Alright if noone posted before me this is post #2705
This is saying me not that fleet marks made sooo many people so upset. Yes, it did but all this complains are not only because of this, but simply because this is just the last issue with grinding.
I don't have much time to make a detailed answer, however as for the IOR problem, I have a simple solution I've already explained before at page 56 (or was it 57?) anyway after more than two hundred pages I think a repost is needed.
As you did with dilithium, make foundry missions reward fleet marks based on mission lenght AND, to avoid AFK exploiting, set a timer for the player where it becomes idle earlier (this would exclude chat) then make the FM reward only for these who already are in a fleet. I assume this would make everyone happy. Then, the grind is a problem too. Don't assume every player have enough time to grind the resources they need. Remember players must have FUN playing a game, or not? This said I really want to thank you stahl for your apologizes. You demostrated to listen to us players, especially the occasional ones, who can't stay in for longer than 1 or 2 hrs but still want to have fun. I'm sure you'll bring us changes to the current starbase advancement system to make it progressive as smaller fleets need to give less. I do not know if my ideas are valid, but they can always be a source for smarter ones, right?
This comment saddens me. You've made similar comments in the past about wanting STO to be a "traditional" MMO, which seems to under-appreciate what are the strengths of game: the non-traditional parts, like story and UGC.
Each new season seems to bolster whatever is formulaic, stale, and frankly annoying about the genre, while the innovative parts of the game, like the Foundry, stand in a perpetual state of Beta, since no resources really get devoted to it, compared to something like a New Romulus, where players collect rocks for tokens for other tokens, for other tokens, for other tokens.
I wish that you guys would embrace the innovative parts of the game instead of rethinking every conceivable way that the game can be more annoyingly MMORPG.
I don't care about shinies or buckets. I want to feel like I'm in the 2409 version of Star Trek. Immersion should be the goal, not immersion-breaking nonsense.
Wonderful post Kirk, and I agree 100% - thank you!
The only person telling you that you have to do all four grinds at once is YOU.
And really, it's only 3 grinds. Dilithium is part of the fleet and reputation grinds. And really, while pursuing marks, you end up doing stuff that rewards Dilithium as well. Plus, 15 minutes spend on DOffing can set up turn-ins for a fair amount od Dilithium as well...
But still it comes down to one simple thing: Just because there are three grindfests in the game does not mean you HAVE to grind them all at once. Try focusing on one per day. Whichever one you are most behind on, or more importantly, which one you are least annoyed by.
I get tired of people throwing out "I've got to grind 45 minutes to 3 hours grinding before I can play what I enjoy playing... No you most certainly don't. Play what you enjoy playing. You do not HAVE to do a single one of the rep grinds or the fleet grind.
Well, I'd say the biggest problem ARE NOT the grind we have to do, but the WAY we have to.
I'd be happy with whatever grind I have to do if it's not unbalanced/unfair (see the fleet advancement system) or linked to boring/worthless content.
The reputation system itself is, despite all, a huge step forward though it needs to be reworked a little. The big problem is the fleet system, which is not progressive. These are all things that can be revamped, adjusted, balanced and even if they need time, I'd be happy to know:
A - Are you really considering to change it?
B - How will you change it?
C - Can you consider player feedback more when regarding these important changes BEFORE applying them?
That would avoid LOTS of problems, make the game more fun for everyone and gather new players
> more cash gain
I get tired of people throwing out "I've got to grind 45 minutes to 3 hours grinding before I can play what I enjoy playing... No you most certainly don't. Play what you enjoy playing. You do not HAVE to do a single one of the rep grinds or the fleet grind.
We do have to do that, because a lot of the grind opens up the kind of items you need to be able to be competitive in the parts of the game you enjoy playing. Not only that but most of the new content in the game is based on grind and so people are having to play it as it's the only content on offer. In addition people who often want to play other parts of the game cannot because they can't get anyone to join their team to do it as everyone is so busy just trying to keep up with the grind.
If you want to advance your end-game play grind content is pretty much the only game in town (apart from doffing I suppose). That is basically that. What this is about is balancing these broken systems and making the grind more enjoyable so that people can progress through it without feeling like they shouldn't bother logging in anymore.
In the future maybe we can hope for a different kind of content but for the moment that is what we are left with at End-Game.
C'mon almoost sinds the start people cry about grinding and doing things they dont like.
I dont agre with you guys, the game is not so much a grind as many other MMO's out there. Even the "adult" mmo's have grinds.
Any way , what i want to say is, stop complaining and try to be constructive in your feedback.
Dont attack people (cryptic) because they dont follow the path you want them to, but give them constructive idears. That works way beter then complaining and saying you will leave the game.
Also moost of the people saying they will leave, dont, just because they like the game...but then why would you complain? Doenst anybody c the circle they are in?
To Dan and the rest of the Crew, there are people still that like the game, and love what you are all doing. As one poster sayd, for 1 person complaining in this threath there are 5 that feel the same but stay still. Next to that there are 20 people that just love the game.....
An apology is due, and while I've admitted fault in previous posts about this , I'll do so again in this one.
The release that was pushed to Holodeck last week failed in several critical ways. There was a failure on the part of a designer to test their work before it was checked into the game.
Similarly, there was a failure in communication with the QA team on the said check in and on top of that, no one headed the concerns on TRIBBLE.
Ultimately, this is all my responsibility as the lead on the team and I do apologize.
There has been corrective action on our end to address this issue and it is our intention that the build going out to Holodeck tomorrow will resolve problems introduced last week.
This doesn't mean that all bugs on Holodeck are magically gone, it means that we are looking into the processes that cause these bugs and taking action to correct them.
In addition, the removal of Fleet Marks was a heavy handed change. It needed to be done because it was getting out of hand and there was an ever increasing amount of exploitation in the Foundry to maximum Fleet Mark rewards. That said, we should have had the Fleet Mark changes we are making this week ready to go last week so there wouldn't have been a week with the drop in Fleet Mark earning.
