But I'm actually pretty miffed about getting tricked into using a feature to help my fleet, burning TONS of fleet creds trying to get 5 security doffs and winding up with 100s of doffs that I couldn't donate yet (missions we're cooling or not of the right type) and then having the rug be pulled out from under me on their usefulness.
I get if you have to make a change but not communicating that change or not applying it in a from-then-on basis is a load of TRIBBLE.
You dangle a carrot. I have to buy 50 carrots to get a carrot I like... and then you poison all the carrots... THANKS. I'm in full on Risa AFK mode now. They found the way to make me no longer care about the game. Not really encouraging me to spend any money on this sale they are running. How will I know that I'll even be able to fly the ship I would buy a few days later (exaggerated for effect)(but I am still not spending).
And if they truly have a code base without any version tracking rollback capability they really need to get their act together. That is not how professional coding in the real world works. Time to move past the hobbyist stage.
I definitely oppose what is effectively a stealth Fleet Doff. Either make them special or make them normal. One more icon of a little Connie or Fleet Mark on the traits won't be hard to cope with. Thanks to the fine folks in DOFFJOBS for saving me from some expensive mistakes. I will try not to re-sell the ones I have until this is sorted.
True, some of the whi... pardon me... W.A.I.ners are taking this meme a little too far, but with a loud enough outcry it tends to fix things faster. 300 post threads are hard to miss. I can clearly remember the last thing described to be "Working As Intended" was the Nukara missions having their Fleet Marks switched off. That didn't last very long.
Isn't it awesome when Video Games are shaped to our whims? You can write all the letters you want to Gearbox, but it won't make Duke Nukem Forever any better. We're lucky, really. lol
=/\=Transwarp 10.0 Victory Achieved on 26-July-2012, Six Months After F2P =/\=
Enough with the self-righteous comments about how 'some people' are taking things too far when you're the ones complaining just as much as everyone else and get to the point. We're upset about the way the DOFFs are currently, the devs are *allegedly* working on it and we have yet to wait to discover if they were sincere or not. Customers have a RIGHT to vote with their wallets when the Devs bring in an update that intentionally or not affects the game in a negative way. In this case a Fleet Starbase stand-still for some fleets.
While we wait, posting in this thread keeps them reminded that we're not happy and that's a good thing. So enough with the high on your hoarse comments about how horrible and evil it is to be upset, to complain and to gripe a few times on a thread regarding something that's simply messed up.
I know some people feel that sucking up to PWE makes them special or will pay off in the long run but it just wont. I like STO and I like that PWE is supporting it; but if there's an update that needs to be disagreed with then I'll stick up with the guts to say what I think; not pander to the idea that PWE is 100% innocent or 100% evil because they're not either way.
Well, I will give you +2 cool points for coming back and admitting that you were wrong.
Or, at least admitting you have some special one-of-a-kind problem with your DOFFs that no one else has but hey, at least you didnt imply we were blind and/or lazy this time.
They simply need to make the doffs bound when you open the pack... problem solved.
They would no longer be able to be listed on the exchange.
The y would not be able to be reused on the star base which made little sense.
They could still be taken to HQ and get sent off to other projects in return for a couple new doffs that could go back to the star base or be traded via the exchange.
simple ways to fix this one put it back to how it was befor patch
2 make them bound to u so u cant sell them
3 remove them totaly as it now pointless him even being in them game
4 lower the duffs needed on sb jobs to allow small fleets to restart building
as tier 3 needs 60 per job and few from sta in one 24 to 48 hours is nuts and never get enough duffs by the time ur dead and gone from the game
5 lower the cool down on sta duff requests( at mo 24 to 48 hours for few duffs that may not be useable anyways)
6 shoot the plank that messed it up tostart with best idear going and return it to befor patch so they are useable but if u trash them u dont get anything for it (that part can stay)
a reply fro pwe or crytic on this subject would be nice too ????????????????????
They simply need to make the doffs bound when you open the pack... problem solved.
They would no longer be able to be listed on the exchange.
The y would not be able to be reused on the star base which made little sense.
They were added solely to be used as a way to get DOFFs to be used on the starbase projects. How does that make little sense to you?
And I don't want to have to go back and forth between the fleet base and the academt to use the grinder. I want to play the game, not shlepp back and forth because the devs borked the DOFF vendor beyond any usefulness.
The solution is to make them identifiable as Fleet doffs so people know selling them won't get them dilithium and cxp but to make them just as usable as any other doff. Starbases, missions, on the exchange, whatever.
They were added solely to be used as a way to get DOFFs to be used on the starbase projects. How does that make little sense to you?
If that was true they would not have needed to make the packs bound at all would they have ? I don't think that was there intention at all myself. Frankly they are likely to simply make all of them bound.
Frankly IMO they where simply a bit lazy... the starbase packs should have had 3-6 unique races (like the gamma packs). I could buy that they where coming from races friendly to the cause... then if as I believe was there intention they where to not be reused in the base projects it would have been quite logical to take them back to HQ for reassignment. lol
Simply put I don't remember reading anywhere that they where intended to complete star base projects.... perhaps I'm wrong there though.
But as it's already been stated, generally, you expend a lot more Fleet Credits buying the DOFFs than you gain back from contributing them.
