wars experience they came for. Instead of a cohesive narrative, they are now doing disconnected events and (with the changes in 6.1.1.) assorted busywork.
Of course they can ignore this, but that starts to feel silly when they see everyone reaping multiples of benefits. It's like insisting on paying $2 for a single bagel when you can instead get 4 of exactly the same quality. We feel that having contradictory pressures on players is undesirable.
Recommendation: Make Conquest scoring by player Legacy. That is, whatever toon they choose to play, Conquest will be accumulated into the same account pool on the server. This way, players can at least focus their play on the narratives where Conquest is held during the week. The qualifying events surrounding the Conquest of the week should provide meaningful context and support the higher, overarching goal of SWTOR, which is to provide a "Star Wars experience".
Conquest by player Legacy is a key part of our framework for a "Real SWTOR Conquest" that aims to provide a "Star Wars planetary invasion" experience.
Per-toon Conquest undermines the concept of guilds in the game
The system of per-toon Conquest rewards is also contradictory to the makeup of guilds in the game, where membership is by toon, not by account.
Suppose a player wants to help their guild win a planet during Conquest. They could exclusively play one toon and get as high as possible a score on that one toon in the guild.
But why would they do that? If they had only one toon, that would make more room in the guild for other players who can contribute. But they are handicapping themselves in terms of rewards.
So the obvious solution is to bring more toons into the guild and reach the Conquest targets on each toon, thereby multiplying reward for a similar amount of work. But that would mean a smaller membership of players all ready to contribute. You can have 10 toons in a guild, but there's still only one of you, so you are taking up 10 times the space for the same contribution.
Now multiply that by maybe 100 other people thinking the same thing and trying to cram more toons into the same guild.
Another solution is to spread your toons around. But every toon you reach Conquest on in another guild helps that other guild -- which may be directly competing with your own guild for the same planet. Even if they were not, by spreading out your time, you are diluting your effort across multiple guilds, theoretically making it less likely for them (and by extension, yourself) to win.
Recommendation: As previously mentioned, make Conquest scoring by player Legacy. This removes the conflict of interest created by wanting to get rewards on several toons.
And allow players to come and go with their toons into a guild and track their score contribution in that guild by Legacy. This way, a single player can support a single guild and still play whichever toon they want, and removes the selfish desire to have several toons in the same guild. Combined with scoring and rewards by Legacy instead of by individual toons, players don't even have to toon-swap in this way much at all.
"Necessary" rewards promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons
A key distinction of Conquest in the Onslaught expansion is the "need" to do Conquest to get enough Solid Resource Matrices (SRM) for crafting. Simply researching up to the 306 item rating version of gear will require vast amounts of SRM, which is obtainable only from Conquest.
With this resource being so exclusive and in-demand, of course the player base will sell it at an exorbitant cost. So both crafters and sellers feel compelled to do Conquest, and on as many toons as possible, to cash in on this.
In fact, when Conquest was separated into level tiers, players were concerned that low-level toons wouldn't get the completely level-inappropriate SRMs for their Conquest reward. This concern reveals an underlying motivation for being able to complete Conquest on as many toons as possible, even using level-inappropriate ones to farm SRMs for crafters (or sale).
This type of motivation to do Conquest is flawed.
Conquest was always a key way to get the materials required to expand guild flagships, but there was another way for players to get them -- Battlemasters in (largely empty) PvP instances. But it is the only way to make any progress in Grade 11 crafting. Even those who would prefer to simply craft and not do Conquest would have to pay to get the SRMs, and at the cost players would charge multiplied by the vast quantities required, it's not sustainable. Combined with the allure of "easy Conquest on multiple toons", it's cost efficient to do at least some Conquest.
The need for SRMs shifts the reason to participate in Conquest and distorts whatever concept is behind it. We can in fact suspect the need for SRMs to be an ulterior motive for players to promote a Conquest model that made it easy to complete on as many toons as possible.
