The AFK system is flawed, the current structure of the Leaver Penalty is also flawed. HOW it's flawed is up for debate, the one camp opposes it entirely, and the other camp wants it to be more draconian.
The actual leaver penalty as it exists is almost completely unnecessary, since players leaving no longer significantly affects others' ability to complete the content.
What we do need a penalty for is people abusing the random queue by leaving until they get the queue they want, violating the rules of the random system to get the reward without holding upt their end of the bargain. To that end, the best solution is to disable the random queue (and only the random queue) for an extended period of time, account wide. The people who want to pick their queue will get to pick their queue the honest way and the bonus rewards will go to those who actually play the content they are given.
Here's the thing you're missing, though: The random queues ARE NOT RANDOM. The so-called bargain is already broken. If I want to create a trainwreck for you, I can stick you in any of the queues you absolutely despise anytime I want.
Um what you really mean is:
I can manually queue things I think people don't like and hope the people hitting random don't like them.
It will not. Let's just use the gold standard of Generic Space Content: ISA. ISA has about 50M HP divided by 15 minutes to pass, yielding an on-paper floor of just shy of 60K. 40K, therefore, is mathematically inadequate: It is simply not possible to succeed on merely 40K, leaving you indistinguishable from AFK, as you are completely unable to complete the mission and entirely dependent on being carried.
Expecting your teammates to be able to carry their own weight in a queue is one thing and is healthy for the game. However to have expectations set so high that 40k is considered no better than being AFK
40K *IS* no better than AFK. The other reason you're indistinguishable from AFK is that, once, the queue was taking so damn long to pop that I looked away from the monitor (after leaving a rock on the "accept pop" button), and by the time I noticed, it had popped, ended, and someone had posted a parse: 47K DPS AFK. I had actually beaten everyone in the queue while AFK!
In conclusion: If that's the best you can do, just embrace being AFK. You'll probably get more DPS out of it, seeing as you're statistically indistinguishable from it.
Your math is almost spot on but you didn't fully complete it. To calculate the DPS needed to complete ISA in that time we would first want to convert our 15 minutes into seconds, since we are trying to determine Damage Per Second. We would multiply our 15 by 60 which gives us 900 seconds. We would then divide our 50m by our 900 seconds. which gives us 55,555.5 with that .5 repeating of course. This is where you dropped the ball in the calculation as you needed to take it one step further and you didn't. Your number only takes into account the COMBINED total the 5 people in the run need to do and not the individual number. When we account for the fact that there are 5 sources of damage in the run, we divide our 55,555.5 by 5 and we get 11,111.1 with that .1 repeating.
So in actuality the number each person in that run needs to deal is only 11k DPS. So your number of 60k per person is way off base. To be considered AFK you would need to be dealing less than 11k. I have a hard time believing a long time veteran player is going to be dealing less than 11k
If you're not running with a premade team, you'd have no way of knowing what sort of teammates you'll end up with, so any number of them could be relatively new players that aren't putting out 11k DPS. There's also a chance that a player may end up leaving or disconnecting, thereby leaving you short of a teammate. In either case, if you're only putting out 11k, you'd be relying on luck, which is obviously unreliable. If you want to guarantee success, you'd need to be prepared for such occurrences by putting out more than 11k DPS. In the worst case scenario, your teammates simply don't exist, so you'd need to be prepared to finish the queue alone.
In theory, Ruin's logic is sound (albeit off by a few thousand DPS), but only in the most extreme circumstances. Luckily, in practice, you'll usually end up with a team that's good enough to succeed, so whether or not you're able to solo the queue isn't often a problem, but I'd advise coming prepared for less than ideal teammates anyway.
As far as stopping the trolls is concerned, I'd point out that while being able to determine exactly how much a player benefits the team as a whole and to reward them based on how much they contribute would be ideal, it would likely prove difficult, if not problematic, to actually implement. However, I do agree that not granting any payouts to players that do nothing or leave the queue, and instead having their rewards distributed among the active players that actually did something, would be relatively easy to implement and would at least add some benefit to the players suffering from smaller teams caused by leavers and AFKers.
Winning.