Again sorry. It doesn't make us feel any better when we make stupid mistakes.
Similarly, it is disheartening when several members of the community make harsh comments towards a team that is working many hours of OT to bring new content to STO.
Be frustrated with me all you want, but every member of the team is pouring their lives into making this game better. While you may not see that on any given day, when you look back at where this game has come from, every year we make big strides in moving forward. They deserve a lot of credit for that.
While you may not agree with all of our designs and decisions, the proof is in the success the game is having and how much the game continues to grow. While we don't share our internal information, STO is the best performing game for Perfect World Entertainment and is enjoy month after month increases in new captains.
Having just celebrated our 3 year anniversary, there should be no doubt in your mind that we will be here for year 4 and beyond. We have a lot of good stuff in the works for our next May update and you'll see what we've been talking about in a little less than a months time.
So thank you for the constructive feedback. I do apologize on the behalf of the team. We appreciate your continued support and understand if we tarnished ourselves with last week's update. We will learn and move on.
And now... back to work.
Last week's patch was the MMO consumer equivalent of my boss walking in Thursday morning and retroactively taking all my raises back. I'd have punched her in her maw. But that wouldn't happen b/c it's insane, and my boss is awesome and would never do something so horrible. That being said, I'm glad that you took the time to apologize to us and make reparations. In the future... Talk to us... Let us help you make this game awesome. I've been with the game for about a year now and since S7 it's become less fun and more of a chore, stressing out over marks and dilithium... After we read about the patch today we all took the night off from farming. Thank you. And believe it or not, we do appreciate the hard work put into this game, and we'd LOVE to help you continue to make it grow. But when you come at us all craycray... 0.o
Delirium Tremens
XO of Training
Tier 5 Starbase, Tier 3 Embassy, Tier 3 Dilithium Mine, Tier 3 Spire
Join us at www.dtfleet.com
the only thing they havent done with the fleet marks in today's patch was put it back in the foundry and i am afraid that the pvp fleet mark thing will be like the foundry fleet marks and be temporary and cause alot more problems with the pvp vets and the pvp boot camp with all the people who dont know one thing about pvp trying to play pvp. idk for sure if the pvp fleet marks will be temporary like the foundry fleet marks or be perminant thou
C'mon almoost sinds the start people cry about grinding and doing things they dont like.
I dont agre with you guys, the game is not so much a grind as many other MMO's out there. Even the "adult" mmo's have grinds. .....
Grind is grind. Saying "other games have grind" is consigning yourself to mediocrity.
Besides, grind isn't neccesarily the issue. The issue is that grind is really the only thing you have to look foward to, and just about everything you do is centered around grinding.
I'm sorry, but having to grind whatever number of missions to unlock T5, only to have to further grind to actually be able to buy anything is just a poor design decision.
In escense you have to grind to unlock the ability to grind. I'm not sure how that can be considered fun.
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
Knowledge about the game mechanics also makes the "grind" aspect a lot shorter. The dil cap can be reached in less than 1h. You only need to play one STF a day to fill your rep projetcs. You don't even need to play a single romulan mission to feed rommie rep ones. Doffs can be bought at the starbase, and it's easy in small fleets because you have a lot of extra fleet credits. The only issue was fleetmarks and it's going to be super easy now. A fleet of 10 people playing 2-3h a day will be able to progress almost as quickly as a 500 players one, except on massive upgrade projects.
I consider that this game is already very light on grind, except on fleet stuff. Now that it's adressed, there's no more grind at all actually. Just play the game the way you want to and get rewards.
I'm sure you don't want a game where you log in, grab rewards, log out. This isn't funny if it's not a challenge. But it's also the only step i see to make "grind" easier because it's already extremely achievable.
Sometimes, systems aren't the problem, but the lack of knowledge about systems is.
On a side note, do you read popups in every mission you get in (even stfs, mind trap and so on)? If the answer is not then you know where the issue is, you don't want to know how to play this game because players are babysitted everywhere.
Hopefully things will become easier with fleet grind that will help but new content is needed eventuallly and I do know how to play the game.
C'mon almoost sinds the start people cry about grinding and doing things they dont like.
I dont agre with you guys, the game is not so much a grind as many other MMO's out there. Even the "adult" mmo's have grinds.
Any way , what i want to say is, stop complaining and try to be constructive in your feedback.
Dont attack people (cryptic) because they dont follow the path you want them to, but give them constructive idears. That works way beter then complaining and saying you will leave the game.
Also moost of the people saying they will leave, dont, just because they like the game...but then why would you complain? Doenst anybody c the circle they are in?
To Dan and the rest of the Crew, there are people still that like the game, and love what you are all doing. As one poster sayd, for 1 person complaining in this threath there are 5 that feel the same but stay still. Next to that there are 20 people that just love the game.....
Try reading the posts again. Creating the straw man that we're not offering constructive feedback is in and of itself irrelevant and disruptive.
There are plenty of other MMO's that don't have this kind of grind, i.e. the kind that is tedious repetitive and isn't much fun.
Take DDO as an example ( a game that isn't even that adult orientated) in that game I have a massive variety of end-game game content to play so I never get bored there are over 20 level 15+ story arcs (hundreds of quests) that I can do and all of them are enjoyable even on repetition because you are usually not repeating the same thing over and over.
I really don't think you can argue against that and I don't think you understand the point here the people who are complaining also love the game and love potential the game has and we complain because we are not happy with the direction the game is going in I've sunk a lot of money into this game, I mean *a lot* I'm not talking 3 digit numbers here.
In addition whether you or I love the game our feelings are irrelevant to the honest facts and admissions made by Stahl himself that the team is rushing development ignoring Tribble testers, failing to communicate internally or externally properly and ultimately introducing broken systems into the live server. All of this is a fact regardless of whether we love the game or not. It's just that some of us love the game so much we want to see these issues eradicated from the live server.
