Really ?
I'm going with #1 .
Why ?
Because aside from Kirkfat saying something about "daddy" not blaming him for this debacle , I have yet to see a StarbaseUGC sig in this thread .
Could it be that they got what they wanted and are off celebrating victory ? :cool:
I mean a number of their posts indicate that they don't give a rodent's behind as to what happens outside the Foundry .
Oh , and all this is the result of Round 3 of "foundry vs grinders" not Round 1 as some claim .
1- clickys
2- afk-ers
3- fleetmarks
Do I count as Starbase UGC?
I've been interviewed and/or jumped on every Foundry podcast. I have a Starbase UGC account. I was in on the Foundry closed beta and the conference call. I'm in a fleet that has almost all of the most prominent Foundry authors and all the past and present Podcast UGC hosts, last I checked.
I feel like I recognize a few Foundry authors in this thread. Just because there's a handful of people who have StarbaseUGC sigs (I never noticed them; taking your word for it) doesn't mean their absence in this thread implies some kind of conspiracy.
Sure, folks like Hav said, "Take the rewards out." But I can tell you right now that I think I echo every last one of them when I say that I think Cryptic has issues managing transitions and analyzing and adapting to how people play. Terilynn would probably be sweeter about how she says it but I don't think ANY of them disagree with me on this point.
Also, a point: Terilynn is not an active Foundry author and I'd wager the vast majority of her fleet marks to contribute came from playing Foundry missions. She's very loyal to the fleet and the kind of person who I think would drop money on dilithium to help with a project but none of the fleet mark awarding content is really her style. Without fleet marks on the Foundry, my suspicion is that she will probably just not contribute fleet marks except on very, very rare occasions when four other people talk her into trying out new content that awards FMs and even then only to have done it once or twice so she can put it in her Massively column.
It's not that she isn't a social player. It's not a lack of fleet loyalty. But she's an example of someone who will simply fall out of active project contribution with these changes.
I assume you want to report and ignore me, well even if you were able to nothing would happen, as I am sure the devs aren't really pleased with all you obnoxious complainers now and don't mind reasonable people like me who are ok with their changes and appreciate their hard work.
Me personally I like both grinder and regular foundry missions depending on how much time I have to play. I wish the foundry authors would just leave the grinder alone, forget they exist and nobody will have any problems.
Recognise the above quote......it seems at one point you were in favour of leaving things alone, now you are in favour of not leaving things alone.
Do make your mind up, or failing that, lose the insulting and non-constructive language.
We are not obnoxious for decrying a change that, at one point, you did not want either.
We are not obnoxious for pointing out how this ill considered change affect small fleets disproportionately.
We are not obnoxious for wishing a fix for this to be on a time scale of hours or days, instead of months.
Obnoxious would be coming up with bad sophistry to insult and belittle others.
Once again you're mistaken... do the math. Just because your large fleet is talking about it doesn't mean it's not impacting large numbers of players across the board. There are hundreds more small fleets than large fleets.
If they count the player base more people are in small fleet than in large fleet. If there is so many large flleet why are there only a couple of fleets that have hit tier 5.
I see a lot of assumptions here. Just because a fleet has 500 members doesn't mean that you have enough active/avail players to do a Fleet Event. Same can be said for donations, not everyone is gonna donate nor can you expect each person to donate a certain amount.
The doff grinder is something that really should be addressed as well as FM. It takes about 400 doffs to set each project to gain 1000 xp in each category. How is this feasible when you initially only get 20 doffs? You're forcing fleets to 'exploit' the exchange to make up the difference or just not advance in the system.
Reputation System is nothing but a clicky, no gameplay..just clicks but, that's ok? IOR wasn't and it has gameplay from 15 min - 4 hours long. You're rewarding players for clicks, regardless, it's a game and you have to click to shoot!
Another thing is now with Foundry you now reward some mysterious amount of Dil and EC based on the amount of time it takes to finish. Shouldn't the faster, more skilled player get more than someone who takes longer? Might this encourage afk in foundry?
We'll have to use the Mission Review Comments to post what rewards and how much since the hail no longer tells us.
What I noticed last night is that the mission reward is based off the average play time of that mission not on your play time. I played a mission over and over and the rate changed very slowly as I was bringing the average play time down the reward slowly dropped each time I played it.
- correct the pathing errors in several of its maps
- use dialoge trees as an actual game mechanic that allows you to make meaningful choices instead of just glorified filler/fanfiction
It's clearly not particularly good for anything but making grinders. That's the one thing its current functionality level is actually well written for. Which is part of what makes all this so funny.
The second point is what turns me off from even trying to write a foundry mission. It's so terribly limiting.
