Humans are by nature lazy, some call it being efficient. We like the path of least resistance. If you make something harder for some than others you're going to hear about it.
Suggestion: Scale the requirements based on number of members (ie less members = less dilithium/fleet marks).
Path of least resistance: Kick everyone from the fleet, queue the project at cheapest rate, everyone rejoins. Profit.
Suggestion: Drop the amounts required across the board.
Complaint: Why the hell should fleets who have already paid 5 million dilithium for project X bend over and take it if they reduce that requirement to 3 million? Do we get a refund? I think not.
I've been profiled many times as the devils advocate, I can pick holes in your suggestions all day...but I'm bored now.
1. Fleets under 25 are going to have a hard time completing projects = by design.
I get you want things challenging, that makes sense. That makes plenty of sense. But my interpretation of this is it's Cryptic's suggestion we all go out and join big fleets. Not everybody wants this. Yes granted I want my fleet bigger, but I don't want to have to add a bunch of random people. I'm having a hard enough time to wrangle enough people to do a private instance STF, let alone 25 to have an easier time building our base.
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
It's attitudes like this that lead to games going down the drain; people too willing to pay for and accept mediocrity and poor decisions, while failing to hold the devs accountable.
I only yell when things actually effect me I'm in 3 fleets all doing well despite the foundry, unlike some fleets we actually do things together and enjoy each others company we are not in a rush to get to tier 5 even though the KDF fleet I am is getting real close. so meh more Dil less work more free Zen I'm happy.
See mate,It cant just be me,you've been caught out again...:rolleyes:
God, your love of this man and the game is cloying...
much as your posts are what i expect from you too. feel free to not read my posts if it annoys you so much.
yes players are impatient, players only concern themselves with the here and now. maybe thats all they can do, but in a very short space of time, there will be more changes and everyone will move onto the next hot topic.
yes they overreact, players have been overreacting to all manner of things for years and the amount of hyperbole on these forums is silly. much like you every time you say the game is dying for the past few years. its an overreaction.
and yes they rage. happens in every game forum ever made. anyone who thinks there are posts that dont include mindless rage, swearing, insults over something as simple as a computer game is kidding themselves.
much as your posts are what i expect from you too. feel free to not read my posts if it annoys you so much.
yes players are impatient, players only concern themselves with the here and now. maybe thats all they can do, but in a very short space of time, there will be more changes and everyone will move onto the next hot topic.
yes they overreact, players have been overreacting to all manner of things for years and the amount of hyperbole on these forums is silly. much like you every time you say the game is dying for the past few years. its an overreaction.
and yes they rage. happens in every game forum ever made. anyone who thinks there are posts that dont include mindless rage, swearing, insults over something as simple as a computer game is kidding themselves.
We are not "players" we are customers.
I am not being impatient.
I am not overreacting, nor being silly, nor raging.
For every action there is a reaction.
I am expressing my opinion on their decision that removes and diminishes an aspect of the game I've enjoyed and spent money on.
And I've expressed that until they reverse this decision I will no longer spend money on this game. This is a normal and appropriate reaction.
As for those who seem not to mind this action; wait they'll get to you with a patch sooner or later and you'll find yourself reacting appropriately as well.
In another place; or some other time; we'd be friends you and I.
But not here, and not now.
As long as you stand across that line you are my enemy.
So the question you must ask yourself is this: "how do my lips smell?"
--Captain Khalune Yazuneri-Ix
There are Four Lights... say no to ARCFleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
I run a full tier 4 fleet all aspects are tier 4, and I can tell you right now fleet marks are in need so bad Over 3000 needed a day, even if my fleet were to grind for 12 hours strait we could not earn the many, yet you claim there are to many fleet marks out there? you are not building a base clearly then if you were you would not insult us hard working players like this, you chose a course of action the you try to explain it later after you realise we are not stupid and now whats best for our fleets, you focus on the small fleets well how about us large ones who cant recruit because every one has their own tiny fleet, they waste their resources and time on a base that will never get done at those small sizes, You do something right for the players like adding FM to the IOR missions then you blunder and remove them then try to cover your butts with that insult of a reason for your actions, stop reading data sheets and talk to your players, we are the ones paying your salaries with out us you are out of jobs, we don't ask for a unfair advantage just a fair chance at playing the game, it should not be a job. You cryptic are turning this game into a job and its not right, this is not a Korean game we don't like to grind we like to have fun. I am at over 1100 days in this game, and im sad to say over the last year you have truly begun to destroy this game. If you want us to stop playing just say so stop this slap in the face insult, we are here to play a game not work that's your job, stop relying on the foundery content is your job not ours, our job is to enjoy the game which you make harder with ever bone head chose you make to hurt the game play and progress of a game. Remember Players come first not not the grind of a game, don't forget we players are your paychecks, you TRIBBLE us off enough you lose pay as us long time vets leave the game. I know many people in sto and Im just one of many who feel this way.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
***IcarusElite.org***R'C, 1 of 3, Dr. Bellet(FED)-Pal'Kin, Lihop, Casya(KDF) LVL 50.***Jan '08 Account I EARNED my 1000 days...I didn't BUY it! LTS = Death to Vet. System: 10/10/12 Never Forget Something should be done for those who cared enough to have a 1000+ day sub.
You are on the way to being a great politician but still need some work on being a good dev/businessman. Just my opinion I mean no offense by it.
However there are as spock would say, some flaws in your logic.
1. You admit that there were originally not enough fleet marks being generated. The reason for this was basically because people became bored and fed up of having to repeat the same dull missions.
(Not only that I can't tell you how many times I've done these missions and had someone ruin them for me by either going afk and leeching or just not listening to the team for tactics on how to run them. Starbase incursion has to be the most frustrating mission I have done in any game simply because people won't listen therefore I refuse to run it anymore. Thats the one mission that if done right will give what I consider to almost be a decent amount of fleet marks for the time invested.)
So you add fleet marks to the investigate officer reports wrapper. Great problem solved it gives fleet marks and variety. However you removed it then say the removal was planned all along.
Ok so if you knew you were going to remove it why wasn't anything done in the mean time to give an alternative way to generate fleet marks. How long have we been given fleet marks for IOR? Couple of months? I would consider that ample time to put alternatives in the game. Now you are saying we have to wait another 3 months for something to be done? Unacceptable!
2. You refer to statistics for dilithium refining and say that players arent reaching the cap so theres no point in raising it. I wouldnt mind betting that those statistics are averaged out over the entire player base over the course of the week. People dont play the game everyday and when they do they log in they probably do refine to the full amount they can. If the statisitcs are as I say they are then we will never see the refining cap being reached. I think anyone with a decent IQ can work out that the real reason we won't see the cap increased is because some people buy dilithium with zen to make up the shortfall (myself included). I haven't got a problem with this but you could at least admit that to the player base.
3. Even with a large fleet, we have 380 odd members, its only the fleet marks that are causing the issue for us and that was before the change. If fleets were progressing faster than you anticipated why not just increase the projects cooldowns rather than throttle the fleet mark generation. This would at least free up the players time to do something other than have to grab fleet marks the whole time.
