Do you even realize how many Fleet ships module sales my Fleet generates for cryptic compared to yours? Since we are able to advance our shipyard quickly, most people in my fleet own lots of fleet ships, and outsiders are sometimes able to make arrangements to join temporarily to get fleet ships. I myself own 9 fleet ships on my account, some people in my fleet own even more. You aren't likely to buy all the modules for that without unlocking high tier shipyard.
We don't need to use up all of our dil like you do either. So who do you think is grinding that dil out to sell to you on the dil exchange. Dil being put on exchange causes people to buy zen, that is also more sales for cryptic.
You fail to point out how just because each member of your small fleet has to indiviually work harder that is more profit for cryptic.
If anything your fleet is a drain on server resources compared to mine, the server has to use the same resources to generate an instance for your fleet holdings and mine, and has to use same resources to store that data. If everyone was in large fleets they might not even have to instance all our holdings and we could have persistent holdings like in other MMOs.
Maybe there should be a fleet maintenance fee to help discourage excessive fleet spam.
Ok, its good to know where you stand and what sort of person you are.
Do you even realize how many Fleet ships module sales my Fleet generates for cryptic compared to yours? Since we are able to advance our shipyard quickly, most people in my fleet own lots of fleet ships, and outsiders are sometimes able to make arrangements to join temporarily to get fleet ships. I myself own 9 fleet ships on my account, some people in my fleet own even more. You aren't likely to buy all the modules for that without unlocking high tier shipyard.
We don't need to use up all of our dil like you do either. So who do you think is grinding that dil out to sell to you on the dil exchange. Dil being put on exchange causes people to buy zen, that is also more sales for cryptic.
You fail to point out how just because each member of your small fleet has to indiviually work harder that is more profit for cryptic.
If anything your fleet is a drain on server resources compared to mine, the server has to use the same resources to generate an instance for your fleet holdings and mine, and has to use same resources to store that data. If everyone was in large fleets they might not even have to instance all our holdings and we could have persistent holdings like in other MMOs.
Maybe there should be a fleet maintenance fee to help discourage excessive fleet spam.
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
And here I thought I'd already seen the most arrogant, self-centered, elitist and delusional post of the day...
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.
Simple math tells us the smaller fleet does more PER MEMBER than the larger fleet.
Simple math tells us the smaller fleet spends more time in game PER MEMBER than the large fleet
Simple math tells us the smaller fleet is more potential profit than the large fleet
Simple logic says, design to the small fleet, and Cap fleet size at a much smaller number
The exploit, is the large fleet. Stop the exploit.
no matter how you spin it the fact is a small fleet does more per active member, meaning more potential for profit. The problem isn't the small fleet, its the fleets exploiting size to trivialize the efforts needed to get to the next tier.
5400 marks, 348K Dil for a T3 upgrade *(leaving out the consumables)
10 man fleet =540 marks per man, 34.8K dil per man
100 man fleet =54 marks per man 3.48 dil per man
Clearly the smaller fleet does more per member meaning more potential for profit, it takes them longer, they must be in the game more than the 100 man fleet, they're much more valuable than the 100 man fleet,
9 Fleet actions and 5 days of max Dil refine Vs 1 Fleet action, and one day of doff grind
You are valuing the wrong group.
Stop the exploit, stop the large fleet.
Amazing post and totally pure logic!
PWE/Cryptic are you reading this?
Here's the answer right in front of your eyes!
Just cap the large fleet size to a much lower level like 25 max!
Actually smaller fleets should be rewarded more than large fleets for the amount of time and money they are putting into their bases.
Large fleets are the exploit! Please change your design pattern and reward the hard work small fleets are doing. You will reap the benefits from them alot more than the large fleets that now have T5 and have stopped grinding on your "farm".
If you turn away from your "farming" style of game design and actually start developing new missions, story lines, and playable factions, you will get more in profits from all the ships, equipment, costumes, kits, etc. than you will ever get from the "farming" system.
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.
"How can we say nobody's perfect if there's no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there is a right and a wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type...?"
Read that, then for god's sake, be quiet for a while...
Lost and Delirious... and Disenchanted too Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine?
A scale/sliding system won't work because there are those that would abuse it. All you have to do is keep your numbers low until the base is finished, rotating members in and out. Then when its done bring everyone into the fold.
