Public Test for the "Conquest Rework" Update & Feedback thread

[destroier6]

Hello again, i will add few additional points to my feedback after further doing many many multiple CQs (lost the count but might be over 40).

8. Depletion of Areas

As highway mentioned on global chat, with the current system deployed on PTR, most areas run out quickly, leaving only 1 area for too long (20 minutes in case of a 5v5/6v6), that makes it quite repetitive and removes the strategy that could occur if multiple areas where still active, i think areas should start depleting way later, so its just a end-shift rather than a progressive depletion. Highway mentioned that this was a bug or something like that, but still worth to mention since its way more noticable in CQs of smallvssmall teams.

9. Ores dropped by players

Right now, unless the player u podded was flying the CQ Ship, u don't drop 100% of the times. That leads to some RNG situations were your win condition or a heavy advantage, can be really determined by pure RNG, in some fights u could wipe out the enemy team and they would always drop, and in others, it would be a "worthless" fight. I think we should not have such RNG, and players should always drop ores, but in a lower ratio, maybe half of the actual amount.

With this, strategies will be a lot more consistent and not anymore half-RNG based where one team could just win a CQ because "they were lucky". As an example, in some situations i killed someone with over 70 ores multiple times in a CQ, and he never dropped, the enemy side just stacked all the ores on him and only by RNG, we weren't ever able to obtain anything when killing him.

10. Gravitons

This is a never ending discussion, as we all know, but i would like to point out something, since the current CQ's last for 45 minutes, i would really prefer to see a 45 minutes cooldown in CQ rather than 30 minutes (or locked, but we know this isn't gonna happen). With the current 30 minutes cooldown, the gravitons don't even have much strategy, they are often used during the first 10 minutes of the CQ just so they can be used again in the last phase of the CQ, which basically removes any sort of strategy/joker playing just to obtain the maximum benefit out of the cooldown.

If the gravs in CQ planets would have 45 minutes cooldown, this situation would occur way less, and at least, players could only use 5 gravs during the full duration of the CQ, making it a bit less P2W

11. Respawn with energy

The actual respawn on spot mechanic lead to some situations where you can just be constantly rematting on the place just so the fight never ends in order to try to get a better chance, this isn't really fair since this remat is only doable with energy, which means that only users that paid energy packs could really abuse this mechanic, i don't have any idea to work around that, but this also occurs because in many situations it takes to long to get back from LZ to the areas that u were fighting, which makes respawning on itself way more time efficent.

Unreported Bug

Even tho that isn't feedback itself, i really couldn't add it as a bug report since i don't have any sort of evidence nor it happened to me. It seems there is a bug that many players experienced (even tho none reported it ) that basically forces the player to relog/recharge the area, when the enlist phase starts. that is because when this phase starts, for some players sometimes the pannel doesn't load up correctly and the players enlisted + the enlist button aren't showing for him. That is a bit annoying and i guess it would be good it gets fixed, but since i don't have any evidence since it never happened to me, i felt it was better to add it here

That's all the extra feedback i could have, im sure i might be missing some points, but maybe some other people could also bring their opinion. Thanks for listening to the community so much, it really shows a lot from the dev team

 

[Highway]

Public ptr is concluded for now. Feedback is welcome on how the current versiom and changes felt for you. Meawhile we work through all the current feedback and working out a plan to get the conquest rework ready for live release. And a happy new year to all of you

 

[NGSpeed]

1) Gameplay​

• before landing
  The moment of a conquest start used to be the moment when everyone is landing.
  Now we sometimes ended up staying in the orbit for 2/3 minutes, because countering the enemy team comp is so essential for the lategame that it is worth sacrificing the first 5-10 ores which already spawned.
  To solve this:
  1) every player in orbit only sees his clanmates, no one else. The ship icon in the enlist window gets removed and optionally the player's name aswell.
  2) three seperate orbits or instances of an orbit: one orbit/instance for each participating clan and a third orbit/instance for spectators. The ship icon in the enlist window gets removed and optionally the player's name aswell.
  
• a linear problem occurs again
  Let's just say there are two clans with 25 possible players, 5 of those played a lot and are very active.
  Their perfomance is significantly better then the other 20 players. The opposing clan has 10 very excellent players and they perform better than the other 15 players. The first clan wants to win and only allows the top 5 players to play to secure the win, the other clan can of course fill 5 players, but now they need to select. The other non-participating players get frustrated and the atmosphere in the clans might get very bad and a good clan atmosphere is what actually keeps us players the most. The reward is scaling, regarding to the formular shared from highway, linearly with each participating player.
  This won't produce high enough opportunity costs for a clan, because winning as 5 results for the top 5 the same as winning with 25 players. To reach high participants numbers the reward needs to scale for each additional participant slighty exponential.
  5 Players: Base reward for 5 players
  6 players: Base reward for 6 players * 1,1 (+10%)
  10 players: Base reward for 10 players * 1,5 (+50%)
  20 players: base reward for 20 players * 2,5 (+150%)
  So for each addition participant the reward increases. This will encourage us to invite friends into the game and try to become a bigger clan for more players on cq planets instead of purely wanting to just use the top players of the clan to secure a win.
  
• Areas and heatzones
  The fact that areas are only decreasing shrinks the planet and the gameplay changes to a position battle.
  The team conquering the final areas usually wins. The "conquering" character gets kinda lost into a camping at the final area. Resulting in a static, monotonous gameplay -> that is not fun on long-term.
  Too many areas will make smaller participants CQs kinda unpleasant. Not enough areas will change higher participants CQs to pure position battles.
  
