Eric Musco wrote another essay on the forums about changes coming to Conquest with the next hotfix update, 7.4.1c, and now you will read one from me on the same topic. This post has been updated to include the patch notes.
7.4.1c is the third hotfix patch for 7.4.1 and it will be focused on addressing changes coming to conquest (CQ) objectives. It is a response to the negative reaction from players following the initially unmentioned nerf to the “Advancement: Reputation” CQ objective.
Eric Musco, SWTOR’s Lead Game Producer, explained on the forums in great detail how they (accurately) interpreted player feedback to the initial 7.4.1 nerf, and then the change they were making to Conquest with the next update, 7.4.1c.
Musco announced 2 changes. First, access to Daily Areas will be unlocked Legacy-wide once you complete the associated story (tracked via achievement). For example, you will be able to do the Kessan’s Landing dailies on any toon once you’ve finished the (possibly Faction-locked) story on any toon in your legacy.
Second, the CQ objective “Complete a Heroic Mission” will now be available at all levels, not just from levels 10-49, and will be worth more points than before. This objective is infinitely repeatable and will be worth 2000 CXP (5000 CXP with max 150% SH boost), buff from its current base value of 1650 CXP per Heroic completed.
The initial reaction from players on the forums to these changes remains overwhelmingly and unreasonably negative. I brought in my unofficial anger translator for Broadsword, Endonangry, to explain why the negative reaction to the initial nerf was so unreasonable in the 7.4.1b Changes Overview.
Unfortunately, he is unavailable this time around, as he had already booked another speaking engagement with Koth Vortena, who hopes Endonangry can better convey to you how everybody’s lives on Zakuul are ruined after you turned a mildly lukewarm shoulder.
The change to daily areas is super nice. I’ve longed for the ability to do the newer daily areas on more than just a couple of toons. I expect that Iokath will also show up on the map, making it easier for raiders to reach the entrance to Gods of the Machine.
The CQ objective is also an elegant and perfectly reasonable solution that meets the criteria outlined by the complaints of the playerbase as Musco consolidated and paraphrased. Heroics are quick, and you should be able to rack up an additional 20k CXP in short order by completing one of the planetary heroic weeklies.
That said, Broadsword’s solution does not address the competitiveness of smaller guilds, though I think this has more to do with the current approach to yield sizes than conquest objectives.
Guilds have too much flexibility to punch below their weight class because the reduction to rewards is necessarily small. A large guild is only giving up 100-200 Tech Frags to conquer a medium or small-yield planet.
Given its popularity, the biggest issue with conquest objectives remains its insufficient rewards for pursuing more challenging group content. Currently, CQ objectives mostly incentivize busywork that can be completed quickly by everyone who can tolerate it in exchange for big number go brr.
To be clear, there are greater rewards for completing content at higher difficulties, but given that they aren’t sought after as part of regular CQ activities, the CXP incentive is insufficient to compensate for even the additional time required to complete said content.
For example, completing an entire NiM raid specifically only gives you the same CXP as you used to get from clicking a single button (Advancement: Reputation). Yes, you get credit for the lower difficulties as well, but NiM completion is still not enough to push you over 100k, and you could also get more than half of the CXP from completing VM.
On top of that, you have to think about the weeks or months progging a fight for the first time, all the time spent forming the group, or sitting in a buggy, restrictive, or otherwise non-existent group finder queue. Clearly, none of that is being accounted for in the harder difficulties where you need to be more selective with your group members to clear it in the first place.
Let’s not forget that this is just thinking in terms of making challenging content more worth a player’s time for CQ compared to other activities. Broadsword still needs to add a multiplier to incentivize players to do the harder content, get better at the game, and reward the investment, to the extent that such activities would be competitive with those spamming busywork objectives.
The same idea can be applied to PvP with objectives based on things like getting a certain number of objective points, damage output, protection, healing, etc. in a round, and constructing those objectives to only be achievable as a skilled player.
In my perfect (and decidedly biased) world, it would be amazing to see the most prestigious raiding and PvP guilds be competitive with the traditional multi-guild conglomerates that currently dominate conquest by completing the most challenging group content in the game.
Below, you can read Eric Musco’s full post on the subject:
Hey folks,
I am back to talk about the Conquest changes we are planning for 7.4.1c (stay tuned for a post in the next few days with more details on timing for this patch). Thank you again for the feedback since the original change in 7.4.1. It gave us a lot to chew on internally around our change, our goals for Conquests, and the friction that came out in the feedback you were passing on.
