I like the idea of random queues, it's present in most of the RPGs I've played. In STO'S case, I just don't think the content is consistent enough in its quality and difficulty for this to be a viable option.
People often chose their queues with two things in mind: good rewards vs time/effort and avoiding bad content.
But now you get put in queues that are truly horrible. Some are badly designed and buggy, others suffer from scaling abnormalities, others still are arithmetically extremely difficult due to bad enemy ports(i mean the same enemy at the same difficulty will be much easier/harder depending on the TFO), a lot of TFO's are extremely similar and similarly boring, and finally the rewards are often grossly uneven for the time/difficulty played, with some rewarding 150+ marks and others 30.
I was in a random advanced TFO today and all my allies left because the enemies were almost invulnerable and they hit way too hard. Everyone died all the time and the mob just stayed there. At first, i thought it might have been a gear/competence issue, but the team was well geared and used sound strategies; in another TFO, it would have performed very well. The underlying numbers and TFO design just made all our efforts completely useless.
I'm tired being force-fed content without the design grunt work being done to make said content palatable (as in fun). Sure, I will avoid random TFOs from now on, but at the same time it's a shame that more effort doesn't go into making playing old content enjoyable.
Tex@luckyyahoo, U.S.S. Rocinante
STO fauna enthusiast/Joker extraordinaire
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Was that particular queue by chance swarm advanced? Experienced a queue there today where the hurQ were more in their invulnerable state that otherwise.
Or perhaps bugs are slow to be fixed because there is little data regarding them. Either way it is good that the flaws are driven into the light.
When you come across bugs in the TFOs, draft a bug report for each individual bug. If you have too many bus listed on the same report it goes in the OMG pile, so be as specific as you can be. If there are six bugs, report them individually and note that there are six bugs.
As a troubleshooter it drives me insane when I am told there's a problem, but the person cannot identify when it occurs, what it does, what process it is happening on, or when it fails to occur. Some systems are massive in size, and a 'problem with the pump' could be a bad motor, a bad switch, a bad valve, a bad control circuit, a bad operational procedure, a bad design, or damned near anything. Go Fix It! Fix what?
So, buggy, crappy, out of date, or whatever, give as much info as possible without writing a novel, and focus on one bug at a time.
My character Tsin'xing
Wait, so who exactly broke into your room and forced you to join a random TFO? Personally, I'd take the act of home invasion as a much higher priority item than the specific queue you were forced to play during the event.
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Mind you it is still better to give full detailed information then vague. But it feels like there is a problem with the way QA is done in Sto. To many times full reports are given even on tribble and the bug still makes it way to live. Or something is fixed then rolled back a few months later and broken again like Tricobalt weapons. I spent a year posting detailed bug report they got fixed for a few months and now broken again.
The thing is, STO is a huge file with many moving parts. It may be that the one fix you want will TRIBBLE up 25 other things, and they don't want to do that until they can fix it without the 25 other things needing to be fixed afterward.
I knew a guy who turned off a control circuit for just a minute to do an easy fix on a broken wire and caused hot polymer to stop flowing in a 2000 foot section of pipe. The polymer settled and cooled, and they had to not only abandon the pipe, (it was removed and replaced,) but they had to discard the contents of a massive mixing vessel full of the polymer too. And all of the instrumentation and control devices. It was a bad day.
Sometimes the best thing to do is to not make things worse. Is that the case here? I don't know, I'm not a developer. But I don't presume the developer is ignoring my bug reports, and I don't presume he's lazy or stupid. My guess is, there's lots of bugs and only so many hours allotted per week to work on them.
Play Normal if you can't handle Advanced.