Recommendation: We feel that Conquest should be about planetary Conquest. Solid Resource Matrices should either be un-tied from Conquest or another source made available. Players should participate in Conquest to participate in whatever Star Wars experience Conquest represents -- not go through the motions to get as much of an exclusive resource in order to sell or for crafting.
Crafting also needs to be re-envisioned and overhauled.
Conquest as a reward multiplier promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons and worsens the problem of too many credits in circulation
If you think of time spent in the game, you can play the game, or you can play aspects of the game that reward Conquest. In the former, you get your usual rewards. But if you do the latter, you get the usual rewards... plus Conquest rewards immediately for achieving points... plus Conquest rewards for achieving the Conquest target score... plus Conquest rewards if your Guild also achieves the invasion target score.
Doing anything other than conquest objective activities simply doesn't compare to the immediate and delayed rewards of doing anything related to Conquest. This further puts pressure on the player to focus on repeating and jigsawing Conquest objectives, rather than actually playing the game and having a Star Wars experience.
Further, this excess of loot can have long-term detrimental consequences to the game. Roleplaying games have long identified that an excess of loot can result in undesirable game situations and player behaviours: The "Monty Haul" problem of too much loot and being unable to deal with the consequences.
SWTOR is already rife with billionaires to whom even a fully unlocked stronghold is pocket change. And the inflation measures in place to remove credits from the system have already (for example) priced basic furnishings so ridiculously high that a brand new player is confronted by basic furnishings that cost more than their starter apartment -- further pushing them to do Conquest for credits and abandoning their storylines, right when they are just starting SWTOR.
Aside from the excess of credits entering the game, XP and leveling are so unavoidably fast for new players that the Star Wars game experience is ruined from the very start.
Recommendation: Conquest is scored by replacing regular rewards with the Conquest contribution. This has many benefits. Assuming that the rewards are already "fair" considering the content done, then we have a benchmark for how activities are scored: We may simply replace quest completion XP and/or credits earned with a conversion of one or both into a Conquest contribution.
(In contrast, by inventing and tweaking a new set of Conquest objectives to be scored, SWTOR is making a new system that has to be balanced on its own, and there are bound to be issues such as a a couple of minutes of trivial busywork equaling the completion of one Veteran mode Operations, itself equaling the completion of one Master mode Operation.)
Players get their Conquest "payment" calculated when conquest ends, and it is entirely in Conquest currency, which can either be exchanged for more general rewards, or donated to the Guild for guild-specific rewards. In this way, smaller Guilds not ready for Conquest (e.g., does not have a Guild ship yet) can still have active members contribute toward getting more ready.
With these changes, when a player chooses to replace their reward with Conquest rewards, they are consciously and clearly making a choice on a per-instance basis whether they are participating in Conquest or not. And that participation leads to outcomes related to Conquest, in the form of Conquest currency that can be donated to the Guild.
The sooner rewards are reined in, the sooner players can be re-habituated to lesser rewards, and the problem of too many credits in the system addressed. When players get used to "Monty Haul" excessive rewards, they will start to demand more as the game progresses -- It is always easier to give more than to take away.
Suddenly pulling back on rewards might seem harsh but Machiavellian wisdom about having to do "bad" things still holds true: People will grumble but eventually it will be forgotten and accepted, so it is better to put all negative changes together (and conversely, to spread out positive changes over time).
Conquest objectives encourages players to focus on objectives instead of playing the game
Conquest doesn't accumulate until a toon is level 10, but that doesn't take long, and once they start stumbling over Conquest objectives, their leveling and credit accumulation accelerates. The game is already not very challenging and further accelerating character development to outpace the story just diminishes the gameplay experience further.
We've already talked about the various ways that players can be conflicted between playing the game and playing Conquest instead, and their negative outcomes. Now, for a new player just starting their Star Wars experience, they are immediately lured in other directions to quickly figure out Conquest and cash in on the rewards, instead of what they should really be doing: Learning the game in a paced way that doesn't overwhelm them or skip crucial features.