Random White Fleet DOFF = 500 Fleet Credits
Contributing a White DOFF to most projects = 150 Fleet Credits.
That's -350 Fleet Credits per DOFF you can contribute.
A complete 500 Fleet Credit loss on any random DOFFs, not what you needed at that given moment. Or if it's possible for civs to spawn from random boxes, even more useless for the most part.
But as it's already been stated, generally, you expend a lot more Fleet Credits buying the DOFFs than you gain back from contributing them.
Random White Fleet DOFF = 500 Fleet Credits
Contributing a White DOFF to most projects = 150 Fleet Credits.
That's -350 Fleet Credits per DOFF you can contribute.
A complete 500 Fleet Credit loss on any random DOFFs, not what you needed at that given moment. Or if it's possible for civs to spawn from random boxes, even more useless for the most part.
That is a valid point... however I think that is still a good enough return that people wouldn't need to grind nearly as much.
Lets be honest the point of the Bases is a time sink... its a way for them to remove EC out of the system... Remove Dilithium out of the system... Create commodity items that create value in game for the currencies they intend to reduce. There by increasing the number of transactions on the ones they make $$$ from. Look at the dilithium exchange... I would say they have achieved that and are likely raking in the $$$.
If you save in this case 3/4 of the cost of the fleet currency they intend you to grind in order to reduce those other currencies, it breaks there system.
In a lot of ways I wish they would have just left the doff option of the star bases all together. I understand why they can't let people use them for projects its counter productive to what they hope to achieve. However its really confusing for people that would assume those doffs could be used that way....
Really if they where going to add fleet doffs... then they should have been NEW doffs tailored to fleet base grinding. Perhaps a doff that increased Fleet Mark Drops by X percent. Or just made them a random style grab bag with a higher chance to drop some of the rare purple doffs. (at the right tier... and of course make them all bind on pickup)
Well we were given something we should have never seen in game, a free infinite doff generator. It's like christmas but every day. It can't last long in a F2P game. You can discuss on the amount of advantages you can get for free in game but you can't ask for everything to be free. They made a huge mistake, the white doffs were 200 times too cheap or so, if we take a look at our leaderboards. I know people can think it's unfair if the free candies for everyone are removed but I'm sure they did this to preserve their revenue on doff packs.
The fact is that this feature was a huge mistake (for the revenue and for the challenges we have in game), and the temporaty patch is a disaster, but it was an emergency solution to this first huge mistake. I really hope that next time, they consider the facts when they want to please us, so that all this frustration can be avoided. I prefer seeing a useless feature they make cheaper after some time than the contrary, otherwise, it leads to many abuses - and such abuses still exists in game with the grinder/degrinder. The infinite doff generator still exists for those who know how to trick the system, it just takes more time.
And the fact is that there is no fun in a game where you can have everything right away without any effort or challenge.
Edit: The best and most friendly solution would be: make all the current doffs usable in the SB. Raise the price of every fleet doff x200 or 300 (purples x1000 or more). With this system, people can get some more doffs each week (not much but some), and they can farm fleetmarks like mad if they want a bit more. Those who bought some doffs on the exchange can use them, and the candy still exists but it's much harder to get.
This reminds me of Catch-22's Milo Minderbinder who made a profit by selling below the cost he paid. Do you care to enlighten us how we can generate infinite doffs if we were to pay 500 Fleet Credits and only get 150 Fleet Credits back when we use them in a project? That sounds like we're losing 350 credits *per duty officer* -- which would clearly be unsustainable unless you're trying to loop some other form of currency in there. You suggest raising the prices by several orders of magnitude -- would you honestly spend 100,000 of your fleet credits for a random common duty officer?.
Given enough time, we can generate unlimited doffs via recruitment, or generate unlimited fleet marks via running events, or unlimited dilithium from doing dailies and STFs?
Let me explain you simple maths with simple words then.
Grind fleetmarks. Turn them into a huge amount of fleet credits with some special projects. Let's say colonists, since we want a cheap one. Reach 1 or 2M of fleet credits. A lot of people already have this. Buy 4000 white doffs with that. It's not infinite, but that's insane. And it's just one month of grinding. Which means 133 doffs a day. This is too much. The academy can offer 5-6 doffs a day (roughtly). Any dev allowing such an imbalance in his game isn't serious.
1 million fleet credits would require 20,000 fleet marks. Let's admit that's a significant amount of marks. That would fill the mark requirement on 33.3 colonist special projects -- but would also require over 4125 colonists to complete. I suppose one could get around this by fleet-hopping volunteering to donate fleet marks, possibly for energy credits.
Keep in mind: white fleet doffs cost 500 credits. And you get 50 credits per fleet mark. Trading 10 FM for one white doff is reasonable, trading 200+ FM for a single random white doff is not. Each project can run dozens to hundreds of white duty officers.
But as it's already been stated, generally, you expend a lot more Fleet Credits buying the DOFFs than you gain back from contributing them.
Random White Fleet DOFF = 500 Fleet Credits
Contributing a White DOFF to most projects = 150 Fleet Credits.
That's -350 Fleet Credits per DOFF you can contribute.