It's what I do. It's what I just did. It's what I'm about to do again. It's being undisputed emperor of an empire that cannot be disproved as the most powerful intergalactic empire in the entire universe; I always win, and everything I've won will definitely be won again... by me. It's my signature move, and thus, it's my signature. Problem, Sonic? Yeah, I mean you, Sonic, because you're being beat up, despite your being super. You can't even hit Shadow back, can you? Nope, he's too strong for you. Of course, I'm not Shadow, I'm the Super Emerald fueled fox that's pulling the strings; trust me, the fight would only be a few frames long if I were in it personally. Oh, and here's something for all you guys thinking you can win Last Post Wins 3.0; trust me, I'll be around a long while after the sun has already consumed the Earth while I sit out with the forum servers on Titan. Yes, I mean Titan... that comparatively little moon orbiting Saturn. It's a nice little place in a version of our solar system where the sun is a lot bigger. I mean, Mars will last longer than your precious Earth, but by then, it'll be one hot planet... and I figure Saturn's moon will be about the right temperate for a super-powered warlord. Oh, and trust me, I packed a lot of rings, and I mean a lot. Trillions, in fact, so I'll never run out of rings to power my super form. Besides, if I start to run out, I can just chaos control more rings into my reach. It's quite easy, really. You should try it. Granted, you'll never have the 7 Super Emeralds that I have in my possession, nor the Master Emerald that I've got hidden away somewhere... absorbed into my body thanks to Sonic logic, but whatever. I win. Again. I'm not kidding, either. Just check Last Post Wins, and if the last post isn't mine, it soon will be. Very, very soon. You can count on it. Seriously. By the way, if you're wondering, there's a really great Super Tails sprite sheet out there... somewhere... by some guy named shadow_91. These sprites are really great. Like, really good. Quality. Just like what I like to see in a sprite sheet. Also, credit to Joe T.E., his Sonic Battle style Super Sonic sprites have a great palette for a Super Sonic being beat up by Super Shadow, who's palette is from a Super Shadow sheet of unknown origin, but it turns out they were "borrowed" from a better sheet made by a certain Domenico. Oh, and the gif is actually a custom made super version of a similar gif, of which there are only 3 or 4 copies to be found by Google, and even then, evidently of an unknown source. Yep, it's one of those things. Stuff people have made, spread around, only for it to vanish and you to be the only person who still has a copy, not even knowing where it came from... like, literally at all. Oh, and anyone notice that Shadow's little chaos snap blast thingies are red and blue now? Yeah, I changed it. Problem, fans of purple? Yeah, I know you got a problem with that one, but you can just deal with it. After all, according to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly... alright, alright, I'll spare you the entire Bee Movie script, just Google it if you want. By the way, ever wonder how your characters would've ended up if they evolved in another universe? Yeah, that. Think about it. Ok, so you probably didn't bother reading up to here, but whatever, here's a surprise for you guys over at ESD (RP) who were crazy enough to read this: Emperor Nat of the mcfreakin' Terran Empire is gonna be right all along! The universe is gonna go BOOM! *Thumbs up to the insanity*
Oh, now don't tell me you want in on all this! Well, ok. Look this that Egg Pawn hanging outside your window, pointing his laser rifle at you, waiting for my next order. He's doing his part. He helps conquer the weak-minded. He roboticizes the weak-bodied. Heck, he even helps keep the useless people from causing any trouble, but you know what? Join. Find the closest Nataran Empire roboticization center near you and join the ranks, before the ranks find you. Oh, I know, you figure it must be so satisfying to know I basically rule the world now, and you know what? It is, but do you want to know the true definition of satisfaction? Well, let me tell you a little story. One day, you see a brand new event. They're giving out boxes that give old event stuff. Your dilithium is plentiful. You buy a whole lot of Phoenix packs on your main, and open them all. You get one epic token. Then, you decide, that since you have all the Breen ships and don't give a damn about the others, you exchange it for an ultra rare, and grab yourself a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship and for the hell of it, a Voth Bulwark. You open both, leaving the Bulwark in your vast masses of starships as you jump into the bugship and deck it out, deck by deck, into the most awesome Jem'Hadar ship you can. You fly it. You enjoy it. Eventually, you get bored and leave, leaving the old Bulwark never flown... until later. Your main is long complete. Your new alt main, based off some character you pulled out of nothing just to explain away some starship being in service without the command of your dear admiral, is also complete. Mostly. Their reps and doffs are hard at work, getting you stuff. You realize the potential, and head back for your dear admiral, pull the most Voth themed build you can out of thin air, and suit up in your giant ship in the shape