Don't get me wrong, if they expect the starbase grind to be managable by 25+ with it becoming painful excessively difficult with any less than 25, then there need to be small fleet holdings that are only available to fleets with less than 25 members with progression balanced around those numbers. That would make the system fair. It would be the difference of having a listening post or research station that is designed to do things along those lines as opposed to a Starbase that handles multiple aspects. Starbases generally have a crew compliment of several thousand. An outpost might have a few hundred. 25 primary crew level occupants can manage a few hundred. But for a facility populated by several thousand should require administrative positions numbering in the hundreds to manage them all.
That is not what you want to do from a game design perspective. It may be "realistic"-ish, but you don't want to create second class citizens out of players just because their playstyle doesn't involve being a serial number.
Cryptic completely botched the design of their Guild Hall system from the get go, which has caused them and players no end of troubles. I suspect they chose the "easiest to code and implement" route instead of finding a sustainable solution. Probably the best solution they should have cribbed from other games (CoH and GW2) is any action while "representing" a guild grants points for that guild to use.
How MMO companies reach for the stars: "And as far as Season 7 being "grindy" - welcome to the MMORPG genre."
Other games also make it an artform of masking the grind with "fun." Crazy, huh?
That is very true. Games by their very nature are repitive. It's how you alieviate that "here we go again" feeling.
First Person Shooters do it with atmosphere and story (of in the case of Modern Warfare 2 and MW 3 and Black Ops just atmosphere because the stories are TRIBBLE).
MMOs are also repititve (get a quest, go to point A killing everythin in your path, get item and go to point b, killing everything in your path). Most get through that by attacthing a story, some in depth lore, lot's of atmosphere or a persistant warzone. Inspite of its failing, The Secret World does a good job with the story, atmosphere (including the music), and has a persistant warzone. It even made an attempt to break the mold by trying to do away with the traditional holy trinity (I would say the results are mixed).
Sometimes you gotta be bold, As Sisko said, "Fortune favors the bold."
If you look it, everything you need to do is a grind :P
Leveling=grind
Getting the right gear=grind
etc
Oh and before you ask.
Your work=grind
your life=grind
even death=grinded your boddy down....
So i guess we can modify Benjamin Franklin's saying.
"The only things certain in life are grind and taxes."
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
It's good to see a reply or two finally but I still feel like I am being talked down to instead of being talked to and not for the first time. This was never just about the FM's being taken away in the Valentines Day patch, that was just the final straw for a lot of people.
On the face of it the FM's added in the Tribble patch notes will help things but they should have been put in at the same time as the others were removed and if you didn't have them ready to be then you should have waited until you did have.
To tell us that we are mouthy and should be thankful that you are doing the jobs that you are paid to do is laughable, even more so when you are only having to do your jobs now to mend the problems that you created and then compounded yourselves with the VD patch.
First, "many people aren't happy" is a matter of perspective. There are certainly people that aren't happy, but there are also many people that are happy.
This typifies one of the problems highlighted by people due to the posts in this thread that only came about because of some problem that you introduced yet again. Cryptic talk rubbish and try to sweep problems under the carpet hoping that they will go away and when they don't they just spout more rubbish when action is wanted instead.
To explain what I mean by that, one of the problems that people have talked about if broken promises and your over use of metrics instead of listening to people's concerns. As discussed just in this thread, you tell us things about stats but don't back them up instead we have to take things on trust. Your response to the recent concerns raised about this is the one I have quoted which is that your metrics tell you that people are unhappy but also happy so shut up and we wont show you any data to back up what we say. It seems that lessons have not been learnt then and you are only looking at metrics still, I for one would love to know how your metrics measure fun and happiness?
This is just looking at one of the more obvious points of this thread brought about by the VD patch and Cryptic's response as you speak for them. I haven't even touched on things like the glaring problems that smaller fleets face with a lopsided fleet system that's so lopsided it's almost vertical, as customers expected to open our wallets we should all be treated as equally as possible.
To sum this up....people are in an rocky relationship with Cryptic. At times it seems that the best thing to do would be to split up but Cryptic keep begging us not to leave. Then they give us VD and when we complain they tell us that we should be happy just to jump back in bed with them anyway.
STO will never be a traditional MMO for as long as dilithium earnings remain capped. And for the record, if the cap was ever removed I would spend 10x the time in game earning it because everything everywhere needs it now. I now question the point of a cap in today's STO. Once a dil buyer/seller, always a dil buyer/seller.
First, "many people aren't happy" is a matter of perspective. There are certainly people that aren't happy, but there are also many people that are happy.
There is a difference between being happy and being content.
People are content with bunny tagging, but is anyone truly happy with it?
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 the fleet system is only unfair if you are a tiny fleet expecting to do what by design is for larger fleets. Don't get me wrong, if they expect the starbase grind to be managable by 25+ with it becoming painful excessively difficult with any less than 25, then there need to be small fleet holdings that are only available to fleets with less than 25 members with progression balanced around those numbers. That would make the system fair. It would be the difference of having a listening post or research station that is designed to do things along those lines as opposed to a Starbase that handles multiple aspects. Starbases generally have a crew compliment of several thousand. An outpost might have a few hundred. 25 primary crew level occupants can manage a few hundred. But for a facility populated by several thousand should require administrative positions numbering in the hundreds to manage them all. Nothing should stop a small fleet from pursuing a Fleet Starbase, but the difficulty of advancement should remain as is, a simulation of the logistical nightmare that a handfull trying to manage several thousand staff members in a variety of departments would be. It's doable but incredibly difficult
I see your point. However, this is a game after all, or not? I think every single player in STO should have the same possibilities. Of course there are lots of variabilities, (forgive me if I spell any word wrong, but I'm not English) this doesn't mean everything should be proportioned to what we find in real-life. Most people here play to have fun, put their real life out for a moment and relax. Now, I'm in a 100-player fleet, but we have many difficulties when it comes to upgrading projects. Sure, we do our best, but even this is not enough. I think the Whole system need lots of tweaking to make it proportional to the size of the fleet. In this case, logistic problems and others things you enlisted should not be a variable as in 2409 everything is supposed to run way smoother than in 2013. And keep in mind this is a game. A fair system would be a progressive one where fleets give in proportion of what they can contribute, it might require a bit more coding, but this would make people happier, even if this may sound wrong in real life, because they would get the same things a 500-man fleet would get just because the Star Trek idea in itself is giving the same rights and possibilities to everyone (then, let's face it, applying this would gather lots of new players and make Cryptic's revenues rising ). Then, even tweaking this, some difficulties would remain, not linked to the system itself though, but to players' possibilites to contribute more or less. This can't be controlled from Cryptic and imho it's not a real difficutly, just playstyle habits . The point is, cryptic should do whatever possible to make this more "trekkie" and equal for everyone. I don't mind if this needs more complicated rules, if the result is better than the status quo
Now I agree that things could use a lot of tweaking, and there should be steps to introduce mechanics that are less grindy. At least so players can feel more engaged.