Reminder of what changed and why. In 7.4.1 we reduced the amount of Conquest points earned for the “Advancement: Reputation” objective by a fairly substantial amount. The reason we did this was to reduce the need for more reputation tracks in Galactic Seasons and bring it in parity with other objectives given the relatively low effort required. Since you could (assuming you had rep tokens on hand) simply log in and right click a token for thousands of points.
Now, coming off of that change we definitely heard some places where this had some knock on consequences that we wanted to take into account:
- Low Session Time Options – Whether this is for someone with a lot of alts or just someone on their main who wanted to dip in for a quick session, that Objective did allow a path for someone to be able to get points during short sessions.
- Supplemental Conquest Points – This runs a little parallel to the first point, but having so many points from the rep objective allowed for someone to be able to get their conquests completed generally by playing a variety of content and supplementing it by gaining rep/using rep tokens (aka quick, repeatable method of getting conquest points)
- Capable Across Alts – Again there is a venn diagram with the above 2 points, but, the rep objective was something that was powerful because someone with many alts could simply login (low session time) to bounce across alts as needed throughout the week to complete conquests.
- One quick aside on this point before we get to the Conquest change. While we were discussing your feedback we noted one point specifically about Daily Areas and alts. Many Daily Areas required a specific amount of crit path progression before you could access them and so this was a friction point for each alt, especially if you have many of them. We are changing this in 7.4.1c so that the requirement to access Daily Areas is now relevant crit path Achievement (instead of crit path completion on the character), meaning they will now effectively unlock across your Legacy instead of character by character. You are of course still free to unlock them naturally on each character via story completion if you wish, this just gives another path to unlocking them.
Ok, so understanding the feedback we heard and some of the problems we wanted to focus in on for 7.4.1c here are the two changes we currently have planned:
- The infinitely repeatable “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now available at all levels (previously only available from 10-49)
- The “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now worth 2000 Conquest points (up from 1650).
- This is 5000 points for those of you with max Stronghold Bonuses
Previously the infinitely repeatable Heroic Conquest objective was not available to anyone above level 49, so these changes should add another inflow of points to players completing those Heroics now. And we also increased the points players earned from that Objective at the same time to supplement it even further.
Heroic Missions are some of our fastest PvE content in the game. They have the added benefits of being soloable, alt friendly, and can be completed while playing other content such as Daily Areas. We felt targeting Heroics allowed us to address the problems raised from the 7.4.1 change while still requiring a bit more direct engagement.
All of that said, Conquests is definitely a place we are continuing to pay close attention to and plan to make more changes in the future so keep the feedback coming. Thanks all.
Eric Musco, SWTOR Forums
7.4.1c Patch Notes
Galactic Seasons
- Copero Stronghold access keys will be removed from the Mission Items tab following unlocking the corresponding rooms.
- “Anarchy in Paradise” Galactic Season Objective grants Blueprint Fragments as intended.
- The Galactic Season 6 Objective “Anarchy in Paradise” now rewards Blueprint Fragments as intended.
- The Northwestern, Northeastern and Southeastern “Eyto Eyto” mounts are now correctly available for purchase from their respective Galactic Season vendors on the Fleet.
- The “Freedom from FR3-D0M” objective no longer misspells “Legacy of the Sith” as “Legends of the Sith”.
Daily Areas
The following Conquest Objectives have been added for Kessan’s Landing:
- Kessan’s Landing: Mission Complete
- Kessan’s Landing: Defeat Enemies 1
- Kessan’s Landing: Defeat Enemies 2
- Kessan’s Landing: Weekly Patrol
The requirement to access the following Daily Areas has been updated to require only one character having unlocked that area previously (and having the relevant Legacy Achievement). Previously it required each character to individually progress their story to unlock them:
- Iokath
- Kessan’s Landing
- Makeb
- Manaan
- Onderon
- Oricon
- Ruhnuk
- Yavin IV
General
- Players who unlocked the “Mek-Sha Safehouse” before 7.4.1 should now have the unlock displayed in their Legacy window.
- Elevator sound effects will no longer play numerous times when exiting the elevator during Koth’s Date Night “A Place to Call Home”
- The infinitely repeatable “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now available at all levels (previously only available from 10-49).
- The “Complete a Heroic Mission” Conquest Objective is now worth 2000 Conquest points (up from 1650).
Items
- The Copero Umbrella (Blue) decoration can now be placed on Medium and Medium Narrow hooks.
- Voice modulation has been added to the Master Builder’s Headguard.
- Removed clipping bottles from the “Arrangement: Cantina Restaurant Pod” decoration.
Known issues list has been updated here.
swtor.com
Update 7.4.1c releases on April 3rd, 2024. Wanna hear more about what’s new with SWTOR these days? Check out our changes overview patch notes for the most recent major and minor updates, 7.4 “Chains in the Dark” and 7.4.1.
