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You want to know what killed the queues?
salazarraze
Member Posts: 3,794 Arc User
I like the queues. I used to enjoy playing them. But these days it's impossible to get anything to Pop that isn't an event, Crystalline, or ISA. I use the DPS channels with some success. But even the DPS channels are 99% ISA and whatever event is going on. Here's a list of things that I believe have killed the queues and possible solutions to those problems.
PROBLEM 1:We're coming up on 2 years since the R&D revamp. A glorious system that vastly improved the game. However (like many things since then) the revamp had a negative effect on the queues being filled. Before the R&D revamp, [Pen] didn't exist. Because of this, rep weapons were on par with lockbox weapons and drops. However, since the R&D revamp, crafted weapons have the clear advantage over lockbox and rep weapons. So players aren't being told to "grind their rep" for those weapons, but this is only a minor issue. At the same time, cryptic added R&D drops to the queues. This should have helped keep the queues full right? People want to build those sweet craftable weapons. Except that these mats are easily acquired from admiralty/doffing and the damage is still being felt from the fixed delta recruit exploit. Today we have a system in which the best energy weapons are acquired without ever entering a single queue.
SOLUTION 1: Remove Rare and Very Rare crafting mats and salvaged tech from anything that isn't a queue. Including all future delta recruits type rewards. Also, maybe some crafting mats sinks should have their requirements increased for a period of time, to drain out the excess form the DR exploit. These sinks are things like doff missions, fleet projects, actual crafting etc.
PROBLEM 2:Ok so the "best" energy weapons don't require you to enter the queues right? What about torpedoes, shields, deflector, impulse engines? If you want the Neutronic Torp, Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torp, Undine Rep Torp, Borg Rep Torps, you still have to do some queues right? Wrong. All torps/shields/deflectors/impulse/warp cores etc. etc. etc. don't require any queues to be played. We have today the battlezones and the patrols. Any and all marks plus ELITE marks can be had by not entering a single queue. You want that sweet Iconian shield? Just go to Kobali Prime and do the 2 missions for easy marks including ELITE marks. Lots of players do this to avoid playing the queues. Don't get me wrong, I love the battlezones. They're REALLY fun but they are also part of the problem with the queues.
SOLUTION 2: Revamp Elite marks. First, nerf elite marks rewards in battlezones by limiting ALL Elite marks earned from battlezones to say 1 or 2 per day. Meaning if you earned your 2 Iconian Elite marks from Kobali Prime, you can't earn any Voth Elite marks from the Dyson Battlezone. I would also like to remove regular marks from patrols but most players would be in an uproar over this. So maybe they should just remove the daily reward from patrols? Also make normal queues reward 1 Elite mark to compensate for the battlezone nerf. Make Advanced queues reward 2 Elite marks. Make ground Elite reward 2 Elite marks and Space elite reward 3 Elite Marks. Some Space Advanced queues and Ground Elite queues are easy right? So double the Elite Mark cost for Rep Items. All Rep Shields/Deflector/Impulse should now cost 10. Modules that cost 2 should now cost 4 etc.
PROBLEM 3: Events, like the current "The Breach" event are really fun. But I've been against them rewarding "any marks" for a long time now. I don't know about you, but lots of my characters need Terran Marks. Ok so let's check the regular Terran queues. Oh no, they're have ZERO players on standby. Ok let's go to the battlezone. Really? There's just ONE instance with ONLY 10 people in it. This is dreadfully slow. Oh well let's play "The Breach." Without including a daily reward, any and all toons get 140 Terran marks on normal difficulty. What? Really? Why on Earth would I ever play any queue or battlezone for my alts knowing that these events come around? I imagine that most players just put their alts into dry dock and wait for Crystalline/Mirror/The Breach to come around. Bonus marks weekend isn't really a problem or a solution since people just play the things that are already being played more.
SOLUTION 3: You aren't going to like it, but "any marks" have to stop being awarded for events. Only Fleet Marks, whatever marks make sense for the rep, and maybe, just maybe, the current marks should be rewarded for completing event queues.
PROBLEM 4 Let's say that I've finished all of my reps. 100% maxed out with all rep gear unlocked. So here I am with all of my sweet gear. What's the point of me playing these reps again? This isn't a new problem that I'm bringing up. We've all talked about this for years. The Borg STF's have (had actually) a solution for this. There is an accolade for completing all of the space queues 100 times. There is also the accolade for completing all of the queues on Elite difficulty with all optionals. Back when we had "No Win Scenario," there were accolades for completing various waves. Lots of people are happy that we don't have to play STF's 6,000 times to get lucky drops to get gear anymore. But perhaps there should be more incentives like the aforementioned accolades to keep people interested?