4. Slightly off topic, I am not happy with the changes made to the romulan bridge officers. I bought those officers for the passive crit chance not the severity I wouldnt have bought them otherwise and I get no chance of a refund
Im not going to be that guy who says do you realise how much money I've put into this game as it just sounds pompous, but I have put "some money" into this game and its really disheartening when you see changes that jeopardise what you have invested in.
The reason you are seeing the rage you are is because people are passionate about this game and don't like it when they see something that jeopardises it, not because they are forum whiners/ragers.
Please give some serious thought to the changes this patch has made!
We are not "players" we are customers.
I am not being impatient.
I am not overreacting, nor being silly, nor raging.
For every action there is a reaction.
I am expressing my opinion on their decision that removes and diminishes an aspect of the game I've enjoyed and spent money on.
And I've expressed that until they reverse this decision I will no longer spend money on this game. This is a normal and appropriate reaction.
As for those who seem not to mind this action; wait they'll get to you with a patch sooner or later and you'll find yourself reacting appropriately as well.
Question of the day: "One must ask oneself: how do your lips smell?"
just for clarity, when i say players rage i dont mean every single negative post. if anyone has given calm, rational criticism then thats fine and is fair. cryptic can still avoid that criticism by being a little more forward thinking. i dont like the changes myself but im prepared to wait for the next batch up updates before panicking. some people are not prepared to wait and resort to full meltdown.
im highlighting that some players, and yes i should have used the word some, my error, do overreact and do rage. lets not pretend that they dont.
cryptic could save themselves the hassle all the way around.
1000 posts, pulled facebook threads and accounts, censored posts, moved threads, opened 2nd threads 100s of pages of replies.... universal opinion.
Not one player here has thought or posted that the removal of rewards for playing foundry misssions was a good idea. Nobody, not one, zilch, nada.
Opinion is not divided on this, its universal. Dislike for this change is all over the place from some people saying I dont like it to others promising to leave the game or not buy zen but overall opinion is virtually unanimous in that this was a VERY bad idea.
When Cryptic removed clickies it was obvious that they were progressing down this road. And it was a mistake then and a worse mistake now.
They are taking their growth and new customers for granted. Sure they did the winter event well and maybe even the anniversary event. You are going to get new customers when the game is free and you are giving away free ships and improving peoples ability to play and enjoy the game but free ships are not going to be universal provided and given away. Its easy to grow during times of prosperity and "free". Lets see how well they do when ships start costing dilithium again and people have to grind forever to get them.
It must be mentioned that the downright arrogance of Cryptic regarding their new content has become laughable. Its a constant source of smirks and mirth in the minds of the true players of the game who spend time here.
Cryptic allowed player rewards in foundry missions to cover up their sins of lack of new content for 2 years. Now that they are "promising" new content once again they are removing the rewards for player made foundry missions to remove a reward catalyst for their competition. Dont play foundry missions they say, you wont get rewarded for it. Play our new content. It will be good once we finally get it released. We promise.
I do not think Dan Stahl intentionally lies and that he believes what he says but we as players know that he has a long track record of being unable to deliver on his promises.
We could go down a long list of statements this man has made that were overly optimistic and promised and that never got delivered.
People that hear, dont worry about fleet marks being taken away, we will put back in missions later that have more fleet marks in them are like dragons that sleep with one eye open. We know that Cryptic probably has intentions of doing things in the future but probably will not.
All the acclaim, Cryptic got with new content and new fleet mark missions from sucky 7 has now been replaced with Im tired of doing those same missions a thousand times. And I get nothing from doing them. I only do them to help my fleet. Fleet leaders get tired of politely asking members to do missions members hate because the fleet needs fleet marks.
Overall, this was a horrid change. Overall, cryptic is arrogant in their attitude and once again could care less about player opinion. Overall, cryptic leaned on the foundry when they ignored their own game and content needs and now that they have a programming team back now that NWN is done and a really big flop they are slapping foundry authors in the face for their work. Thanks for being a substitute fill in guys for us when we went to develop a new game. We are back now so take your foundry missions and shove it ... we dont want players playing your content anymore so we are taking away the rewards. We want players playing our content now. Thanks for filling in for us. Goodbye
The arrogance of these people is just mind numbing.
This is a univerally hated change which means that they doubtfully will back down and reverse course and give back a feature of the game players loved.
just for clarity, when i say players rage i dont mean every single negative post. if anyone has given calm, rational criticism then thats fine and is fair. cryptic can still avoid that criticism by being a little more forward thinking. i dont like the changes myself but im prepared to wait for the next batch up updates before panicking. some people are not prepared to wait and resort to full meltdown.
im highlighting that some players, and yes i should have used the word some, my error, do overreact and do rage. lets not pretend that they dont.
cryptic could save themselves the hassle all the way around.
Beep, beep, beep, "post back tracking"...;)
Straight from the mouth of one of the leaders of the CDF - "I tell you what, Haven't spent any money either - I'm a lousy freeloader" - Jonsills 17/12/2014
I keep looking for names in the credits that might shed more light on things recent...
"Dammit J'mpok! I'm a Warrior, not a Worrier!"
- KDF Ambassador Syon vocalizing her objection to the discussions of possible peace talks with the UFP due to recent Borg and Undine activities.Hegh'bat, Stardate 66588.8
I have a challenge for you Dan. For the next week, using the fleet events, try to get 900 fleet marks. I did it last week. Just go for it. Walk in our shoes for the ten days and see what it's like. See what it makes you think of this game. See how much fun it really is. Then come back and lets have a conversation about fleet marks and internal metrics, ok?
This. So much this.
I'm sick of their constant 'I haz checked the numberz' posts. The community has proven them over and over again that their ******n numbers are wrong. They probably don't even consider that there is a skyrocketing demand of Fleet Marks and Dilithium in Starbases/Embassies, checking if average numbers stay constant therefore only proves that there is still a vast SHORTAGE. They even admit that there is a shortage when it comes to Dilithium, but all they do is creating ANOTHER ONE. This is just mind-boggling.
I'm done with STO as long as the devs don't provide a good source of Fleet Marks. Starbase progression was the only thing that kept me playing, there is absolutely nothing else to do at the moment in STO. However, I'm not going to grind hundreds of Fleet missions just to get barely enough Fleet Marks for one project. If this is what they consider to be 'fun' the devs must live in a completely different world than me.
I appreciate that you make a statement about this and even replied to some comments in the discussion already. Now I'm not sure you're still reading every post up to page 35, but I'd like to still give my feedback anyway.
One thing that feels to me as if it doesn't get considered is the psyche of the players. One of the biggest enjoyment factors in a MMO is from my experience the feeling of making progress.
I think most players are first and foremost playing to advance their own characters. That means doing reputation related tasks, earning dilithium and gear and EC. Advancing the fleet is fun, but a secondary objective I turn to at the end of the day when I'm satisfied I played enough for myself. The foundry wrapper was great because I could get 50 or 100 marks to help out my fleet with relatively little effort. I'd log out with a good feeling of having contributed my fair share to the fleet and I didn't have to sacrifice my own game in order to do it.