You have brought up a point that is ironic and true. The bugs that have been in the Foundry since day one. You pretty much have to use a handful of maps to get around the pathfinding issues. The only ones that consitently worked were the grinders.
If they count the player base more people are in small fleet than in large fleet. If there is so many large flleet why are there only a couple of fleets that have hit tier 5.
How dare you use logic on this board!
How the Devs see Star Trek, apparently:
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
I played a mission over and over and the rate changed very slowly as I was bringing the average play time down the reward slowly dropped each time I played it.
You mean playing a mission in a normal manner was bringing down the average play time?
Gee I wonder why, or what could be wrong with this new system. Wink wink nudge nudge.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
No that was the guy who I replied to being arrogant saying we are exploiting by playing mmo properly and growing our fleet, and saying his small useless fleet somehow is worht more to cryptic when my fleet obviously has the ability to generate more sales for cryptic due to us being able to purchase more fleet ships.
yet it is you who want to demean and put down small fleets.
Fact is, it takes longer in game time to get 540 marks, than 54
Fact is, it takes longer in game time to get 34.8K dil, than 3.48
Fact is, the smaller fleet is more inclined to spend money than the larger
Fact is, the larger fleet costs more for cryptic to deal with than the small
Fact is, that small fleets buy fleet ships, fleet modules, Sell dill, buy Zen each and every day just like the large fleet.
Fact is, that for as many large fleets, there are small fleets, possibly more.
Fact is, server wise, it takes more space to store a large fleet than it does a small one.
So exactly how valuable are you?
oh btw, just to point out something, I've sold ships from our fleet too. so, thats not exclusive to large fleets either.
I made a previous post which was supposed to come across as comical, however, Brandon did not think so - and he was correct. So for that I apologize.
Unfortunately my suggestion to fix some things got lost in this misunderstanding. I would post in your thread but it has devolved into 60 pages of ranting and I would not read it if I were in your shoes because it has not become constructive any more.
Here were my 2 suggestions to help out with the situation that could be done immediately:
1. Add a token amount of fleet marks to STF - say 5 for Normal and 10 for elite
2. Bases were made to be social hubs but they are almost always empty. I belong to one of the Largest KDF fleets in the Game with over 400 active member - (500 cap due to some people having a few alts) But there is almost no-one at this beautiful base with every addition.
My suggestion which would be to drastically increase the "officer of the watch" daily to reward 50 fleet marks. This would get a lot more people out to the base.
I hope that this thread remain somewhere where you can read it. And for the other players - I would ask that only constructive and positive responses be left. 60+ pages of ranting helps no-one and anything left in those threads now just gets buried in nowhere land.
Singualr purchases, one time one off purchases. Untill recently, i was spending on average 30-50 a month on the fleet, not on me, on the fleet. I'm one man.
I've never used up all my dill, in fact I'm sitting on a surplus of 6 digits right now. I'm a lifer, I have everything I currently want to have from the store, I sell my points monthly for dill, as do several others of my fleet so you're no more valuable than I am.
You fail to point out how you are more valuable than a small fleet. 30-50 every month, vs 9 one off purchases.
Actually if you want to look at data size you're the drain, you take up more space not mine. So in this case maybe we should do the maintenance and remove the space hogs, which would be you.
Being in a large fleet doesn't automatically make you any more important that not being. What it does is make you a member of a group that is exploiting a game mechanic right now.
No your numbers are irrelevant you just show larger fleets have to do less dil and FM grinding per person and somehow that generates less profit for cryptic. Well guess what, those people still play an average amount of time compared to people in smaller fleets, just they are doing other stuff when not grinding FM and dil like doing PVP and events with the fleet.
So if you were spending 30-50 per month and your stipend on dil, a lot of that dil came from me and others, you wouldn't have bought the zen if there wasn't dil being placed on the exchange so people like me who are able to sell dil helped generate those sales. 9 one off purchases isn't all I have bought. I am impatient so there were times I didn't have dil when I needed it so I buy dil with zen at times in addition to selling dil, also I don't like farming EC so have bought many modules and keys both with real money and dil exchange zen so I could sell on exchange.
Reason smaller fleets is more of a data drain is the server has to generate a seperate instance for each fleet each time a person from that fleet goes to a holding, if all fleets were larger there would be less fleets, thus less instances it needs to generate.
Me personally I like both grinder and regular foundry missions depending on how much time I have to play. I wish the foundry authors would just leave the grinder alone, forget they exist and nobody will have any problems.
Recognise the above quote......it seems at one point you were in favour of leaving things alone, now you are in favour of not leaving things alone.
Do make your mind up, or failing that, lose the insulting and non-constructive language.
We are not obnoxious for decrying a change that, at one point, you did not want either.