  I guess there are three options for creating a more dynamic gameplay:
  1) sometimes one or two more areas are active again instead of depleting, also two or more areas can be deactivated at the same time while other areas activate (more areas on the surface will be used!).
  2) combine 1) with the dependancy of the participants for a battle.
  3) add bonus objectives: elite troops of NPCs which will drop ore or even a new score system as a mix of ore and completed objectives. On Cetacea there are already guardians, imagine how cool it would be if a mission marker appears on the map and moves around.
  
• Materialization
  Self-Materialization:
  Should be removed or only allowed once for a CQ.
  
  CQ-Ship Materialization:
  Any strong materializer is in pretty OP in general. Reviving teammates is too fast and cooldown too low.
  The fast materializing of the CQ-ship is actually broken. Any materializer should take at least 40 to 50 seconds (for outlasting the Citrine Graviton) to materialize the CQ-Ship.
  
• Mizar and higher techs
  obviously there is a meta which you need to follow in order to have a chance to win.
  The shipclasses and some single components still have to be adjusted, but this will take a lot of time to test and find out the optimum nerfs and buffs.
  During that time a shipclass should be limited to use. E.g. only X% of participants are allowed to use the shipclass Y. In my opinion 40% max. usage of a shipclass should be fine and most players have a decent pool of shipclasses to use.
  Else: Every clan is allowed to bann a shipclass, so overpowered classes will be less present.
  
• Scope Shifter
  Seemed to have no effect on the conquest ship, would be worth to take a look at it.(accidentally had bulwark-armor on the Bobcat xD maybe that was the reason, but still the scope shifter should have a noticeable effect)
  
• supportive interaction on the Deflection Droid
  I wanted to know what happens when the Deflection Droid receives a protector and the result was that
  no damage was deflected at all (tested against Mantis Signors on Mantis Hive). Next PTR phase I will check for other supportive item interactions, but to fix this I would recommend removing all of those interactions, since the purpose of the DD is not to stay on the surface forever.
  
  
• Drone balancing and HUGE BUG!!
  Nobody is paying attention into drones and their state in the game. With the release of the 2K20 Spaceball Drone the Assassin Drone was completely irrelevant. Adjustment and balancing came into the drones, the Assassin Drone and the Armor Drone got buffed from 5 to 10% effect (not sure if the Armor Drone was adjusted earlier).
  The Alien Pumpkin Drone is still there crying on 5% (buff needed).
  Since some drones have more than one effect the amount of energy to fill those got doubled!
  For non-ult-membership players this is very punishing, while ult-membership players weren't impacted at all, instead they will forget that drones consume energy.
  The regular Spaceball Drone (10% armor&damage) provides too much value and has a big bug which it shares with the Armor Drone. It boosts the Repair Droid! How?
  When adding bonus armor with a drone the flat amount of the Repair Droid should result into less total-%-healing, instead it stays the same.
  This means that the total healing amount on higher HP shipclasses is stronger than on low HP shipclasses.
  Maybe that explains why Chromian and Lava are so strong, consistent dmg output combined with high HP.
  I only tested this on Antares X-Tank - let myself get podded and repaired myself from 1HP with Antares Strong Repair Droid.
  Result
  with drone: 72% HP
  without drone: 72% HP (I expected this to be at least 76%, since less armor should equals more HP after RD)
  Besides that bug the Spaceball Drone (and all similar drones) is too strong, you literally need it all the time except visiting lower star systems with a high tech ship. It needs a nerf (to 7,5%) or the the Armor and Damage Drone need a buff (to 12,5%), so that the active drone slot has more adaptability to a shipclasses playstyle and more drones become attractive.
  Almost the same is for the 2K20 Drone (10% Speed&Crit) even tho the speed effect is less than the Speed Drone it overshades the Assassin Drone completely. The Assassin Drone needs to have a higher crit chance effect (buff to 12,5% or nerf 2K20 to 7,5%) for standing out.

2) CQs without merging servers​

small populated servers
Maybe they won't care about CQs if there are not enough active players or the few active clans are bored of always getting selected for the cqs and they will be able to just use a single mining ticket.

medium populated servers
Clans who are dominating cqs will only face each other, because the reward for other clans is not worth spending the time on a cq and the losing will make them feel frustrated to continue play cqs.

higher populated servers
More clans who aren't the strongest will try to participate, because the chance is higher that another clan of the same strength is gonna be their enemy. Problem: not enough conquests during a week to play and satisfy. Participating at a cq will be rarer than usual.​

3) CQs with merged servers​

Conquest times will be an issue due to different timezones and participating at a cq will be very rare if there are so many clans trying to participate. Generating war score as a clan will be very difficult.​

PS: New shipclass balance update needed immediately after CQ-Update!!

 

[Fission]

Hello @NGSpeed ,

Drones use the same concept as damage deflectors as far as i know, basically damage reduction. So its not that its boosting any repair power.

The drones that consume twice energy it isn't because they have higher %, but because they have multiple effects, like spaceball drone, spaceball 2K20 or energy drone.

Even with that, great feedback, the linear problem u described and the fix looks like it could really solve the issue

 

[NGSpeed]

Drones use the same concept as damage deflectors as far as i know, basically damage reduction. So its not that its boosting any repair power.

Well then the description is not correct or very missleading. Reducing the damage by -10% is more valueable than increasing the armor by +10%, because the overall repairpower is benefitting aswell. The shield and protector are benefitting a lot as well from that +10% armor rating (description text). Maybe a huge reason why Chromian and Lava are so broken?