But now that it's gone I still have the Fleet Action daily (by the way, PLEASE look at the Klingon Scout Force mission. You need to kill twice as many enemies as are on the map, so you always end up spending 80% of the running time of the mission waiting for respawns!) but other than that I only have the actions. But to earn the same amount of marks as before with fleet actions, I have to invest three times as much time into it as before (outside of the bonus event, which isn't up 24/7). And at that point it's just disheartening. I look at the effort, see the 17 marks I got and look at the holding and see that we need 800 marks for s single daily. That just kills all my motivation.
Yes, those projects are intended to be filled by many players. But we players need to have the feeling that we ARE making a difference individually. And earning 35 marks for a daily play session when we need 2000 marks a day does not give us this feeling. It makes us feel as if we can't do a thing. It's oppressing. It kills my motivation to even bother.
I know you are planning on making new ways to earn marks and all that. But please don't wait too long. Many players have already finished their personal reputations. Fleet holdings are the only thing tiding us over to the May update. That's still 3 long months off. We need a fix for this soon or a lot of us will take a long extended break from the game. To keep logging in daily we need the feeling of making progress.
Yeah, except one thing, there isn't an IOR repeatable in the available missions tab any more, either you forgot to let non fleet players earn dilithium on the foundry, or I have a bug that stops me from seeing it in my available missions tab... So no... What you've done, if I'm not experiencing a bug, is to prevent non-fleet players from earning dilithium, except in fleet events. So non-fleet players have to grind fleet events to earn dilithium... working as intended... -.-
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I'm not THAT difficult to please, I just have a very low tolerance threshold for stupid BS! - George Carlin.
Concurrently, we also closed a major loophole in Foundry missions in Season 7 which removed Dilithium rewards from what many considered "exploitative" Foundry missions (literally "log in click a button" get a boat of Dilithium). The number of players who were exploiting this type of mission was vast
If this is how you reffer to the "clicky's" , then please tell us how come a vast number of players were using them when , according to you "players are now earning more Dilithium than ever" .
The two ideas + the 8K cap just don't seem to make a lot of sense ... , unless a vast number of ppl are not earning a lot of Dil .
Season 7 started broken, and is still broken today. You break more things than you fix every patch. Half of our Tau Dewa missions are broken/glitched and your worried about FMs in The Foundry? Seriously?
Why is it if anythings to the players benefit it gets nerfed or removed, but if its to Cryptics
benefit it gets ignored or never fixed?
And the above quote is why I seriously doubt Cryptic's ability to deliver something that is bigger than a Season ... as it is ample clear that you have not staffed up your QA department .
You sir , can't deliver , you are not qualified to deliver , and I for one am very glad you do not work at any place where what you do tend to deliver could physically harm others .
its very simple for me. no point wasting time for me on the fleetmark que missions.....the amount of marks i get for the effort, just not worth it. see....i just really cant see how you can be this stupid mr stahl or Dahl or whatever your name is, you had two very sensible options.
1. cap the amount of fleet-marks you can get from foundry missions. Adjust it up or down as needed.
2. before you PULLED THEM OUT....have another source back in to replace them....ohh i dont know. Elite versions of the fleetmark missions actually worth playing. Something. Heres another idea, LEAVE THE MARKS IN UNTIL MAY.....what planet are you on?
Really you have only accomplished one thing for me. My fleets just arnt gonna get any more marks from me. and come may. marvel heroes is gonna be out, and you lost another customer. Good game, well played.
Yeah, except one thing, there isn't an IOR repeatable in the available missions tab any more, either you forgot to let non fleet players earn dilithium on the foundry, or I have a bug that stops me from seeing it in my available missions tab... So no... What you've done, if I'm not experiencing a bug, is to prevent non-fleet players from earning dilithium, except in fleet events. So non-fleet players have to grind fleet events to earn dilithium... working as intended... -.-
pretty sure you no longer need the wrapper. you play a mission, as long as it does not have the red text, you get rewards.
If this were true PvP would have received FM when Fleetbases appeared on Tribble. As the pvp community has requested since this day. PvP is fleet content, so why no FM for PvP.
We already have too many DIL afk farmers, despite your statements about how much DIl everyone is having.
It will always be faster to use private matches to farm PvP rewards. So why is pvp left out every time you adjust the economy?
I'm just going to add a plug for that poor neglected officer of the watch, on every starbase out there. This guy needs to give more than 5 fleet marks every 20 hours.
if pve or pvp gave wayyy more fleet marks then we would play it more, but it isnt worth it
we are not going to grind 1 hour what we can do in 5minutes !
and howabout lowering the doff count in tier5 projects or giving them more fleet credit reward, it cost us 100x more effort but 10x less reward..
Due to the fact that Fleet Marks are spent by Fleets to advance Fleet Holdings, it is intended that Fleet Marks are to be rewarded for completing Fleet-based gameplay.
By Fleet based Gameplay you are referring to the Fleet Events that are already in place, events that already give a pitiful amount of Fleet Marks for a considerable amount of time to complete.
Those Fleet Events would not be so bad if they were similar to the Omega Rep STFs, but they are not - They are not fun and its a hit or miss in regards to maximum FM reward. The Fleet Events really need a revamping, especially in the reward department.
Also its to my understanding that if one is in a Fleet, that all content of the game should be considered as Fleet based, rewarding missions etc.. with at least some FM reward. The game is saturated with alot of content to grind, resources to obtain, and contribution to be made. Surely you must take this into account.
Right now many Fleet starbases are suffering for the lack of Fleet Marks, while everything else is at a steady pace.
We monitor the amount of Fleet Marks earned by each character and each player every day. We do so for game design reasons to ensure that the amount of progress Fleets are making on Fleet Holdings is as expected.
Just out of curiousity, whats your expectation for starbase completion to occur? - since the numbers are in your hands, what is your aim in regards to a time frame for a starbase to be completed? Lets use the highest number - A 500 Member Fleet (which I hope all members are fully active)
After the release of Season 7, we noticed that the amount of Fleet Marks players were earning per day started declining. As we expected, it was mostly due to the introduction of new content and the new Reputation system. Players were now spending less time in missions that granted Fleet Marks, and more time in missions that granted Dilithium and Rep Marks. We adjusted this at the time by adding Fleet Marks to the Foundry and Fleet Action dailies. The Foundry daily subsequently was turned into a 30 minute repeatable, which made Foundry missions an amazingly easy source of Fleet Marks, but because of the drop in Fleet Marks at the time, we left it in as a temporary bonus that would last up through our Anniversary.
That could have been easily adjusted by turning the Daily time gate back up to 24hrs, I feel there was no need for a drastic change in regards to the fM being removed. This could also have been reasonably adjusted by placing the three mission requirement back in place.
Concurrently, we also closed a major loophole in Foundry missions in Season 7 which removed Dilithium rewards from what many considered "exploitative" Foundry missions (literally "log in click a button" get a boat of Dilithium). The number of players who were exploiting this type of mission was vast and so there were several weeks where we aggressively adjusted Dilithium rewards in order to keep Dilithium earnings back in line with our goal of getting more Dilithium into players hands without using the exploit. Due to the tuning we've done with Season 7, players are now earning more Dilithium than ever without the Foundry exploit.
Fair enough, everyone here agrees that the daily clickys needed to be fixed.
