KDF Que is Officially DEAD / Time for a revamp

stark2k

As the title states, the KDF que is officially dead, at least when it comes to que up for Fleet Marks events. I believe the time has come for the fleet marks, which is a very important assest to the fleet starbase to become account wide.

It is a given that Fed Fleet marks are easier to come by than KDF. Cryptic should at least allow for:

A) Fleet Marks only to become account wide

or

revamp some of the fleet marks oriented fleet events to be universal or cross faction.

what say you all?

timelord79

Just some new post-Undine-invasion fleet mark missions that are cross faction would help.

feiqa

A few points against you.

The queues are not dead. They are incredibly slow.

Making marks from your fed characters go to your KDF ones will kill the KDF queues as there would be zero need for them.

How about instead they start making some of the less popular STFs, which are cross faction, give a choice of marks? This bumps those numbers and makes grouping for marks easier.

rahmkota19

feiqa wrote: »

A few points against you.

The queues are not dead. They are incredibly slow.

Making marks from your fed characters go to your KDF ones will kill the KDF queues as there would be zero need for them.

How about instead they start making some of the less popular STFs, which are cross faction, give a choice of marks? This bumps those numbers and makes grouping for marks easier.

This, this and this.


Although I would also appreciate the current queues to become crossfaction. Alll we need to do is change the Gorn, Orion, Klingon etcetera to Rebel Gorn, Rebel Klingon et cetera, and toss in the Terran Empire to replace the Federation. And then the base picking goes similar as it does now, we pick a random base from one of the participants.

That should help out the queues to speed up. Ofcourse, for the Klingon players that don't even think about playing with Feddies, you can always create your private queue.

feiqa

rahmkota19 wrote: »

Although I would also appreciate the current queues to become crossfaction. Alll we need to do is change the Gorn, Orion, Klingon etcetera to Rebel Gorn, Rebel Klingon et cetera, and toss in the Terran Empire to replace the Federation. And then the base picking goes similar as it does now, we pick a random base from one of the participants.

That should help out the queues to speed up. Ofcourse, for the Klingon players that don't even think about playing with Feddies, you can always create your private queue.

I think this is also a good idea. It would allow opposing faction accolades too.

azurianstar

I been saying this since Season 8. :rolleyes:

Since then, I've honestly only been in a Fleet STF only 2 times. If it wasn't for the KDFDefera channel, my fleet would've ground to a halt months ago.

razar2380

I hope that they start doing something on a regular basis during the weeks (between weekend events) to put more action into the queues. When the hourlies went away, there was a big drop in action during the weekdays. And it has just kept dwindling down since.

I was queued up for a STF (The Vortex) the other day for about 15 mins before we had 5 players queued. And, there have been times when the PVEs I queued up for took almost 5 mins to queue. And those were ones that were cross faction missions.

I am not sure if putting things for crafting into the mission rewards will help any. I hope they fix problems with the new crafting system so enough players are going to do it. If so, there will be more players coerced into playing the STFs, and PVEs more.

tenkari

ehh, its slow yes, but i've been in a couple starbase defenses the last cuple days.... i think most just play CCE for fleet marks.

dahminus

Get into a nws channel and start farming

sle1989

If they made all the fleet mark missions cross faction, then KDF and Starfleet enemies would have to be removed.

I would say replace the Starfleet enemies with Terran Empire, any progress towards the Starfleet accolades would count towards the Terrans. They already have rival house Klingons, so they would be the excuse for KDF fighting KDF.


As for which starbase you'd end up defending it would be somewhat random with the amount of teammates who are of a certain faction affecting that outcome.

rattler2

We do need some kind of solution to help KDF fleets build their base. So far KDF only queues tend to be almost non existant while cross faction works just fine. Not many people que up for KDF only Fleet Mark missions because it just takes to dang long to get 5 KDF in one PUG. Making them cross faction might fix the issue, but might TRIBBLE with the game's story or... I don't know...

But I do agree we need something that can help KDF side.

snoggymack22

Revamp means it will either be removed, or just smooshed into something that already exists. Like the federation.

snoggymack22

rattler2 wrote: »

But I do agree we need something that can help KDF side.

Getting Cryptic to devote time and resources to KDF development is a long standing problem.

rattler2

Well... they did add the low level content with the last expansion...

tucana66

Yes, the KDF queue is hurting for participants.

I typically queue up a handful of STFs when playing KDF. As it goes, I'm accepted into another STF instead of making it into, say, Klingon Fleet Alert first.

Given the FED, ROM and KDF events of "Surface Tension", I agree more cross-factional playing is important.

But for KDF-only STFs, maybe it's time to up the rewards for KDF players to get more interest in KDF-specific STFs. Something. There's plenty of KDF player, imho, to participate. More incentives, please?


On a side note: I really wish Mine Trap would be reworked to include more participants. I get tired of queueing up with only 1-2 others... when 20 players are required.

sheldonlcooper

Whenever I see this complaint I'm not sure I understand it. I never have a problem with my KDF character more than my Feds. The Klingon fleet alert is no problem. There are some that are dead but these are dead to Feds too aren't they?

captainzhei

Why not just do the Crystalline Entity queue and collect the Fleet Marks instead of Nukara Marks? That'll hold you over until they do something about the population thing.

Not like the Klingon side is interesting anyway. It's the same level grind as Fed.

tucana66

captainzhei wrote: »

Why not just do the Crystalline Entity queue and collect the Fleet Marks instead of Nukara Marks? That'll hold you over until they do something about the population thing.