 

[DaKuaz]

Feedback to the 2nd PTR Phase of Conquest Rework - Taco Tuesday Korell​

We from the PTR clan “Taco Tuesday Korell” collected our feedback for the 2nd PTR phase and summed it up for a smoother and cleaner forum thread (always think of the environment).


1. Graviton usage

Gravitons are a p2w mechanic at the moment because you get a huge impact on a fight if you use gravitons. In a competitive gamemode like Conquests there shouldn't be an easy button to hide mistakes. Now you can use a green one into a yellow and red one and get from zero hp to 30 seconds godmode. That can and will happen twice in every Cq as the cooldown is at 30 minutes.
The fights will be more fun and enjoyable if gravitons couldn't be used. The only balance on the PTR is that everybody can spam gravitons to counter it too.

Suggestion:
Change graviton usage
best option: player can't use gravitons at all during a Cq
needed option: increase cooldown to 45 min


2. Materialization mechanic

Fights are usually taking longer than one minute. Some fights tend to end completely unpredictable(or never) because players respawn at their squadron leader or their position and join the fight with all their items again while the opponent is vulnerable. For example we had a Saturn Cq where more than 50% of all ores remained uncollected at the end. This for there should be a punishment for dying in fights.

possible Changes:

• respawn at squadron leader/CQ-Ship 1,5 min with 25% hp and no landing protection
• respawn at the landing zone 1 min if there is NO area in the landing zone with 100 % hp + protection
• respawn at the landing zone 2 min if there is an area in the landing zone with 100 % hp + protection
• “materialize now” 2 min cooldown with 25% hp and no landing protection

Killing the protection in all tactical resurrect modes might sound hard but in our opinion it should be a well thought decision when and how you materialize.


3. Ore drop mechanic

Currently a win is often decided by the RNG of players dropping ores. As destroier6 already described, in a close cq somebody with 50-70 ores not dropping several times is the reason for a win/loss. Victory should definitely not depend on RNG. The RNG of areas is already enough.

Required Changes:

• Every player has a 100% drop chance
• Players drop 20% of their ores, Cq ship 20% (25%)

4. Area mechanics

a) Depleting Areas
+14 to destroier6.
Areas should start depleting only towards the end so that most areas are active for the main time period of the CQ. This should give a passive restriction for Paragneiss only strategies and will enhance more tactics during a cq instead of just clashing against each other with everything you got.


b) Global Messages
In addition to that, there should be a global message to prepare for areas depleting/entering heat mode so both sides can prepare and fight for valuable Areas. On many Cqs we were not even able to fight for a heat mode because it was over/75% over before we got there.


c) No Ores during the last 5 minutes
The last area depletes 5 minutes before the Cq ends. This highly supports hide and seek gameplay where the winning party just runs away from their opponent to avoid losing ores and the Cq. This running mostly happened in very close Cqs (45%-55% or similar differences).

A possible solution to this could be to let the last area drop a massive amount of ores at the end of the CQ to force a final fight. Like that the close Cqs can be decided by a massive fight if both teams were unable to get ahead of each other before.

Regarding this we think that 10-15% of the total ore amount should be dropped at the 5 minute mark. So both clans can fight for it and then collect. Like this it automatically stops the leading party from running when it is a close call. Either they fight and possibly lose their ores or the run and definitely lose the Cq because the opponent can catch up with the 15% ores dropped at the end.


d) Heat Modes
Heat modes work currently a bit strange, where there is a “dead time” in the beginning of a heat mode where you cant notice an increase in spawning ores. Maybe this is a bug but we are not sure.

Further it would be good to have more heat modes during a conquest even in smaller fights to not make the one heat mode too game deciding if you get it or not.


5. CQ Ship Strength

In pretty much all Cqs with a Cq ship we recently fought we felt that the Cq ship is still too tanky. Surely it should be the last man standing, but if it is the last man standing it is still often too hard to focus down. This is mainly because you won't be finished with killing before all killed enemies remat in LZ and get back to their still living Cq ship.
The other Items and DPS values seem pretty balanced. It is just the HP.

For the next PTR the HP of the Cq ship could probably be reduced by 30-50% and the Cq ship would still be the MvP. But when the fight is over, the Cq ship dies faster and therefore rewards the winning party with a longer time to work on their map control and organisation after the fight.

Also the Conquest Collector could be buffed as its a very slow ship and currently has way more value supporting in a fight than working as a Ore collector. With a collector buff it could get a new role within Cqs


6. Visibility of Mines, Turrets, Magnettraps and Aggrobeacons

With the increased view range the names of player items are now visible everywhere which is unnecessary. Turrets and magnet traps don’t need their name hovering above it.
The name could be displayed, when the player targets the turret or trap.
In addition to that: once several traps are placed there is an endless amount of useless text on everybody's screen due to rather long item names.

Further, Mines are visible “across the whole map” and behind walls which takes away all their purpose. Everybody sees them and they are no threat at all.
Please hide the names of all turrets, traps, mines, aggrobeacons for a nice improvement in gameplay.

Moreover it would be good to see enemy magnet traps in red, like the Mantis ones in Tau Ceti. Their visuals currently dont differ from friendly ones and that causes massive confusion sometimes when you dont know if you can pass a magnet trap or not.


7. Support big Clans

Currently a clan of five active players has all the power they need with no drawback at all compared to a clan of 25. Every player can get the same amount of cryo at the end and they can play with their five best players while the other clan faces issues like prioritizing people and a major Kryo loss because most people cannot participate.
We need some features to support big clans and encourage players to join them instead of gathering in multiple mini clans. Most Cq planets are designed for bigger fights and that kills fun when you play a 5vs5 on planets like Valkion or Mercury.

