First off I want to say that I REALLY like the formats of the Borg Incursion, Mirror Event, and new STF's (and even the old Fleet Actions). Nice epic space battles.
But right now, they seem to me to be all the same thing, but with different names and rewards.
Some, like the Gorn or Klingon fleet actions, can take a LONG time to complete and offer little reward (mirror event = only ONE drop per person for the whole mission, and no dilithium?), while others like the new STF's are rather quick to complete (under 10 minutes) and offer GREAT rewards (STF drops plus rare gear drops).
Right now as of this moment, I've noticed a HUGE shift in players to the STF missions due to the rewards given. The Mirror events before used to be crowded but now are empty, and most of the time its difficult to get more than one or two other people into a Borg Incursion event. And the other Fleet Actions are 100% empty.
Granted, this is Tribble and there are quite a few less people on the server, but I have a feeling if the rewards-per-time-involved status of these missions aren't evened out more that it will translate over to Holodeck as well.
Also, on the STF/Fleet action menu, I'd REALLY like to see it more fleshed out with separate windows for the Fleet actions and STF missions, cause right now they are all mixed in together and hard to distinguish for newcomers.
I'm wondering what everyone else has to say about this as well...
I've noticed the invasion events are more popular in the pre-Admiral/General levels just because of the XP bonus. They're great for leveling up a character, and the items aren't bad. However, once the players hi the Admiral/General level range, I've noticed the shift to the Cure and Infected just because of the rewards. The invasion events at that level are ghost towns.
I agree with the OP. I've been *****ing a lot about the fleet actions but nobody seems to care.
As far as original intentions are concerned, I think the Dev meant something like this:
Mirror events and RA: get people to do things together, give a lot of XP for leveling up, not for end-game
STF: end-game grind
but what about the best original invention of all?
Fleet action: get 10-20 players together in a giant map, do grand missions
A while ago, Cryptic put in this queue system for the fleet actions and you can't get into an instance with more than 8 people, while keeping enemy activities at 10-20 player level, so it became disproportionately tedious to do. The other thing is reward, there is simply no incentive to do it. Doing just about anything else in STO gets you better rewards per time spent.
People respond to incentives. And you are definitely right with your observations.
Yes "regular" fleet actions are, beside the lowlevel SB24, always empty and lacking incentive to play them. A few valuable drops and some dilithium involved would do wonders to populate them and to give more rewarding diversity beside the STFs.
The mirror event is as long interesting as your still leveling. But after that it's also lacking the rewards to make it attractive (compared to STFs, maybe make mirror event more rewarding dilithium wise, while STFs stay it loot/salvage wise).
Borg incursion has additionally the major drawback that you can't enter from the PvE queue.
Comments
As far as original intentions are concerned, I think the Dev meant something like this:
Mirror events and RA: get people to do things together, give a lot of XP for leveling up, not for end-game
STF: end-game grind
but what about the best original invention of all?
Fleet action: get 10-20 players together in a giant map, do grand missions
A while ago, Cryptic put in this queue system for the fleet actions and you can't get into an instance with more than 8 people, while keeping enemy activities at 10-20 player level, so it became disproportionately tedious to do. The other thing is reward, there is simply no incentive to do it. Doing just about anything else in STO gets you better rewards per time spent.
People respond to incentives. And you are definitely right with your observations.
The mirror event is as long interesting as your still leveling. But after that it's also lacking the rewards to make it attractive (compared to STFs, maybe make mirror event more rewarding dilithium wise, while STFs stay it loot/salvage wise).
Borg incursion has additionally the major drawback that you can't enter from the PvE queue.