of you know what. You head out... and cause all sorts of havoc. Enemies scream out your name as their very life is drained away by your swarms of Aceton Assimilators. They complain to the devs of your OPness when you revive yourself from death every time you die. Do you show any form of mercy? No. After all, this isn't the United Federation of Planets, this is mother frakkin' Starfleet, where you explore strange new worlds and kick butt never kicked before. Oh, and you realize that I just wrote another speech rivaling your own signature. Cool. Oh, wait, that's just the original draft, it is part of my signature now. Oh, and yes, I am aware that I have become a Canadian Regent; one day, sooner than you'd expect, we'll suddenly decide to take over the world and declare an "alliance", and I shall become it's Regent. You know, like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe of our beloved Star Trek. Oh, who'll we be taking over with? I dunno, maybe [REDACTED], or maybe aliens from outer space. Guess you'll have to wait and find out, won't we? Until then, don't ask too many questions, or else my Breen allies on Titania might pick up on your -- [REDACTED BY BREEN CONFEDERACY FOR REASONS] Also, psst... keep an eye out for flying Tribbles! Also walls. Big, great walls, separating entire continents apart. Walls patrolled by Tribbles. Flying Tribbles. Flying Nukara Tribbles. Don't worry, it's not like they were on Venus with a herd of Tholians or anything, they just like the extreme heat and brutal weather like acid rain and hurricane force winds as the norm. Oh, and definitely keep your eye out on any two-tailed foxes, because if they ain't glowing, they're definitely an imposter. Possibly an Undine, we caught one of those once in my place once. Oh, and if you find a two-tailed fox that doesn't like the cold... most certainly ask him to say sorry. If he refuses, DESTROY HIM WITH A DOOMSDAY MACHINE, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING ELSE THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH AGAINST SUCH AN OVERPOWERED IMPOSTER!
tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
@patrickngo I commend your effort here to explain colors to blind people. A lot of things you've posted here are chock full of common sense. None of them will ever be acted on, sadly. Because they require effort, time and money. CBS and PWE/Cryptic either cannot or will not(more likely) allocate any of these resources to correcting this situation. They already demonstrated this behavior with previous problems. No reason at all to expect them to act differently this time, is there?
I am a TROLL.
I wear this title as a badge of honor bestowed upon me by people who've never met me. Who have no idea what my life is like. Who think my only purpose in this game is to be at their beck and call 24/7. Who would "punish" me by removing me entirely from this game given the choice. I am okay with them thinking of me this way. Because it has zero impact on my playing STO. My Fleetmates and friends know me and know what kind of person I am. And as long as they are okay with how I play STO, I can give a flying rodent's posterior what a bunch of forum warriors think.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
@patrickngo you speak so much sense it brings a tear to one's eye.
The whole system of rewards in STO these days (in particular the featured TFO's or events) is geared towards simply turning up and being given a reward, rather than actually having to make any effort to earn them.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
I mean if all they want is for player X to earn a reward be that they are logged in daily for Y time then why not just have us sit in an empty blank map for 15 mins daily and throw rewards at us, this is literally all current event TFO design is. The fancy map designs, enemy ships, effects....they are all a total waste of resources and time if your whole way of thinking is just to auto-reward a player for simply being present.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
From that data, it should be pretty easy to structure an algorithm that scales rewards individually. Particularly if concepts like 'Assists' in kills is also implemented. it's more complicated than the "Finished/didn't finish" they're using now, but it has the potential to increase the value of players-actually-playing while de-incentivising AFK behaviour.
STO has missions built that track that stuff. Seriously, look at the end of queue window in NW. In STO the game can and does track all of that stuff. It's how the game decides who gets First in Romulan Minefield or CC. In Champions, this system has a score requirement for getting rewards.
What does it accomplish? Realistically? Not a whole lot.
so I won't actually say why I think we have the system we have in STO, merely that it would require a mentality that is likely to be non-present in the developer staff before any change could even be designed, much less implemented.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort. That and it creates an environment where using certain builds will give you a higher score just because of your build choices. Remember the old whining about Romulans in CCA? Now imagine that applied to every TFO, but WORSE since it applies to dilithium rewards and not just junk gear and trophies.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort.