Recommendation: Make Conquest rewards an option instead of an additional bonus (see above) and keep new players on-track to learn aspects of the game. In every game, power leveling in any way by new players just creates incompetent players overwhelmed by the broad array of choices they suddenly have at a high level but don't understand at all.
In this article, we will present our analysis of Conquest and our recommendations for SWTOR.
- Per-toon Conquest undermines the game
- Per-toon Conquest undermines the concept of guilds in the game
- "Necessary" rewards promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons
- Conquest as a reward multiplier promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons and worsens the problem of too many credits in circulation
- Conquest objectives encourages players to focus on objectives instead of playing the game
- "Unavoidable" Conquest rewards ruins the new game experience for new players
- Conquest doesn't feel like "Conquest"
We assume that players came to SWTOR to have a "Star Wars experience" -- that's why SWTOR is using the Star Wars intellectual property at all. This is accomplished by investing time in a character, taking them through story arcs as well as the "mini stories" that give context and meaning to the more independent activities such as PvP matches, Flashpoints, and Operations. These experiences put them in or help them visualize being in a Star Wars episode or movie.
However, when players see that Conquest rewards are by toon, it is natural to want to maximize their rewards. Why score 200,000 Conquest points on a single toon when you will get the same reward for 50,000 points? Instead, why not spread play over four toons and get four times the rewards? Immersing yourself in the Star Wars experience on a single character becomes a handicap, and this is counter to what they came to experience.
Further, as Conquest objectives become easier to obtain, there is pressure to jigsaw together disjointed activities to optimally get the required score on different toons. Again this undermines the Star Wars experience they came for. Instead of a cohesive narrative, they are now doing disconnected events and (with the changes in 6.1.1.) assorted busywork.
Of course they can ignore this, but that starts to feel silly when they see everyone reaping multiples of benefits. It's like insisting on paying $2 for a single bagel when you can instead get 4 of exactly the same quality. We feel that having contradictory pressures on players is undesirable.
Recommendation: Make Conquest scoring by player Legacy. That is, whatever toon they choose to play, Conquest will be accumulated into the same account pool on the server. This way, players can at least focus their play on the narratives where Conquest is held during the week. The qualifying events surrounding the Conquest of the week should provide meaningful context and support the higher, overarching goal of SWTOR, which is to provide a "Star Wars experience".
Conquest by player Legacy is a key part of our framework for a "Real SWTOR Conquest" that aims to provide a "Star Wars planetary invasion" experience.
Per-toon Conquest undermines the concept of guilds in the game
The system of per-toon Conquest rewards is also contradictory to the makeup of guilds in the game, where membership is by toon, not by account.
Suppose a player wants to help their guild win a planet during Conquest. They could exclusively play one toon and get as high as possible a score on that one toon in the guild.
But why would they do that? If they had only one toon, that would make more room in the guild for other players who can contribute. But they are handicapping themselves in terms of rewards.
So the obvious solution is to bring more toons into the guild and reach the Conquest targets on each toon, thereby multiplying reward for a similar amount of work. But that would mean a smaller membership of players all ready to contribute. You can have 10 toons in a guild, but there's still only one of you, so you are taking up 10 times the space for the same contribution.
Now multiply that by maybe 100 other people thinking the same thing and trying to cram more toons into the same guild.
Another solution is to spread your toons around. But every toon you reach Conquest on in another guild helps that other guild -- which may be directly competing with your own guild for the same planet. Even if they were not, by spreading out your time, you are diluting your effort across multiple guilds, theoretically making it less likely for them (and by extension, yourself) to win.
Recommendation: As previously mentioned, make Conquest scoring by player Legacy. This removes the conflict of interest created by wanting to get rewards on several toons.
And allow players to come and go with their toons into a guild and track their score contribution in that guild by Legacy. This way, a single player can support a single guild and still play whichever toon they want, and removes the selfish desire to have several toons in the same guild. Combined with scoring and rewards by Legacy instead of by individual toons, players don't even have to toon-swap in this way much at all.