It probably requires multiple features to accomplish that.
Here are a few suggestions that could solve this issue in our opinion:

• +1 Mechanic: The clan with more pilots registered is allowed to land with more people (+1 for 5-10 players; +2 for 10-20 players, +3 for 20-25 players | Or +2 for all team sizes).
• Increasing rewards:
  • in a 5vs5 rewards x1
  • in a 10vs10 rewards x1.25
  • in a 15vs15 rewards x1.5
  • in a 20vs20 rewards x2
  • in a 25vs25 rewards x2.5/x3

Especially the +1 mechanic seems promising to tackle multiple problems at once. For instance playing with a smaller team on purpose (to grief your opponent) can turn into a risk of loosing the fight.
It will give clans a huge motivation to gather up in big clans to not get disadvantaged. The motivation will be boosted even more when beeing able to enjoy all sizes of conquest planets.

8. Leaderboard issues

Currently Warscore can only be generated by playing Cqs.
That means that on low populated servers where only a few clans participate in Cqs, the competition can be over after the first few matches and the winner can stall for the rest of the week. If there are only 2 clans competing, there is no way for the #2 clan to catch up with the #1 clan if #1clan decides not to register anymore.
No way for them to get the golden skull then.
Of course this only happens, if only 2 clans are playing Cqs but at some point this can happen on very low populated servers.

A solution to this would be to allow mining when only 1 clan registers.
With limitations so they can only get 50% of the ores and therefore only 50% of the cryo (based on a 5vs5 Cq), but also 50% (or 100%) Warscore, and the additional mining tickets. Basically similar like we already have it on live servers - Registered clan gets everything.
If nobody wants to play the Cq system or fight vs a specific clan then that should not limit that specific clan in playing the Cq system and catching up to their opponents.


9. Achievements

Some of the old cq/clan achievements need to be reworked as they dont make sense anymore (lonely wolf for example). It would be good to have more achievements for PvP and Cqs especially. From nearly 7k Achievement points the priority is clearly on PvE. 2000 or even more additional points to gain via cqs would be awesome. There is so much potential of adding new achievements like Kills, Ore collected, Wins,etc.


10. Sol 55 Tech on Mercury

This point might also end up very controversial, but we think the Level55 tech on Mercury is really boring and unbalanced compared to other star systems. It's a tech stage where repair power, damage, and ship armor dont fit together.

If there is a value demand for a non ancient tech stage we would rather go for Sol gold tech as a reminder for the passed times. Sure that would allow parsecs of all variants again but rather allow a wider spectrum of useable ships than restricting some ships because they lack items for level 55.


This Feedback was created and supported by following Players:
[Forum Name (PTR Name, when they differ)]
Gladiator
Meduna
Nago (_Sh4dow_)
N4P4LM
Judai (Acnologia)
Sorgenkind
Skyslide
BO0STER
(Mantis10)
Joel (Tschugger)
IchLiebeSpachtelmasse (.Noob.)
Leopard131 (Gepard313)
Kapljeu (Kapljeu_MerkelESPORT)
DaKuaz

 

[gonzaabel]

Well, like the most of the pilots from Aurora & Gaia don't want to spend time writing extended feedback and even don't want to participate on forums I want to write according to my sensations about the matchs played and what I have listened from my whole alliance on Gaia the firsts days and mates from my clan on Aurora.

First of, like I said and see on the first days (then almost 90% of Gaia leaved PTR..) is about the nice this new CQ system is compared to the previous one. The funny of have frenzy battles, not more staying into an area in a specific moment and the great of have real rewards (100000% better than 20 clan gravitons...) and the fairness thinking for small clans (no warpoints for kill to have all the same chance to win a skull according to %ores collected whatever the number of team size is, the same number of pilots for both clans, etc).
The good to have a Mercury CQ ship! This is really fantastic! With the high-populated conquests that planet have between the three great alliances during the past of the last year. (And a lot more that I cannot record & upload ) Don't believe me? Check it out and see how many pilots are there with 43 ships with lvl 55 tech builded only for that CQs on each video: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLat_l4uFH3VpN2xeZGF88lcY09EwGnWCy

That summarizing in few words, then after some conquests, a lot of people returned to the live server. They just entered only to see what's new. (Sadly )

In the second PTR with the increase of the time to resurrect, I heard many negative comments like it's too much time on rescue pod and it removes the frenzy battles that we see in the first PTR and we liked (and this does it). I also see it as an negative aspect because I liked how it was, always fighting. But I will agree to increment the time to use "remat. here" option with energy if a pilot quickly die more than one time on less of 3-5 minutes to avoid a big impact of that pay-to-energy option.

About the gravitons I agree with Destroier, because it is like he said. The best is to use it at the first 5-10 minutes to have it again around the end of the conquest. So I would like to increase the cooldown to 45 minutes on conquests planets.

Don't forget to make it to have minimum 2 conquest on a day, I think there will be a lot of clans of Gaia (even newly clans created from other clans being splitted due that many people could be out of conquests if we have an average of 10vs10 conquest, to say an example).

And also one small thing, I would like more the message after conquest if it says: "Clan X won a conquest on Venus against Clan Y" instead of "Clan X won a conquest on Venus". What do you think?

The CQ rework at least for people from Gaia is well accepted as it is. Because it is sooo much better compared with the current one.
Also there is some things that can be done before live release, like with the scoreboards... So much divisions for few clans, it needs a change because competition for skull also is a thing high valuated (overall for Gaia where a lot of weeks we had at least two clans playing hard to win it).

Hope to see it soon on the live server
Greetings!