A complete 500 Fleet Credit loss on any random DOFFs, not what you needed at that given moment. Or if it's possible for civs to spawn from random boxes, even more useless for the most part.
Correct, we're not getting *more* fleet credits out of the system -- we're losing hundreds of available fleet credits with every fleet doff we purchase and (theoretically) would contribute. And actually it's actually worse for us than a net loss of 350 fleet credits if we were to get some civilian doffs that no active project seems to need. This is extremely common with the doff exchange projects.
to the OP if you burn your in-game currencies by using them: yes they are.
If you expect something useful to come out of them, no they aren't; buy some keys and lockboxes for that
So, been a while since I logged into the game (not any fun any more so I don't see a reason), got plenty of other games I'd much rather play (including ones that require a monthly sub) but still feel the need to check in here from time to time just to keep track on how much they are destroying this game (sad since I was stupid enough to purchase a LTS).
My only question at this time is, has the exchange been totally infiltrated by these useless DOFFs now?
...where do you get your statement, that seems to be in direct contradiction to that of the developer?
His statement doesn't contradict anything I am saying. How do you get to that conclusion?
He says they fleet doffs were never intended to be a way to earn fleet credits. Fine. I am not saying they ever were intended as a way to earn fleet credits. Guess what? You didn't earn fleet credits in the old system. You lost fleet credits. The Doff vendor charged you 500 fleet creds for a random doff that might or might not further your project. If you got one that did help the project, you only "earn" a payback of (I think) 150 fleet credits. Nothing actually earned. Net loss of 350 on just that one Doff. And when you factor in that maybe one out of every 10, or 20, or X is actually useful to a project, its a hugh fleet credit burner.
And seriously man - why do you think they would put a Doff vendor on your starbase that just happens to sell random whites at completed tier 1, greens at completed tier II, etc etc if it wasn't intended as a way to help people in small fleets have access to something that can help advance the projects while simultaneously burn off their huge surplus of useless fleet credits?
Has anyone from PWE come forward yet and said anything about this issue?
Yup, it has been stated that it is "working as intended". As soon as that statement was made many protests were made in that same thread. The Dev in question replied later in the thread but completely ignored that issue and all the complaints about it "working as intended" and tried to turn the discussion in a different direction.
From what I can tell, "working as intended" is the "polite" way of them saying "We don't give a ***** about our players or what they think and, since this item doesn't net us any money we have no intention of spending any time looking into it, we would rather spend our precious time creating more overpriced, underperforming, c-store items"
Maybe the Devs can prove me wrong, but based on their history I'm not holding my breath.
all i can say is now the change my sb come to a stop i need 60 white duff for tier 3 millitary i spent past 3 days trying to get some from the sta non at all sb duff suply pointless might as well remove him from game no need for him now and back to tons of fleet cred and zip to spend it on
but the big problem with trying to get duffs from sta is the stupid cool down 24 to 48 hours ?!?!?!?!? ok so at what point do i just say f this and move on to other games ???
the exchange if filled with pointless useless no need duffs ????
i also bord running from fsb to sta to fsb trying to get a duff that i can use
( wast of dill too)
i also now stopd playing as much as nothing to do now sb stoped and my fleet of 250 have also stop spending money and few stoped playing as no longer can move on with sb
and people iv seen saying expolit ok were u lose fleet cred buying the duffs and using them on sb ?? non expolit there
u trash the duffs u got 75 dill and little cxp ok not realy a expolit but ok oh wait ur limited to 8k dill refining ( ok still see no expolite) no different to doing a few elite stfs and trashing chips???
the cxp so little it even pointless to trash duffs anyways!
the duffs cost 500 fc u spend 100k on 200 duffs and lucky to get 20 that usefull and u get back 150 per not realy a money maker isit
but if u have brains u can make more dill and zen for nothing out the dill exchange if u play it rite ???? i ran 2 elite stfs and use that dill and turnd it in to 8k zen and 500k dill just playing the dill exchange so y moan about trashing duffs for pence when i make tons off the dill exchnage???? from not alot????
so now im bord and now playing bsgo and other games due to it takes too stupidly long to get duffs now ( but way to easy to get marks ) with the allready stupidly long time out on sb jobs
The premise that purchasing Fleet DOFFs with Fleet Credits is some sort of exploitive way of EARNING Fleet Marks OR Fleet Credits is absurd. Even if we were to accept this as fact (albeit one contradicted by all available evidence), the most elementry solution would have been to raise the prices of said DOFFs.
What is more... it was the DEVs whom placed this option in our hands. they designed it. They asigned the values. How could they not see this comming?
I'm frankly more disturbed by this latest statement then I was with the nerfing of the DOFFs in the first place.
If there was an exploit going on, well, you have closed the loop now. Tell us what it was so that we can all perhaps get behind you. These "cryptic" explanations, devoid of any actual substance, only lend to further agrivation of an already jittery community.:mad:
If one were to take Borticus's comment from the other week about not earning [more] fleet credits via fleet doffs that were purchased with fleet credits, this could be resolved by getting tech so that fleet doffs do not give fleet credits but could be contributed to projects. Since devs do not like solutions that require new techs, the alternative was to have them cost more than you'd get so it wouldn't be profitable -- but this is already the case. Even if you *only* got doffs useful for projects, you'd be losing a net 350 Fleet Credits.