"Necessary" rewards promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons
A key distinction of Conquest in the Onslaught expansion is the "need" to do Conquest to get enough Solid Resource Matrices (SRM) for crafting. Simply researching up to the 306 item rating version of gear will require vast amounts of SRM, which is obtainable only from Conquest.
With this resource being so exclusive and in-demand, of course the player base will sell it at an exorbitant cost. So both crafters and sellers feel compelled to do Conquest, and on as many toons as possible, to cash in on this.
In fact, when Conquest was separated into level tiers, players were concerned that low-level toons wouldn't get the completely level-inappropriate SRMs for their Conquest reward. This concern reveals an underlying motivation for being able to complete Conquest on as many toons as possible, even using level-inappropriate ones to farm SRMs for crafters (or sale).
This type of motivation to do Conquest is flawed.
Conquest was always a key way to get the materials required to expand guild flagships, but there was another way for players to get them -- Battlemasters in (largely empty) PvP instances. But it is the only way to make any progress in Grade 11 crafting. Even those who would prefer to simply craft and not do Conquest would have to pay to get the SRMs, and at the cost players would charge multiplied by the vast quantities required, it's not sustainable. Combined with the allure of "easy Conquest on multiple toons", it's cost efficient to do at least some Conquest.
The need for SRMs shifts the reason to participate in Conquest and distorts whatever concept is behind it. We can in fact suspect the need for SRMs to be an ulterior motive for players to promote a Conquest model that made it easy to complete on as many toons as possible.
Recommendation: We feel that Conquest should be about planetary Conquest. Solid Resource Matrices should either be un-tied from Conquest or another source made available. Players should participate in Conquest to participate in whatever Star Wars experience Conquest represents -- not go through the motions to get as much of an exclusive resource in order to sell or for crafting.
Crafting also needs to be re-envisioned and overhauled.
Conquest as a reward multiplier promotes Conquest for the wrong reasons and worsens the problem of too many credits in circulation
If you think of time spent in the game, you can play the game, or you can play aspects of the game that reward Conquest. In the former, you get your usual rewards. But if you do the latter, you get the usual rewards... plus Conquest rewards immediately for achieving points... plus Conquest rewards for achieving the Conquest target score... plus Conquest rewards if your Guild also achieves the invasion target score.
Doing anything other than conquest objective activities simply doesn't compare to the immediate and delayed rewards of doing anything related to Conquest. This further puts pressure on the player to focus on repeating and jigsawing Conquest objectives, rather than actually playing the game and having a Star Wars experience.
Further, this excess of loot can have long-term detrimental consequences to the game. Roleplaying games have long identified that an excess of loot can result in undesirable game situations and player behaviours: The "Monty Haul" problem of too much loot and being unable to deal with the consequences.
SWTOR is already rife with billionaires to whom even a fully unlocked stronghold is pocket change. And the inflation measures in place to remove credits from the system have already (for example) priced basic furnishings so ridiculously high that a brand new player is confronted by basic furnishings that cost more than their starter apartment -- further pushing them to do Conquest for credits and abandoning their storylines, right when they are just starting SWTOR.
Aside from the excess of credits entering the game, XP and leveling are so unavoidably fast for new players that the Star Wars game experience is ruined from the very start.
Recommendation: Conquest is scored by replacing regular rewards with the Conquest contribution. This has many benefits. Assuming that the rewards are already "fair" considering the content done, then we have a benchmark for how activities are scored: We may simply replace quest completion XP and/or credits earned with a conversion of one or both into a Conquest contribution.
(In contrast, by inventing and tweaking a new set of Conquest objectives to be scored, SWTOR is making a new system that has to be balanced on its own, and there are bound to be issues such as a a couple of minutes of trivial busywork equaling the completion of one Veteran mode Operations, itself equaling the completion of one Master mode Operation.)
Players get their Conquest "payment" calculated when conquest ends, and it is entirely in Conquest currency, which can either be exchanged for more general rewards, or donated to the Guild for guild-specific rewards. In this way, smaller Guilds not ready for Conquest (e.g., does not have a Guild ship yet) can still have active members contribute toward getting more ready.