We know based on progression data that there is further room to add more Dilithium to the economy and so today we have added in additional rewards to Foundry missions that grant a daily amount of Dilithium in addition to scaling rewards based on the gameplay of the Foundry mission. This now makes qualified Foundry missions an excellent source of Dilithium.
At the expense of severely handicapping FM acquirement, which was already in limited amounts. The Fleet Events in the Queue are not fun at all and suffer from a decent reward as it is. Almost everyone on these forums, as well as many players I have spoken to ingame agrees that the Fleet Event FM need some serious overhauling.
As part of this change and now that we're past our Anniversary, we have removed the wrapper mission that granted the additional 50 Fleet Marks every 30 minutes for playing a single Foundry mission. We did this for a number of reasons. While we want players to enjoy Foundry missions, they should not be the one stop shop for all Rewards in the game.
If you're aim is to spread out gameplay throughout the different areas of STO, then make the reward worthwhile. As of right now the only worthwhile Fleet Event that nets me an ok amount of FM are the GROUND Starbase Incursions - but the Space ones are a hit or miss and are not worth the time investing in. They are also NOT fun by design, at least the STF's and the Azura Romulan mission are adequate and at times fun, but somehow the space portion of the Fleet events that give FM are lacking.
They are now arguably the single best source of Dilithium per mission, and they should not also be the best source for Fleet Marks. Another reason is that Fleet Marks should be for Fleet Gameplay and we will begin adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to keep Fleet Marks in line with our Fleet gameplay goals.
Please define for us Fleet Gameplay? Again are we referring to missions like Starbase incursion etc... Personally every aspect of this game should earn players some Fleet Marks and even Dilithium, even if its in a small amount, including Featured Episodes and regular missions <-- Just throwing an idea out there.
Over the next several months we will be adjusting where Fleet Marks are granted to be more in line with our original design - Fleet Marks are for Fleet Gameplay. This means that Fleet Marks will be granted in more places where Fleets group up for missions, because the reason you need Fleet Marks is to benefit the Fleet.
I would agree with that notion, depending on how well Fleet Mark reward are adjusted. If they are to be gain by Fleet Gameplay, then the reward should be on par with the time invested. If it takes me an hour to complete a Fleet Gameplay event, let the reward reflect the time invested.
This leads me to a frequent Ask Cryptic question that I want to address - Why are the Fleet Holdings so challenging to complete for small Fleets?
We monitor Fleet sizes and Holding progress and we do understand that small Fleets are finding Fleet Holdings to be expensive in both Fleet Marks and Dilithium.
Let me take a moment to explain our philosophy behind the Fleet Holdings so that there is a better understanding of our actions when we adjust economies like this.
First, keep in mind that that Fleet sizes in STO range from 1 member up to 500 members.
Lets find a medium - How many small fleets compared to Larger fleets that have 500 members. I believe that smaller to medium fleets are more numerous than the 500 Fleets that exist out there. Then there is the possibilty that in those 500 member fleets only a small percentage are actually active and are contributing.
When we were crafting the Fleet System, we considered two options for how Fleet Marks and Fleet Progression would behave. There are pro's and con's to both options we considered.
Option A was that Fleet size would determine the maximum tier for Fleet Holdings. The larger the Fleet, the higher the Fleet Holding Tiers could achieve. This is how many other MMOs gate Guild progression, but we felt that it is artificially limiting to the many active small Fleets in STO.
Option B was to allow Fleets of any size to achieve all tiers of Fleet Holdings. The drawback is that because Fleet sizes range so much, we had to find a balance so that Large Fleets had some challenge, while still allowing small Fleets to achieve all tiers, albeit at a much slower pace. If you are in a Fleet less than 25 players, then it is expected to be more challenging than the norm.
So from our perspective we choose the sensible Option B, with the goal of ensuring that our active large Fleets had a decent challenge and wouldn?t complete the Fleet Holdings overnight. It needed to be a challenge for 500 member Fleets. It is a sign that you went through extreme effort to achieve the goal.
Which raises the questions, how many 500 member fleets are out there that are very active? 200 to 500 members? My fleet once had 350 members, and over time a small fraction of its population was actually active.
Then there are fleets that have more than one alt in them.
The end result of this decision is that smaller Fleets may achieve maximum Starbase sizes, but it is expected to be much harder. You can achieve all tiers, but you are doing so at a great disadvantage, especially if you are under 25 Fleet Members or your Fleet Members don't play at least three times a week.
I consider a 25 member fleet to be somewhat of a norm in STO, of course this is my opinion. To be honest a 25 member fleet is a decent figure, if they are all active.
Which goes back to my question: What does the Cryptic team dictate a decent time to fully complete one's starbase?
Keep in mind Dan, that it was stated that there will be future holdings developed as mini starbases type progression.
We understand that we could have introduced a handicap for small fleets into the design, but that solution could and would be exploited. In trying to find a way to exploit the system, we would end up having to create a wealth of rules and regulations behind how the handicap works and at the end of the day it is not in line with our goals of ensuring that top tier Fleet progression is a great accomplishment. (congrats btw to the Fleets that are just now hitting this tier!)
That said, we continue to investigate options that may help small Fleets without making it a cake-walk for Large Fleets. Because of our decision to not limit tiers based on guild size, we will not be scaling all projects based on Fleet size. What we will continue to do is find ways for small Fleets to play hard and gain the Fleet Marks and Dilithium needed to advance the Starbase.
Dilithium is no longer problem, it never was, due to it being purchased easily at the exchange.
However; any possibilty, since money is the game, lets be honest - that the Cryptic team introduces Fleet Marks Booster packs in the Cstore? Something similar to teh Experience packs that ranges for a few hours.
or
FM Booster Packs that can be sold in bundles of 250 to 500? For a decent price - This can be a small and optional solution for those smaller fleets. Not exploitable because one has to shell out real cash for them. Bound to a character of course.
I know, I know, I hate to go that route, but I am looking for other decent options and solutions.
While there are always exceptions, for the most part, the data shows that small fleets are more starved for Dilithium than they are for Fleet Marks. Thus we continue to add more Dilithium to help all players, and along with that, small Fleets.
Ever considered that gameplay and farming is being spread to thin, especially in the midst of the Reputation system. On the contrary, Dilithium can be easily purchased, but Fleet Marks cannot. FM are far more valuable to a starbase than Dilithium is - I am referring to its progression.
Likewise, even though we've removed Fleet Marks from the now super Dilithium rich Foundry mission, we will be adding Fleet Marks to other events, but not immediately.
Why? Is it because more data needs to be collected? What could possibly be the reason to delay such an important aspect of Starbase Progression?
Is it because the team needs more data in regards to the Fleet Events that earn you FM, and to see if a higher player turn out will occur? This should be easy to answer.
Look for us to further classify Events and Fleet Actions as having Fleet Marks in the near future. We are also entertaining suggestions to merge fleets or other ways that small Fleets can accelerate their progress.
Just as max level players are now earning far more Dilithium than they ever have due to adjustments that we've made along the way, we will continue to adjust Fleet Marks in the same way.