Nothing in the game is stopping a large fleet from booting tons of folks out when they hit T5. We're hearing reports of folks getting demands to contribute set amounts or they can't have anything from large fleets. We've already seen a fleet get taken hostage. The current system is just as subject to abuse.
One, way which was suggested by someone (sorry I can't remember who) was to scale things with a twist. the less you have to put in, the longer it must go, the more, the faster.
So say a small fleet doing T3 only has to do 540 marks, and 34.8K dil instead of it taking 7 days, you double the time out, to 14 days. Now the large fleet, of 100, has to do 5400, and 348K. instead of seven it takes them 3. so more items shorter time, less work longer time. It puts a value on both ends, both sides sacrifice something to get another. Both large and small gain, and loose.
You seem to have some insider information that we are not aware of?
To most on this thread it seems to be simply 1 of 2 reasons.
1. The Foundry authors "screamed" that they want it removed and Cryptic did (highly unlikely)
2. People are building bases faster than Cryptic wanted and they may loose money.
I go for number 2.
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
The debate about marks will continue, but I'm more concerned about how Cryptic handled this.
All I can see is that Cryptic decided to take marks away from Foundry, decided to let everyone know in the patch notes a day before the patch was to go live, and failed to include a suitable alternative for earning marks.
To me this is lazy. I actually agree that fleet marks should be out of Foundry and that the system was abused much like clickies for Dil. I do not agree that they rushed in and took it away with barely any notice, and not without another means to earn marks in place.
EXACTLY.
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.
Cryptic please don't listen to all these complainers. Of course all the people that are against it are going to be complaining the loudest and most on forums, but fact is most players aren't complaining here and don't really have a problem with these changes.
Both my Fed and KDF fleets are close to 500 members and most are not active on the forums, and from what I have seen of other Fleets this size it is similar with them.
From what I hear from everyone on Fleet chat and teamspeak none of them are complaining or care I assume this is similar with many other fleets. The mostly silient majority does not mind these changes and are ok with it, don't let the loud angry minority bully you into giving them their exploits back. These changes were the right thing to do for the foundry and for the Fleet Event system (maybe we will actually get the queues active again outside of events)
You don't represent the "silent majority"... If the average fleet size is 25 then for every fleet of 500 there are dozens of fleets with less than 25 members... so before you pretend to speak for the masses... do some math.
This decision is just wrong all the way around... and before you get all excited to get more people in queue, you should realize a lot more people will be in queue to AFK as well and ruin your fun as they used to do before fleet marks were added to solo foundry missions.
Just cap the large fleet size to a much lower level like 25 max!
Actually smaller fleets should be rewarded more than large fleets for the amount of time and money they are putting into their bases.
Large fleets are the exploit! Please change your design pattern and reward the hard work small fleets are doing. You will reap the benefits from them alot more than the large fleets that now have T5 and have stopped grinding on your "farm".
If you turn away from your "farming" style of game design and actually start developing new missions, story lines, and playable factions, you will get more in profits from all the ships, equipment, costumes, kits, etc. than you will ever get from the "farming" system.
Please listen to your customers!
PWE/Cryptic Stop the "farm", bring back the fun!
Zeus
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.
Then why is my fleet chat and teamspeak silent on this issue. Sorry but that counts for as much as 10, 20 maybe even 30 times as much people as your Fleet likely has. It is the same way on both my KDF and Fed fleets as I am a member of 2 different Fleets around same size, none of them care. Sorry but your small fleet= small amount of players=insignificant minority.
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.
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.
Well put, and I agree. You should also pipe in about my "Playing as Intended" post because I know we have similar philosophies on it.
Wow, lots of pages of responses here! Obviously, many people were caught unaware by this most recent change, but I'm not sure why they would have been.
I stumbled onto this whole "short Foundry missions give 50 FM" shortcut just htis week. In 2 days, I used 2 of my characters to earn 1100 FM for my single player Fleet. It got me up to Tier 1. I ran the same Foundry mission over and over again to get it (was able to complete the text-heavy mission in 5-8 minutes, depending on loading times).
Obviously, this wasn't how the game was intended to be played, and, as a Foundry author myself, wasn't what I wanted to see the Foundry become.
Although I'll definitely misss the easy FM, I have no problem with them being taken out in this case. What I'd LIKE to see, though, is the following:
1. FM added to all Fleet Action missions (Starbase 24, Halting the Gorn Advance, etc.); and not just as the Daily event, but for all the events, every day. A 20 hour cool-down period makes sense, but there are only 5 of these events, I think, so someone doing each one of these every day SHOULD earn some decent FMs.
