about 1 month ago - EricMusco - Direct link

Hey folks,

Following up on my post from last week around our Conquest/Rep changes in 7.4.1 I wanted to set the stage. As you know 7.4.1b is coming tomorrow but before you open the patch notes you will not see any changes yet around Conquests. We are still actively discussing all of the feedback you have been sending our way but I do want to confirm you should expect to see changes in 7.4.1c I just don't have them confirmed yet. I will come back and post them in this thread as soon as I do.

Thanks all.

-eric

30 days ago - EricMusco - Direct link

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