We are not obnoxious for pointing out how this ill considered change affect small fleets disproportionately.
We are not obnoxious for wishing a fix for this to be on a time scale of hours or days, instead of months.
Obnoxious would be coming up with bad sophistry to insult and belittle others.
I assume you want to report and ignore me, well even if you were able to nothing would happen, as I am sure the devs aren't really pleased with all you obnoxious complainers now and don't mind reasonable people like me who are ok with their changes and appreciate their hard work.
Quite on the contrary, I have no reason to report you, you're presenting your side, I'm presenting mine. You have however on more than one occasion been very demeaning and derogatory; case in point, this point.
Me personally I like both grinder and regular foundry missions depending on how much time I have to play. I wish the foundry authors would just leave the grinder alone, forget they exist and nobody will have any problems.
Recognise the above quote......it seems at one point you were in favour of leaving things alone, now you are in favour of not leaving things alone.
Do make your mind up, or failing that, lose the insulting and non-constructive language.
We are not obnoxious for decrying a change that, at one point, you did not want either.
We are not obnoxious for pointing out how this ill considered change affect small fleets disproportionately.
We are not obnoxious for wishing a fix for this to be on a time scale of hours or days, instead of months.
Obnoxious would be coming up with bad sophistry to insult and belittle others.
I was refering to the private war between foundry authors, and the reason I wanted them to leave it alone was to stop the griefing between both sides, and many grinder authors retailiating by 1 staring real foundry missions. And I never need FM for that, if I was 1k short of dil cap and busy I might have occaisonaly did boff grinder to cap my character out for the day but I don't really need it.
The problem is that Cryptic comes up with a better or more coherent on-paper design and then they just deploy it to servers.
Some things need to be deployed in phases. Some things, better design or not, don't need to be deployed at all because it's too far a leap from where players already are.
I mean, holy mackerel, they could have just said, "We need a new fleet mark sink to siphon off excess supply." That's just one possible example and not the only one. But they could have said, "We'll add an embassy project that siphons off fleet marks, a fleet reputation system that uses fleet marks, some items/projects that cost direct fleet marks, etc." And it would have had a similar net effect without taking anything away.
Here's the other thing to consider: Yes, they took away the quick easy source of 50 FM from the Foundry. They did so because they saw players using the Foundry OVER the other content they designed to generate FM. yes, they realized this would upset players and the Forums would again explode with both reasoned responses and just plain angry hatred for the the decision. Players also are upset they didn't put in/increase the FM drop rate from that other content at the same time.
Here's the deal though:
- Cryptic obviously thought FMs were coming into the game more quickly then they would like (whether they state this openly or not.
- Because of what they see as an anomaly that was just removed from gthe equation; in their eyes they have no real hard data on just how much FM will now come in via the content they designed for that purpose. If they try to compensate before getting such data, it could lead to a situation where they feel they need to nerf/lower the FMs on that content as well -- so to avoid that, they just want to get some hard data on how the playerbase at large (not just us very vocal folks on the forums) respond to the change. Once they have that data, they'll do further adjustments (up or down) as they deem fit.
Personally, I think they do overuse dataming to drive a lot of their final decisions; but that's honestly been the way Cryptic does things dating all the way back to their CoH days.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
No that was the guy who I replied to being arrogant saying we are exploiting by playing mmo properly and growing our fleet, and saying his small useless fleet somehow is worht more to cryptic when my fleet obviously has the ability to generate more sales for cryptic due to us being able to purchase more fleet ships.
Again you abuse the definition of Massively Multiplayer. Also, your continued disparagement of small fleets and distasteful remarks demonstrates your comical argument as long since jumped the shark.
Jack Emmert: "Starfleet and Klingon. ... So two factions, full PvE content." Al Rivera hates Klingons Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert All cloaks should be canon.
Wow what a completely asinine and insane post. No MMO in their right mind would ever restrict guilds to be that small, it is always in the hundreds. You choose to be in a small fleet and accept the challenges that come with it so you can avoid some of the challenges of being in a large fleet like politics, deciding fair way to share provisions, managing large events, and generally keeping so many members happy. You made that choice now deal with it.
Your small fleet isn't unlocking shipyard tiers fast enough, and even if it did doesn't have a lot of people that will be buying modules compared to large fleets with t4 shipyards. WHich is why large fleets are better for cryptic anyway.
Dan? Sorry you sound just like this guy I know named Dan, it's weird....
You seem to be missing the entire point of that Fleet size argument, Fleet's were considered to be 'big' at around 50+ members when this was all devised and Fleet's of 25 were assured they would be able to keep up with requirements being 'scaled' appropriately. Everything Dan(hey buddy) has come out here and said is really conjecture, 8-ball derived answers, and a cloudy vision for the foreseeable future with apparently no incoming beneficial improvements as a result of this recent patch. He(hey buddy) gets upset and tries to quote 'factoids' to people while we go find posts he and his Staff have made showing the exact opposite.