Secondly, if enemies are not scaling to what they should be, then that is a bug that needs fixing as the queue is not functioning as it should. At which case I would advise you to file a bug report. To give a proper bug report you need to be as detailed as you can. Simply saying "this queue is broken" doesn't give me enough information to pass along to the devs, or for the devs themselves to fix the issue. If you want to file a proper bug report, be as specific as possible. When I go through steps 1, 2, 3 and 4, I see this bugged result here. If you can get screenshots and video of the bug(s) happening then that's an even greater help as then the actual bug can be seen in action. Fixing the bugs takes time to do so properly as it's not just flipping switches as much as we all wish it was. A single one or zero out of place in the code can bring the entire thing crashing down whether its at the full on studio production level like with STO, or small time modder level like what I do for some older games. It also depends on the severity of the break as well. A textual error in the tooltip is alot easier to fix than something like the Kemocite issues a few years back. Took close to 12-15 weeks I believe it was for the Kemocite stuff to finally be ironed out due to the nature of the break. Also, just because your particular bug doesn't make the next round of patch notes doesn't mean it won't get fixed. It simply means it didn't make that particular patch because they needed more time to fix it, or it wasn't ready until after the current patch cycle was complete. Point being, you get me details and I will personally wire the info on the bug up the chain of command.
Cryptic also asked for feedback on which queues were in need of a rebalance and which queues could use better payouts or changes. There were some good bits of feedback that I saw, and unfortunately I also saw some folks all but throw it back in their face as well, which was unfortunate. In fact myself and several test monkeys that help me hunt bugs for the devs went through all the queues and took notes about payouts vs time and effort etc. I would say overall we put at least 150 hours into testing the various queues once everything was said and done.
In terms of the content itself, if you're having issues with survival after the scaling issues have been addressed, then that falls into the realm of gearing, piloting etc. If you need help with survival I tend to play near exclusively as a tank in game and can help you with that. Send me your build details you have now including skills, gear, traits, boffs and the whole lot and I can offer suggestions to help in the survival department.
Finally, what is "bad" is largely subjective in this game. What I consider bad content another might not or vice versa. Every queue is doable if you pay attention to the clues and even briefings that outright tell you how to beat the queue as I pointed out above. What is "fun" is also another fairly large and subjective factor as well.
Star Trek Online volunteer Community Moderator
I do not care about the extra marks or other people playing random. The problem is the pick and play the queue you want has suffered badly. I cannot get many queues to start and the few that start now take ages to start making the entire experience much worse. I have had so much wasted time due to the new queue system that I have all but given up trying to play queues.
The problem is many bugs get fixed and then unfixed a few months later see the Tricobalt bugs which are a good example they worked for a few months and then spent a year+ being broken again. It feels like people are working on different code branches and on merging fixed bugs are getting unfixed.
I have tried that not with you but others and have been trying to years with the Kinetic 1 shot kill bug. See https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/startrekonline#/discussion/comment/13435880
We got the attention of the bug hunter at last. But they never collected the screenshots or combat logs or responded to anything. From our point of view we have no way to even know if they read our reply's or just abandoned the thread after that post. Did the bug report even make its way up the chain? The 1 shot kill bug has been going on for years now.
The introduction of random TFO's seems to suggest that Cryptic is trying to make some adjustments, so perhaps giving them a little time to see how THIS change settles in would be more beneficial than trashing it right from the outset?
It is not a good thing as all the evidence I have seen shows it to be bad with a negative impact. There has been zero benefit only problems.
While I can join any and all queues many will not start anymore or take much longer to start.
The numbers were removed because they were negative feedback that encouraged people to wait instead of joining queues. It's better the like minded people are in the queues together rather than lurking in the shadows waiting for someone else to queue first.
On the other hand, if people don't want to play the same queues you do, well there's your problem. Either way it has nothing at all to do with the UI.
Opposite experience I've had myself and seen documented through several STO streams. I'm really not sure how you're having such a bad time if you're accurately reporting your experience with the RTFO system. Some difficulty with specific queues? Sure, there's ways of replicating that (ie. playing ineligible TFO's.) All queues taking much longer to start, if at all? I just can't see how you're arriving at that conclusion.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Original STO beta tester.