Hopefully this post helps to explain our position and why we continue to make the decisions we do. We want Fleet Progression to be a reward for Fleet Gameplay. We want players to earn more Dilithium. We want Foundry missions to have useful rewards. We want small Fleets to only be limited by group effort, not by artificial caps on progress.
We will continue to make progress towards those goals and welcome your feedback. Nothing is every "final" in MMOs, and your constructive comments are always valued.
Thank you for your understanding.
Only thing I must say is that make the reward worth the time to play in those events. To be honest its getting to the point that being in a fleet, or making one,is now mute and one should considered going solo, if to only reap Dilithium reward to exchange for Zen etc...
I think most players are first and foremost playing to advance their own characters. That means doing reputation related tasks, earning dilithium and gear and EC.
Not I... just so it is said.
Was grinding to level my Starbase up so I could recruit new players for an RP PVP fleet.
These changes just wtfpwned me and my reasons for playing.
P.S.
Thanks for Feds on Fire! It let me get FMs, kill pesky feds, and left me with a good feeling that lasted all night. Enjoyed setting my BOFFs up and personally leading them into combat.
Never went AFK once, for the record.
"Dammit J'mpok! I'm a Warrior, not a Worrier!"
- KDF Ambassador Syon vocalizing her objection to the discussions of possible peace talks with the UFP due to recent Borg and Undine activities.Hegh'bat, Stardate 66588.8
And I was just starting to think the game was heading in a good direction.
My fleet started out with about five or six active members, who all knew each other in real life. Between us, we had an average of three characters each. At this point, it's basically down to me - everyone else has left. However, I don't want to merge. My fleet corresponds with the personal storyline of my characters, and those of my friends. We knew we were never likely to get past the third tier, but we accepted this and ploughed on as best we could. The IOR fleet marks were invaluable for us, as we were hardly ever able to be online at the same time regularly, and the PvE queue mission rewards were never worth the effort. Despite all this. we (but mostly I) have managed to get close enough to our first big upgrade that I don't want to throw all that away by becoming Anonymous Member #537 of MegaFleet 1.
I've pretty much resigned myself now to the fact that my starbase will never get past tier 1. I was really hoping to get hold of the Fleet Excelsior, but currently there's more of a chance of the actual year 2409 rolling round than me getting that ship from the tier 3 shipyard. I'll be happy if I get to tier 1 by the big May update.
The thing that most annoys me though, is how this update was snuck out in the bottom of the patch notes with barely a couple of days warning. If I didn't frequent the forums, I would have been caught totally blindsided. As it was, I was able to spend the last few hours before the patch running as many IORs as I could. And yes, I ran a different story mission each time.
Last night I ran three stories from the Foundry, and made 180 fleet marks. Today I ran a successful Colony Defence PUG and a failed Starbase Defence PUG, as well as the Gorn Minefield Fleet Action with the Fleet Action Daily, for less than 100 fleet marks. The experience was miles apart. Last night I played three enjoyable stories that actually felt like my character was engaged in the Star Trek universe. Today I played three totally unconnected missions, with barely any overarching plot (unless you count "Random bad guys! Shoot them! Explosions! Giant space monkey thing!" as plot). It was downright boring, and I received significantly less rewards. A wholly unsatisfying experience all round, and one that does not make me want to play the PvE fleet mark missions again.
What I find inexplicable, is that you removed the one reliable source of fleet marks for pretty much anyone with a small fleet, without having a replacement system already in place to switch over to! As someone said earlier in the thread, that's like getting a puncture, removing the wheel, but not getting the spare out and telling the passengers that you understand their concerns, and that you might possibly think about working out some sort of replacement in the coming months. Also, you mention that IOR in its most recent form was always scheduled to go away after the anniversary event ended. Well all I can say is, this is the first I've ever heard of this, and I'm on these forums pretty much every day. I follow you on Facebook, and I follow several devs on Twitter. There was not one inkling that IOR was a temporary measure, and saying so only after the event is hardly comforting.
As I said at the beginning, I thought the game was heading in a good direction. I was planning starting a monthly subscription next month, as I have a month's free Gold status from picking up a Collector's Edition after Christmas. It was going to be a no brainer, but now I think I will have to wait and see what I keep and what I lose when my existing Gold status expires before I commit.
In the meantime, I repeat a suggestion I made in the existing thread in General Discussion - please make Reputation assignments where players can trade Romulan and Omega marks on a 1:1 basis for fleet marks. Even if this is just a stop gap while you get the new systems up and running (which, again, inexplicable that there are no new replacement ways to get the fleet marks from IOR), it will prevent a lot of starbases from coming to a juddering halt.
Finally, I would like to give props to Dan for stepping out into the Coliseum to face the lions, even with the crowd baying for blood. I would imagine there's some pretty grim faces over at Cryptic today. However, you should be aware that this mess is entirely of your own doing, it's the Season 7 launch all over again.
Oh, and by the way, I responded to that PWE survey with a 1 out of 10 because of this, and the history of similar issues. And this is coming from someone who actually likes the game (I think 848 game hours in less than a year of playing should speak for itself).
Make it right, and make it soon, or else your metrics may not be looking so rosy next month.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
Average max level player refining per day is nowhere near the cap yet. Once the average Dilithium refined per day by max level players gets closer to the cap, we'll consider it.
So you are punishing the players who work hard to grind their dil every day, and rewarding the idle level 10 players who quit after a day anyway? That's disgusting. By that bad logic, you should add a cap on EC, experience, skill points and all marks. See how little sense it makes?
The only interesting part of the post for me was this ...
Definitely need more variety of game play for Fleet Marks. And you guys need to do this NOW.
Also, this does not make me very excited
You should be able to contribute to your fleet by earning marks through solo play (like the Daily Fleet mark mission on the Starbase.) We need more of these type of missions please.
Totally agree with this. Levelling up a starbase is indeed a team effort but that doesn't neccessary have to mean grouping. If you're in a fleet your automatically part of the team. There will always be those players who for whatever reason play the game solo, they should be able to contribute to the fleet effort as well, and not just dilithium and commodities but also fleet marks. Limit this as you will just don't remove it all together.
So you are punishing the players who work hard to grind their dil every day, and rewarding the idle level 10 players who quit after a day anyway? That's disgusting. By that bad logic, you should add a cap on EC, experience, skill points and all marks. See how little sense it makes?
Comments
Suggestion: Scale the requirements based on number of members (ie less members = less dilithium/fleet marks).
Path of least resistance: Kick everyone from the fleet, queue the project at cheapest rate, everyone rejoins. Profit.
Suggestion: Drop the amounts required across the board.
Complaint: Why the hell should fleets who have already paid 5 million dilithium for project X bend over and take it if they reduce that requirement to 3 million? Do we get a refund? I think not.
I've been profiled many times as the devils advocate, I can pick holes in your suggestions all day...but I'm bored now.
I get you want things challenging, that makes sense. That makes plenty of sense. But my interpretation of this is it's Cryptic's suggestion we all go out and join big fleets. Not everybody wants this. Yes granted I want my fleet bigger, but I don't want to have to add a bunch of random people. I'm having a hard enough time to wrangle enough people to do a private instance STF, let alone 25 to have an easier time building our base.
