Attractiveness of conquests (borrowed from the French forum)

[HGus]

Hi. This was posted June 15th by A-CM @Erecura on the French forum:

Hello everyone,

Many of you have told me that you'd like to propose a change to the timetable for the conquests. It's true that 8pm is the time when many pilots are at dinner.
The purpose of this post is to poll everyone's ideas on this subject and to improve the attractiveness of the conquests. Please feel free to make suggestions and, of course, don't use this post for personal reasons to express your dissatisfaction with player participation.
I look forward to hearing from you.

A-CM Erecura

On following posts, I will transcript some of the answers not strictly related to the timetable.

I hope to get some suggestions from non-French players.

 

[HGus]

Proposed by @BlindSoBroke

A minimum reward for participation
Very often there is an imbalance in the winning teams.
As a result, one team dominates and the losers go home almost empty-handed after an hour of being 'blown up'.

Personally, in the conquests I've taken part in, I've often proposed a 60/40 split so that everyone is at least satisfied, despite the fact that the performance isn't always up to scratch, and to encourage people to come back to the conquest.

Setting up a matchmaking system
A system to balance conquests:
A PvP rating system that would determine the level of players and thus create a team average.
Depending on the ship's technology, this would at least put everyone on a more or less equal basis, but it wouldn't take into account players' personal experience.

Different game modes
The conquests are based on a game mode that everyone is familiar with: 'Capture the Flag'.
However, this might be a little redundant for some players, and we'd like to incorporate other ways of enjoying PVP, such as:
Kill counter matches (first to 100 KOs)
Round-based matches (with only one life per round)
Payload matches (NPCs to escort from point A to point B that only advance when you're nearby and no opponent is around).

 

[HGus]

Proposed by @NathVador

I'm following up on your survey of players about reviving the CQ on Trantor.
I agree with the ideas suggested by players:
* Immo (100% Abo bubble and vault) which puts all players on the same level.
* CrazyFalcOn (increase rewards) because it's more profitable to farm cryo or plans.
* Le Chat Noir ( to differentiate between PVE and PVP items ) to start with a base accessible to all, and gain better items through CQ.
A tasty mix of three ideas with variable times and days could give fairness and a new lease of life to CQs.

Note of Translation; What is "Abo bulle"?

 

[HGus]

Posted by @Monkey D Luffy

1. In my opinion, it would be beneficial to provide players with a crio vault and 100% energy for the PVP conquest event. This could encourage more participants to join and enjoy the experience.
2. In addition, it could be beneficial to reintroduce alliance clans into the clan versus clan function. This could encourage more people to participate and discourage frequent clan changes.
3. Removing the 3 day cooldown for players to join a new clan would be a substantial benefit, allowing effortless joining after participating in a CQ.
4. Here's another suggestion: consider offering rewards to players who have accumulated a significant number of bonuses at the end of each week.
5. PVP could be boosted by organising a tournament every month.
6. It could be very useful for OTB to have a way of randomly selecting teams so that everyone can play fairly and no one ends up in an unfair team.

 

[HGus]

By @ZelD

And why not have two modes of conquest? The current system and the other conquest mode would be a return to a more PvP and less strategic style. I'm thinking in particular of the first conquests at the start of the game.

For example:
- Team A vs Team B / possibility of adding a third team if there are a lot of people.
- Conquest ship playable in this mode (with no restriction on the number of players)
- The aim is to destroy the conquest ship
- Destroy the conquest ship = eliminate the Team
- In the event of a tie at the end of the allotted time (conquest ships still alive), a kill count system is used. The Team with the most kills wins the conquest.
- When the three teams are ranked, each wins either Cryo/Gravitons or even bubbles (to be fine-tuned for the rewards).

This would allow us to take our conquest ships out and have some fun!

Note of translation: again I don't understand what is "bulles". Is it "energy orbs"?

 

[HGus]

Suggested by @Eredin

My suggestion is quite simple, that the 5v5 minimum restrictions be lowered to a 3v3 to allow conquests to be launched more often (sometimes 2-3 players are missing ^^ and sometimes many more).
I'm very much in favour of the random team system being integrated into the game, because it's one of the reasons why people don't come at inconvenient times and don't want to.
Gold technology, why not for small systems (because it's not expensive ^^').