SOLUTION 4: Like I said above, add some accolades for completing queues. Perhaps there could be accolades for completing each one 100 times plus more accolades for completing optionals. Also, to borrow some terminology we could have a REAL REP SPONSOR SYSTEM. Right now we have the system in which we can "sponsor" our alts so that they don't have to grind as much rep. This system should stay in place since it encourages us to play with our alts. But perhaps, newer players and poorly outfitted alts, need "sponsors" to play queues with them? If there were a system in place in which a maxed rep player could team up with and sponsor a non-maxed player, it would encourage more players to play queues. The maxed player would need some kind of incentive like say... an accolade that unlocks a special visual for their rep gear. Or something like that.
PROBLEM 5: This is more of a fix for generic fleet queues. In the old days, old school fleet queues like "Colony Invasion" would pop fairly quickly. Now it's 100% dead every day. How do we give some love to these queues to keep people interested? The R&D boxes don't help since people only want advanced and elite R&D boxes. These queues already have dilithium rewards so it can't be that. I think that the answer is closer to the above problem than buffing any rewards. Perhaps a slight change in marks rewards would help though.
SOLUTION 5: Say you play "Colony Invasion" and your enemy is Klingons. Your reward should be fleet marks. Say the enemy is Undine. Your rewards should be a choice between Fleet Marks and Undine marks. Say your enemy is Jem'Hadar. There are no Dominion Marks (yet) so perhaps fleet marks and a few commodities like Unrefined ketracel should be included? Ok, also, like fleet alert (which pops very quickly, possibly due to what I'm about to suggest) you should add accolade rewards. Say one accolade for beating Klingons/Jem'Hadar/Hirogen in Colony Invasion 50 times. Perhaps there should be named bosses in queues like Colony Invasion that are tied to accolades like the named ships in Fleet Alert. Really, I think we might be on to something here with these accolades. Also let's say that some of these accolades are more than just a title. Perhaps they could unlock trophies for your ship interior or unlock special costume pieces like the Borg Elite accolade. Or maybe the accolades should be REPEATABLE (like beating Colony Invasion 100 times) and unlock a reward like dilithium or spec points or whatever. Really, I'm trying to get ideas for bringing the Glory Days of the queues back.
Well there you have it. Feel free to agree with me or crucify me. Or add your own ideas. Personally, I miss the days in which I could just run any queue, because the vast majority of them would pop within 2-3 minutes.
PROBLEM 1:We're coming up on 2 years since the R&D revamp. A glorious system that vastly improved the game. However (like many things since then) the revamp had a negative effect on the queues being filled. Before the R&D revamp, [Pen] didn't exist. Because of this, rep weapons were on par with lockbox weapons and drops. However, since the R&D revamp, crafted weapons have the clear advantage over lockbox and rep weapons. So players aren't being told to "grind their rep" for those weapons, but this is only a minor issue. At the same time, cryptic added R&D drops to the queues. This should have helped keep the queues full right? People want to build those sweet craftable weapons. Except that these mats are easily acquired from admiralty/doffing and the damage is still being felt from the fixed delta recruit exploit. Today we have a system in which the best energy weapons are acquired without ever entering a single queue.
SOLUTION 1: Remove Rare and Very Rare crafting mats and salvaged tech from anything that isn't a queue. Including all future delta recruits type rewards. Also, maybe some crafting mats sinks should have their requirements increased for a period of time, to drain out the excess form the DR exploit. These sinks are things like doff missions, fleet projects, actual crafting etc.
PROBLEM 2:Ok so the "best" energy weapons don't require you to enter the queues right? What about torpedoes, shields, deflector, impulse engines? If you want the Neutronic Torp, Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torp, Undine Rep Torp, Borg Rep Torps, you still have to do some queues right? Wrong. All torps/shields/deflectors/impulse/warp cores etc. etc. etc. don't require any queues to be played. We have today the battlezones and the patrols. Any and all marks plus ELITE marks can be had by not entering a single queue. You want that sweet Iconian shield? Just go to Kobali Prime and do the 2 missions for easy marks including ELITE marks. Lots of players do this to avoid playing the queues. Don't get me wrong, I love the battlezones. They're REALLY fun but they are also part of the problem with the queues.