Let us upgrade the Seleya Ceremonial Lirpa and Kri'stak Blade
See mate,It cant just be me,you've been caught out again...:rolleyes:
much as your posts are what i expect from you too. feel free to not read my posts if it annoys you so much.
yes players are impatient, players only concern themselves with the here and now. maybe thats all they can do, but in a very short space of time, there will be more changes and everyone will move onto the next hot topic.
yes they overreact, players have been overreacting to all manner of things for years and the amount of hyperbole on these forums is silly. much like you every time you say the game is dying for the past few years. its an overreaction.
and yes they rage. happens in every game forum ever made. anyone who thinks there are posts that dont include mindless rage, swearing, insults over something as simple as a computer game is kidding themselves.
A thought that hasn't gone unnoticed by alot of us (neo,this doesn't include you mate :P )
We are not "players" we are customers.
I am not being impatient.
I am not overreacting, nor being silly, nor raging.
For every action there is a reaction.
I am expressing my opinion on their decision that removes and diminishes an aspect of the game I've enjoyed and spent money on.
And I've expressed that until they reverse this decision I will no longer spend money on this game. This is a normal and appropriate reaction.
As for those who seem not to mind this action; wait they'll get to you with a patch sooner or later and you'll find yourself reacting appropriately as well.
Fleet: 1st Order of Role-Players' Guild - gaming together since 2004
***IcarusElite.org***R'C, 1 of 3, Dr. Bellet(FED)-Pal'Kin, Lihop, Casya(KDF) LVL 50.***Jan '08 Account I EARNED my 1000 days...I didn't BUY it! LTS = Death to Vet. System: 10/10/12 Never Forget Something should be done for those who cared enough to have a 1000+ day sub.
You are on the way to being a great politician but still need some work on being a good dev/businessman. Just my opinion I mean no offense by it.
However there are as spock would say, some flaws in your logic.
1. You admit that there were originally not enough fleet marks being generated. The reason for this was basically because people became bored and fed up of having to repeat the same dull missions.
(Not only that I can't tell you how many times I've done these missions and had someone ruin them for me by either going afk and leeching or just not listening to the team for tactics on how to run them. Starbase incursion has to be the most frustrating mission I have done in any game simply because people won't listen therefore I refuse to run it anymore. Thats the one mission that if done right will give what I consider to almost be a decent amount of fleet marks for the time invested.)
So you add fleet marks to the investigate officer reports wrapper. Great problem solved it gives fleet marks and variety. However you removed it then say the removal was planned all along.
Ok so if you knew you were going to remove it why wasn't anything done in the mean time to give an alternative way to generate fleet marks. How long have we been given fleet marks for IOR? Couple of months? I would consider that ample time to put alternatives in the game. Now you are saying we have to wait another 3 months for something to be done? Unacceptable!
2. You refer to statistics for dilithium refining and say that players arent reaching the cap so theres no point in raising it. I wouldnt mind betting that those statistics are averaged out over the entire player base over the course of the week. People dont play the game everyday and when they do they log in they probably do refine to the full amount they can. If the statisitcs are as I say they are then we will never see the refining cap being reached. I think anyone with a decent IQ can work out that the real reason we won't see the cap increased is because some people buy dilithium with zen to make up the shortfall (myself included). I haven't got a problem with this but you could at least admit that to the player base.
3. Even with a large fleet, we have 380 odd members, its only the fleet marks that are causing the issue for us and that was before the change. If fleets were progressing faster than you anticipated why not just increase the projects cooldowns rather than throttle the fleet mark generation. This would at least free up the players time to do something other than have to grab fleet marks the whole time.
4. Slightly off topic, I am not happy with the changes made to the romulan bridge officers. I bought those officers for the passive crit chance not the severity I wouldnt have bought them otherwise and I get no chance of a refund
Im not going to be that guy who says do you realise how much money I've put into this game as it just sounds pompous, but I have put "some money" into this game and its really disheartening when you see changes that jeopardise what you have invested in.
The reason you are seeing the rage you are is because people are passionate about this game and don't like it when they see something that jeopardises it, not because they are forum whiners/ragers.
Please give some serious thought to the changes this patch has made!
just for clarity, when i say players rage i dont mean every single negative post. if anyone has given calm, rational criticism then thats fine and is fair. cryptic can still avoid that criticism by being a little more forward thinking. i dont like the changes myself but im prepared to wait for the next batch up updates before panicking. some people are not prepared to wait and resort to full meltdown.
im highlighting that some players, and yes i should have used the word some, my error, do overreact and do rage. lets not pretend that they dont.
cryptic could save themselves the hassle all the way around.
Not one player here has thought or posted that the removal of rewards for playing foundry misssions was a good idea. Nobody, not one, zilch, nada.
Opinion is not divided on this, its universal. Dislike for this change is all over the place from some people saying I dont like it to others promising to leave the game or not buy zen but overall opinion is virtually unanimous in that this was a VERY bad idea.
When Cryptic removed clickies it was obvious that they were progressing down this road. And it was a mistake then and a worse mistake now.
They are taking their growth and new customers for granted. Sure they did the winter event well and maybe even the anniversary event. You are going to get new customers when the game is free and you are giving away free ships and improving peoples ability to play and enjoy the game but free ships are not going to be universal provided and given away. Its easy to grow during times of prosperity and "free". Lets see how well they do when ships start costing dilithium again and people have to grind forever to get them.
It must be mentioned that the downright arrogance of Cryptic regarding their new content has become laughable. Its a constant source of smirks and mirth in the minds of the true players of the game who spend time here.
Cryptic allowed player rewards in foundry missions to cover up their sins of lack of new content for 2 years. Now that they are "promising" new content once again they are removing the rewards for player made foundry missions to remove a reward catalyst for their competition. Dont play foundry missions they say, you wont get rewarded for it. Play our new content. It will be good once we finally get it released. We promise.
I do not think Dan Stahl intentionally lies and that he believes what he says but we as players know that he has a long track record of being unable to deliver on his promises.
We could go down a long list of statements this man has made that were overly optimistic and promised and that never got delivered.
People that hear, dont worry about fleet marks being taken away, we will put back in missions later that have more fleet marks in them are like dragons that sleep with one eye open. We know that Cryptic probably has intentions of doing things in the future but probably will not.
All the acclaim, Cryptic got with new content and new fleet mark missions from sucky 7 has now been replaced with Im tired of doing those same missions a thousand times. And I get nothing from doing them. I only do them to help my fleet. Fleet leaders get tired of politely asking members to do missions members hate because the fleet needs fleet marks.
Overall, this was a horrid change. Overall, cryptic is arrogant in their attitude and once again could care less about player opinion. Overall, cryptic leaned on the foundry when they ignored their own game and content needs and now that they have a programming team back now that NWN is done and a really big flop they are slapping foundry authors in the face for their work. Thanks for being a substitute fill in guys for us when we went to develop a new game. We are back now so take your foundry missions and shove it ... we dont want players playing your content anymore so we are taking away the rewards. We want players playing our content now. Thanks for filling in for us. Goodbye
The arrogance of these people is just mind numbing.
This is a univerally hated change which means that they doubtfully will back down and reverse course and give back a feature of the game players loved.