So yes, Cryptic wants money. You are not pointing anything out or telling anyone anything they don't know when it comes to that but if you are going to try and make statements trying to tell smaller Fleet's 'you should have known, you chose obscurity!' then back it up and find some empirical data to contribute like they have. Otherwise you're just trolling.
I just wanted to say that I'm in a big KDF fleet (the biggest maybe?) and whilst I can't speak for my fleet-mates, this change certainly impacts me negatively.
I didn't 'grind' the IOR but I'd run it maybe a couple of times a day and along with some dilithium make my contributions to our T5 projects.
We run a lot of fleet events for marks but none of the fleet members are expected or required to participate which suited me just fine - now I have to if I want to continue making my small contribution.
This change hasn't made me 'want' to do fleet events - it's pushed me into 'having to' - not a good change - for me anyway.
Dan? Sorry you sound just like this guy I know named Dan, it's weird....
You seem to be missing the entire point of that Fleet size argument, Fleet's were considered to be 'big' at around 50+ members when this was all devised and Fleet's of 25 were assured they would be able to keep up with requirements being 'scaled' appropriately. Everything Dan(hey buddy) has come out here and said is really conjecture, 8-ball derived answers, and a cloudy vision for the foreseeable future with apparently no incoming beneficial improvements as a result of this recent patch. He(hey buddy) gets upset and tries to quote 'factoids' to people while we go find posts he and his Staff have made showing the exact opposite.
So yes, Cryptic wants money. You are not pointing anything out or telling anyone anything they don't know when it comes to that but if you are going to try and make statements trying to tell smaller Fleet's 'you should have known, you chose obscurity!' then back it up and find some empirical data to contribute like they have. Otherwise you're just trolling.
I assure you I am not a dev. I am just sick of the constant dev bashing of my favorite game.
I assure you I am not a dev. I am just sick of the constant dev bashing of my favorite game.
People are free to speak their voice as long as they do so respectfully. If you are sick of "constant dev bashing," don't visit these threads anymore. Problem solved. People are complaining a lot b/c STO is also their favorite game. They just have different ways of expressing themselves than you do, and they aren't content with mediocrity or hastily made decisions that haven't undergone testing, or don't come with substitutes for that matter.
I don't want to sound like a troll - but seriously how are there so many people who didn't understand that the fleet system favours larger groups. Simple math here. Just as in the real world, those with the most contributors to a group wins the game. They will always be ahead.
If you honestly didn't see how much tougher it got with each progressive project, I'd take issue with your math teachers.
I admit it's tough. I belong to a fleet of 350+ members (maybe 100 active more than 2x a week), and we're just getting to T3 shipyards. That's tough enough without giving our rank and file easy access to change projects at the last second. Weeeee we paid how much for the 2013 holosmaltz? Oh well, at least we can turn that off.
Here's where I get flamed:
From the beginning I understood that smaller fleets would ultimately fade and die.
I was ok with this when I joined a fleet. I knew there was a chance that the fleet might [insert worst fear here]. So if you were lucky enough to hook up with like minded players, you might be able to get access to all of that eventual T5 goodness. So far, it's been a great experience, and I would recommend you create a Tribble Removal/reduction Project.
Starbase s are group competitions that will never, ever end. There are winners - those who have all of the cool stuff, and only slightly annoy you with their offers of T5 Shipyard access for a nominal fee. If your not at least at [this] Tier, you're not doing well.
Survival of the fittest until you added FC to the Foundry.
We live in a gamer culture, where min/max of any ecosystem is our one true goal. Of course we'd look for the optimal way to 'work within your rules' to our benefit. We're human (or at least most of us are).
STO just underestimated how many Epohh Fleets the FC carrot would invite.
The availability of the credits effectively gave smaller fleets a chance to compete, and created the impression STO approved of this ecosystem. It's removal now effectively a double-whammy of 'Sorry no bonus' and and a middle finger 'grind harder'. The much improved reward system story is lost under a strong backlash to the changes. Major marketing miscue.
I feel bad for people who didn't 'get-it' when it came to the math behind Fleet Starbase's. I just don't think that making it easier for them after busting our collective butts is necessarily fair. Any proportional gain a larger fleet might get so smaller fleets can advance would TRIBBLE with future Starbase growth.
Let smaller fleets die with at least some grace by restoring just enough additional fleet credits so that when they fail, they understand it was their decision to fail.