 

[The_Ghost]

Whoever is flying the CQ ship and meets the min player count to use one should be boosted to the top of the enlistment queue.

Why do I feel the meta for CQs will end up being para camping the last area especially for smaller ones.

A good point with materializing CQ ship needing a time increase. Self mat could also do with a limit on how many times it can be done per CQ. When you pod dropping ore needs to be guaranteed rather than random.

Coloring hostile magnet traps red is much needed for CQs and hostile player magnet traps in general. Increased name visibility should be for everything but hostile mines (maybe as a game setting).

Totals on each side for kills, gravitons used, ore dropped (from podding) would be nice to see. Warscore and achievement changes still need to be done.

I think spectate mode could have a place on colossus for running out of lives or not having a ship for that system but wanting to observe.

And yes +10% armor should be changed to 10% less damage to better fit what it actually does.

 

[moddoo]

about the r55 sol CQ
its the only planet that i enjoy not being podded instantly with red gravis its shouldnt be changed really
u can just avoid doing CQs there i dont see anything wrong on that

 

[Getagripx]

Well then the description is not correct or very missleading. Reducing the damage by -10% is more valueable than increasing the armor by +10%, because the overall repairpower is benefitting aswell. The shield and protector are benefitting a lot as well from that +10% armor rating (description text). Maybe a huge reason why Chromian and Lava are so broken?

The description is indeed wrong, armor and dmg reduction are not one and the same and if the spaceball/armor drones work as intended, then their descriptions should be changed to match what they are actually providing (damage reduction in this case).

 

[Getagripx]

Feedback to the 2nd PTR Phase of Conquest Rework - Taco Tuesday Korell​

We from the PTR clan “Taco Tuesday Korell” collected our feedback for the 2nd PTR phase and summed it up for a smoother and cleaner forum thread (always think of the environment).


1. Graviton usage

Gravitons are a p2w mechanic at the moment because you get a huge impact on a fight if you use gravitons. In a competitive gamemode like Conquests there shouldn't be an easy button to hide mistakes. Now you can use a green one into a yellow and red one and get from zero hp to 30 seconds godmode. That can and will happen twice in every Cq as the cooldown is at 30 minutes.
The fights will be more fun and enjoyable if gravitons couldn't be used. The only balance on the PTR is that everybody can spam gravitons to counter it too.

Suggestion:
Change graviton usage
best option: player can't use gravitons at all during a Cq
needed option: increase cooldown to 45 min


2. Materialization mechanic

Fights are usually taking longer than one minute. Some fights tend to end completely unpredictable(or never) because players respawn at their squadron leader or their position and join the fight with all their items again while the opponent is vulnerable. For example we had a Saturn Cq where more than 50% of all ores remained uncollected at the end. This for there should be a punishment for dying in fights.

possible Changes:

• respawn at squadron leader/CQ-Ship 1,5 min with 25% hp and no landing protection
• respawn at the landing zone 1 min if there is NO area in the landing zone with 100 % hp + protection
• respawn at the landing zone 2 min if there is an area in the landing zone with 100 % hp + protection
• “materialize now” 2 min cooldown with 25% hp and no landing protection

Killing the protection in all tactical resurrect modes might sound hard but in our opinion it should be a well thought decision when and how you materialize.


3. Ore drop mechanic

Currently a win is often decided by the RNG of players dropping ores. As destroier6 already described, in a close cq somebody with 50-70 ores not dropping several times is the reason for a win/loss. Victory should definitely not depend on RNG. The RNG of areas is already enough.

Required Changes:

• Every player has a 100% drop chance
• Players drop 20% of their ores, Cq ship 20% (25%)

4. Area mechanics

a) Depleting Areas
+14 to destroier6.
Areas should start depleting only towards the end so that most areas are active for the main time period of the CQ. This should give a passive restriction for Paragneiss only strategies and will enhance more tactics during a cq instead of just clashing against each other with everything you got.


b) Global Messages
In addition to that, there should be a global message to prepare for areas depleting/entering heat mode so both sides can prepare and fight for valuable Areas. On many Cqs we were not even able to fight for a heat mode because it was over/75% over before we got there.


c) No Ores during the last 5 minutes
The last area depletes 5 minutes before the Cq ends. This highly supports hide and seek gameplay where the winning party just runs away from their opponent to avoid losing ores and the Cq. This running mostly happened in very close Cqs (45%-55% or similar differences).

A possible solution to this could be to let the last area drop a massive amount of ores at the end of the CQ to force a final fight. Like that the close Cqs can be decided by a massive fight if both teams were unable to get ahead of each other before.

Regarding this we think that 10-15% of the total ore amount should be dropped at the 5 minute mark. So both clans can fight for it and then collect. Like this it automatically stops the leading party from running when it is a close call. Either they fight and possibly lose their ores or the run and definitely lose the Cq because the opponent can catch up with the 15% ores dropped at the end.


d) Heat Modes
Heat modes work currently a bit strange, where there is a “dead time” in the beginning of a heat mode where you cant notice an increase in spawning ores. Maybe this is a bug but we are not sure.

Further it would be good to have more heat modes during a conquest even in smaller fights to not make the one heat mode too game deciding if you get it or not.


5. CQ Ship Strength

In pretty much all Cqs with a Cq ship we recently fought we felt that the Cq ship is still too tanky. Surely it should be the last man standing, but if it is the last man standing it is still often too hard to focus down. This is mainly because you won't be finished with killing before all killed enemies remat in LZ and get back to their still living Cq ship.
The other Items and DPS values seem pretty balanced. It is just the HP.