100% agree
Back to the topic, I'm really happy about the introduction of FM in PvP. Nice work!
You realize the people on the forums are the minority right? More people play the game then visit the forum.
I bet if you were some how to poll every active member, the majority of players probably would not know about this thread. Or even care.
This is exactly why I am going to look into creating a method for harvesting community statistical data that will unlike Cryptics be open and available to all of us.
You realize the people on the forums are the minority right? More people play the game then visit the forum.
I bet if you were some how to poll every active member, the majority of players probably would not know about this thread. Or even care.
All my fleetmates don't visit forums that often. And the people that actually play have been very unhappy about throwing away FMs from IOR. They used to do this not because they wanted to exploit, but just because they were not enjoying the content where fleet marks are rewarded. Foundry was a good option to have fun (even teamed) and gain something useful, especially for smaller fleets. The fact they aren't in the forums doesn't mean they don't care about this change. Because they do. At least those who are involved in fleet and actively contribute.
Things have changed with this last patch, and I'm curious to see how.
The only person telling you that you have to do all four grinds at once is YOU.
And really, it's only 3 grinds. Dilithium is part of the fleet and reputation grinds. And really, while pursuing marks, you end up doing stuff that rewards Dilithium as well. Plus, 15 minutes spend on DOffing can set up turn-ins for a fair amount od Dilithium as well...
But still it comes down to one simple thing: Just because there are three grindfests in the game does not mean you HAVE to grind them all at once. Try focusing on one per day. Whichever one you are most behind on, or more importantly, which one you are least annoyed by.
I get tired of people throwing out "I've got to grind 45 minutes to 3 hours grinding before I can play what I enjoy playing... No you most certainly don't. Play what you enjoy playing. You do not HAVE to do a single one of the rep grinds or the fleet grind.
Because I want to progress, would love to get my hads on cetain ships yes I have to and the Dil is for zen ships right now not fleet since till some major changes happen to the game I'm not spending anymore real money on STO.
For the most part, based on the complaints and comments from the complainers concerning the difficulty small fleets have, many of them are small because they WANT to be small. They do not want to grow their fleet.
I would say the majority of people would rather be in smaller fleets full stop because closer knit communities are more meaningful and fun, you don't feel simply another number.
The problem here is Cryptic preferred Large Fleets other Small ones which is entirely counter intuitive to human nature.
For the most part, based on the complaints and comments from the complainers concerning the difficulty small fleets have, many of them are small because they WANT to be small. They do not want to grow their fleet.
That's why I say that large fleets should get LARGE fleet holdings to work towars. Small fleets should get small ones.
Either that or you implement a system that tracks how large a fleet has ever been and implement scaling mark and dilithium costs based on that tracked value. That way, a large fleet cannot drop down to minimal size, blow through the scaled down progression costs and then invite everyone back. You also add a system that puts a daily cap of 5 new characters added to the fleet. so that a fleet cannot start small, take advantage of scaled down costs and then suddenly baloon up to a massive fleet.
The system needs to be balanced in such a way that a small fleet can advance as quickly as a large fleet but where those who would be large fleets cannot game the system.
So fairness will require some restrictions and regulations that do not exist now.
So I say leave the system as it is, but give those who would be small fleets small holdings they can advance reasonably with their PREFERRED fewer numbers. Let those holdings have a purpose. Maybe there are DOff assignments there that award commodities that are required for large fleet holdings. A fleet permissions system could be used to grant non-fleet members permission to visit the base and use the NPCs that grant DOff assignments.
A Tier 5 production facility could grant up to 50 of a single commodity every 5 minutes. at half the cost of replicating them. So if something ordinarily would cost 100ex, at the facility it would cost 50. This will help fleets produce large numbers of comodities needed for projects.
Let the small fleet holdings service large fleets. This way they serve a valid purpose.
Of course, I think that large holdings need to serve more of a purpose than to just grant members access to top-end gear. Fleet Holdings could and should become part of a greater end-game mechanic.
Things are a little bit different. Smaller fleets want to be bigger (ofc there are exceptions) but they can't get new players because they want better stuff, so they make big fleets even bigger. Smaller holdings would mean worse stuff (if I got you right) = small fleet which wants to improve dead. Here we go again. The less-hurting solution is Always a progressive system rewarding the same as bigger fleets. Less complicated than a fleet provision Exchange as you purposed too. Sure, some restrictions would be needed too, like not letting more than 5 alts in the same fleet etc (btw the progressive system should be based by accounts, not alts, as more alts you have, less time you can spend on them - a day is 24h for everyone)
First, "many people aren't happy" is a matter of perspective. There are certainly people that aren't happy, but there are also many people that are happy.
I'd planned on taking a break from this thread but this comment from Dan perplexes me.
How do you measure that Dan?
Your metrics merely tell you what people are doing, not whether they're 'happy' doing it.
Since this whole Fleet Marks thing exploded you've had precisely two threads pop up on the forums voicing support for the change and praise for you and the team.