I really don't understand what the logic was -- the fleet doffs would ideally work the same as fleet mark boosts. With the latter, you need 15000 Fleet Credits to purchase a 100 mark boost. Once you've earned 500 more marks (and thus gotten your bonus 100 marks), you could donate them to the starbase. Those 100 bonus marks would net you 5000 Fleet Credits -- you're still taking a net loss of 10,000 Fleet Credits but its:
1) a way to spend fleet credits
2) help you make progress on starbase
If #1 isn't done, it becomes a rather useless currency. If #2 isn't done, it makes people upset and likely to not continue either that aspect of STO that they dedicated an entire season to.
I really don't understand why some posters here think that the problem was a fleet credit exploit. Some real basic math shows the fallacy in that logic.
Lets say you buy 20 Doffs hoping to get 5 of the common security doffs you need:
Cost to you:
20 x 500 fleet credits = 10,000 fleet credits spent
of the 20 Doffs you bought, 2 are actually common security doffs, so you use them in the fleet project.
2 x 150 fleet credits = 300 fleet credits "earned" for donating the bought fleet doffs to the project
players net gain: -9,700 fleet credits.
How exactly is this an exploit?
Simple solution: mark the fleet doffs as fleet doffs usable on everything just like normal doffs, but turn off the dilithium/cxp reward. That way, still usable on the exchange, still usable for fleet projects, and no one can game the dilithium system (which is time gated already, remember?) by suicide-selling a gangload of fleet credit purchased doffs.
Sorry for the ongoing silence on this issue, folks.
We recognize the inconvenience that a lack of clear indicator has caused on the Exchange, and are still discussing additional (or alternative) solutions to the underlying mechanics we were seeking to address.
I'm afraid we can't comment further than that on the issue at the moment. Just wanted to let you all know that it is definitely on our radar, and under discussion for additional resolution.
So what I get from this is, it is not a bug. They just never thought people would sell the Fleet bought Doffs on the exchange. So they never thought to put a special marker on the Fleet bought doffs, so people could tell them apart.
I know a roll back is well past the point of use, unless you roll back a week and I think half the community would be getting on a plane to come hunt your TRIBBLE if you did that.
So how about you disable the uncontribute code in a hotfix. To allow us to contribute the current doffs we have now and then release a patch at a later date, that will have a marker on fleet bought doffs.
Not one of us knows the actual problem they were trying to address with this patch. Were they patching an exploit? Were they patching something in the code that could cause a crippling catastrophe with the doff system or fleet credit system? We don't actually know. Give them time and they're sure to provide a reason for what they've done. It's only been a 2 business days.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
Not one of us knows the actual problem they were trying to address with this patch. Were they patching an exploit? Were they patching something in the code that could cause a crippling catastrophe with the doff system or fleet credit system? We don't actually know. Give them time and they're sure to provide a reason for what they've done. It's only been a 2 business days.
Actually, they were told this was going to happen after the patch to Tribble on Wednesday. They didn't acknowledge the community warning and still let it happen on Holodeck on Thursday. It was late Friday before Borticus even acknowledged that the problem was, in fact, a problem - as opposed to "working as intended."
And frankly, when you have completely screwed up the exchange to the point where buying any common DOFFs is a game of russian roulette, two business days is two too many to have not addressed the issue.
Think about all of the weekend-only gamers and non-forum readers who got ***** in the exchange buying useless DOFFs all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and so far all of today.
Frankly, you don't know what they fixed by this patch. They made a change to a mechanic that resulted in a change that nobody liked or approves of. For all you know, the patch stopped the game from deleting the entire database for every character and every ship in the game.
The point is, you don't know why they did it, all you know that they did it and it sucks. But people constantly complaining and try to come up with ways to "fix" this, isn't helping anything. They're aware of the issue, they're working on a way to fix both the issue they needed to fix originally, and what has happened due to their fix. That kind of thing takes time.
Note: This was not intended to be a personal attack or anything, I was using "you" more or less for everybody, rather than boglejam73.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
We don't know because PWE hasn't told us, and they haven't told us because they've decided not to. Invoking the NDA as an excuse is asinine because the NDA is invoked by company discretion, so all that means is "We won't tell you because we've decided not to tell you."
It all adds up to the same thing which is that PWE decided to not discuss the issue because they don't feel they can be honest about their intent regarding the game mechanics, and for that, no one deserves blame but the company.
Frankly, you don't know what they fixed by this patch. They made a change to a mechanic that resulted in a change that nobody liked or approves of. For all you know, the patch stopped the game from deleting the entire database for every character and every ship in the game.
The point is, you don't know why they did it, all you know that they did it and it sucks. But people constantly complaining and try to come up with ways to "fix" this, isn't helping anything. They're aware of the issue, they're working on a way to fix both the issue they needed to fix originally, and what has happened due to their fix. That kind of thing takes time.
Note: This was not intended to be a personal attack or anything, I was using "you" more or less for everybody, rather than boglejam73.
Since you like the word "Frankly" I will tell you frankly that what they did was frankly irrisponsible.
They put the Starbase doff vendor in there to spend fleet credits on and informed the players that this was a new feature - and that these doffs could be used for starbase projects.