For the next PTR the HP of the Cq ship could probably be reduced by 30-50% and the Cq ship would still be the MvP. But when the fight is over, the Cq ship dies faster and therefore rewards the winning party with a longer time to work on their map control and organisation after the fight.

Also the Conquest Collector could be buffed as its a very slow ship and currently has way more value supporting in a fight than working as a Ore collector. With a collector buff it could get a new role within Cqs


6. Visibility of Mines, Turrets, Magnettraps and Aggrobeacons

With the increased view range the names of player items are now visible everywhere which is unnecessary. Turrets and magnet traps don’t need their name hovering above it.
The name could be displayed, when the player targets the turret or trap.
In addition to that: once several traps are placed there is an endless amount of useless text on everybody's screen due to rather long item names.

Further, Mines are visible “across the whole map” and behind walls which takes away all their purpose. Everybody sees them and they are no threat at all.
Please hide the names of all turrets, traps, mines, aggrobeacons for a nice improvement in gameplay.

Moreover it would be good to see enemy magnet traps in red, like the Mantis ones in Tau Ceti. Their visuals currently dont differ from friendly ones and that causes massive confusion sometimes when you dont know if you can pass a magnet trap or not.


7. Support big Clans

Currently a clan of five active players has all the power they need with no drawback at all compared to a clan of 25. Every player can get the same amount of cryo at the end and they can play with their five best players while the other clan faces issues like prioritizing people and a major Kryo loss because most people cannot participate.
We need some features to support big clans and encourage players to join them instead of gathering in multiple mini clans. Most Cq planets are designed for bigger fights and that kills fun when you play a 5vs5 on planets like Valkion or Mercury.

It probably requires multiple features to accomplish that.
Here are a few suggestions that could solve this issue in our opinion:

• +1 Mechanic: The clan with more pilots registered is allowed to land with more people (+1 for 5-10 players; +2 for 10-20 players, +3 for 20-25 players | Or +2 for all team sizes).
• Increasing rewards:
  • in a 5vs5 rewards x1
  • in a 10vs10 rewards x1.25
  • in a 15vs15 rewards x1.5
  • in a 20vs20 rewards x2
  • in a 25vs25 rewards x2.5/x3

Especially the +1 mechanic seems promising to tackle multiple problems at once. For instance playing with a smaller team on purpose (to grief your opponent) can turn into a risk of loosing the fight.
It will give clans a huge motivation to gather up in big clans to not get disadvantaged. The motivation will be boosted even more when beeing able to enjoy all sizes of conquest planets.

8. Leaderboard issues

Currently Warscore can only be generated by playing Cqs.
That means that on low populated servers where only a few clans participate in Cqs, the competition can be over after the first few matches and the winner can stall for the rest of the week. If there are only 2 clans competing, there is no way for the #2 clan to catch up with the #1 clan if #1clan decides not to register anymore.
No way for them to get the golden skull then.
Of course this only happens, if only 2 clans are playing Cqs but at some point this can happen on very low populated servers.

A solution to this would be to allow mining when only 1 clan registers.
With limitations so they can only get 50% of the ores and therefore only 50% of the cryo (based on a 5vs5 Cq), but also 50% (or 100%) Warscore, and the additional mining tickets. Basically similar like we already have it on live servers - Registered clan gets everything.
If nobody wants to play the Cq system or fight vs a specific clan then that should not limit that specific clan in playing the Cq system and catching up to their opponents.


9. Achievements

Some of the old cq/clan achievements need to be reworked as they dont make sense anymore (lonely wolf for example). It would be good to have more achievements for PvP and Cqs especially. From nearly 7k Achievement points the priority is clearly on PvE. 2000 or even more additional points to gain via cqs would be awesome. There is so much potential of adding new achievements like Kills, Ore collected, Wins,etc.


10. Sol 55 Tech on Mercury

This point might also end up very controversial, but we think the Level55 tech on Mercury is really boring and unbalanced compared to other star systems. It's a tech stage where repair power, damage, and ship armor dont fit together.

If there is a value demand for a non ancient tech stage we would rather go for Sol gold tech as a reminder for the passed times. Sure that would allow parsecs of all variants again but rather allow a wider spectrum of useable ships than restricting some ships because they lack items for level 55.


This Feedback was created and supported by following Players:
[Forum Name (PTR Name, when they differ)]
Gladiator
Meduna
Nago (_Sh4dow_)
N4P4LM
Judai (Acnologia)
Sorgenkind
Skyslide
BO0STER
(Mantis10)
Joel (Tschugger)
IchLiebeSpachtelmasse (.Noob.)
Leopard131 (Gepard313)
Kapljeu (Kapljeu_MerkelESPORT)
DaKuaz

While I agree with most of what you've said here, I would like to add to or try to refute a few of the points made:
1. Graviton usage - agree entirely, however I would like them to be outright banned in Colossus as well, not just in CQ battles (the same core logic applies, players who make mistakes should not have "an easy way out of trouble").

2. Materialization mechanic - the only thing that needs to be limited imo is the self-materialization; I reckon being able to only do it once or twice in a CQ should fix the issue and besides, if the SQ leader manages to escape the fight, why not reward them with letting their sq mates mat on them ?

8. Leaderboard issues - I think that's just scraping the bottom of the barrel here - wasn't the whole idea of the rework to bring more ppl into the CQs by rewarding both the winning and the losing side based on their performance and in the process prevent clans from obtaining stuff like cryonite and gravitons without having to fight at all for them ?