Neither received many posts whilst this dissenting thread has thousands.
Doubtless you have many content, possibly even 'happy' Free-to-Play players playing missions, doing STFs, customizing their ships and trading Dilithium for Zen.
But if you relied on their contributions to feed your family you'd starve.
You have a loyal fan-base that subsidises the game for the genuinely F2P players and that sinks a great deal of money into this game, and moves like this and the general lack of communication are alienating the players that pay your salary.
I was once one of them, but no longer. Because I'm not happy.
I've spent some time in game trying to recruit players to my campaign and the overwhelming sentiment I've heard in-game is 'it's pointless - Cryptic doesn't listen to us' - does that sound like a 'happy' player?
How many more paying customers are you prepared to lose before you effect change?
while I have no idea what you intend to do about AFK'ers in the matches, I do hope that its got some safety nets. Vote to kick can be exploited, badly. I will await the arrival to comment. I'm just hoping its more of a activity level to gain an award.
I agree with vote to kick... Three people in a fleet and two other people in a vote to kick system will result in the two outsiders getting kicked out before the rewards are divvied up on occasion.
Not every time, but if it happens to you one time, that will be one time too many.
But a simple 'report/respond' function won't get it done, either. Maybe that other person is AFK, or maybe they are just sitting there assigning department head jobs to their duty officers while the other people in th einstance do the work.
If they get a pop-up that says that they have 10 seconds to click it before they get kicked for inactivity, they will have no problem clicking the button and moving along.
I think that it should come down to participation.
I would have no problem with rewards being given based upon what you actually did.
Did you deal DPS? Did you restore shield, hull, or hit points to an allied ship or character? Did you remove a status effect on a ship or character? Were you targeted by an attack?
These should all be worth points. The more you do, the more points you get, and the more points you get, the better your reward.
The people that sit back and do nothing will get nothing. It might not help the four people that tried if they fail to defeat the Borg in the allotted time, but the people that show up and do nothing will end up getting nothing if they do succeed, so that should be enough to at least minimize the amount of players that queue in and then just sit still while others do the work.
I get my keys from the exchange so not a dime by me there and just because some companies are STUPID to be bought my PWE doesn't mean they are in the right. THeir mentaility is mwhy I'm an old Westwood fan
Doesn't matter where you get your keys, they all come from the same place originally. Every key in the game is money paid to PWE. That you are giving someone EC so that they will give PWE $$$ doesn't affect how much money PWE is getting for the key.
The people working for Cryptic are probably pretty happy that Atari bought Cryptic, and then that Atari sold Cryptic to PWE.
To them, it was almost certainly a good, or the 'right', decision.
That is very true. Games by their very nature are repitive. It's how you alieviate that "here we go again" feeling.
First Person Shooters do it with atmosphere and story (of in the case of Modern Warfare 2 and MW 3 and Black Ops just atmosphere because the stories are TRIBBLE).
MMOs are also repititve (get a quest, go to point A killing everythin in your path, get item and go to point b, killing everything in your path). Most get through that by attacthing a story, some in depth lore, lot's of atmosphere or a persistant warzone. Inspite of its failing, The Secret World does a good job with the story, atmosphere (including the music), and has a persistant warzone. It even made an attempt to break the mold by trying to do away with the traditional holy trinity (I would say the results are mixed).
Sometimes you gotta be bold, As Sisko said, "Fortune favors the bold."
So i guess we can modify Benjamin Franklin's saying.
"The only things certain in life are grind and taxes."
Well, I used to think it was a Cryptic thing but I see it in Foundry missions too...
One thing that I like about the biggest competitor in the western market (the game that shall not be named with the initials W.O.W.)...
They use emotionally manipulative stories. I felt they got a bit too jokey with Cataclysm (and I like Jokey somewhat; it helps get me into the fantasy genre, which I'm not a devotee of on its own). But the classic missions through WotLK rarely involve orders or political stakes. You are so far from the periphery of your faction in WoW that, last I checked, nobody had a clear answer as to whether player characters in that game are soldiers or represent the official political interests of their factions. There are missions that you may want to skip or where you choose a path.
But above all, thir stories (while not exactly great literature for the most part) have an emotionally manipulative hook. Separated lovers. Sick child. Failing farmers. Lost family member. Running across an innocent in peril or a good person who died unjustly. All of the classic PvP scenarios actually do have a backstory with enough bad apples and good points on both sides that people actually debate who is right.
The presentation is not sophisticated and the writing in WoW is not often Shakespeare but the situations are morally complex and the stakes are emotionally manipulative.
And STO doesn't have much of that even if Star Trek traditionally did.
Take the Scarlet Crusade in that other game. You can have hours of debate over whether their position is justified or uneviable or a perfect example of how evil takes route. It's not settled even though most of the Scarlet story has been resolved. There are probably fifteen characters who are personally connected to that in the game.
Part of the reason Blizz keeps bringing them back (and did so again in this latest expansion) despite attempts to wrap up that story is because players indicate that killing Scarlets makes them feel things. Justified. Sad. Powerful. Righteous.
I don't see a lot of that in STO. The closest is Obisek and he's pretty unambiguously a good guy at this point.
Outside of that one oddball mission on the farm, killing True Way or Tal Shiar never triggered the same emotions in spite of being the closest thing to STO Scarlet Crusaders. They're just bad dudes.
Part of the problem with Fleet Actions is that they reinforce the interchangability of of the enemies. Tactics may change slightly (not much) but it ultimately doesn't send me to a different place emotionally if I'm fighting a colony defense against True Way, Dominion, Romulans, or Breen. They're just pixels to kill.
Whereas it kinda does matter in WoW if I'm fighting Scourge, Scarlets, Defias, Bloodsail, Eredar, Burning Legion, etc. The mechanics there are largely even more interchangable but there's a different set of emotions, themes, and motifs in play. I don't think a WoW player needs to be a total lorehead to sense that as I knew plenty of people who were mainly mechanical players but they at least had one boss, enemy group, quest line, or dungeon that triggered some emotional connection. Effectively, these are my enemies above the others and these are the ones I wish I didn't fight and these are the ones I want to join my faction.