With these changes, when a player chooses to replace their reward with Conquest rewards, they are consciously and clearly making a choice on a per-instance basis whether they are participating in Conquest or not. And that participation leads to outcomes related to Conquest, in the form of Conquest currency that can be donated to the Guild.
The sooner rewards are reined in, the sooner players can be re-habituated to lesser rewards, and the problem of too many credits in the system addressed. When players get used to "Monty Haul" excessive rewards, they will start to demand more as the game progresses -- It is always easier to give more than to take away.
Suddenly pulling back on rewards might seem harsh but Machiavellian wisdom about having to do "bad" things still holds true: People will grumble but eventually it will be forgotten and accepted, so it is better to put all negative changes together (and conversely, to spread out positive changes over time).
Conquest objectives encourages players to focus on objectives instead of playing the game
When Conquest awards massive points for completing any mission on a planet (for example), this naturally encourages players to optimize their time by completing the shortest, easiest, possible mission on each planet, to the exclusion of all else. (Even an often easy bonus objective for a mission will award the Conquest score for the planet for the day.)
So for Belsavis (for example), why do any mission other than [HEROIC 2+] Jungle Flight on the Republic side with a character that can stealth past all the mobs and just click the quest objective body and complete it. Then why stay on Belsavis when you can move on to another easy mission on another planet to quickly get another score boost?
In fact, with 6.1.1., planetary objectives are common for every Conquest weekly theme, so there isn't even much point in doing much of the theme events when so many other sources (planetary mission objectives) help players make Conquest targets on their toons. Instead of even doing Conquest themes, players are encouraged by sheer common sense and efficiency to just play Conquest objectives.
In fact, with 6.1.1., planetary objectives are common for every Conquest weekly theme, so there isn't even much point in doing much of the theme events when so many other sources (planetary mission objectives) help players make Conquest targets on their toons. Instead of even doing Conquest themes, players are encouraged by sheer common sense and efficiency to just play Conquest objectives.
Recommendation: Make Conquest events about a region or the event instead of focusing player efforts too much with targeted rewards. This encourages players to participate in the event or play SWTOR in the conquest region, without encouraging them to jigsaw disjointed Conquest objectives instead of SWTOR the game. A mixed bag of unrelated objectives to increase a score is not a "Star Wars experience".
"Unavoidable" Conquest rewards ruins the new game experience for new playersConquest doesn't accumulate until a toon is level 10, but that doesn't take long, and once they start stumbling over Conquest objectives, their leveling and credit accumulation accelerates. The game is already not very challenging and further accelerating character development to outpace the story just diminishes the gameplay experience further.
We've already talked about the various ways that players can be conflicted between playing the game and playing Conquest instead, and their negative outcomes. Now, for a new player just starting their Star Wars experience, they are immediately lured in other directions to quickly figure out Conquest and cash in on the rewards, instead of what they should really be doing: Learning the game in a paced way that doesn't overwhelm them or skip crucial features.
Recommendation: Make Conquest rewards an option instead of an additional bonus (see above) and keep new players on-track to learn aspects of the game. In every game, power leveling in any way by new players just creates incompetent players overwhelmed by the broad array of choices they suddenly have at a high level but don't understand at all.
Conquest doesn't feel like "Conquest"
Previously, Conquest was strongly related to guilds and flagships. The main point of Conquest was to get the achievement and titles for conquering planets, and to improve your guild flagship. So it was sort-of related to Star Wars, even though you could have (for example) multiple Republic guilds fighting each other for the same planet. Which isn't really a "Star Wars" experience.
Long before the Onslaught expansion however, flagship encryptions were already so plentiful for sale that the need to actually do Conquest to expand guild flagships had already been deprecated and all that really remained were the achievements and titles.
With the Onslaught expansion, Conquest shifted to being a source of SRMs, so much of it became about crafting.
And now with 6.1.1., with the myriad of potential point sources, often completely unrelated to the Conquest theme of the week, Conquest has finally lost all meaning.