SOLUTION 2: Revamp Elite marks. First, nerf elite marks rewards in battlezones by limiting ALL Elite marks earned from battlezones to say 1 or 2 per day. Meaning if you earned your 2 Iconian Elite marks from Kobali Prime, you can't earn any Voth Elite marks from the Dyson Battlezone. I would also like to remove regular marks from patrols but most players would be in an uproar over this. So maybe they should just remove the daily reward from patrols? Also make normal queues reward 1 Elite mark to compensate for the battlezone nerf. Make Advanced queues reward 2 Elite marks. Make ground Elite reward 2 Elite marks and Space elite reward 3 Elite Marks. Some Space Advanced queues and Ground Elite queues are easy right? So double the Elite Mark cost for Rep Items. All Rep Shields/Deflector/Impulse should now cost 10. Modules that cost 2 should now cost 4 etc.
PROBLEM 3: Events, like the current "The Breach" event are really fun. But I've been against them rewarding "any marks" for a long time now. I don't know about you, but lots of my characters need Terran Marks. Ok so let's check the regular Terran queues. Oh no, they're have ZERO players on standby. Ok let's go to the battlezone. Really? There's just ONE instance with ONLY 10 people in it. This is dreadfully slow. Oh well let's play "The Breach." Without including a daily reward, any and all toons get 140 Terran marks on normal difficulty. What? Really? Why on Earth would I ever play any queue or battlezone for my alts knowing that these events come around? I imagine that most players just put their alts into dry dock and wait for Crystalline/Mirror/The Breach to come around. Bonus marks weekend isn't really a problem or a solution since people just play the things that are already being played more.
SOLUTION 3: You aren't going to like it, but "any marks" have to stop being awarded for events. Only Fleet Marks, whatever marks make sense for the rep, and maybe, just maybe, the current marks should be rewarded for completing event queues.
PROBLEM 4 Let's say that I've finished all of my reps. 100% maxed out with all rep gear unlocked. So here I am with all of my sweet gear. What's the point of me playing these reps again? This isn't a new problem that I'm bringing up. We've all talked about this for years. The Borg STF's have (had actually) a solution for this. There is an accolade for completing all of the space queues 100 times. There is also the accolade for completing all of the queues on Elite difficulty with all optionals. Back when we had "No Win Scenario," there were accolades for completing various waves. Lots of people are happy that we don't have to play STF's 6,000 times to get lucky drops to get gear anymore. But perhaps there should be more incentives like the aforementioned accolades to keep people interested?
SOLUTION 4: Like I said above, add some accolades for completing queues. Perhaps there could be accolades for completing each one 100 times plus more accolades for completing optionals. Also, to borrow some terminology we could have a REAL REP SPONSOR SYSTEM. Right now we have the system in which we can "sponsor" our alts so that they don't have to grind as much rep. This system should stay in place since it encourages us to play with our alts. But perhaps, newer players and poorly outfitted alts, need "sponsors" to play queues with them? If there were a system in place in which a maxed rep player could team up with and sponsor a non-maxed player, it would encourage more players to play queues. The maxed player would need some kind of incentive like say... an accolade that unlocks a special visual for their rep gear. Or something like that.
PROBLEM 5: This is more of a fix for generic fleet queues. In the old days, old school fleet queues like "Colony Invasion" would pop fairly quickly. Now it's 100% dead every day. How do we give some love to these queues to keep people interested? The R&D boxes don't help since people only want advanced and elite R&D boxes. These queues already have dilithium rewards so it can't be that. I think that the answer is closer to the above problem than buffing any rewards. Perhaps a slight change in marks rewards would help though.
SOLUTION 5: Say you play "Colony Invasion" and your enemy is Klingons. Your reward should be fleet marks. Say the enemy is Undine. Your rewards should be a choice between Fleet Marks and Undine marks. Say your enemy is Jem'Hadar. There are no Dominion Marks (yet) so perhaps fleet marks and a few commodities like Unrefined ketracel should be included? Ok, also, like fleet alert (which pops very quickly, possibly due to what I'm about to suggest) you should add accolade rewards. Say one accolade for beating Klingons/Jem'Hadar/Hirogen in Colony Invasion 50 times. Perhaps there should be named bosses in queues like Colony Invasion that are tied to accolades like the named ships in Fleet Alert. Really, I think we might be on to something here with these accolades. Also let's say that some of these accolades are more than just a title. Perhaps they could unlock trophies for your ship interior or unlock special costume pieces like the Borg Elite accolade. Or maybe the accolades should be REPEATABLE (like beating Colony Invasion 100 times) and unlock a reward like dilithium or spec points or whatever. Really, I'm trying to get ideas for bringing the Glory Days of the queues back.