And I find that to be oddly more Trek-y than what we have here. I think they've done a better job with attaching value to grinding. If I play WoW and have no other goals, there are certain groups I WANT to fight more and I know everybody has a favorite to blow off steam against and a favorite they wish they could play.
To the extent that's true in STO, it's based on the shows and not anything STO does.
C'mon almoost sinds the start people cry about grinding and doing things they dont like.
I dont agre with you guys, the game is not so much a grind as many other MMO's out there. Even the "adult" mmo's have grinds.
Any way , what i want to say is, stop complaining and try to be constructive in your feedback.
Dont attack people (cryptic) because they dont follow the path you want them to, but give them constructive idears. That works way beter then complaining and saying you will leave the game.
Also moost of the people saying they will leave, dont, just because they like the game...but then why would you complain? Doenst anybody c the circle they are in?
To Dan and the rest of the Crew, there are people still that like the game, and love what you are all doing. As one poster sayd, for 1 person complaining in this threath there are 5 that feel the same but stay still. Next to that there are 20 people that just love the game.....
Ah most of my complaints had ways to fix the problem CDF
Comments
This is saying me not that fleet marks made sooo many people so upset. Yes, it did but all this complains are not only because of this, but simply because this is just the last issue with grinding.
I don't have much time to make a detailed answer, however as for the IOR problem, I have a simple solution I've already explained before at page 56 (or was it 57?) anyway after more than two hundred pages I think a repost is needed.
As you did with dilithium, make foundry missions reward fleet marks based on mission lenght AND, to avoid AFK exploiting, set a timer for the player where it becomes idle earlier (this would exclude chat) then make the FM reward only for these who already are in a fleet. I assume this would make everyone happy. Then, the grind is a problem too. Don't assume every player have enough time to grind the resources they need. Remember players must have FUN playing a game, or not? This said I really want to thank you stahl for your apologizes. You demostrated to listen to us players, especially the occasional ones, who can't stay in for longer than 1 or 2 hrs but still want to have fun. I'm sure you'll bring us changes to the current starbase advancement system to make it progressive as smaller fleets need to give less. I do not know if my ideas are valid, but they can always be a source for smarter ones, right?
Wonderful post Kirk, and I agree 100% - thank you!
Well, I'd say the biggest problem ARE NOT the grind we have to do, but the WAY we have to.
I'd be happy with whatever grind I have to do if it's not unbalanced/unfair (see the fleet advancement system) or linked to boring/worthless content.
The reputation system itself is, despite all, a huge step forward though it needs to be reworked a little. The big problem is the fleet system, which is not progressive. These are all things that can be revamped, adjusted, balanced and even if they need time, I'd be happy to know:
A - Are you really considering to change it?
B - How will you change it?
C - Can you consider player feedback more when regarding these important changes BEFORE applying them?
That would avoid LOTS of problems, make the game more fun for everyone and gather new players
> more cash gain
We do have to do that, because a lot of the grind opens up the kind of items you need to be able to be competitive in the parts of the game you enjoy playing. Not only that but most of the new content in the game is based on grind and so people are having to play it as it's the only content on offer. In addition people who often want to play other parts of the game cannot because they can't get anyone to join their team to do it as everyone is so busy just trying to keep up with the grind.
If you want to advance your end-game play grind content is pretty much the only game in town (apart from doffing I suppose). That is basically that. What this is about is balancing these broken systems and making the grind more enjoyable so that people can progress through it without feeling like they shouldn't bother logging in anymore.
In the future maybe we can hope for a different kind of content but for the moment that is what we are left with at End-Game.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
I guess I missed the part where content, items and ships ended up not being gated behind currency based grinds.
I dont agre with you guys, the game is not so much a grind as many other MMO's out there. Even the "adult" mmo's have grinds.
Any way , what i want to say is, stop complaining and try to be constructive in your feedback.
Dont attack people (cryptic) because they dont follow the path you want them to, but give them constructive idears. That works way beter then complaining and saying you will leave the game.
Also moost of the people saying they will leave, dont, just because they like the game...but then why would you complain? Doenst anybody c the circle they are in?
To Dan and the rest of the Crew, there are people still that like the game, and love what you are all doing. As one poster sayd, for 1 person complaining in this threath there are 5 that feel the same but stay still. Next to that there are 20 people that just love the game.....
Last week's patch was the MMO consumer equivalent of my boss walking in Thursday morning and retroactively taking all my raises back. I'd have punched her in her maw. But that wouldn't happen b/c it's insane, and my boss is awesome and would never do something so horrible. That being said, I'm glad that you took the time to apologize to us and make reparations. In the future... Talk to us... Let us help you make this game awesome. I've been with the game for about a year now and since S7 it's become less fun and more of a chore, stressing out over marks and dilithium... After we read about the patch today we all took the night off from farming. Thank you. And believe it or not, we do appreciate the hard work put into this game, and we'd LOVE to help you continue to make it grow. But when you come at us all craycray... 0.o
XO of Training
Tier 5 Starbase, Tier 3 Embassy, Tier 3 Dilithium Mine, Tier 3 Spire
Join us at www.dtfleet.com
Grind is grind. Saying "other games have grind" is consigning yourself to mediocrity.
Besides, grind isn't neccesarily the issue. The issue is that grind is really the only thing you have to look foward to, and just about everything you do is centered around grinding.
I'm sorry, but having to grind whatever number of missions to unlock T5, only to have to further grind to actually be able to buy anything is just a poor design decision.
In escense you have to grind to unlock the ability to grind. I'm not sure how that can be considered fun.
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Hopefully things will become easier with fleet grind that will help but new content is needed eventuallly and I do know how to play the game.
Try reading the posts again. Creating the straw man that we're not offering constructive feedback is in and of itself irrelevant and disruptive.