This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Perfect World Entertainment Community Rules and Policies . ~syberghost
Just one mans opinion but certainly from a guy that plays a lot and pays attention.
Love
Happy Valentines Day
Bug
Beep, beep, beep, "post back tracking"...;)
I keep looking for names in the credits that might shed more light on things recent...
- KDF Ambassador Syon vocalizing her objection to the discussions of possible peace talks with the UFP due to recent Borg and Undine activities. Hegh'bat, Stardate 66588.8
This. So much this.
I'm sick of their constant 'I haz checked the numberz' posts. The community has proven them over and over again that their ******n numbers are wrong. They probably don't even consider that there is a skyrocketing demand of Fleet Marks and Dilithium in Starbases/Embassies, checking if average numbers stay constant therefore only proves that there is still a vast SHORTAGE. They even admit that there is a shortage when it comes to Dilithium, but all they do is creating ANOTHER ONE. This is just mind-boggling.
I'm done with STO as long as the devs don't provide a good source of Fleet Marks. Starbase progression was the only thing that kept me playing, there is absolutely nothing else to do at the moment in STO. However, I'm not going to grind hundreds of Fleet missions just to get barely enough Fleet Marks for one project. If this is what they consider to be 'fun' the devs must live in a completely different world than me.
I appreciate that you make a statement about this and even replied to some comments in the discussion already. Now I'm not sure you're still reading every post up to page 35, but I'd like to still give my feedback anyway.
One thing that feels to me as if it doesn't get considered is the psyche of the players. One of the biggest enjoyment factors in a MMO is from my experience the feeling of making progress.
I think most players are first and foremost playing to advance their own characters. That means doing reputation related tasks, earning dilithium and gear and EC. Advancing the fleet is fun, but a secondary objective I turn to at the end of the day when I'm satisfied I played enough for myself. The foundry wrapper was great because I could get 50 or 100 marks to help out my fleet with relatively little effort. I'd log out with a good feeling of having contributed my fair share to the fleet and I didn't have to sacrifice my own game in order to do it.
But now that it's gone I still have the Fleet Action daily (by the way, PLEASE look at the Klingon Scout Force mission. You need to kill twice as many enemies as are on the map, so you always end up spending 80% of the running time of the mission waiting for respawns!) but other than that I only have the actions. But to earn the same amount of marks as before with fleet actions, I have to invest three times as much time into it as before (outside of the bonus event, which isn't up 24/7). And at that point it's just disheartening. I look at the effort, see the 17 marks I got and look at the holding and see that we need 800 marks for s single daily. That just kills all my motivation.
Yes, those projects are intended to be filled by many players. But we players need to have the feeling that we ARE making a difference individually. And earning 35 marks for a daily play session when we need 2000 marks a day does not give us this feeling. It makes us feel as if we can't do a thing. It's oppressing. It kills my motivation to even bother.
I know you are planning on making new ways to earn marks and all that. But please don't wait too long. Many players have already finished their personal reputations. Fleet holdings are the only thing tiding us over to the May update. That's still 3 long months off. We need a fix for this soon or a lot of us will take a long extended break from the game. To keep logging in daily we need the feeling of making progress.
Thanks for reading!
yes clarifying is exactly the same as backtracking. :P
I'm not THAT difficult to please, I just have a very low tolerance threshold for stupid BS! - George Carlin.
If this is how you reffer to the "clicky's" , then please tell us how come a vast number of players were using them when , according to you "players are now earning more Dilithium than ever" .
The two ideas + the 8K cap just don't seem to make a lot of sense ... , unless a vast number of ppl are not earning a lot of Dil .
And the above quote is why I seriously doubt Cryptic's ability to deliver something that is bigger than a Season ... as it is ample clear that you have not staffed up your QA department .
You sir , can't deliver , you are not qualified to deliver , and I for one am very glad you do not work at any place where what you do tend to deliver could physically harm others .
1. cap the amount of fleet-marks you can get from foundry missions. Adjust it up or down as needed.
2. before you PULLED THEM OUT....have another source back in to replace them....ohh i dont know. Elite versions of the fleetmark missions actually worth playing. Something. Heres another idea, LEAVE THE MARKS IN UNTIL MAY.....what planet are you on?
Really you have only accomplished one thing for me. My fleets just arnt gonna get any more marks from me. and come may. marvel heroes is gonna be out, and you lost another customer. Good game, well played.
pretty sure you no longer need the wrapper. you play a mission, as long as it does not have the red text, you get rewards.
If this were true PvP would have received FM when Fleetbases appeared on Tribble. As the pvp community has requested since this day. PvP is fleet content, so why no FM for PvP.
We already have too many DIL afk farmers, despite your statements about how much DIl everyone is having.
It will always be faster to use private matches to farm PvP rewards. So why is pvp left out every time you adjust the economy?
a history of sto pvp: 2010 - 2011
a history of sto pvp: 2012 - 2013
Does your data show that this guy is ever used?
we are not going to grind 1 hour what we can do in 5minutes !
and howabout lowering the doff count in tier5 projects or giving them more fleet credit reward, it cost us 100x more effort but 10x less reward..
By Fleet based Gameplay you are referring to the Fleet Events that are already in place, events that already give a pitiful amount of Fleet Marks for a considerable amount of time to complete.
Those Fleet Events would not be so bad if they were similar to the Omega Rep STFs, but they are not - They are not fun and its a hit or miss in regards to maximum FM reward. The Fleet Events really need a revamping, especially in the reward department.
Also its to my understanding that if one is in a Fleet, that all content of the game should be considered as Fleet based, rewarding missions etc.. with at least some FM reward. The game is saturated with alot of content to grind, resources to obtain, and contribution to be made. Surely you must take this into account.
Right now many Fleet starbases are suffering for the lack of Fleet Marks, while everything else is at a steady pace.
Just out of curiousity, whats your expectation for starbase completion to occur? - since the numbers are in your hands, what is your aim in regards to a time frame for a starbase to be completed? Lets use the highest number - A 500 Member Fleet (which I hope all members are fully active)
That could have been easily adjusted by turning the Daily time gate back up to 24hrs, I feel there was no need for a drastic change in regards to the fM being removed. This could also have been reasonably adjusted by placing the three mission requirement back in place.
Fair enough, everyone here agrees that the daily clickys needed to be fixed.
At the expense of severely handicapping FM acquirement, which was already in limited amounts. The Fleet Events in the Queue are not fun at all and suffer from a decent reward as it is. Almost everyone on these forums, as well as many players I have spoken to ingame agrees that the Fleet Event FM need some serious overhauling.
If you're aim is to spread out gameplay throughout the different areas of STO, then make the reward worthwhile. As of right now the only worthwhile Fleet Event that nets me an ok amount of FM are the GROUND Starbase Incursions - but the Space ones are a hit or miss and are not worth the time investing in. They are also NOT fun by design, at least the STF's and the Azura Romulan mission are adequate and at times fun, but somehow the space portion of the Fleet events that give FM are lacking.
Please define for us Fleet Gameplay? Again are we referring to missions like Starbase incursion etc... Personally every aspect of this game should earn players some Fleet Marks and even Dilithium, even if its in a small amount, including Featured Episodes and regular missions <-- Just throwing an idea out there.