Well there you have it. Feel free to agree with me or crucify me. Or add your own ideas. Personally, I miss the days in which I could just run any queue, because the vast majority of them would pop within 2-3 minutes.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
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"Colonial Defender [Klingons]" - Defeat Klingons in Colony Invasion 25 Times
"Colonial Defender [Borg]" - Defeat Borg in Colony Invasion 25 Times
"Colonial Defender [Dominion]" - Defeat Jem'Hadar in Colony Invasion 25 Times
"Colonial Defender [Hirogen]" - Defeat Hirogen in Colony Invasion 25 Times
"Colonial Defender [Nausicaans]" - Defeat Nausicaans in Colony Invasion 25 Times
"Colonial Defender [Undine]" - Defeat Undine in Colony Invasion 25 Times
...repeat for other races...
"Renown Colonial Defender [Klingon]" - Defeat all named Klingon Bosses in Colony Invasion, K'trakh, B'eleth, Dg'Yatagh, Y'akGh, Korel, M'reth, T'omath, K'tilana.
...repeat for other races....
"Colonial Savior" - Complete Colony Invasion 100 Times [Reward 25,000 Unrefined Dilithium] [REPEATABLE]
I'd certainly not go chasing after accolades unless their was some sort of reward for doing so. They should be the sort of thing you just acquire through regular gameplay.
You really want to fix dead queues, you need proper incentives to play them. That means something like the old hourly events to encourage players to run them. Minor improvements to rewards for the event run would entice people into alternatives to the usual CCA & ISA.
Or actually revamp the queues to be"fun" and not a grind of the same stuff you can do blindfold. Stuff like the fleet alerts are good as they have random enemies, that keeps it interesting.
- Crashs...
1st of all by doing that the real ones who's going to have the problem would be the new players. For us who are already far ahead this would only further frustrate everyone. 2nd crafting isn't the problem. The imbalance in everything in this game is class wise and skill wise. Then you have the bugs.
There is really no reason to play the queues once you have farmed your rep gear. The queues really don't have much of a lasting effect. So end gear no matter what slow progression you want it will be the same once you completed your rep.
It's not that even surprising that the queues are this anyway since similar games that uses a system like this which are called "Dungeon Queues" at some games suffer the same issues. So in the end trying to do what you want would only make people stay away more of the game than attract more.
Anyway please don't take my words as hostility or a sign of disrespect towards you. I'm saying these things without any Ill will towards you but rather just an opinion from a long time MMO player.
DR and its changes annihilated the player-base, driving off vast crowds of low-end and mid-teir players. This had a direct impact on the already strained relationship many players had with the STFs, and those players who remained either stuck with them or found new content to enjoy. Either way, queue numbers are slashed.
Crafting is largely abandoned, the recent arrival of the Admiralty rewards and the proposed Season 11.5 Romulan Upgrade rewards show that Cryptic feels they've bled that stone dry. They need incentives to get players using the system, easing the grind and keeping the casual player invested in the game. The longer they're invested/progressing in the game, the more time/chance Cryptic has to entice them to open their wallet. Say, buying more ships for Admiralty power?
Accolades are dead. This has already been stated several times by Cryptic. They simply provide too much of a 'passive' advantage to players, and become too much of a maths nightmare to handle behind the scenes. Visual incentives where all that remained from that system, and they too are currently shelved.
So we are left with an antique mechanic with a bad reward/time ratio, which thanks to DR and it has to be said the 'DPS OR GTFO' mentality of many players/channels, now has the lowest incentive in the history of STO to play any of it. And you want to lower the incentive to not just play them, but a variety of other content as well?
No thanks.
This is a much better approach.
Personally, I have always favored the idea of 'Featured Weekly Ques.' Feature a mission que for one week where players are offered more incentive to play. Offer them an increased reward value to get them to try the mission. Switch the featured mission every week so that they all get equal attention.