There are plenty of other MMO's that don't have this kind of grind, i.e. the kind that is tedious repetitive and isn't much fun.
Take DDO as an example ( a game that isn't even that adult orientated) in that game I have a massive variety of end-game game content to play so I never get bored there are over 20 level 15+ story arcs (hundreds of quests) that I can do and all of them are enjoyable even on repetition because you are usually not repeating the same thing over and over.
I really don't think you can argue against that and I don't think you understand the point here the people who are complaining also love the game and love potential the game has and we complain because we are not happy with the direction the game is going in I've sunk a lot of money into this game, I mean *a lot* I'm not talking 3 digit numbers here.
In addition whether you or I love the game our feelings are irrelevant to the honest facts and admissions made by Stahl himself that the team is rushing development ignoring Tribble testers, failing to communicate internally or externally properly and ultimately introducing broken systems into the live server. All of this is a fact regardless of whether we love the game or not. It's just that some of us love the game so much we want to see these issues eradicated from the live server.
:cool:
#2311#2700#2316#2500
Other games also make it an artform of masking the grind with "fun." Crazy, huh?
That is not what you want to do from a game design perspective. It may be "realistic"-ish, but you don't want to create second class citizens out of players just because their playstyle doesn't involve being a serial number.
Cryptic completely botched the design of their Guild Hall system from the get go, which has caused them and players no end of troubles. I suspect they chose the "easiest to code and implement" route instead of finding a sustainable solution. Probably the best solution they should have cribbed from other games (CoH and GW2) is any action while "representing" a guild grants points for that guild to use.
If you look it, everything you need to do is a grind :P
Leveling=grind
Getting the right gear=grind
etc
Oh and before you ask.
Your work=grind
your life=grind
even death=grinded your boddy down....
That is very true. Games by their very nature are repitive. It's how you alieviate that "here we go again" feeling.
First Person Shooters do it with atmosphere and story (of in the case of Modern Warfare 2 and MW 3 and Black Ops just atmosphere because the stories are TRIBBLE).
MMOs are also repititve (get a quest, go to point A killing everythin in your path, get item and go to point b, killing everything in your path). Most get through that by attacthing a story, some in depth lore, lot's of atmosphere or a persistant warzone. Inspite of its failing, The Secret World does a good job with the story, atmosphere (including the music), and has a persistant warzone. It even made an attempt to break the mold by trying to do away with the traditional holy trinity (I would say the results are mixed).
Sometimes you gotta be bold, As Sisko said, "Fortune favors the bold."
So i guess we can modify Benjamin Franklin's saying.
"The only things certain in life are grind and taxes."
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
On the face of it the FM's added in the Tribble patch notes will help things but they should have been put in at the same time as the others were removed and if you didn't have them ready to be then you should have waited until you did have.
To tell us that we are mouthy and should be thankful that you are doing the jobs that you are paid to do is laughable, even more so when you are only having to do your jobs now to mend the problems that you created and then compounded yourselves with the VD patch.
This typifies one of the problems highlighted by people due to the posts in this thread that only came about because of some problem that you introduced yet again. Cryptic talk rubbish and try to sweep problems under the carpet hoping that they will go away and when they don't they just spout more rubbish when action is wanted instead.
To explain what I mean by that, one of the problems that people have talked about if broken promises and your over use of metrics instead of listening to people's concerns. As discussed just in this thread, you tell us things about stats but don't back them up instead we have to take things on trust. Your response to the recent concerns raised about this is the one I have quoted which is that your metrics tell you that people are unhappy but also happy so shut up and we wont show you any data to back up what we say. It seems that lessons have not been learnt then and you are only looking at metrics still, I for one would love to know how your metrics measure fun and happiness?
This is just looking at one of the more obvious points of this thread brought about by the VD patch and Cryptic's response as you speak for them. I haven't even touched on things like the glaring problems that smaller fleets face with a lopsided fleet system that's so lopsided it's almost vertical, as customers expected to open our wallets we should all be treated as equally as possible.
To sum this up....people are in an rocky relationship with Cryptic. At times it seems that the best thing to do would be to split up but Cryptic keep begging us not to leave. Then they give us VD and when we complain they tell us that we should be happy just to jump back in bed with them anyway.
There is a difference between being happy and being content.
People are content with bunny tagging, but is anyone truly happy with it?
Star Trek: The Original Grind
Star Trek: The Next Grind
Star Trek: Deep Space Grind
Star Trek: Voyage to the Grind
Back to the topic, I'm really happy about the introduction of FM in PvP. Nice work!
You realize the people on the forums are the minority right? More people play the game then visit the forum.
I bet if you were some how to poll every active member, the majority of players probably would not know about this thread. Or even care.
So why in the world would we want to try and escape realities grind in a game and grind even more?
This is exactly why I am going to look into creating a method for harvesting community statistical data that will unlike Cryptics be open and available to all of us.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
All my fleetmates don't visit forums that often. And the people that actually play have been very unhappy about throwing away FMs from IOR. They used to do this not because they wanted to exploit, but just because they were not enjoying the content where fleet marks are rewarded. Foundry was a good option to have fun (even teamed) and gain something useful, especially for smaller fleets. The fact they aren't in the forums doesn't mean they don't care about this change. Because they do. At least those who are involved in fleet and actively contribute.
Things have changed with this last patch, and I'm curious to see how.
Because I want to progress, would love to get my hads on cetain ships yes I have to and the Dil is for zen ships right now not fleet since till some major changes happen to the game I'm not spending anymore real money on STO.
I would say the majority of people would rather be in smaller fleets full stop because closer knit communities are more meaningful and fun, you don't feel simply another number.
The problem here is Cryptic preferred Large Fleets other Small ones which is entirely counter intuitive to human nature.