Then they removed this feature without informing the players that they were doing it. Frannkly that is bad business and deceptive practices that would have most other corparations in hot water.
They continued to allow the sale of these "tainted" non- functioning doff's to continue to the point of this writing - frankly I believe that is criminal - they are stealing money from people on a feature without informing them that the feature no longer applies - and if someone spent money on zen - converted it to dilth - then contributed to a starbase project to get fleet marks and spent that on doff's they are led to belive will work on the starbase - that is both deceptive if not outright theft!!
Most companies selling a deceptive product without informing the players that the product has changed would be facing lawsuits. They have yet to make a formal announcement that they are no longer able to be used in fleet projects. A posting by a Dev in a chat forum is not a formal release. This makes the issue even more contentable.
More to the point because PWE is afraid of saying "we screwed up, sorry".
Don't even argue the point. No matter how you look at it somebody screwed up. it's unfortunate that PWE is collectively so insecure, as I think they should know by now ....... the playerbase is very forgiving and just wants the best oportunity to enjoy thier time/money.
(above very poorly written, sorry, I'm short on time today).
(which is not to imply that anything else I have ever written has been a masterpeice, only that I have a marginaly valid excuse today)
Frankly, you don't know what they fixed by this patch. They made a change to a mechanic that resulted in a change that nobody liked or approves of. For all you know, the patch stopped the game from deleting the entire database for every character and every ship in the game.
The point is, you don't know why they did it, all you know that they did it and it sucks. But people constantly complaining and try to come up with ways to "fix" this, isn't helping anything. They're aware of the issue, they're working on a way to fix both the issue they needed to fix originally, and what has happened due to their fix. That kind of thing takes time.
Note: This was not intended to be a personal attack or anything, I was using "you" more or less for everybody, rather than boglejam73.
Your post does bring up another bone of contention with this entire situation, actually.
Did you know that the thing about making Fleet doffs unslottable on fleet projects wasn't mentioned in the Tribble patch notes? Initially, that led some of us to believe this was a bug. When this was brought to the devs attention, they said it wasn't a bug but was by design.
And then, they didn't mention it on the Holodeck patch notes. Surely they knew this decision regarding fleet doffs was going to cause customer resentment. They had two chances to tell us it was going to happen. They chose not to.
I'm not saying Cryptic or PWE is evil and intentionally TRIBBLE people over or any of that conspiracy stuff - I am saying that you offering justifications and saying "things takes time" is cutting them more slack than I am willing to cut them at this point.
When a company that largely relies on customer good will makes a boneheaded decision and is called out on it, a smart business owns up to the decision, explains what got us there, and fixes it. When the boneheaded decision leads to a fairly important part of your game not working at all (DOFF exchange is important to DOFF re-sellers, fleet projects, DOFFing in general) then you fix ASAP. You don't let players get taken advantage of going on 5 days now and leave it at "We did something dumb, can't tell you why, and we will maybe tell you how we will fix it, as soon as we figure out how to fix it."
Since you like the word "Frankly" I will tell you frankly that what they did was frankly irrisponsible.
They put the Starbase doff vendor in there to spend fleet credits on and informed the players that this was a new feature - and that these doffs could be used for starbase projects.
Then they removed this feature without informing the players that they were doing it. Frannkly that is bad business and deceptive practices that would have most other corparations in hot water.
They continued to allow the sale of these "tainted" non- functioning doff's to continue to the point of this writing - frankly I believe that is criminal - they are stealing money from people on a feature without informing them that the feature no longer applies - and if someone spent money on zen - converted it to dilth - then contributed to a starbase project to get fleet marks and spent that on doff's they are led to belive will work on the starbase - that is both deceptive if not outright theft!!
Most companies selling a deceptive product without informing the players that the product has changed would be facing lawsuits. They have yet to make a formal announcement that they are no longer able to be used in fleet projects. A posting by a Dev in a chat forum is not a formal release. This makes the issue even more contentable.
I think that this is completely accurate. I love the game and never come to the forums before I was ripped off by this mess. Why should I have to come to a sub-section of the formums to find out that the company has made a change and i have lost time and money? They proudly put in this feature and pointed it out to use then go ahead and pull the rug out and don't let anyone know that they are doing it!! And as you said they STILL have not made a formal release about what they have done! Shamefull Cryptic, truely shameful.
Comments
I get if you have to make a change but not communicating that change or not applying it in a from-then-on basis is a load of TRIBBLE.
You dangle a carrot. I have to buy 50 carrots to get a carrot I like... and then you poison all the carrots... THANKS. I'm in full on Risa AFK mode now. They found the way to make me no longer care about the game. Not really encouraging me to spend any money on this sale they are running. How will I know that I'll even be able to fly the ship I would buy a few days later (exaggerated for effect)(but I am still not spending).
And if they truly have a code base without any version tracking rollback capability they really need to get their act together. That is not how professional coding in the real world works. Time to move past the hobbyist stage.
True, some of the whi... pardon me... W.A.I.ners
Isn't it awesome when Video Games are shaped to our whims? You can write all the letters you want to Gearbox, but it won't make Duke Nukem Forever any better.