2. FM added to STFs. They're fleet events, so they should get fleet rewards.
I agree with dstahl that the biggest hurdle for fleets isn't the FMs but the Dilithium costs. One of my alts is in a large fleet (100+ members) and the last resource to be filled for each and every mSB mission and upgrade is dilithium. Sure, we could buy Dil, but a lot of us object to the whole "pay to advance" idea. Ideally, Dil will be earned through a variety of different ways (not just grinding a handful of Eta Eridian and Deferi missions-that gets old!).
I saw one poster recommend that all Cryptic-designed missions (i.e. leveling up missions) give Dil, either every time or just on replay. Some of these missions are really good, and Cryptic might as well get as much mileage out of them as they can. This sounds like a good idea to me.
Anyway, I really enjoy STO and want to see it continue to grow and add new things for all players to do. I LOVE my Tier 1 StarBase, and I'm now working on my Romulan Embassy and reputations for each alt, so I've got my hands full for awhile.
Hopefully, this latest dust-up can be settled to most people's satisfaction and we can all get on with playing the game we enjoy so much.
No they don't and they got rid of the report feature as well, for some reason.:cool:
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.
Could we at least put an IOR in that awards only XP, for those of us that wanted an alternate way to level alts?
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
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 .
The Foundry authors aren't blame in this whole mess - that lies squarely with Cryptic.
Fleet Marks should never have been attached to Foundry Missions in the first place, they should have been attached to compelling, non-time-gated Fleet content in quantities that rewarded players rather than punished them.
I can't disagree that there's some elitist attitudes amongst some authors (and non-authors) as to what constitutes a 'good' Foundry mission, but the fact is, Cryptic gave the players tools to exploit the system and they furthermore rewarded those players for doing it.
Those rewards are part of the life-blood of small fleets and pulling them without offering any alternatives is as clumsy and blinkered as the 'fixes' they inflicted on the STF community.
Those rewards are part of the life-blood of small fleets and pulling them without offering any alternatives is as clumsy and blinkered as the 'fixes' they inflicted on the STF community.
Heh, yeah.
You really would assume they learnt something when they decided to take Dil rewards from STF's, I'm sure everyone remembers how welcome that change was.
- 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.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
Do you even realize how many Fleet ships module sales my Fleet generates for cryptic compared to yours? Since we are able to advance our shipyard quickly, most people in my fleet own lots of fleet ships, and outsiders are sometimes able to make arrangements to join temporarily to get fleet ships. I myself own 9 fleet ships on my account, some people in my fleet own even more. You aren't likely to buy all the modules for that without unlocking high tier shipyard.
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.
We don't need to use up all of our dil like you do either. So who do you think is grinding that dil out to sell to you on the dil exchange. Dil being put on exchange causes people to buy zen, that is also more sales for cryptic.
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.
If anything your fleet is a drain on server resources compared to mine, the server has to use the same resources to generate an instance for your fleet holdings and mine, and has to use same resources to store that data. If everyone was in large fleets they might not even have to instance all our holdings and we could have persistent holdings like in other MMOs.
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.
You really would assume they learnt something when they decided to take Dil rewards from STF's, I'm sure everyone remembers how welcome that change was.
What I remember the most was a bunch of players that admitted they didn't play STFs fully endorsing the changes :rolleyes:
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.
Comments
Aha, so you want better treatment because you generate sales?
<-look what it says there, I actually spend real money, can I demand stuff on basis of that too?
Of course not, so stop this insulting line of argument...
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Ok, its good to know where you stand and what sort of person you are.
I suggest you look up the word sophistry
Hmm, I wonder what the scouter has to say about this post
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
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.
Amazing post and totally pure logic!
PWE/Cryptic are you reading this?
Here's the answer right in front of your eyes!
Just cap the large fleet size to a much lower level like 25 max!
Actually smaller fleets should be rewarded more than large fleets for the amount of time and money they are putting into their bases.
Large fleets are the exploit! Please change your design pattern and reward the hard work small fleets are doing. You will reap the benefits from them alot more than the large fleets that now have T5 and have stopped grinding on your "farm".
If you turn away from your "farming" style of game design and actually start developing new missions, story lines, and playable factions, you will get more in profits from all the ships, equipment, costumes, kits, etc. than you will ever get from the "farming" system.
Please listen to your customers!