And small pvp events could be interesting and there could be random teams to avoid a gap between teams! (perhaps we should consider integrating a new rank into the game (see with the devs) to relieve the GM/CM and who can help with the monthly preparation because it requires quite a lot of preparation (in my memories of tournaments before)).

Despite the efforts that have already been made to make conquests more attractive (and I'm aware of the mistakes that have been made), I think that we still need to maintain a certain competitiveness in conquests and players need to be prepared to lose sometimes. Even with stories about randomness, people will complain, but beyond that there really isn't an adequate solution.

 

[Vesperion]

Note of Translation; What is "Abo bulle"?

Considering the context that OP is using the term 100% abo bubble and vault i assume that it refers to the point of "During CQ/OTB every participant on a CQ planet will have automatic 100% Ult Mem + Cryo vault active". Considering that the CQs take place in every system Vega is the system with the lowest e consumption of the items so that only a pod can throw you off heavily when you should use self mat while TC is of course the system with the highest e consumption so that your e will run out quickly and over half the time you may have to sit in an e-field to recharge if you have no membership at all.

I can only speak for myself but imagining to play the game without having at least ult mem is a pain when you basically shoot for 5 mins just to sit in the e-field then already. So i rather prefer to only rely on an e-field when i should have poded rather then sit every few mins in it. During CQ it would at least mean that even when you should have used self mat that you can still play if during the CQ time everyone has 100% e-flat for usage.

 

[HGus]

@Robin des Bois said:

About testricted tech (not Ancient):

I have mixed feelings about this, because all the players who love PVP and are very well equipped will be disappointed but will continue to come.
On the other hand, people who are very well equipped but don't yet have that appetite for PVP will be less motivated to come. Because it's hard to say you've spent a lot of time farming your plans on Sirius, but you can't use them.

I have another suggestion, related to this one: it might be interesting for conquests to be mostly with all items (Ancient & Gold), but sometimes to be limited to maximum Gold.
The proportion remains to be defined: 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 of conquests with maximum Gold.
In this way, everyone could be happy, because Ancient items are part of the game and for a big player they don't have much interest other than for PVP.

Another proposal would be to make it possible to lend a ship for the duration of the conquest to a player in their team, so that players who are very well equipped and have a lot of ships can give members of their team better equipment).

This doesn't mean that Gold conquests from time to time can't be an interesting way to play with items that are no longer played in the game because they're not as strong (a bit of nostalgia for our Gold items).

About randomizing the teams:

I'm in favour of this proposal because we often find ourselves in situations where players sign up together because they're friends and like to play together. This is understandable, but it creates sometimes significant differences in the level of the teams, which leads to other players not signing up because they know they're going to suffer for 45 minutes and won't enjoy themselves.
Bear in mind that OTBs are not fleet versus fleet, so if the members of an entire fleet who are used to playing together sign up for the same team, there's bound to be a major imbalance with players who aren't used to playing together because they'll be less organised and communication won't be as good. And communication and listening to the players is one of the most important elements in winning a match.

However, to be perfect, this system must come with a player level system so that the automatically generated teams are as balanced as possible. It's true that at first the teams won't always be balanced, but if a ranking system is included, the more conquests players make, the more balanced the teams will become.

On the other hand, I don't think 5 minutes is long enough to see who has what ship and to think about the composition of the ships we're going to make and the strategy we're going to adopt. I think it would take 10 minutes.

About alliances involvement:

On this point I'm more than in favour, because today an alliance serves no purpose other than to have an alliance chat, and that would allow the possibility of having more conquests in fleet against fleet I think.

About rewards:

I don't think we need to increase the rewards, but rather modify them, because I don't really see a problem with PvE earning more cryo.
I'll see what he comes up with once he's out of the way.