- Because of what they see as an anomaly that was just removed from the equation; in their eyes they have no real hard data on just how much FM will now come in via the content they designed for that purpose. If they try to compensate before getting such data, it could lead to a situation where they feel they need to nerf/lower the FMs on that content as well -- so to avoid that, they just want to get some hard data on how the playerbase at large (not just us very vocal folks on the forums) respond to the change. Once they have that data, they'll do further adjustments (up or down) as they deem fit.
Personally, I think they do overuse dataming to drive a lot of their final decisions; but that's honestly been the way Cryptic does things dating all the way back to their CoH days.
Interesting, if a little unsettling. It kind of irks me that they depend so much on their numbers and metrics instead of listening to player feedback and opinions. It reminds me of those lines M says in Goldeneye
You don't like me, Bond. You don't like my methods. You think I'm an accountant, more interested in numbers than your instincts.
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.
If Fleet Marks being added to the Foundry was planned to be a temporary thing at the time, then why wasn't it communicated as such when it was implemented? And why didn't you have a backup means of earning additional fleet marks planned to implement when you removed them from the Foundry, you know, in case your metrics showed fleets weren't earning enough anymore?
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.
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.
Previously when talking about fleet projects Cryptic has consistently stated that the projects are balanced for fleets with 25 members. Now you're saying that they've been balanced for the mega-fleets all along?
I was refering to the private war between foundry authors, and the reason I wanted them to leave it alone was to stop the griefing between both sides, and many grinder authors retailiating by 1 staring real foundry missions. And I never need FM for that, if I was 1k short of dil cap and busy I might have occaisonaly did boff grinder to cap my character out for the day but I don't really need it.
Possibly true....but your use of the word obnoxious was hypocritical.
You may well not enjoy the sight of dev bashing, it is not the most edifying of sights I agree.
However, your apparent prejudice against small fleets is equally unedifying.
I do not enjoy bashing dev decisions for the sake of it, however when it is justified by a (bad) decision made by the devs themselves it is necessary.
No your numbers are irrelevant you just show larger fleets have to do less dil and FM grinding per person and somehow that generates less profit for cryptic. Well guess what, those people still play an average amount of time compared to people in smaller fleets, just they are doing other stuff when not grinding FM and dil like doing PVP and events with the fleet.
So if you were spending 30-50 per month and your stipend on dil, a lot of that dil came from me and others, you wouldn't have bought the zen if there wasn't dil being placed on the exchange so people like me who are able to sell dil helped generate those sales. 9 one off purchases isn't all I have bought. I am impatient so there were times I didn't have dil when I needed it so I buy dil with zen at times in addition to selling dil, also I don't like farming EC so have bought many modules and keys both with real money and dil exchange zen so I could sell on exchange.
Reason smaller fleets is more of a data drain is the server has to generate a seperate instance for each fleet each time a person from that fleet goes to a holding, if all fleets were larger there would be less fleets, thus less instances it needs to generate.
You are basicly begging for a Godwin, but I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to do that...small fleets are a drain and therefore need to go...musn't.....do.....Godwin
Lost and Delirious... and Disenchanted too Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine?
No your numbers are irrelevant you just show larger fleets have to do less dil and FM grinding per person and somehow that generates less profit for cryptic.
So you admit it takes less work to progress your fleet, you've admitted that you're exploiting size to trivialize the projects. Large fleet members are always complaining about the fact they "can't get things in because they fill so fast" large fleets require the individual to do less, meaning they need less, meaning they spend less since they can quite easily earn it in game.
Well guess what, those people still play an average amount of time compared to people in smaller fleets, just they are doing other stuff when not grinding FM and dil like doing PVP and events with the fleet.
Small fleets do otherthings as well, Mine, does all those things too with and without our fleet, in fact since we need more, we do more.
So if you were spending 30-50 per month and your stipend on dil, a lot of that dil came from me and others, you wouldn't have bought the zen if there wasn't dil being placed on the exchange so people like me who are able to sell dil helped generate those sales. 9 one off purchases isn't all I have bought. I am impatient so there were times I didn't have dil when I needed it so I buy dil with zen at times in addition to selling dil, also I don't like farming EC so have bought many modules and keys both with real money and dil exchange zen so I could sell on exchange.
Right it does come from you earning it in game, the Zen, came from actual cash transactions with cryptic, which is important. Without the demand for Dil you'd have no market. What has created that demand? The small fleet having to do more per member than the large fleet.
My fleet ships aren't all I've bought, every uniform fed size but 1. Most of the bridges, Several C store ships, and lock box keys. Being in a large fleet doesn't make you any better in this regard. As far as EC farm, I'm sure you, me and many others don't like the thought and have all done it, fleet size has nothing to do with that, at all.