No doubt, they will find that certain ques still don't get played even with increased reward. They can then compare those to the ques that are more popular and use those as a model for revamps of missions that are not currently considered desirable.
The OP's proposal is little more then implementing game wide penalties on anyone that doesn't play qued missions. The best way to get people into mission ques is to make the ques desirable, not make all other game modes less fun or rewarding.
Upon reflection, since the expressed opinions thus far don't seem to promote changing the distribution of rewards and materials, it seems to me that the only thing that would make the queues more desirable at this point would also introduce power creep. The prevailing wisdom is that there's enough power creep already. IMHO, people won't play queues for "now you can paint your ship purple" rewards--does anyone expend effort to get those "snazzy holograms" Leeta won't shut up about at the Dabo table?--and the in-game economists already panic over the amount of EC and dilithium in the game.
Well, maybe there's something there...pay players in Zen for playing the queues.
(Yes, I know. But what else is there to offer?)
epic mk xiv deflector
-> 0,1% chance to drop from any normal Borg space queue
-> 1% chance to drop from any advanced Borg space queue
-> 1,5% chance to drop from any elite Borg space queue
epic mk xiv impulse engine
-> Undine space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
epic mk xiv warp/singularity core
-> Vaadwaur space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
epic mk xiv shield
-> Terran space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
The same could be applied to ground queues. I guarantee you. With a random drop reward system like this the queues would be full again.
They had something like this, people complaned that they needed to play 100's or 1000's of stf's and sometimes even then didn't got it.
I actually really support this idea. The biggest issue with the old tech drops from the Borg STF's was that there was literally no other way to get the STF gear than to grind out the missions until RNG favoured you. I lost count how many times I had to play Cure Ground to get that last drop - it was infuriating! However, now we've got the reputation system to get the Mk XII VR versions. Having the potential for a Mk XIV Epic to drop would definitely be an incentive for me to hop back into some of the queues for the gear. Given that the drop rate is low it would stop them being taken for granted and people having dozens of epics selling them off as vendor trash and people who aren't lucky enough to get them can just start with a MK XII version and upgrade it or try their luck again in the queues.
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I agree. Make it like the old STFs pre-rep, adapted to the new situation.
Rep gear at mk xii space and ground is available the current way. Mk XIII or Mk XIV elite or "veteran" gear with buffed up stats should be available from playing the queues only, and each one of them. Veteran Omega ground gear available from Borg ground, weapon, armour and shield, same for space. Veteran dyson gear (would need a ground queue), Iconian and so on.
And yes, you may not get it running hundreds of those, some get it at their third run - that's a game. RNG, item drops. Deal with it. It's fun to try to get it and if it isn't the game isn't fun to you, take a break.
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The idea of a weekly featured queue might have more merit. Say, you get one "Weekly Queue" reward token each day per character. Once you got 7 of them, you get, say a choice of:
- Small Set of one time use Admirality Cards and Pass Tokens
- A Superior Upgrade Kit
- A small random DOFF set
- Respec Token
- A Pack of 3 Elite Marks (choice on opening)
The tokens would be agnostic to what queue you used to get them - it's basically a reward that you can get up to once per week (if you play daily).
I remember that once upon time, they were trying to revamp queued content to get fairer in rewards vs time played. They might need to revisit that.
Personally, I think they need to make all queues so that they give an equal reward/time ratio. It could of course mean that this will require time-gating queues like Infected, too, but it almost certainly also means upgrading the reward/time ratio.
I don't think making other content less enticing, as the OP seems to suggest mostly, is of any help. I certainly do not want to have "Dead Battle Zones", for example. Battle Zones are a lot of fun to me, more so than queues. I like the more or less "impromptu team play" going on there. You can solo points, you can work together. You're not alone and can join with others as you see fit and as is possible, and you don't need to wait for a war zone to "pop" - you can join whenever you want, and leave whenever you want. That's the kind of freedom I enjoy.
In short, allow players to do well and set quick times. Don't make it so we have to twiddle our thumbs for minutes on end because Cryptic wants everyone to suffer for the same amount of time.
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Also just expanding and adding to the older reps would be nice, giving player both new an old new items an projects to get. Could be you can get/capture schematics in the ques for the rep it is linked with that give you access to a reverse engineered piece of tech. There is also having maybe not the gear itself so much over stfs giving out specific materials that can be used to upgrade an item into different variants of gear, like you get the base model from the rep an then you have three improved version that take mats from different stfs to gain.