I would agree with that notion, depending on how well Fleet Mark reward are adjusted. If they are to be gain by Fleet Gameplay, then the reward should be on par with the time invested. If it takes me an hour to complete a Fleet Gameplay event, let the reward reflect the time invested.
Lets find a medium - How many small fleets compared to Larger fleets that have 500 members. I believe that smaller to medium fleets are more numerous than the 500 Fleets that exist out there. Then there is the possibilty that in those 500 member fleets only a small percentage are actually active and are contributing.
Which raises the questions, how many 500 member fleets are out there that are very active? 200 to 500 members? My fleet once had 350 members, and over time a small fraction of its population was actually active.
Then there are fleets that have more than one alt in them.
I consider a 25 member fleet to be somewhat of a norm in STO, of course this is my opinion. To be honest a 25 member fleet is a decent figure, if they are all active.
Which goes back to my question: What does the Cryptic team dictate a decent time to fully complete one's starbase?
Keep in mind Dan, that it was stated that there will be future holdings developed as mini starbases type progression.
Dilithium is no longer problem, it never was, due to it being purchased easily at the exchange.
However; any possibilty, since money is the game, lets be honest - that the Cryptic team introduces Fleet Marks Booster packs in the Cstore? Something similar to teh Experience packs that ranges for a few hours.
or
FM Booster Packs that can be sold in bundles of 250 to 500? For a decent price - This can be a small and optional solution for those smaller fleets. Not exploitable because one has to shell out real cash for them. Bound to a character of course.
I know, I know, I hate to go that route, but I am looking for other decent options and solutions.
Ever considered that gameplay and farming is being spread to thin, especially in the midst of the Reputation system. On the contrary, Dilithium can be easily purchased, but Fleet Marks cannot. FM are far more valuable to a starbase than Dilithium is - I am referring to its progression.
Why? Is it because more data needs to be collected? What could possibly be the reason to delay such an important aspect of Starbase Progression?
Is it because the team needs more data in regards to the Fleet Events that earn you FM, and to see if a higher player turn out will occur? This should be easy to answer.
Only thing I must say is that make the reward worth the time to play in those events. To be honest its getting to the point that being in a fleet, or making one,is now mute and one should considered going solo, if to only reap Dilithium reward to exchange for Zen etc...
Not I... just so it is said.
Was grinding to level my Starbase up so I could recruit new players for an RP PVP fleet.
These changes just wtfpwned me and my reasons for playing.
P.S.
Thanks for Feds on Fire! It let me get FMs, kill pesky feds, and left me with a good feeling that lasted all night. Enjoyed setting my BOFFs up and personally leading them into combat.
Never went AFK once, for the record.
- KDF Ambassador Syon vocalizing her objection to the discussions of possible peace talks with the UFP due to recent Borg and Undine activities. Hegh'bat, Stardate 66588.8
My fleet started out with about five or six active members, who all knew each other in real life. Between us, we had an average of three characters each. At this point, it's basically down to me - everyone else has left. However, I don't want to merge. My fleet corresponds with the personal storyline of my characters, and those of my friends. We knew we were never likely to get past the third tier, but we accepted this and ploughed on as best we could. The IOR fleet marks were invaluable for us, as we were hardly ever able to be online at the same time regularly, and the PvE queue mission rewards were never worth the effort. Despite all this. we (but mostly I) have managed to get close enough to our first big upgrade that I don't want to throw all that away by becoming Anonymous Member #537 of MegaFleet 1.
I've pretty much resigned myself now to the fact that my starbase will never get past tier 1. I was really hoping to get hold of the Fleet Excelsior, but currently there's more of a chance of the actual year 2409 rolling round than me getting that ship from the tier 3 shipyard. I'll be happy if I get to tier 1 by the big May update.
The thing that most annoys me though, is how this update was snuck out in the bottom of the patch notes with barely a couple of days warning. If I didn't frequent the forums, I would have been caught totally blindsided. As it was, I was able to spend the last few hours before the patch running as many IORs as I could. And yes, I ran a different story mission each time.
Last night I ran three stories from the Foundry, and made 180 fleet marks. Today I ran a successful Colony Defence PUG and a failed Starbase Defence PUG, as well as the Gorn Minefield Fleet Action with the Fleet Action Daily, for less than 100 fleet marks. The experience was miles apart. Last night I played three enjoyable stories that actually felt like my character was engaged in the Star Trek universe. Today I played three totally unconnected missions, with barely any overarching plot (unless you count "Random bad guys! Shoot them! Explosions! Giant space monkey thing!" as plot). It was downright boring, and I received significantly less rewards. A wholly unsatisfying experience all round, and one that does not make me want to play the PvE fleet mark missions again.
What I find inexplicable, is that you removed the one reliable source of fleet marks for pretty much anyone with a small fleet, without having a replacement system already in place to switch over to! As someone said earlier in the thread, that's like getting a puncture, removing the wheel, but not getting the spare out and telling the passengers that you understand their concerns, and that you might possibly think about working out some sort of replacement in the coming months. Also, you mention that IOR in its most recent form was always scheduled to go away after the anniversary event ended. Well all I can say is, this is the first I've ever heard of this, and I'm on these forums pretty much every day. I follow you on Facebook, and I follow several devs on Twitter. There was not one inkling that IOR was a temporary measure, and saying so only after the event is hardly comforting.
As I said at the beginning, I thought the game was heading in a good direction. I was planning starting a monthly subscription next month, as I have a month's free Gold status from picking up a Collector's Edition after Christmas. It was going to be a no brainer, but now I think I will have to wait and see what I keep and what I lose when my existing Gold status expires before I commit.
In the meantime, I repeat a suggestion I made in the existing thread in General Discussion - please make Reputation assignments where players can trade Romulan and Omega marks on a 1:1 basis for fleet marks. Even if this is just a stop gap while you get the new systems up and running (which, again, inexplicable that there are no new replacement ways to get the fleet marks from IOR), it will prevent a lot of starbases from coming to a juddering halt.
Finally, I would like to give props to Dan for stepping out into the Coliseum to face the lions, even with the crowd baying for blood. I would imagine there's some pretty grim faces over at Cryptic today. However, you should be aware that this mess is entirely of your own doing, it's the Season 7 launch all over again.
Oh, and by the way, I responded to that PWE survey with a 1 out of 10 because of this, and the history of similar issues. And this is coming from someone who actually likes the game (I think 848 game hours in less than a year of playing should speak for itself).
Make it right, and make it soon, or else your metrics may not be looking so rosy next month.
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
So you are punishing the players who work hard to grind their dil every day, and rewarding the idle level 10 players who quit after a day anyway? That's disgusting. By that bad logic, you should add a cap on EC, experience, skill points and all marks. See how little sense it makes?
Totally agree with this. Levelling up a starbase is indeed a team effort but that doesn't neccessary have to mean grouping. If you're in a fleet your automatically part of the team. There will always be those players who for whatever reason play the game solo, they should be able to contribute to the fleet effort as well, and not just dilithium and commodities but also fleet marks. Limit this as you will just don't remove it all together.
I do not like this one one bit.