10. Sol 55 Tech on Mercury - This is where I could, on behalf of many Askone players, disagree. A lot of us don't see an issue with R55 conquests and actually enjoy them (if you think about the balancing it's pretty similar to what you get in TC, yet no one is complaining about Cetacea). On an additional note, if you remove R55 CQs from the game, you might as well remove R55 Colossus fights and let players use Ancient tech to do Mars sms

 

[Leopard131]

I have one theme which is important for the conquest update. The division gameplay and hall of fame gamplay (skulls) is a long term motivation feature.

Division rewards:


In the moment only the first and best clan gets the skull as a weekly reward and there is basically no motivation to go for the second place in war score. We will face the same frustration that can take place as in RDX reactor defence where only the tryhards of each week get rewarded and all others have nothing besides the cryonite they won.

More frustration = less players who are playing the conquest -> more frustration because each day the same players face each other.


Possible rewards for each position each weak:

1st Division (5 Spots):

1. Gold skull - 2.000.000 kry - 50 gravitons

2. silver skull - 1.750.000 kry - 45 gravitons

3. bronze skull - 1.500.000 kry - 40 gravitions

4. descend to 2nd division - 1.250.000 kry - 35 gravitons

5. descend to 2nd division - 1.000.000 kry - 30 gravitons


2nd Division:

1. climb to 1st division - 750.000 kry - 25 gravitons

2. climb to 1st division - 500.000 kry - 20 gravitons

3. gets 250.000 kry - 15 gravitons

4. gets 10 gravitons

5. gets 5 gravitons


Why two divisions?

In my opinion the skull should be won by the clan which plays good pvp and can use there mining ticket better as the other clans. Two divisions give you also a better way to try out your tactics and win a division (like the second league in football) against less stronger clans. To be the first gets you a great feeling. In my system there is a second point. You didn’t even win the second division you climb in the first one and you 100 % more reward in the next week.

There is more motivation for clans to play conquests because you have no need to be the best clan to get strong rewards. Also, if more clans will be playing the conquest mode, the strongest PvP-Clans get less conquest and PvE-Clans can fight against each other. Now sometimes you get a draw against a stronger clan but not every time.


Why three different skulls?

To be the best should be seen for every clan in the first moment. But now you can’t see how much time a clan was second or third in the first division.

With three different skulls you can also classify better the position at the hall of fame.

There are two different options for this:

• Olympic Way: gold skull gets your rank and if the number of gold skulls are the same the silver and bronze skull say which gets the higher rank
• Skulls gives Points:
  • Gold skull: 5 Points
  • Silver skull: 3 Points
  • Bronze skull: 1 Point
  • You can use the point system behind the hall of fame to rank each clan.

Both options have their pros and cons.


Why is this change so important?

In the last 10 years of the game pvp wasn’t the biggest part. It was a small part for most of the community (on Korell). Now you must give this pve players some good arguments to learn pvp. You can’t say go and play against the pvp players and try to win. They get frustrated so quick. On Korell sometimes we can watch the frustration. A pve clan would like to fly a conquest. They decide the planet and try it, but they must play against a pvp community. This is frustrating for them.

BUT if you get the pvp content so rewarding that every player has the feeling to try it and learn how to play pvp combat. There is a great chance that the pve players want to play more conquests. Than there happens more fights between diffrent clans.
And if they get rewards for playing and trying it. They can say: “Yes we are better than Clan A, Clan B and so on!”

 

[dontbelive]

1st Division (5 Spots):

1. Gold skull - 2.000.000 kry - 50 gravitons

2. silver skull - 1.750.000 kry - 45 gravitons

3. bronze skull - 1.500.000 kry - 40 gravitions

4. descend to 2nd division - 1.250.000 kry - 35 gravitons

5. descend to 2nd division - 1.000.000 kry - 30 gravitons


2nd Division:

1. climb to 1st division - 750.000 kry - 25 gravitons

2. climb to 1st division - 500.000 kry - 20 gravitons

3. gets 250.000 kry - 15 gravitons

4. gets 10 gravitons

5. gets 5 gravitons

Love this idea, would be nice to see such a similar implementation.

 

[KingSub]

I have one theme which is important for the conquest update. The division gameplay and hall of fame gamplay (skulls) is a long term motivation feature.

Division rewards:


In the moment only the first and best clan gets the skull as a weekly reward and there is basically no motivation to go for the second place in war score. We will face the same frustration that can take place as in RDX reactor defence where only the tryhards of each week get rewarded and all others have nothing besides the cryonite they won.

More frustration = less players who are playing the conquest -> more frustration because each day the same players face each other.


Possible rewards for each position each weak:

1st Division (5 Spots):

1. Gold skull - 2.000.000 kry - 50 gravitons

2. silver skull - 1.750.000 kry - 45 gravitons

3. bronze skull - 1.500.000 kry - 40 gravitions

4. descend to 2nd division - 1.250.000 kry - 35 gravitons

5. descend to 2nd division - 1.000.000 kry - 30 gravitons


2nd Division:

1. climb to 1st division - 750.000 kry - 25 gravitons

2. climb to 1st division - 500.000 kry - 20 gravitons

3. gets 250.000 kry - 15 gravitons

4. gets 10 gravitons

5. gets 5 gravitons


Why two divisions?

In my opinion the skull should be won by the clan which plays good pvp and can use there mining ticket better as the other clans. Two divisions give you also a better way to try out your tactics and win a division (like the second league in football) against less stronger clans. To be the first gets you a great feeling. In my system there is a second point. You didn’t even win the second division you climb in the first one and you 100 % more reward in the next week.

There is more motivation for clans to play conquests because you have no need to be the best clan to get strong rewards. Also, if more clans will be playing the conquest mode, the strongest PvP-Clans get less conquest and PvE-Clans can fight against each other. Now sometimes you get a draw against a stronger clan but not every time.