Reason smaller fleets is more of a data drain is the server has to generate a seperate instance for each fleet each time a person from that fleet goes to a holding, if all fleets were larger there would be less fleets, thus less instances it needs to generate.
actually, when my small fleet isn't in the base, which can be often, we don't generate and instance at all. Since you have larger member counts, its probable, you have an instance more often than we do, therefore are requiring more server time. No matter what, you do require more server space than we do. Maintaining that space, is a fixed cost they must put out, and well more space, is more cost, no way around that at all. In the size you take, I'd bet several small fleets can fit.
Comments
Do I count as Starbase UGC?
I've been interviewed and/or jumped on every Foundry podcast. I have a Starbase UGC account. I was in on the Foundry closed beta and the conference call. I'm in a fleet that has almost all of the most prominent Foundry authors and all the past and present Podcast UGC hosts, last I checked.
I feel like I recognize a few Foundry authors in this thread. Just because there's a handful of people who have StarbaseUGC sigs (I never noticed them; taking your word for it) doesn't mean their absence in this thread implies some kind of conspiracy.
Sure, folks like Hav said, "Take the rewards out." But I can tell you right now that I think I echo every last one of them when I say that I think Cryptic has issues managing transitions and analyzing and adapting to how people play. Terilynn would probably be sweeter about how she says it but I don't think ANY of them disagree with me on this point.
Also, a point: Terilynn is not an active Foundry author and I'd wager the vast majority of her fleet marks to contribute came from playing Foundry missions. She's very loyal to the fleet and the kind of person who I think would drop money on dilithium to help with a project but none of the fleet mark awarding content is really her style. Without fleet marks on the Foundry, my suspicion is that she will probably just not contribute fleet marks except on very, very rare occasions when four other people talk her into trying out new content that awards FMs and even then only to have done it once or twice so she can put it in her Massively column.
It's not that she isn't a social player. It's not a lack of fleet loyalty. But she's an example of someone who will simply fall out of active project contribution with these changes.
Me personally I like both grinder and regular foundry missions depending on how much time I have to play. I wish the foundry authors would just leave the grinder alone, forget they exist and nobody will have any problems.
Recognise the above quote......it seems at one point you were in favour of leaving things alone, now you are in favour of not leaving things alone.
Do make your mind up, or failing that, lose the insulting and non-constructive language.
We are not obnoxious for decrying a change that, at one point, you did not want either.
We are not obnoxious for pointing out how this ill considered change affect small fleets disproportionately.
We are not obnoxious for wishing a fix for this to be on a time scale of hours or days, instead of months.
Obnoxious would be coming up with bad sophistry to insult and belittle others.
If they count the player base more people are in small fleet than in large fleet. If there is so many large flleet why are there only a couple of fleets that have hit tier 5.
You're once again making the hilariously false assumption that every created character is not only active, but in a fleet.
What I noticed last night is that the mission reward is based off the average play time of that mission not on your play time. I played a mission over and over and the rate changed very slowly as I was bringing the average play time down the reward slowly dropped each time I played it.
I'll have to do that. And I love that Geordi test footage photo you have.
You have brought up a point that is ironic and true. The bugs that have been in the Foundry since day one. You pretty much have to use a handful of maps to get around the pathfinding issues. The only ones that consitently worked were the grinders.
How dare you use logic on this board!
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Keep digging,you're doing a wonderful job
You mean playing a mission in a normal manner was bringing down the average play time?
Gee I wonder why, or what could be wrong with this new system. Wink wink nudge nudge.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Surely punitive is the new paradigm.
This change (or to be more specific, its execution) is clearly punitive against small fleets
Given that you probably have the ear of someone like Branflakes, are you defending these changes or not
Do you, at least, recognise that these changes are hurting players and when players are hurt they look for concrete ways to express their displeasure.
Those foundry authors who lobbied for these changes will be one target, the cash flow of PWE will also be a target.
yet it is you who want to demean and put down small fleets.
Fact is, it takes longer in game time to get 540 marks, than 54
Fact is, it takes longer in game time to get 34.8K dil, than 3.48
Fact is, the smaller fleet is more inclined to spend money than the larger
Fact is, the larger fleet costs more for cryptic to deal with than the small
Fact is, that small fleets buy fleet ships, fleet modules, Sell dill, buy Zen each and every day just like the large fleet.
Fact is, that for as many large fleets, there are small fleets, possibly more.
Fact is, server wise, it takes more space to store a large fleet than it does a small one.
So exactly how valuable are you?
oh btw, just to point out something, I've sold ships from our fleet too. so, thats not exclusive to large fleets either.
Unfortunately my suggestion to fix some things got lost in this misunderstanding. I would post in your thread but it has devolved into 60 pages of ranting and I would not read it if I were in your shoes because it has not become constructive any more.