#2311#2700#2316#2500
Things are a little bit different. Smaller fleets want to be bigger (ofc there are exceptions) but they can't get new players because they want better stuff, so they make big fleets even bigger. Smaller holdings would mean worse stuff (if I got you right) = small fleet which wants to improve dead. Here we go again. The less-hurting solution is Always a progressive system rewarding the same as bigger fleets. Less complicated than a fleet provision Exchange as you purposed too. Sure, some restrictions would be needed too, like not letting more than 5 alts in the same fleet etc (btw the progressive system should be based by accounts, not alts, as more alts you have, less time you can spend on them - a day is 24h for everyone)
I'd planned on taking a break from this thread but this comment from Dan perplexes me.
How do you measure that Dan?
Your metrics merely tell you what people are doing, not whether they're 'happy' doing it.
Since this whole Fleet Marks thing exploded you've had precisely two threads pop up on the forums voicing support for the change and praise for you and the team.
Neither received many posts whilst this dissenting thread has thousands.
Doubtless you have many content, possibly even 'happy' Free-to-Play players playing missions, doing STFs, customizing their ships and trading Dilithium for Zen.
But if you relied on their contributions to feed your family you'd starve.
You have a loyal fan-base that subsidises the game for the genuinely F2P players and that sinks a great deal of money into this game, and moves like this and the general lack of communication are alienating the players that pay your salary.
I was once one of them, but no longer. Because I'm not happy.
I've spent some time in game trying to recruit players to my campaign and the overwhelming sentiment I've heard in-game is 'it's pointless - Cryptic doesn't listen to us' - does that sound like a 'happy' player?
How many more paying customers are you prepared to lose before you effect change?
I agree with vote to kick... Three people in a fleet and two other people in a vote to kick system will result in the two outsiders getting kicked out before the rewards are divvied up on occasion.
Not every time, but if it happens to you one time, that will be one time too many.
But a simple 'report/respond' function won't get it done, either. Maybe that other person is AFK, or maybe they are just sitting there assigning department head jobs to their duty officers while the other people in th einstance do the work.
If they get a pop-up that says that they have 10 seconds to click it before they get kicked for inactivity, they will have no problem clicking the button and moving along.
I think that it should come down to participation.
I would have no problem with rewards being given based upon what you actually did.
Did you deal DPS? Did you restore shield, hull, or hit points to an allied ship or character? Did you remove a status effect on a ship or character? Were you targeted by an attack?
These should all be worth points. The more you do, the more points you get, and the more points you get, the better your reward.
The people that sit back and do nothing will get nothing. It might not help the four people that tried if they fail to defeat the Borg in the allotted time, but the people that show up and do nothing will end up getting nothing if they do succeed, so that should be enough to at least minimize the amount of players that queue in and then just sit still while others do the work.
Doesn't matter where you get your keys, they all come from the same place originally. Every key in the game is money paid to PWE. That you are giving someone EC so that they will give PWE $$$ doesn't affect how much money PWE is getting for the key.
The people working for Cryptic are probably pretty happy that Atari bought Cryptic, and then that Atari sold Cryptic to PWE.
To them, it was almost certainly a good, or the 'right', decision.
Well, I used to think it was a Cryptic thing but I see it in Foundry missions too...
One thing that I like about the biggest competitor in the western market (the game that shall not be named with the initials W.O.W.)...
They use emotionally manipulative stories. I felt they got a bit too jokey with Cataclysm (and I like Jokey somewhat; it helps get me into the fantasy genre, which I'm not a devotee of on its own). But the classic missions through WotLK rarely involve orders or political stakes. You are so far from the periphery of your faction in WoW that, last I checked, nobody had a clear answer as to whether player characters in that game are soldiers or represent the official political interests of their factions. There are missions that you may want to skip or where you choose a path.
But above all, thir stories (while not exactly great literature for the most part) have an emotionally manipulative hook. Separated lovers. Sick child. Failing farmers. Lost family member. Running across an innocent in peril or a good person who died unjustly. All of the classic PvP scenarios actually do have a backstory with enough bad apples and good points on both sides that people actually debate who is right.
The presentation is not sophisticated and the writing in WoW is not often Shakespeare but the situations are morally complex and the stakes are emotionally manipulative.
And STO doesn't have much of that even if Star Trek traditionally did.
Take the Scarlet Crusade in that other game. You can have hours of debate over whether their position is justified or uneviable or a perfect example of how evil takes route. It's not settled even though most of the Scarlet story has been resolved. There are probably fifteen characters who are personally connected to that in the game.
Part of the reason Blizz keeps bringing them back (and did so again in this latest expansion) despite attempts to wrap up that story is because players indicate that killing Scarlets makes them feel things. Justified. Sad. Powerful. Righteous.
I don't see a lot of that in STO. The closest is Obisek and he's pretty unambiguously a good guy at this point.
Outside of that one oddball mission on the farm, killing True Way or Tal Shiar never triggered the same emotions in spite of being the closest thing to STO Scarlet Crusaders. They're just bad dudes.
Part of the problem with Fleet Actions is that they reinforce the interchangability of of the enemies. Tactics may change slightly (not much) but it ultimately doesn't send me to a different place emotionally if I'm fighting a colony defense against True Way, Dominion, Romulans, or Breen. They're just pixels to kill.
Whereas it kinda does matter in WoW if I'm fighting Scourge, Scarlets, Defias, Bloodsail, Eredar, Burning Legion, etc. The mechanics there are largely even more interchangable but there's a different set of emotions, themes, and motifs in play. I don't think a WoW player needs to be a total lorehead to sense that as I knew plenty of people who were mainly mechanical players but they at least had one boss, enemy group, quest line, or dungeon that triggered some emotional connection. Effectively, these are my enemies above the others and these are the ones I wish I didn't fight and these are the ones I want to join my faction.
And I find that to be oddly more Trek-y than what we have here. I think they've done a better job with attaching value to grinding. If I play WoW and have no other goals, there are certain groups I WANT to fight more and I know everybody has a favorite to blow off steam against and a favorite they wish they could play.
To the extent that's true in STO, it's based on the shows and not anything STO does.
Ah most of my complaints had ways to fix the problem CDF