While we wait, posting in this thread keeps them reminded that we're not happy and that's a good thing. So enough with the high on your hoarse comments about how horrible and evil it is to be upset, to complain and to gripe a few times on a thread regarding something that's simply messed up.
I know some people feel that sucking up to PWE makes them special or will pay off in the long run but it just wont. I like STO and I like that PWE is supporting it; but if there's an update that needs to be disagreed with then I'll stick up with the guts to say what I think; not pander to the idea that PWE is 100% innocent or 100% evil because they're not either way.
Well, I will give you +2 cool points for coming back and admitting that you were wrong.
Or, at least admitting you have some special one-of-a-kind problem with your DOFFs that no one else has but hey, at least you didnt imply we were blind and/or lazy this time.
What size t-shirt do you wear?
They would no longer be able to be listed on the exchange.
The y would not be able to be reused on the star base which made little sense.
They could still be taken to HQ and get sent off to other projects in return for a couple new doffs that could go back to the star base or be traded via the exchange.
2 make them bound to u so u cant sell them
3 remove them totaly as it now pointless him even being in them game
4 lower the duffs needed on sb jobs to allow small fleets to restart building
as tier 3 needs 60 per job and few from sta in one 24 to 48 hours is nuts and never get enough duffs by the time ur dead and gone from the game
5 lower the cool down on sta duff requests( at mo 24 to 48 hours for few duffs that may not be useable anyways)
6 shoot the plank that messed it up tostart with
a reply fro pwe or crytic on this subject would be nice too ????????????????????
They were added solely to be used as a way to get DOFFs to be used on the starbase projects. How does that make little sense to you?
And I don't want to have to go back and forth between the fleet base and the academt to use the grinder. I want to play the game, not shlepp back and forth because the devs borked the DOFF vendor beyond any usefulness.
The solution is to make them identifiable as Fleet doffs so people know selling them won't get them dilithium and cxp but to make them just as usable as any other doff. Starbases, missions, on the exchange, whatever.
If that was true they would not have needed to make the packs bound at all would they have ? I don't think that was there intention at all myself. Frankly they are likely to simply make all of them bound.
Frankly IMO they where simply a bit lazy... the starbase packs should have had 3-6 unique races (like the gamma packs). I could buy that they where coming from races friendly to the cause... then if as I believe was there intention they where to not be reused in the base projects it would have been quite logical to take them back to HQ for reassignment.
Simply put I don't remember reading anywhere that they where intended to complete star base projects.... perhaps I'm wrong there though.
Since contributing DOFFs to starbase projects awards Fleet Credit, and borticus said this:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=5342801&postcount=36
...where do you get your statement, that seems to be in direct contradiction to that of the developer?
Random White Fleet DOFF = 500 Fleet Credits
Contributing a White DOFF to most projects = 150 Fleet Credits.
That's -350 Fleet Credits per DOFF you can contribute.
A complete 500 Fleet Credit loss on any random DOFFs, not what you needed at that given moment. Or if it's possible for civs to spawn from random boxes, even more useless for the most part.
Matthew@Matthew486DX -> Eng Lvl 60
FAW/Tank: Tactical Oddyessy T5-U, Tank/Heal Science Oddyessy T5-U, DPS Cruiser: A2B Battlecruiser T5-U, DPS/Debuff Tholian Recluse T5-U
Fleet Admiral: Angry Tribbles
That is a valid point... however I think that is still a good enough return that people wouldn't need to grind nearly as much.
Lets be honest the point of the Bases is a time sink... its a way for them to remove EC out of the system... Remove Dilithium out of the system... Create commodity items that create value in game for the currencies they intend to reduce. There by increasing the number of transactions on the ones they make $$$ from. Look at the dilithium exchange... I would say they have achieved that and are likely raking in the $$$.
If you save in this case 3/4 of the cost of the fleet currency they intend you to grind in order to reduce those other currencies, it breaks there system.
In a lot of ways I wish they would have just left the doff option of the star bases all together. I understand why they can't let people use them for projects its counter productive to what they hope to achieve. However its really confusing for people that would assume those doffs could be used that way....
Really if they where going to add fleet doffs... then they should have been NEW doffs tailored to fleet base grinding. Perhaps a doff that increased Fleet Mark Drops by X percent. Or just made them a random style grab bag with a higher chance to drop some of the rare purple doffs. (at the right tier... and of course make them all bind on pickup)
This reminds me of Catch-22's Milo Minderbinder who made a profit by selling below the cost he paid. Do you care to enlighten us how we can generate infinite doffs if we were to pay 500 Fleet Credits and only get 150 Fleet Credits back when we use them in a project? That sounds like we're losing 350 credits *per duty officer* -- which would clearly be unsustainable unless you're trying to loop some other form of currency in there. You suggest raising the prices by several orders of magnitude -- would you honestly spend 100,000 of your fleet credits for a random common duty officer?.
Given enough time, we can generate unlimited doffs via recruitment, or generate unlimited fleet marks via running events, or unlimited dilithium from doing dailies and STFs?
Edit: Read a bit farther and saw
1 million fleet credits would require 20,000 fleet marks. Let's admit that's a significant amount of marks. That would fill the mark requirement on 33.3 colonist special projects -- but would also require over 4125 colonists to complete. I suppose one could get around this by fleet-hopping volunteering to donate fleet marks, possibly for energy credits.