Why three different skulls?

To be the best should be seen for every clan in the first moment. But now you can’t see how much time a clan was second or third in the first division.

With three different skulls you can also classify better the position at the hall of fame.

There are two different options for this:

• Olympic Way: gold skull gets your rank and if the number of gold skulls are the same the silver and bronze skull say which gets the higher rank
• Skulls gives Points:
  • Gold skull: 5 Points
  • Silver skull: 3 Points
  • Bronze skull: 1 Point
  • You can use the point system behind the hall of fame to rank each clan.

Both options have their pros and cons.


Why is this change so important?

In the last 10 years of the game pvp wasn’t the biggest part. It was a small part for most of the community (on Korell). Now you must give this pve players some good arguments to learn pvp. You can’t say go and play against the pvp players and try to win. They get frustrated so quick. On Korell sometimes we can watch the frustration. A pve clan would like to fly a conquest. They decide the planet and try it, but they must play against a pvp community. This is frustrating for them.

BUT if you get the pvp content so rewarding that every player has the feeling to try it and learn how to play pvp combat. There is a great chance that the pve players want to play more conquests. Than there happens more fights between diffrent clans.
And if they get rewards for playing and trying it. They can say: “Yes we are better than Clan A, Clan B and so on!”

good idea, but definitely too high a reward. In the coming cq update we will earn a lot of cryo.
gravi are such a thing... since gravis has existed, the players have become lazy and the story missions has become much more difficult.

if it is implemented in healthy proportions, such an idea would make something new for us .. everyone would have a chance to get cryo, skull and some gravi.

AND there will of course be players who will exploit this system for weeks holding first or second place in the first division .. these players would not even need to go cryo farming any more. They can crawl away on the moon or earth for 1 month.

but otherwise a good idea.

 

[Kapljeu]

good idea, but definitely too high a reward. In the coming cq update we will earn a lot of cryo.
gravi are such a thing... since gravis has existed, the players have become lazy and the story missions has become much more difficult.

if it is implemented in healthy proportions, such an idea would make something new for us .. everyone would have a chance to get cryo, skull and some gravi.

AND there will of course be players who will exploit this system for weeks holding first or second place in the first division .. these players would not even need to go cryo farming any more. They can crawl away on the moon or earth for 1 month.

but otherwise a good idea.

2 Million for a clan of 20 people for playing CQs 1 Week.
My Brain/Calculator tells me that makes:
2.000.000 / 20 = 100.000
100.000 / 7 = 14.285

14.3k Kryo per day per player.
I doubt that will be enough for a Sirius or Tau Ceti Parsec/Ship...

 

[Vesperion]

14.3k Kryo per day per player.
I doubt that will be enough for a Sirius or Tau Ceti Parsec/Ship...

This can be amount you can make within an hour by farming AI in Siri R4/5 or at Venar/EiU/Calon (if you know the spots to hunt of course )

 

[Fra_592]

He said 14.300 cryo, not 143.000. That's a few minutes of playing.

 

[Vesperion]

He said 14.300 cryo, not 143.000. That's a few minutes of playing.

Yeah my bad but i was a bit drowsy yesterday so not all my brain cells functioned properly when replying to that

Anyways if we consider some posts from other about cryo and droprate it could match up again cus i remember some posts that state shoting stuff for hours but only get a few cryos. In base terms and depending where and what you hunt it´s either 7-10 WU drops, 2-3 MU Drops or 1 SU drop while 1 CU drop nets nearly 3x of that in a single drop and without boosters of course.

For me currently the big drawback that still not convinces me or our clan to even care about the CQ update is simply that we could make the same or even more amount of cryos by going for PvE for 45 mins and still have more fun playing.

I know most Online games tend to make PvP the "End Contend" but for PG it seems not really to fit in considering that the reward for doing PvP is basicly nothing and if it makes no difference if i go for 45 mins to a planet batteling for ores that will be transfered into clan cryo afterwards and can then be payed out to me just to obtain the same amount or even less by doing 45 mins of doing PvE hunting the new CQ system will not convince many pilots imo cus again there will always 2 sides of player in an online game and you will never be able to make both sides happy.

Best example are those CQs where a clan is heavily cornered and has nearly no chance to compete with the other clan so that in return they can not collect enough ore to make it even "worth to continue the battle". The potential issue i see here is that the losing clan just might "give up" and the pilots stay in their pods until the CQ is over so that the other clan has an easy time but at the same time no fun at all if they then just can "wait that it ends" while gathering the ores.

During the PTR i guess this will not really happen cus everyone is enjoying the big battles that remind them on the old CQ times and really have been something... but i guess once the new CQ is live it may see some more changes cus at the PTR all servers are on a single server for the testings what makes such big numbers of Pilots possible but once it´s live and seperated on the servers again the battles may get way smaller again.

 

[Highway]

New Public PTR is soon be ready. Check out the changelog: https://forum.pirategalaxy.com/threads/update-1003675-1003683.36113/#post-191191

Still we need have a few topics open from your feedback that will be worked on. So its not yet a release candidate, but it contains substantional changes that should get early public testing.

 

[NGSpeed]

Well the most important aspect about the CQ gameplay is not in that patch:
Area depletion, activation, reactivation, switching etc.
The conquering gameplay will still be static that way.
Was that point not highlighted enough for you or are you still figuring out how to make it work to be a more dynamic gameplay?
Always loosing ore will definitely make the late game for the losing side a hide and seek game lol
I really like the 90 seconds after cq start!
Is the 5minute cooldown on self-mat after every pod or for the second pod e.g.??