Here were my 2 suggestions to help out with the situation that could be done immediately:
1. Add a token amount of fleet marks to STF - say 5 for Normal and 10 for elite
2. Bases were made to be social hubs but they are almost always empty. I belong to one of the Largest KDF fleets in the Game with over 400 active member - (500 cap due to some people having a few alts) But there is almost no-one at this beautiful base with every addition.
My suggestion which would be to drastically increase the "officer of the watch" daily to reward 50 fleet marks. This would get a lot more people out to the base.
I hope that this thread remain somewhere where you can read it. And for the other players - I would ask that only constructive and positive responses be left. 60+ pages of ranting helps no-one and anything left in those threads now just gets buried in nowhere land.
Thanks.
No your numbers are irrelevant you just show larger fleets have to do less dil and FM grinding per person and somehow that generates less profit for cryptic. Well guess what, those people still play an average amount of time compared to people in smaller fleets, just they are doing other stuff when not grinding FM and dil like doing PVP and events with the fleet.
So if you were spending 30-50 per month and your stipend on dil, a lot of that dil came from me and others, you wouldn't have bought the zen if there wasn't dil being placed on the exchange so people like me who are able to sell dil helped generate those sales. 9 one off purchases isn't all I have bought. I am impatient so there were times I didn't have dil when I needed it so I buy dil with zen at times in addition to selling dil, also I don't like farming EC so have bought many modules and keys both with real money and dil exchange zen so I could sell on exchange.
Reason smaller fleets is more of a data drain is the server has to generate a seperate instance for each fleet each time a person from that fleet goes to a holding, if all fleets were larger there would be less fleets, thus less instances it needs to generate.
What he said
Quite on the contrary, I have no reason to report you, you're presenting your side, I'm presenting mine. You have however on more than one occasion been very demeaning and derogatory; case in point, this point.
i does my best
I was refering to the private war between foundry authors, and the reason I wanted them to leave it alone was to stop the griefing between both sides, and many grinder authors retailiating by 1 staring real foundry missions. And I never need FM for that, if I was 1k short of dil cap and busy I might have occaisonaly did boff grinder to cap my character out for the day but I don't really need it.
Here's the other thing to consider: Yes, they took away the quick easy source of 50 FM from the Foundry. They did so because they saw players using the Foundry OVER the other content they designed to generate FM. yes, they realized this would upset players and the Forums would again explode with both reasoned responses and just plain angry hatred for the the decision. Players also are upset they didn't put in/increase the FM drop rate from that other content at the same time.
Here's the deal though:
- Cryptic obviously thought FMs were coming into the game more quickly then they would like (whether they state this openly or not.
- Because of what they see as an anomaly that was just removed from gthe equation; in their eyes they have no real hard data on just how much FM will now come in via the content they designed for that purpose. If they try to compensate before getting such data, it could lead to a situation where they feel they need to nerf/lower the FMs on that content as well -- so to avoid that, they just want to get some hard data on how the playerbase at large (not just us very vocal folks on the forums) respond to the change. Once they have that data, they'll do further adjustments (up or down) as they deem fit.
Personally, I think they do overuse dataming to drive a lot of their final decisions; but that's honestly been the way Cryptic does things dating all the way back to their CoH days.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
Again you abuse the definition of Massively Multiplayer. Also, your continued disparagement of small fleets and distasteful remarks demonstrates your comical argument as long since jumped the shark.
Al Rivera hates Klingons
Star Trek Online: Agents of Jack Emmert
All cloaks should be canon.
Dan? Sorry you sound just like this guy I know named Dan, it's weird....
You seem to be missing the entire point of that Fleet size argument, Fleet's were considered to be 'big' at around 50+ members when this was all devised and Fleet's of 25 were assured they would be able to keep up with requirements being 'scaled' appropriately. Everything Dan(hey buddy) has come out here and said is really conjecture, 8-ball derived answers, and a cloudy vision for the foreseeable future with apparently no incoming beneficial improvements as a result of this recent patch. He(hey buddy) gets upset and tries to quote 'factoids' to people while we go find posts he and his Staff have made showing the exact opposite.
So yes, Cryptic wants money. You are not pointing anything out or telling anyone anything they don't know when it comes to that but if you are going to try and make statements trying to tell smaller Fleet's 'you should have known, you chose obscurity!' then back it up and find some empirical data to contribute like they have. Otherwise you're just trolling.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
I didn't 'grind' the IOR but I'd run it maybe a couple of times a day and along with some dilithium make my contributions to our T5 projects.
We run a lot of fleet events for marks but none of the fleet members are expected or required to participate which suited me just fine - now I have to if I want to continue making my small contribution.