On the other hand, the problem is that PvP doesn't give you the chance to improve your equipment nowadays, so I think there should be different rewards available in the form of packs that you can select and choose 1 from the list.
Example: - Item parts (all Ancient items included, even if the player doesn't have access to Sirius)
- Parts of a cortex, as this can also make a big difference (even if the player doesn't have access to this cortex)
- Cryo
- Graviton
We'll just have to define the right quantities for it to be fair.
In this way, PvP will also be a way of evolving in the game and improving the quality of your equipment and ships.

About PvP/PvE tech:

I don't think we should differentiate between PvE and PvP items because, yes, initially everyone will be starting from the same base but if a new player arrives in 3 years' time, the problem of inferiority in terms of equipment will also be there. So the problem will be the same again.
On the other hand, as explained above, I think that PvP should allow players to progress in the game in terms of equipment, which will also be useful for the PvE aspect of the game.
As explained above, a ship loan system for conquest would also be a way of allowing new players who aren't yet very well equipped to come and play with the same weapons as the others, and therefore to balance the teams a little more in terms of equipment.

About different CQ modes:

I don't think we need to create another mode for the time being, the conquest system today I find good and enjoyable to play, I think that first we need to make it more attractive and balanced so that everyone wants to come and conquer.
In the second instance, however, I think it would be cool to increase the PvP content in the game, whether it's conquests or something else, but we'll have to create a new dedicated post the day we've made conquests more attractive, at which point we'll be able to develop more PvP content in the game.

About reduced teams:

I think that initially it's a very good way of allowing players who want to make conquests to be able to do more until we find a formula that makes as many players as possible want to come.

Note of translation: Phew!

 

[HGus]

Considering the context that OP is using the term 100% abo bubble and vault i assume that it refers to the point of "During CQ/OTB every participant on a CQ planet will have automatic 100% Ult Mem + Cryo vault active".

Thanks. From other post I understood that bulles (lit. bubbles) is used for energy orbs.

 

[HGus]

About an alternative CQ mode (tower defense system), @ZelD said:

Just like at the beginning of the game, when several fleets would fight each other until the conquest ship was destroyed.
To avoid alliances, we could perhaps allow teams that have been eliminated to have a sort of "post-conquest freecam". This would allow them to observe how the end of the conquest unfolds Or else, the last two teams MUST destroy the opposing conquest ship within an allotted time, 10 minutes for example. Something to think about in the event that the teams don't beat each other up to maintain a perfect tie... (I have no idea how to do this).

 

[HGus]

After @Erecura asked:

As far as setting up PVP events is concerned, you already have Colossus at your disposal, so do you have any additional ideas for improving what already exists?

@Robin des Bois answered:

In the event that my proposal made above with an alternative resource and a dedicated shop with this new resource obtainable only in PvP, would be implemented. It could be interesting to obtain this resource in wild PvP and in this way there would probably be more PvP directly on all the planets in pirate mode.


Create a PvP planet where you could fly from 1vs1 to 5vs5 in random selections depending on who is registered. The planet would have to be set for a period of 1 month, for example. As you fight your way through the month, an automatic ranking would be made.
And at the end of each month, rewards would be given to the best teams in the same way as in Colossus. The rewards could be the famous PvP resources I suggested above.
The idea would be that each month it would be different, between 1vs1 and 5vs5 and with a random selection of techno.
What could also be interesting, both for this new mode and for Colossus, would be the proposal of several technologies, item max, and 1vs1 to 5vs5 subject to a vote and that what receives the most votes is the next Colossus or for this new mode during the following month.

 

[HGus]

@Redthorne dropped this:

-----​

As I was reading the debates about what schedule should be chosen for CQ, an idea came to mind:
Why should we limit ourselves to one CQ per day?
We could totally have CQs starting every 2 hours, and let me explain what that would mean:
- Pilots who can't play at 8pm could simply come to another CQ at another time of day.
- PvP-loving pilots will be more than happy to bang each other more often.
- It would create an alternative to cryo farming on r5, which is a bore.

