BioWare teased a few days ago upcoming changes to rewards for low level players. Today the confirmation for that arrives through a long and detailed post revealing specific changes coming to the Conquest system with Game Update 6.1.1!
SWTOR 6.0 Onslaught introduced a hell of a lot of changes to the game. We got an abundance of new features at the expense of new story, but that’s a different topic. The specific Conquest changes went somewhat under the radar, or so I felt about them.
About a week ago creative director Charles Boyd and community manager Eric Musco were guests to the OotiniCast guys. In Episode 382 hosts Chill and Dr. SWTOR discussed with the two guests several topics, but the one that caught my attention the most was the tease that the studio is actively working on providing meaningful rewards to all sorts of players and not just the EndGame population. Enter the 6.1.1 Conquest changes!
Coming with Update 6.1.1 community coordinator over at BioWare Daniel Steed announced a new set of changes to that system. These would affect the aspect of Personal Conquest and how it works for all sorts of players – low levels, high levels, endgame, farmers and casuals – there will be something for everyone.
“With the upcoming Game Update 6.1.1, we will be changing how some aspects of Personal Conquests work. Our main goal for these changes is to make Personal Conquests relevant to any character, not just an activity for players at max level. Our second goal was to add some quality of life improvements that help players in the right direction through clearer menu navigation.”
Conquest will offer more objectives
If you find yourself farming the same stuff over and over for your Conquest points, know that BioWare is watching you and the devs are aware of this issue.
“We feel the current Personal Conquest system has too high of a reliance on the automatic conversion of EXP to Conquest points. While this is helpful to allow players to experience content of their choosing, players who wanted to focus on their Conquest objectives found themselves lacking enough objectives to meaningfully contribute during a session.”
The devs are aware, Daniel writes, of the players’ demands for BioWare to “allow conquest completion per character”. Sadly, this is a big no-no for now. The reason is technical. The message doesn’t specifically say if the devs are working on this, but it does seem to be the case.
“Players have expressed frustration with the repeatability of Conquest Objectives, particularly Weekly objectives. Weekly objectives feel frustrating because they can be completed only once on a single character, forcing players to choose which character gets the lucrative amount of Conquest points.”
To address the issue and provide better flexibiity, more and new repeatable and Daily objectives will be introduced.
The Character’s level will matter more
The current level cap is 75. To provide more personalized and useful rewards to all types of players BioWare is splitting the rewards into different tiers (brackets) based on the character’s level.
Right now the Conquest system is only really beneficial to EndGame players. The resources and items you gain from Conquest don’t really help lower level characters, except to earn credits by selling some of the items earned.
Here is what the new tiers will look like and what rewards each bracket will offer:
Levels 1 – 49
- Mission EXP boosts
- These will be a new type of boost. These will offer bonus experience from Missions only and they’ll be stackable with other boosts. They will also have a shorter duration of 30 minutes per boost.
- Companion Gifts
- Credit Certificate (15k)
- Gathering Lockbox
Levels 50 – 70
- Mission EXP boosts
- Companion Gifts
- Credit Certificate (20k)
- Gathering Lockbox
- Heroic Box (Level Dependent Gear)
Levels 71+
- Credit Certificate (25k)
- Gathering Lockbox
- Solid Resource Matrices
- Tech Fragments
- Small Conquest Equipment Crate
“These rewards are locked in once the Conquest begins. For example, if a character starts the Conquest at level 45 and reaches level 50 half-way through the week, they will still get rewards for the level 1 – 49 range. The following Conquest will then update to the next tier of rewards. There are no plans to change Guild Invasion rewards.” – Daniel clarifies.
UI and new functionality changes
To make conquest participation easier, smoother and to overall improve the user experience, BioWare plans to add quick shortcut buttons to various activities.
“[…] if a Conquest objective requires you to complete a specific mission, you’ll be able to receive the Mission and travel to the Mission location right from the Personal Conquest window! We can bring you to the specific Flashpoint or Operation required, open up the crafting window for crafting related objectives, or grant you the Mission needed to complete objectives.”
6.1.1 WILL be on PTS, together with 6.1.2
This segment has been updated to reflect the follow-up announcement made late last night by Daniel Steed.
Daniel announced in a new forum post that the developers have decided to merge Updates 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 into a single PTS release. The server is expected to be live by the end of this week.
“[…] the team has decided to merge Game Updates 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 together, in order to make everything available on PTS. This way, everyone can get hands-on experience for how these Conquest changes work and we can have more iterations of feedback.”
The previously announced PTS was to include only 6.1.2, which brings new set bonuses, new class changes and Dxun’s Master Mode difficulty. Now these will appear together on PTS with the Conquest update.
Conclusions and expectations
Last, but not least, I would like to remind you that this is a preview. Things may change. There is no current release date for either 6.1.1 or 6.1.2. No info on when to expect PTS as well.
Daniel finishes his post with an announcement. Some time later this week we should see a more complete list of what the Conquest’s entire objectives list will look like.
What do you think? Does this make you want to run more Conquest or are you ignoring this feature of SWTOR? Why?
Find out everything you need to know about SWTOR 6.1.1 from my collective preview article.