This change hasn't made me 'want' to do fleet events - it's pushed me into 'having to' - not a good change - for me anyway.
I assure you I am not a dev. I am just sick of the constant dev bashing of my favorite game.
Then perhaps your devs shouldn't be making decisions that infuriate the overwhelming majority of their playerbase.
People are free to speak their voice as long as they do so respectfully. If you are sick of "constant dev bashing," don't visit these threads anymore. Problem solved. People are complaining a lot b/c STO is also their favorite game. They just have different ways of expressing themselves than you do, and they aren't content with mediocrity or hastily made decisions that haven't undergone testing, or don't come with substitutes for that matter.
If you honestly didn't see how much tougher it got with each progressive project, I'd take issue with your math teachers.
I admit it's tough. I belong to a fleet of 350+ members (maybe 100 active more than 2x a week), and we're just getting to T3 shipyards. That's tough enough without giving our rank and file easy access to change projects at the last second. Weeeee we paid how much for the 2013 holosmaltz? Oh well, at least we can turn that off.
Here's where I get flamed:
From the beginning I understood that smaller fleets would ultimately fade and die.
I was ok with this when I joined a fleet. I knew there was a chance that the fleet might [insert worst fear here]. So if you were lucky enough to hook up with like minded players, you might be able to get access to all of that eventual T5 goodness. So far, it's been a great experience, and I would recommend you create a Tribble Removal/reduction Project.
Starbase s are group competitions that will never, ever end. There are winners - those who have all of the cool stuff, and only slightly annoy you with their offers of T5 Shipyard access for a nominal fee. If your not at least at [this] Tier, you're not doing well.
Survival of the fittest until you added FC to the Foundry.
We live in a gamer culture, where min/max of any ecosystem is our one true goal. Of course we'd look for the optimal way to 'work within your rules' to our benefit. We're human (or at least most of us are).
STO just underestimated how many Epohh Fleets the FC carrot would invite.
The availability of the credits effectively gave smaller fleets a chance to compete, and created the impression STO approved of this ecosystem. It's removal now effectively a double-whammy of 'Sorry no bonus' and and a middle finger 'grind harder'. The much improved reward system story is lost under a strong backlash to the changes. Major marketing miscue.
I feel bad for people who didn't 'get-it' when it came to the math behind Fleet Starbase's. I just don't think that making it easier for them after busting our collective butts is necessarily fair. Any proportional gain a larger fleet might get so smaller fleets can advance would TRIBBLE with future Starbase growth.
Let smaller fleets die with at least some grace by restoring just enough additional fleet credits so that when they fail, they understand it was their decision to fail.
Interesting, if a little unsettling. It kind of irks me that they depend so much on their numbers and metrics instead of listening to player feedback and opinions. It reminds me of those lines M says in Goldeneye
If Fleet Marks being added to the Foundry was planned to be a temporary thing at the time, then why wasn't it communicated as such when it was implemented? And why didn't you have a backup means of earning additional fleet marks planned to implement when you removed them from the Foundry, you know, in case your metrics showed fleets weren't earning enough anymore?
Previously when talking about fleet projects Cryptic has consistently stated that the projects are balanced for fleets with 25 members. Now you're saying that they've been balanced for the mega-fleets all along?
If this is your favourite game,then get used to it or gain a thick skin very quickly,because you're in for a bumpy ride.
Possibly true....but your use of the word obnoxious was hypocritical.
You may well not enjoy the sight of dev bashing, it is not the most edifying of sights I agree.
However, your apparent prejudice against small fleets is equally unedifying.
I do not enjoy bashing dev decisions for the sake of it, however when it is justified by a (bad) decision made by the devs themselves it is necessary.
You are basicly begging for a Godwin, but I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to do that...small fleets are a drain and therefore need to go...musn't.....do.....Godwin
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Small fleets do otherthings as well, Mine, does all those things too with and without our fleet, in fact since we need more, we do more. Right it does come from you earning it in game, the Zen, came from actual cash transactions with cryptic, which is important. Without the demand for Dil you'd have no market. What has created that demand? The small fleet having to do more per member than the large fleet.
My fleet ships aren't all I've bought, every uniform fed size but 1. Most of the bridges, Several C store ships, and lock box keys. Being in a large fleet doesn't make you any better in this regard. As far as EC farm, I'm sure you, me and many others don't like the thought and have all done it, fleet size has nothing to do with that, at all.
actually, when my small fleet isn't in the base, which can be often, we don't generate and instance at all. Since you have larger member counts, its probable, you have an instance more often than we do, therefore are requiring more server time. No matter what, you do require more server space than we do. Maintaining that space, is a fixed cost they must put out, and well more space, is more cost, no way around that at all. In the size you take, I'd bet several small fleets can fit.