As for the question "But won't that be too many rewards?", let's compare my proposal to silly r5 farming:
With an n5 equipped with TC gold, solo on r5 you can farm around 200k per hour.
In a 5v5 CQ, if you win with a 60-40 score (which is common on Trantor), you'll get around 150k cryo for 45 minutes of play (which can be extended to around 1 hour if you include travel and registration), which you can only do once every 2 hours.
This would still be a less profitable alternative to PvE farming, but much more interesting from a gameplay point of view.
Another way of making the PvE/PvP combination more interesting would be to offer a cryo/plan booster (of moderate value, of course) as a reward for CQ, for one hour only. This way, alternating between CQ and PvE would become more profitable than doing only PvE or only PvP.
This would encourage players to take part in PvP, then move on to PvE. In this way, the 2 game modes would coexist in harmony, and not one 'against' the other. Of course, the booster would have to be given to all participants, with perhaps a slightly higher value for victory (e.g. 10% cryo for defeat, 15% for victory) so as not to discourage or put off those who aren't necessarily confident in their chances of victory.

The only thing that could be a problem would be the 3 gravitons per win. If we have a CQ every 2 hours, there is a risk of being able to farm too many gravitons, which I can think of 2 solutions for:
- Make the reward of 3 gravitons daily, i.e. a pilot can only get these 3 gravitons once a day, regardless of the number of victories.
- Drastically reduce the reward, giving only one or even no graviton for a victory.

There you have it, I think that in conjunction with other very interesting proposals in this post, this proposal has the merit of being studied.

-----​

About the rewards proposed by Robin, he said:

I have to say, though, that I'm opposed to this idea as far as plans and cortexes are concerned.

On the one hand, plans are one of the pillars of the game, and allowing pilots to obtain all of them without going through the standard progression mode (PvE, going out and hitting stronger and stronger mantis) presents a huge risk of destroying the progression curve, which is already quite damaged by all the pushing/assistance methods.
What particularly bothers me is the possibility of obtaining plans that the pilot wouldn't be able to get through 'normal' progression, especially old plans without access to Sirius.
An alternative that I'd find acceptable, however, would be to obtain any part of a gold plan that's already been started, which would effectively allow you to transfer some of the boring farm work to a more interesting activity, while still maintaining the notion of a progression curve (not getting where you shouldn't be able to by standard means).

As far as the cortexes are concerned, I think it would be more appropriate to discuss a rework of the reactor challenge, as these are relatively unimportant items and the method of obtaining them is self-sufficient and doesn't need to involve other activities. The very principle of obtaining cortexes is based on competitive PvE, not PvP. If players are allowed to obtain them in PvP, then the competitive PvE aspect is entirely invalidated.
(I wouldn't say no to a permanent ifrit challenge, though...).

 

[HGus]

Finally, the post that encouraged me to create this thread:

GM @Arwaen wrote:

A lot of different proposals and a lot of interesting ones.
However, there are two things that concern me:
- Firstly, since the opening of this thread on 15 June, only 8 different pilots have replied, which is very few when you consider the server activity statistics.
- Secondly, most of the messages posted come from players who are already more or less active in the conquests.

We'd like to hear from as many pilots as possible who don't take part in conquests to find out what changes they'd like to see, because the main target of this post is you. Players who like the current conquest format may have opinions on what could make conquests more attractive to try and attract as many players as possible, but these will never be as relevant as the opinions of people who don't like the current format.

So, if you're one of those pilots who might be interested but needs some changes to be so, we invite you to share it here, and even if it's already been said by someone else, it'll help us see what comes up the most so that we can target more precisely what's bothering you.

We look forward to hearing from you, and the more feedback we get, the better we'll be able to understand what you don't like.

 

[HGus]

Note from the translator: please send me some cookies.

 

[Redthorne]

Note of Translation; What is "Abo bulle"?

As a french player I can confirm that it's the membership.
"Abo" is short for Abonnement, which translates to Subscription/Membership
"Bulles" indeed means Bubbles, and it's the term we commonly use to refer to energy as a whole (not just the orbs)

Also, thank you @HGus for extending the reach of that thread to other countries, although some servers may have completely different points of view regarding CQs.

The reason why this thread exists is because we struggle to have the bare minimum of players (10) to even start a CQ. Some servers like Gaia have 50+ players ready to enlist at exactly 7:30pm.
As such, I'd like to have any suggestion-giver bear in mind that the purpose of this thread is to gather suggestions in order to attract players to CQs, and not a general "how to improve CQ".