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
I honestly have no idea what to do about trolls, I think a lot of what @patrickngo said makes absolute sense - you have to rob the trolls of their incentive to troll. Turn the logic on its head somehow.
I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort.
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
Those are included as part of the score systems in CO and NW. In fact, the reason people complained about Romulans in CCA was due to certain Warbird consoles having passive heal effects that would enhance their score.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
Because as soon as players are required to do anything more than show up and derp around for a few minutes for their rewards, the forums light up like a christmas tree full of whiners saying "too hard."
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
Because as soon as players are required to do anything more than show up and derp around for a few minutes for their rewards, the forums light up like a christmas tree full of whiners saying "too hard."
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.
Yeah sadly There's too vocal a minority who just whine like crazy when it gets remotely hard.
At least the mission can be sped up by playing well though, so a good team will always finish before a group of lazy afk'ers.
But what would make that even better would be if a faster run actually rewarded you better.
I could get behind a reward system which awarded extras for getting things done faster. Or with fewer players if someone bugs out. As long as it is not DPS based. But this ship sailed long ago. I'd like very much for that player who was throwing heals at me every five seconds during a Hive Advanced PUG to be rewarded for doing so. Instead of being hit with an AFK Penalty for not doing enough damage. But putting such an effort into this game would require too much from the same old crowd. It would also upset the rate at which PWE/Cryptic thinks we should be rewarded without spending gobs of cash on STO.
There are some good ideas in this thread. Proposed by people who continually come up with good ideas.
Too bad no one at PWE/Cryptic ever listens to them.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
0
rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,434Community Moderator
I was about to mention Crystalline. I was able to take first in a Kobali Healboat on my main. All I did was spam heals every chance I got.
CC is a good example of a TFO that measures more than just DPS yes, but it can be fudged because you can heal yourself with a macro I imagine and not actually be of any use to the rest of the team(s) in that run.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
They have already said no on that, several times, specifically because they aren't going to split people up.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
When you see "TRIBBLE" in my posts, it's because I manually typed "TRIBBLE" and censored myself.
They have already said no on that, several times, specifically because they aren't going to split people up.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
CC is a good example of a TFO that measures more than just DPS yes, but it can be fudged because you can heal yourself with a macro I imagine and not actually be of any use to the rest of the team(s) in that run.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
1: the game does already separately track healing others vs healing self
2: it doesn't track "overheal". IE if I activate a power that would heal for 5k, I only get score credit for healing 5k if the target was missing at least 5k health. Otherwise credit is given for the amount actually healed.
3: Making mark/dil rewards scale based on amount of participation credit has a major problem. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to tweak the balance on the score system to avoid creating situations where specific types of build have a drastically different score than others. And I'm not talking about people being bad or good players, but about people min-maxing builds to exploit the score system.
One thing I would like to see added to RTFO's is if someone leaves during a TFO to add a new player(s) to the group to fill out the roster (WoW does this).
I was in a borg ground TFO and 2 people left and the 3 of us carried on only to be stopped because 2 people (3rd had to drop the shields elsewhere) just didn't produce enough dps to destroy the thingy. If the TFO code brought in 2 more people we could of finished it. Instead the 3 of us wasted a lot of time, which as you know is frustrating.
You want a penalty, bust the Characters on the Account to a maximum of Tier 4 (Captain) for 40 hours. No use of ships above Tier IV and no equipment above Mk VIII.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
#3: People are already min/maxing a specific build to exploit the existing score system. What's the difference if they're min.maxing healboats, versus the present min/maxing for DPS, except possibly that it's significantly easier to min/max DPS?
As someone who has "made an effort" to get the first place trophy in CC on every character, I don't think it'd be good for the game overall if that applied to the actual TFO rewards.
I ummm know the reason for this problem. It comes from the complexities of trying to teach 2 people to press F at the same time I do. You would think that this would be relatively easy to get players to do but its like asking them to solve quantum physics problems. So being this is way too hard for them they avoid these type of TFO's and run away to another game or another character.
Especially the borg STF's there needs to be a tribble or some kind of function that says I am smarter than the average person I can press 3 buttons at the same time. Its the only thing missing from my setups to carry a whole team and need it badly. The other thing is the whole adapting thing where that trait comes in handy but having to feel the need to use it on ever single TFO is bothersome.