Keep in mind: white fleet doffs cost 500 credits. And you get 50 credits per fleet mark. Trading 10 FM for one white doff is reasonable, trading 200+ FM for a single random white doff is not. Each project can run dozens to hundreds of white duty officers.
Correct, we're not getting *more* fleet credits out of the system -- we're losing hundreds of available fleet credits with every fleet doff we purchase and (theoretically) would contribute. And actually it's actually worse for us than a net loss of 350 fleet credits if we were to get some civilian doffs that no active project seems to need. This is extremely common with the doff exchange projects.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
If you expect something useful to come out of them, no they aren't; buy some keys and lockboxes for that
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
My only question at this time is, has the exchange been totally infiltrated by these useless DOFFs now?
His statement doesn't contradict anything I am saying. How do you get to that conclusion?
He says they fleet doffs were never intended to be a way to earn fleet credits. Fine. I am not saying they ever were intended as a way to earn fleet credits. Guess what? You didn't earn fleet credits in the old system. You lost fleet credits. The Doff vendor charged you 500 fleet creds for a random doff that might or might not further your project. If you got one that did help the project, you only "earn" a payback of (I think) 150 fleet credits. Nothing actually earned. Net loss of 350 on just that one Doff. And when you factor in that maybe one out of every 10, or 20, or X is actually useful to a project, its a hugh fleet credit burner.
And seriously man - why do you think they would put a Doff vendor on your starbase that just happens to sell random whites at completed tier 1, greens at completed tier II, etc etc if it wasn't intended as a way to help people in small fleets have access to something that can help advance the projects while simultaneously burn off their huge surplus of useless fleet credits?
Yup, it has been stated that it is "working as intended". As soon as that statement was made many protests were made in that same thread. The Dev in question replied later in the thread but completely ignored that issue and all the complaints about it "working as intended" and tried to turn the discussion in a different direction.
From what I can tell, "working as intended" is the "polite" way of them saying "We don't give a ***** about our players or what they think and, since this item doesn't net us any money we have no intention of spending any time looking into it, we would rather spend our precious time creating more overpriced, underperforming, c-store items"
Maybe the Devs can prove me wrong, but based on their history I'm not holding my breath.
but the big problem with trying to get duffs from sta is the stupid cool down 24 to 48 hours ?!?!?!?!? ok so at what point do i just say f this and move on to other games ???
the exchange if filled with pointless useless no need duffs ????
i also bord running from fsb to sta to fsb trying to get a duff that i can use
( wast of dill too)
i also now stopd playing as much as nothing to do now sb stoped and my fleet of 250 have also stop spending money and few stoped playing as no longer can move on with sb
and people iv seen saying expolit ok were u lose fleet cred buying the duffs and using them on sb ?? non expolit there
u trash the duffs u got 75 dill and little cxp ok not realy a expolit but ok oh wait ur limited to 8k dill refining ( ok still see no expolite) no different to doing a few elite stfs and trashing chips???
the cxp so little it even pointless to trash duffs anyways!
the duffs cost 500 fc u spend 100k on 200 duffs and lucky to get 20 that usefull and u get back 150 per not realy a money maker isit
but if u have brains u can make more dill and zen for nothing out the dill exchange if u play it rite ???? i ran 2 elite stfs and use that dill and turnd it in to 8k zen and 500k dill just playing the dill exchange so y moan about trashing duffs for pence when i make tons off the dill exchnage???? from not alot????
so now im bord and now playing bsgo and other games due to it takes too stupidly long to get duffs now ( but way to easy to get marks ) with the allready stupidly long time out on sb jobs
What is more... it was the DEVs whom placed this option in our hands. they designed it. They asigned the values. How could they not see this comming?
I'm frankly more disturbed by this latest statement then I was with the nerfing of the DOFFs in the first place.
If there was an exploit going on, well, you have closed the loop now. Tell us what it was so that we can all perhaps get behind you. These "cryptic" explanations, devoid of any actual substance, only lend to further agrivation of an already jittery community.:mad:
I really don't understand what the logic was -- the fleet doffs would ideally work the same as fleet mark boosts. With the latter, you need 15000 Fleet Credits to purchase a 100 mark boost. Once you've earned 500 more marks (and thus gotten your bonus 100 marks), you could donate them to the starbase. Those 100 bonus marks would net you 5000 Fleet Credits -- you're still taking a net loss of 10,000 Fleet Credits but its:
1) a way to spend fleet credits
2) help you make progress on starbase
If #1 isn't done, it becomes a rather useless currency. If #2 isn't done, it makes people upset and likely to not continue either that aspect of STO that they dedicated an entire season to.
My STOwiki page | Reachable in-game @PhyrexianHero
Fed Armada: Section 31 (level 730, 2700+ members)
KDF Armada: Klingon Intelligence (level 699, 2100+ members)
Lets say you buy 20 Doffs hoping to get 5 of the common security doffs you need:
Cost to you:
20 x 500 fleet credits = 10,000 fleet credits spent
of the 20 Doffs you bought, 2 are actually common security doffs, so you use them in the fleet project.