Participating in Conquest -- the actions performed to advance in Conquest -- are mostly completely unrelated to the theme of the week. Although this theoretically promotes "play your way and still complete Conquest", in practice (as we have discussed above) it actually encourages players to play a nonsense jigsaw of activities, further destroying any sense of identity for Conquest.
Recommendation: Step back from number-tweaking to write a clear mission statement for Conquest. Our recommendation for a "Real SWTOR Conquest" is: It aims to provide a "Star Wars planetary invasion" experience.
Strongly theme each Conquest. It's actually fine that not everyone can do every Conquest week with equal ease -- that gives each week's theme its own identity -- as long as there are a range of themes that everyone can enjoy participating at different events throughout the year.
Each Conquest theme may have more or less qualifying events, and that can adjust the conversion of Conquest points into actual rewards delivered after Conquest closes. In this way, not every event has to be tuned in the same way and structured in such a way that everyone has to have an equal chance to get a similar number of points per Conquest.
Where strongly themed Conquest events can become tricky occurs when only some of the player base regularly plays those events and/or with any proficiency. For example, a "Clash in Hyperspace" Conquest where the focus is on space battles -- Galactic Starfighter and Space Missions, to simulate in-space action -- not many people might like these at all but clearly those who do enjoy Galactic Starfighter (GSF) would finally have a chance to shine. This might drive players to queue for GSF and just not even try, simply to get Conquest points for the week.
It is then important that the other recommendations are applied in tandem. For example, when Conquest isn't giving additional rewards, but alternate rewards, then players who really hate GSF and Space Missions can mostly give that week a pass and do other things for regular rewards -- instead of feeling they are missing out on potential rewards.
Previously, Conquest was strongly related to guilds and flagships. The main point of Conquest was to get the achievement and titles for conquering planets, and to improve your guild flagship. So it was sort-of related to Star Wars, even though you could have (for example) multiple Republic guilds fighting each other for the same planet. Which isn't really a "Star Wars" experience.
Long before the Onslaught expansion however, flagship encryptions were already so plentiful for sale that the need to actually do Conquest to expand guild flagships had already been deprecated and all that really remained were the achievements and titles.
With the Onslaught expansion, Conquest shifted to being a source of SRMs, so much of it became about crafting.
And now with 6.1.1., with the myriad of potential point sources, often completely unrelated to the Conquest theme of the week, Conquest has finally lost all meaning.
Participating in Conquest -- the actions performed to advance in Conquest -- are mostly completely unrelated to the theme of the week. Although this theoretically promotes "play your way and still complete Conquest", in practice (as we have discussed above) it actually encourages players to play a nonsense jigsaw of activities, further destroying any sense of identity for Conquest.
Recommendation: Step back from number-tweaking to write a clear mission statement for Conquest. Our recommendation for a "Real SWTOR Conquest" is: It aims to provide a "Star Wars planetary invasion" experience.
Strongly theme each Conquest. It's actually fine that not everyone can do every Conquest week with equal ease -- that gives each week's theme its own identity -- as long as there are a range of themes that everyone can enjoy participating at different events throughout the year.
Each Conquest theme may have more or less qualifying events, and that can adjust the conversion of Conquest points into actual rewards delivered after Conquest closes. In this way, not every event has to be tuned in the same way and structured in such a way that everyone has to have an equal chance to get a similar number of points per Conquest.
Where strongly themed Conquest events can become tricky occurs when only some of the player base regularly plays those events and/or with any proficiency. For example, a "Clash in Hyperspace" Conquest where the focus is on space battles -- Galactic Starfighter and Space Missions, to simulate in-space action -- not many people might like these at all but clearly those who do enjoy Galactic Starfighter (GSF) would finally have a chance to shine. This might drive players to queue for GSF and just not even try, simply to get Conquest points for the week.
It is then important that the other recommendations are applied in tandem. For example, when Conquest isn't giving additional rewards, but alternate rewards, then players who really hate GSF and Space Missions can mostly give that week a pass and do other things for regular rewards -- instead of feeling they are missing out on potential rewards.
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