Remember, back in the days of Borg technology drops the Borg space and ground sets were practically the only endgame sets available. But today you got plenty of alternatives, reputation sets.
The introduction of a new epic mk xiv set as random drop in queues could motivate people to play them. If they don't get the gear in a reasonable amount of time they at least have the marks necessary to "buy" a set from the reputation systems.
It kept people playing the content, ALL of it and not just the "easiest" ones like ISE.
The problem is people will always gravitate towards the path of least resistance. And that is why unique shinies for each and every group mission is an absolute must, something that the majority of MMORPG developers recognize.
I say add Mk XIV Ultra Rare/Epic versions of the Reputation gear as very rare drops to ALL the advanced/Elite queues, and restore the generic gear rewards upon completion so that people playing always get "something" for their efforts like in the old days.
Also something else I think would be cool, given how people enjoy vanity pets, is to add mini pet versions of bosses from all the queues that can only be obtained from Advanced/Elite queues, as a symbol of prestige. Like having a Mini-Armek tailing you around at ESD shouting "Resistance is Futile!" Or a mini-Borg Queen ship flying after you in space.
To summarize, all queues MUST have unique rewards of some kind that set them apart from eachother, this cannot be disputed.
I think Mirror Invasion could be simply improved if the portals did not stop opening, and you simply unlocked extra rewards for the additional ships you kill or portals you close.
More complicated could be a bonus phase triggered before the flagship comes, say where someone from the Mirror Universe offers support (maybe some Delta Quadrant factions that are still unthreatened by the Terran Empire) if you reconfigure some of the anomalies.
I think a system of featured queues or a rotation would work better: seeing a menu full of empty queues with maybe three queues with two people each is a massive turnoff. Slim that down and it feels busier, while increased rewards might encourage players to try STFs they haven't played before.
Lol, the renown defender accolade would never work right. They have three broken wrapper accolades that have been broken for years now with no movement to fix them.
In cryptic place I would take a look exactly which difficulty settings are run most for the respective maps and simply abandon the third, underused one. Let it be elite, advanced or normal. I mean when was the last time anybody played Herald Sphere Elite or Defend Rhi Station Normal?
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That way the super-DPS guys can get piles of rewards for putting in the effort but there's a baseline to get the optional like we currently have (say 30 portals).
Reward players for doing really well and incentivise the rest to put in that extra effort and get better at the game.
Alternatively set a baseline number of portals to shut and have the timer end cut off as soon as you reach that level. But if you don't close that many the timer runs its course.
That would provide better rewards for the really good players and those making the effort but still keep a time:reward ratio in check.
This could work. People could try their luck out in an STF... or pay large sums of dilithium. I like it.
That being said, each queue would have to get one or more items of this kind.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
People whining about dead queues.
"Don't queue up for anything as a PUG, it'll never pop. I read about it on the forums."
^^ This synoptic paragraph speaketh the truth.
The games hasn't been dying ever since: the number of people playing simply dwindled significantly. Whales, assorted peeps with big wallets, and a few die-hards, they all stayed. And, by the looks of it, the way Cryptic is raking in money, hand over fist, they're doing better than ever. But the broad number of people that were constantly online before, they've been decimated with the advent of DR. And THAT simply can't be masked in the queues (Well, Smirk still tried, telling everyone, in a podcast, that literally all queues popped for him immediately; but no one was buying).
So, the queues probably will stay dead, as, like I said, a large amount of numbers playing is the only thing that can remedy the situation. And the greedy Upgrade system makes it so the true casual player will never come back in droves. Ahhh, remember Starbase Fleet Defense?! I used to play it daily. Nowadays it's still 20 needed, but 0 queued.
Just take a look at the various threads where people are complaining about the Breach and you know what I mean. The only thing people, or at least this minority on the Forum, seem to care about are rewards. Things must be had on all characters, preferably with as little effort as possible. If it cannot be obtained in the equivalent of a 3 or 4 minute ISA or CCA, it's a fail, the revamp 'sucks' and... well you all know what people tend to say here whenever they might not get everything they want, immediately.
Apparantly some people aren't able to play something they like, especially if it means they get less rewards or a less certain outcome by pugging it.
As for the solutions in the OP: restricting access to things, be it materials or elite marks, won't solve anything. It'll only frustrate the newer or below average players more, which will only result in lower participation in the queues.