2 x 150 fleet credits = 300 fleet credits "earned" for donating the bought fleet doffs to the project
players net gain: -9,700 fleet credits.
How exactly is this an exploit?
Simple solution: mark the fleet doffs as fleet doffs usable on everything just like normal doffs, but turn off the dilithium/cxp reward. That way, still usable on the exchange, still usable for fleet projects, and no one can game the dilithium system (which is time gated already, remember?) by suicide-selling a gangload of fleet credit purchased doffs.
Fleet people happy, exchange DOFF sellers/buyers happy, fleet doff vendor useful again...
Problem solved.
So what I get from this is, it is not a bug. They just never thought people would sell the Fleet bought Doffs on the exchange. So they never thought to put a special marker on the Fleet bought doffs, so people could tell them apart.
I know a roll back is well past the point of use, unless you roll back a week and I think half the community would be getting on a plane to come hunt your TRIBBLE if you did that.
So how about you disable the uncontribute code in a hotfix. To allow us to contribute the current doffs we have now and then release a patch at a later date, that will have a marker on fleet bought doffs.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
Actually, they were told this was going to happen after the patch to Tribble on Wednesday. They didn't acknowledge the community warning and still let it happen on Holodeck on Thursday. It was late Friday before Borticus even acknowledged that the problem was, in fact, a problem - as opposed to "working as intended."
And frankly, when you have completely screwed up the exchange to the point where buying any common DOFFs is a game of russian roulette, two business days is two too many to have not addressed the issue.
Think about all of the weekend-only gamers and non-forum readers who got ***** in the exchange buying useless DOFFs all day Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and so far all of today.
The point is, you don't know why they did it, all you know that they did it and it sucks. But people constantly complaining and try to come up with ways to "fix" this, isn't helping anything. They're aware of the issue, they're working on a way to fix both the issue they needed to fix originally, and what has happened due to their fix. That kind of thing takes time.
Note: This was not intended to be a personal attack or anything, I was using "you" more or less for everybody, rather than boglejam73.
[Unrepentant] Lapo@overlapo: the problem with space STF
is that you can't properly teabag your defeated opponent
Unrepentant: Home of the Rainbow Warrior and the Rainbow Brigade.
It all adds up to the same thing which is that PWE decided to not discuss the issue because they don't feel they can be honest about their intent regarding the game mechanics, and for that, no one deserves blame but the company.
Since you like the word "Frankly" I will tell you frankly that what they did was frankly irrisponsible.
They put the Starbase doff vendor in there to spend fleet credits on and informed the players that this was a new feature - and that these doffs could be used for starbase projects.
Then they removed this feature without informing the players that they were doing it. Frannkly that is bad business and deceptive practices that would have most other corparations in hot water.
They continued to allow the sale of these "tainted" non- functioning doff's to continue to the point of this writing - frankly I believe that is criminal - they are stealing money from people on a feature without informing them that the feature no longer applies - and if someone spent money on zen - converted it to dilth - then contributed to a starbase project to get fleet marks and spent that on doff's they are led to belive will work on the starbase - that is both deceptive if not outright theft!!
Most companies selling a deceptive product without informing the players that the product has changed would be facing lawsuits. They have yet to make a formal announcement that they are no longer able to be used in fleet projects. A posting by a Dev in a chat forum is not a formal release. This makes the issue even more contentable.
Don't even argue the point. No matter how you look at it somebody screwed up. it's unfortunate that PWE is collectively so insecure, as I think they should know by now ....... the playerbase is very forgiving and just wants the best oportunity to enjoy thier time/money.
(above very poorly written, sorry, I'm short on time today).
(which is not to imply that anything else I have ever written has been a masterpeice, only that I have a marginaly valid excuse today)
Your post does bring up another bone of contention with this entire situation, actually.
Did you know that the thing about making Fleet doffs unslottable on fleet projects wasn't mentioned in the Tribble patch notes? Initially, that led some of us to believe this was a bug. When this was brought to the devs attention, they said it wasn't a bug but was by design.
And then, they didn't mention it on the Holodeck patch notes. Surely they knew this decision regarding fleet doffs was going to cause customer resentment. They had two chances to tell us it was going to happen. They chose not to.
I'm not saying Cryptic or PWE is evil and intentionally TRIBBLE people over or any of that conspiracy stuff - I am saying that you offering justifications and saying "things takes time" is cutting them more slack than I am willing to cut them at this point.
When a company that largely relies on customer good will makes a boneheaded decision and is called out on it, a smart business owns up to the decision, explains what got us there, and fixes it. When the boneheaded decision leads to a fairly important part of your game not working at all (DOFF exchange is important to DOFF re-sellers, fleet projects, DOFFing in general) then you fix ASAP. You don't let players get taken advantage of going on 5 days now and leave it at "We did something dumb, can't tell you why, and we will maybe tell you how we will fix it, as soon as we figure out how to fix it."
I think that this is completely accurate. I love the game and never come to the forums before I was ripped off by this mess. Why should I have to come to a sub-section of the formums to find out that the company has made a change and i have lost time and money? They proudly put in this feature and pointed it out to use then go ahead and pull the rug out and don't let anyone know that they are doing it!! And as you said they STILL have not made a formal release about what they have done! Shamefull Cryptic, truely shameful.