Also that temporal gornish type one people don't get their are 2 entrance/exit points as well as 2 gates to the area you need to go too. This means you have to split up and not have one person work extra hard just to have to solo one side all by themselves. That is the end of my ranting about this but if I can replace stupid ppl with a device or function I'll carry teams i'm on and just get over it since i've been doing this for almost a decade.
Honestly, there's been times that I've 'Disco'd/Disconnected for those who thought I meant ST:D while waiting for the transition to the TFO maps. I didn't mean to abandon those, but I was called away from the keyboard, or someone needed me in Real Life.
Anyways, there may be more reasons that just trolling that happens in these situations.
i alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
i alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
Your calling other people "noobs" would have more weight behind it if you didn't first admit it takes you 40 minutes to solo ISA.
i alt f4 when the team can't do any damage or stay alive, im not wasting my time anymore, last time i did that i was in a ISA for almost 40 mins, nope not again, if you don't like me bailing on a mission then build for the mission, TFO's are not for noobs, even normal ones, you get your story gear first then think about tfo's you got battlezones to grind up in so stay the hell out of TFO's.
Your calling other people "noobs" would have more weight behind it if you didn't first admit it takes you 40 minutes to solo ISA.
Comments
What we do need a penalty for is people abusing the random queue by leaving until they get the queue they want, violating the rules of the random system to get the reward without holding upt their end of the bargain. To that end, the best solution is to disable the random queue (and only the random queue) for an extended period of time, account wide. The people who want to pick their queue will get to pick their queue the honest way and the bonus rewards will go to those who actually play the content they are given.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I can manually queue things I think people don't like and hope the people hitting random don't like them.
My character Tsin'xing
If you're not running with a premade team, you'd have no way of knowing what sort of teammates you'll end up with, so any number of them could be relatively new players that aren't putting out 11k DPS. There's also a chance that a player may end up leaving or disconnecting, thereby leaving you short of a teammate. In either case, if you're only putting out 11k, you'd be relying on luck, which is obviously unreliable. If you want to guarantee success, you'd need to be prepared for such occurrences by putting out more than 11k DPS. In the worst case scenario, your teammates simply don't exist, so you'd need to be prepared to finish the queue alone.
In theory, Ruin's logic is sound (albeit off by a few thousand DPS), but only in the most extreme circumstances. Luckily, in practice, you'll usually end up with a team that's good enough to succeed, so whether or not you're able to solo the queue isn't often a problem, but I'd advise coming prepared for less than ideal teammates anyway.
As far as stopping the trolls is concerned, I'd point out that while being able to determine exactly how much a player benefits the team as a whole and to reward them based on how much they contribute would be ideal, it would likely prove difficult, if not problematic, to actually implement. However, I do agree that not granting any payouts to players that do nothing or leave the queue, and instead having their rewards distributed among the active players that actually did something, would be relatively easy to implement and would at least add some benefit to the players suffering from smaller teams caused by leavers and AFKers.
Winning.