Good thinking, if you're playing solely for the Fleet Marks.

captainzhei wrote: »

Not like the Klingon side is interesting anyway. It's the same level grind as Fed.

With these STFs, it's a bit of camaraderie. I know I enjoy Klingon Fleet Alert, for example, because I can play alongside other KDF faction players. It's fun to interact, see other KDF ships in action, etc.

Then again, as you smartly suggested, CC is a great alternative for Fleet Marks.

darthwoo

Federation Minefield is the best example of just how badly KDF queues are hurting. This past weekend, we had an unprecedented series of four consecutive days of Fed Minefield as the Fleet Action Daily. Even during the prime afternoon hours, it would take forever just to get one queue started. This is for one of the single quickest and potentially most profitable PvE events for the KDF. On the other hand, you can usually get a queue of Gorn Minefield started within a reasonable time even when it isn't the FA Daily. I often find myself having to defer a run of Fed Minefield until the next day because a queue won't start in the half hour I typically spend doing all my dailies. As far as the KDF's other two FADs, Big Dig and Breaking the Planet, those are just hopeless. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a running instance of those two when looking through the PvE queues.

duncanidaho11

rattler2 wrote: »

Well... they did add the low level content with the last expansion...

Indeed and finally another C-store ship. It's a difficult thing to ask cryptic to do, though (give an equal amount of content that the FED has), because of one simple thing

NOT AS MANY PEOPLE PLAY THE KDF.

Why? Well one reason is that lack of content but another and probably more serious one (since its a lot harder for cryptic to overcome) is the focus of Star Trek. It is about the Federation. The Klingons have seen quite a bit of development over the years and series BUT just consider how much screen time was spent engaging the audience with the Empire versus the UNFP. With STO's faction system there's hardly any question between what most people will gravitate towards.

So in dealing with the separate populations that bias WILL cause problems for all population dependent aspects of KDF gameplay. Fleet building, content demand, and most pertinently to this thread queued event availability.

Now cryptic could try to address this in a variety of ways. The first is to condense the current offering of KDF-only content to correspondingly condense the queued KDF population (this is the default option to population problems for any playlist based multiplayer system). To some extent this has already been done and its questionable that the improvement to wait times will be worth sacrificing PVE variety. Second, cryptic could create a KDF revamp expansion to provide not only an equivalent amount of content to the FED (which isn't really the problem) but a superior amount which might overcome the natural bias people have for the FED. However with development constraints and the question "is preferring Starfleet in a Star Trek game really a problem that needs to be dealt with?" this MASSIVE undertaking is not a very viable option either.

The solution is simply this, get a time machine and remake STO into a single faction game. Integrate the KDF, ROM, and FED together with ships, crews, and equipment freely interchangable throughout all of them. It would require A. a different plot B. a different setting (probably another +40 years), C. a different art design (unified) and D. a different game entirely, but its the only way to truly avoid the problem of emptier KDF queues.

That being said, the best course of action may simply be to live with it...

centaurianalpha

Why not just do the Crystalline Entity queue and collect the Fleet Marks instead of Nukara Marks?

Because doing the same PvE mission over and over is BORING... I agree with those who propose that some of the bigger queues get a revamp for 5 players. I too have never seen a 20-player STF under way. Since we supposedly have so much "new content" from the last 2 "seasons", why are there not more associated STF's to begin with? Why not at least 3 PvE missions from each season? I would be interested to see STF's against the Cardassians, Dominion, Breen, Elachi, etc., but they don't exist...

stark2k

I think in essence I am looking at the Fleet Defense event, which at times gives you a whopping 140 Fleet Marks a run. Unfortunately; this Gold Gem of an event on the KDF side is literally dead, and I do mean D E A D. It may take hours to get a full 20 player que up to do. It is one of my favorite events for both the Fed and KDF side, unfortunately; its a grueling wait on the KDF, if there is a que at all.

So I am mainly looking at the Fleet defense event that earns 100+ FM per run per toon.

macronius

KDF doesn't meet Cryptic's standard of quality and confuses new players. It is being removed! :P

ddesjardins

macronius wrote: »

KDF doesn't meet Cryptic's standard of quality and confuses new players. It is being removed! :P

I snortled while reading that.

Well done.

aarons9

they screwed up when they made this game all about marks.

there are plenty of missions i loved playing, but now its impossible to queue up because it doesnt give rewards.. even then it can take 15 to 20 minutes to queue up for something besides a STF.

azurianstar

Maybe they should send some events back into the wild? (Make Fleet Actions non-queued).

xaraman

I used to play in an MMO that didn't have a very high population. It also suffered from faction bias.

One of the things the company did to help out was to create an "outnumbered faction" buff that would activate when the population balance went beyond a certain percent. When this buff activated the outnumbered faction would get 10% more EXP and a few other things.

In STO, you could maybe provide an xx% buff on EXP, skill points, EC and FM/FC. Something like that might help if FM missions aren't triggering as much as the fed side. It would also reduce the grind to 50 and give a better yield for EC farming, which would encourage more people to play KDF. You could also consider reducing the cooldown on rejoining a queue. As soon as the population goes back to within a certain % of balance, the buff turns off and no one gets an unfair advantage.

Another idea to help the balance would be maybe to allow people to "defect" to the other faction. It's been seen loads of times on Star Trek and could be an interesting mechanic, especially if used in conjunction with the outnumbered faction buff. It shouldn't be easy to do this and it should be limited (so you don't get a flood). But it could be fun.

Cheers!

rinkster

macronius wrote: »

KDF doesn't meet Cryptic's standard of quality and confuses new players. It is being removed! :P

I did get lost on Qonos once......