 

[Vishnu]

Just my opinion but from hgus's activitiy stats its clear to me that the dwindling otb numbers has less to do with interest in otb and more to do with shortage of players. Even with 100 players active each week isn't it just lying to yourself (copium) that 10 players will show up for conquest. So maybe there should be more priority to fix this problem first?

Its pretty nuts that more than 60% of pg population is on 3 servers, with less than 2000 active players a week I struggle to see the need for 8 servers. The only fix I can see is Killing off 2 or 3 servers and relocating the players elsewhere.

 

[GOTIL0N]

Just my opinion but from hgus's activitiy stats its clear to me that the dwindling otb numbers has less to do with interest in otb and more to do with shortage of players. Even with 100 players active each week isn't it just lying to yourself (copium) that 10 players will show up for conquest. So maybe there should be more priority to fix this problem first?

Its pretty nuts that more than 60% of pg population is on 3 servers, with less than 2000 active players a week I struggle to see the need for 8 servers. The only fix I can see is Killing off 2 or 3 servers and relocating the players elsewhere.

The merger of servers always seems to me to be the quickest solution, you just have to play a little on Gaia for example to realize the wave of players who migrate, from Trantor, Aeria, Askone, Aurora, all to Gaia, I have even I've been tempted to abandon my home server but starting from 0 and removing everything again and enslaving myself again with each event, no please XD

 

[Vesperion]

The merger of servers always seems to me to be the quickest solution, you just have to play a little on Gaia for example to realize the wave of players who migrate, from Trantor, Aeria, Askone, Aurora, all to Gaia, I have even I've been tempted to abandon my home server but starting from 0 and removing everything again and enslaving myself again with each event, no please XD

At this point it is more or less alredy a broken vinyl record when the theme "Merge the Servers to increase activity for the game". Sure it might be the most simple solution to simply merge the servers and is in theory possible for Split according to Highway but will come with its drawbacks that certain things will not be transfered to the merged server.

This is requested since some time with several feedback that with pro and cons for merging servers. It certainly would help to fill less populated servers with more players when merging them together but would require to use the chat system we use in dinostorm to allow multiple languages to communicate better.

But merging servers is not a trivial thing to do as the state is completly independant and many things will conflict when merging them due to duplicate references etc. Many elements where players are referenced in will not be possible to be moved in a merge (ladder, clans, etc.). Simply speaking its basically a new server where only the players are moved to it with their belongings and everting else will need to be recreated on the new server.

Still this is something that will be evaluated in detail in the future.

Long story short you will keep your ships; BPs and cryos but will lose everything else with the merge. If this of course affects story progress and stuff as well is another thing and it would be a pain to redo all story missions again to reach Erebos again if i alone think of the 1st TC4 mission.

Aside from this Offtopic course i can only speak for myself and say that the CQ/OTB times do not fit my shift times as i mostly end my work shift at 7:30PM what is the start of the CQ/OTB so i can at best maybe participate them on my free days but from what i have noticed so far OTBs are not more so good like during their implementation so that i´m not really intrigued to consider them atm.

 

[GOTIL0N]

Personally, I wouldn't mind doing all the missions again, we're talking about a huge hype in which there would be so many players that doing missions would be a piece of cake, including the first one in Erebos, and yes, the CQ schedule in Gaia is at 8:00 p.m. New York time if I'm not mistaken, in any case, this has already been mentioned and that putting more CQ schedules that adjust to the different continents is also another solution

In the past with the old CQ system, there were 2 cqs per day, one at 6:00 and one at 8:00 which means that adding or adjusting hours is not something that has not already been done, so my account keep my BP, ships and cryo, I am more than satisfied to do everything that needs to be done in a hypothetical fusion

 

[HGus]

Please stay on topic. Leave the server merging stuff for another thread.

A long time ago, before the CQ rework, when there were still two CQs per day, I suggested in a lost post to divide the schedule with a time of 12 hours between the two. That way some people could play in the morning, especially since some like me worked at night most of the week.