Oh, now don't tell me you want in on all this! Well, ok. Look this that Egg Pawn hanging outside your window, pointing his laser rifle at you, waiting for my next order. He's doing his part. He helps conquer the weak-minded. He roboticizes the weak-bodied. Heck, he even helps keep the useless people from causing any trouble, but you know what? Join. Find the closest Nataran Empire roboticization center near you and join the ranks, before the ranks find you. Oh, I know, you figure it must be so satisfying to know I basically rule the world now, and you know what? It is, but do you want to know the true definition of satisfaction? Well, let me tell you a little story. One day, you see a brand new event. They're giving out boxes that give old event stuff. Your dilithium is plentiful. You buy a whole lot of Phoenix packs on your main, and open them all. You get one epic token. Then, you decide, that since you have all the Breen ships and don't give a damn about the others, you exchange it for an ultra rare, and grab yourself a Jem'Hadar Attack Ship and for the hell of it, a Voth Bulwark. You open both, leaving the Bulwark in your vast masses of starships as you jump into the bugship and deck it out, deck by deck, into the most awesome Jem'Hadar ship you can. You fly it. You enjoy it. Eventually, you get bored and leave, leaving the old Bulwark never flown... until later. Your main is long complete. Your new alt main, based off some character you pulled out of nothing just to explain away some starship being in service without the command of your dear admiral, is also complete. Mostly. Their reps and doffs are hard at work, getting you stuff. You realize the potential, and head back for your dear admiral, pull the most Voth themed build you can out of thin air, and suit up in your giant ship in the shape of you know what. You head out... and cause all sorts of havoc. Enemies scream out your name as their very life is drained away by your swarms of Aceton Assimilators. They complain to the devs of your OPness when you revive yourself from death every time you die. Do you show any form of mercy? No. After all, this isn't the United Federation of Planets, this is mother frakkin' Starfleet, where you explore strange new worlds and kick butt never kicked before. Oh, and you realize that I just wrote another speech rivaling your own signature. Cool. Oh, wait, that's just the original draft, it is part of my signature now. Oh, and yes, I am aware that I have become a Canadian Regent; one day, sooner than you'd expect, we'll suddenly decide to take over the world and declare an "alliance", and I shall become it's Regent. You know, like the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance in the mirror universe of our beloved Star Trek. Oh, who'll we be taking over with? I dunno, maybe [REDACTED], or maybe aliens from outer space. Guess you'll have to wait and find out, won't we? Until then, don't ask too many questions, or else my Breen allies on Titania might pick up on your -- [REDACTED BY BREEN CONFEDERACY FOR REASONS] Also, psst... keep an eye out for flying Tribbles! Also walls. Big, great walls, separating entire continents apart. Walls patrolled by Tribbles. Flying Tribbles. Flying Nukara Tribbles. Don't worry, it's not like they were on Venus with a herd of Tholians or anything, they just like the extreme heat and brutal weather like acid rain and hurricane force winds as the norm. Oh, and definitely keep your eye out on any two-tailed foxes, because if they ain't glowing, they're definitely an imposter. Possibly an Undine, we caught one of those once in my place once. Oh, and if you find a two-tailed fox that doesn't like the cold... most certainly ask him to say sorry. If he refuses, DESTROY HIM WITH A DOOMSDAY MACHINE, BECAUSE THERE'S NOTHING ELSE THAT WOULD BE ENOUGH AGAINST SUCH AN OVERPOWERED IMPOSTER!
tr;dr, I am winning last post wins 3.0. Thank you for your time.
I wear this title as a badge of honor bestowed upon me by people who've never met me. Who have no idea what my life is like. Who think my only purpose in this game is to be at their beck and call 24/7. Who would "punish" me by removing me entirely from this game given the choice. I am okay with them thinking of me this way. Because it has zero impact on my playing STO. My Fleetmates and friends know me and know what kind of person I am. And as long as they are okay with how I play STO, I can give a flying rodent's posterior what a bunch of forum warriors think.
The whole system of rewards in STO these days (in particular the featured TFO's or events) is geared towards simply turning up and being given a reward, rather than actually having to make any effort to earn them.
The entire current problem with calls for AFK runs and people joining back in only at the last phase or whatever is pretty much promoted by the way Cryptic designs their content. It's lazy, un-inventive content design that is simply relies of a player being present at the end to grab a free reward with no actual participation in the team environment.
Why they insist on designing content this way is literally beyond me tbh; you'd have thought the amount of effort put into the maps, mechanics etc would want them to encourage people to at least appreciate it.
I mean if all they want is for player X to earn a reward be that they are logged in daily for Y time then why not just have us sit in an empty blank map for 15 mins daily and throw rewards at us, this is literally all current event TFO design is. The fancy map designs, enemy ships, effects....they are all a total waste of resources and time if your whole way of thinking is just to auto-reward a player for simply being present.
They need to move towards incentive based reward. They need to promote actual player participation. Because nothing looks worse for a game than when a newbie pops in and sees apathetic people just sitting about afk waiting for their daily benefits to be handed out freely to their greedy hands with no active participation.
Some of these missions are quite enjoyable, if playing the actual content is why you play STO. If all you play STO for is to get rewards from sitting AFK then I have to question why do you play at all? Why do you want the rewards if all you do is sit AFK in the actual content being provided for you to play?