PWE/Cryptic Stop the "farm", bring back the fun!
Zeus
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
"How can we say nobody's perfect if there's no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there is a right and a wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type...?"
Read that, then for god's sake, be quiet for a while...
Apparently some forum posters have diplomatic immunity nowadays, where can I get mine? [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
One, way which was suggested by someone (sorry I can't remember who) was to scale things with a twist. the less you have to put in, the longer it must go, the more, the faster.
So say a small fleet doing T3 only has to do 540 marks, and 34.8K dil instead of it taking 7 days, you double the time out, to 14 days. Now the large fleet, of 100, has to do 5400, and 348K. instead of seven it takes them 3. so more items shorter time, less work longer time. It puts a value on both ends, both sides sacrifice something to get another. Both large and small gain, and loose.
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
No they don't and they got rid of the report feature as well, for some reason.:cool:
EXACTLY.
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.
You don't represent the "silent majority"... If the average fleet size is 25 then for every fleet of 500 there are dozens of fleets with less than 25 members... so before you pretend to speak for the masses... do some math.
This decision is just wrong all the way around... and before you get all excited to get more people in queue, you should realize a lot more people will be in queue to AFK as well and ruin your fun as they used to do before fleet marks were added to solo foundry missions.
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.
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.
Well put, and I agree. You should also pipe in about my "Playing as Intended" post because I know we have similar philosophies on it.
-ABM
I stumbled onto this whole "short Foundry missions give 50 FM" shortcut just htis week. In 2 days, I used 2 of my characters to earn 1100 FM for my single player Fleet. It got me up to Tier 1. I ran the same Foundry mission over and over again to get it (was able to complete the text-heavy mission in 5-8 minutes, depending on loading times).
Obviously, this wasn't how the game was intended to be played, and, as a Foundry author myself, wasn't what I wanted to see the Foundry become.
Although I'll definitely misss the easy FM, I have no problem with them being taken out in this case. What I'd LIKE to see, though, is the following:
1. FM added to all Fleet Action missions (Starbase 24, Halting the Gorn Advance, etc.); and not just as the Daily event, but for all the events, every day. A 20 hour cool-down period makes sense, but there are only 5 of these events, I think, so someone doing each one of these every day SHOULD earn some decent FMs.
2. FM added to STFs. They're fleet events, so they should get fleet rewards.
I agree with dstahl that the biggest hurdle for fleets isn't the FMs but the Dilithium costs. One of my alts is in a large fleet (100+ members) and the last resource to be filled for each and every mSB mission and upgrade is dilithium. Sure, we could buy Dil, but a lot of us object to the whole "pay to advance" idea. Ideally, Dil will be earned through a variety of different ways (not just grinding a handful of Eta Eridian and Deferi missions-that gets old!).
I saw one poster recommend that all Cryptic-designed missions (i.e. leveling up missions) give Dil, either every time or just on replay. Some of these missions are really good, and Cryptic might as well get as much mileage out of them as they can. This sounds like a good idea to me.
Anyway, I really enjoy STO and want to see it continue to grow and add new things for all players to do. I LOVE my Tier 1 StarBase, and I'm now working on my Romulan Embassy and reputations for each alt, so I've got my hands full for awhile.
Hopefully, this latest dust-up can be settled to most people's satisfaction and we can all get on with playing the game we enjoy so much.
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.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
The Foundry authors aren't blame in this whole mess - that lies squarely with Cryptic.
Fleet Marks should never have been attached to Foundry Missions in the first place, they should have been attached to compelling, non-time-gated Fleet content in quantities that rewarded players rather than punished them.
I can't disagree that there's some elitist attitudes amongst some authors (and non-authors) as to what constitutes a 'good' Foundry mission, but the fact is, Cryptic gave the players tools to exploit the system and they furthermore rewarded those players for doing it.
Those rewards are part of the life-blood of small fleets and pulling them without offering any alternatives is as clumsy and blinkered as the 'fixes' they inflicted on the STF community.
Heh, yeah.
You really would assume they learnt something when they decided to take Dil rewards from STF's, I'm sure everyone remembers how welcome that change was.
- 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.
"We are smart." - Grebnedlog
Member of Alliance Central Command/boq botlhra'ghom
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.
Since the average fleet size is 121, that would be rather punitive.
Pull up the infographic and do the math.
What I remember the most was a bunch of players that admitted they didn't play STFs fully endorsing the changes :rolleyes:
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.