What does it accomplish? Realistically? Not a whole lot. I think the devs actually did try that and decided it created more problems than it solved. How? that's simple. It's possible for one player to get 50%(or more) of the score in a mission. Should they get 50% of the rewards? While it might be tempting to say yes, people who are using low-level and/or poorly geared characters will get substantially less rewards for the same amount of actual player effort. That and it creates an environment where using certain builds will give you a higher score just because of your build choices. Remember the old whining about Romulans in CCA? Now imagine that applied to every TFO, but WORSE since it applies to dilithium rewards and not just junk gear and trophies.
My character Tsin'xing
While I would like to see a merit based system of rewards, I have to admit that you make a very good point on why it would cause problems. That said, I would like to see some form of recognition for support actions - healing others, interacting with the map, and debuffing/buffing.
I honestly have no idea what to do about trolls, I think a lot of what @patrickngo said makes absolute sense - you have to rob the trolls of their incentive to troll. Turn the logic on its head somehow.
My character Tsin'xing
And because Cryptic is unwilling to respond to that with "too bad" and an offer to buy the reward for $$$.
Right. Like in the current Pahvo event, I would totally have made the mission FAIL when the time runs out, instead of auto-win. But no, that would be "too hard."
Still, at least the current trend is a slight improvement over the previous SOP. Even though playing through the crystal capture phase of Pahvo isn't actually required, it does make the mission go faster if you do. So it's at least better than, for example, Mirror Incursion where the entire first phase is just a wait no matter what you do.
Yeah sadly There's too vocal a minority who just whine like crazy when it gets remotely hard.
At least the mission can be sped up by playing well though, so a good team will always finish before a group of lazy afk'ers.
But what would make that even better would be if a faster run actually rewarded you better.
There are some good ideas in this thread. Proposed by people who continually come up with good ideas.
Too bad no one at PWE/Cryptic ever listens to them.
But the idea is a sensible one in principle.
They'd just need the balls to actually implement such a system, though slightly improved across the board or in new content at the least.
Send 50% of your heals to other players - extra marks.
Partake in x% of interacts in with objectives in the mission - extra marks.
Stuff like that but spread across the spectrum of different inputs people make to team missions so that it's not just DPS being awarded and also so that if you chose to sit AFK then you WILL miss out on some extra rewards.
12Th Fleet Section 31 Fleet Captain
That will be the "solution" they come up with.
Unfortunately, that splits the players up, again.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
Random
Random Space
Random Ground
But again that might split the players because people who are afraid of getting ground will skip Random because of the chance to get Ground.
This is 100% correct. There is no "solution" because there is no problem that needs a solution. The random button works just fine as it is. If you want a specific queue and don't want to go random, then choose that specific queue.
I wanna like this post so bad.
2: it doesn't track "overheal". IE if I activate a power that would heal for 5k, I only get score credit for healing 5k if the target was missing at least 5k health. Otherwise credit is given for the amount actually healed.
3: Making mark/dil rewards scale based on amount of participation credit has a major problem. It would take a ridiculous amount of time to tweak the balance on the score system to avoid creating situations where specific types of build have a drastically different score than others. And I'm not talking about people being bad or good players, but about people min-maxing builds to exploit the score system.
My character Tsin'xing
Just because they said they would not do it.....does NOT mean it isn't part of the solution in this case.
Would I like to see them do it...no, because that splits up the players, again.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
I was in a borg ground TFO and 2 people left and the 3 of us carried on only to be stopped because 2 people (3rd had to drop the shields elsewhere) just didn't produce enough dps to destroy the thingy. If the TFO code brought in 2 more people we could of finished it. Instead the 3 of us wasted a lot of time, which as you know is frustrating.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
My character Tsin'xing
Especially the borg STF's there needs to be a tribble or some kind of function that says I am smarter than the average person I can press 3 buttons at the same time. Its the only thing missing from my setups to carry a whole team and need it badly. The other thing is the whole adapting thing where that trait comes in handy but having to feel the need to use it on ever single TFO is bothersome.
Also that temporal gornish type one people don't get their are 2 entrance/exit points as well as 2 gates to the area you need to go too. This means you have to split up and not have one person work extra hard just to have to solo one side all by themselves. That is the end of my ranting about this but if I can replace stupid ppl with a device or function I'll carry teams i'm on and just get over it since i've been doing this for almost a decade.
Anyways, there may be more reasons that just trolling that happens in these situations.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'