How about actually running STFs and other missions on elite? They are much more difficult and don't offer NEARLY as much as 3+ mil an hour unless a player gets a lucky drop.
RIIIIGHT
And after a while, STFs will become the main source of EC, and it will be NERFED.
Then what?
Your comments throughout this thread only reflect an authoritarian method of thinking.
YOU may prefer to do things one way but others may not share or believe in what you do.
one thing about STO that made me go for an LTS was its free market economy and balanced nature. All the currency in game is somewhat balanced and players need not spend real $$$ to obtain them.
And people do NOT like to be told how to do things.
In every successful MMOs, there waill be a variety of ways to obtain currency.
Tour the Universe was one of those ways. STFs and others are another
Tour by itself is NOT easy and requires proper equipment to match the rewards. You claim >3mil ec / tour? What is the basis of your argument and what is the percentage of the alleged tour exploiters getting this amount per tour? Your statement is akin to people completing STFs in record time and claiming it is an easy source of money.To get that amount of EC per tour requires using top end equipment. Regular players using the so called exploit will be getting 1-2.5 mil on average for a WHOLE hour of work.
YOUR suggestions only attempt to move the Tour players to STFs and i can tell you that sooner or later, you will start to see more AFKers in STFs.. Mark my word on this one because in any game, elites complaining about the cheesy.easy ways a farmer can obtain currency, ends up indirectly inviting the farmers to their turf, thereby ruining their gaming experience. This has happened before and will not be new to STO.
Biggest problem was that if you did the tour the way it was ment to be done - the max you could get was 4 runs of $1.4 million
But many people were following exploited route that did not run the full "Tour the Universe" and avoided half the sector blocks but made $3 million+
Exactly, and as somebody already pointed out, this could be totally avoided by simply giving the reward as a lump sum upon completion of the tour. It would completely prevent people from exploiting it without taking something away from the people doing it legitimately.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
To obtain the full 3 Mil EC from the "Exploit" you had to invest time, money and skill. It wasn't a "grab the mission, sit back and watch the ec roll in". It was hard work and it was well documented on how to do it. The only reason why this was done IMO was to place alittle more focus on zen purchasing, which is fine. Just like other changes, I will adapt and do something else to obtain ec.
But riddle me this: Why do you need a four hour cd for a one hour event that a normal player can do three times a week?
Without us the customers this game would be nothing, Cryptic cannot have everything their way. The Tour of the Universe stealth nerf should be the last straw for people they are making a concerted effort to make it harder and harder to earn things in game and it is now all culminating into one massive EC grind nerf. Next will be Dilithium and then they will eventually just outright ban exchanging Dilithium for Zen. We need to nip this in the bud now people!
They have known about the Tour of the Universe for a long time so ask yourself why have they waited until now to change it. It was not an exploit you could only earn 3 million in the hour with a perfect run and now you can only earn 350k per event! It just competed with their profit margins where there are game breaking bugs that go unfixed because they simply do not care an iota about us, they care about profit plain and simple. It is exactly the reason they do not deal with AFK players in STF's there is no profit in that for them!
They are releasing Fleet consoles that are bound to character and that trash console drops. Always look a gift horse in the mouth!
If we want to take our game back and stop this lob sided action we need to teach them that their actions have consequences.
I suggest that we ALL! stop spending any money on the game whatsoever until the Tour is restored. It is the only way we will get their attention!
Someone earlier on the forums warned about stealth nerfs and this is exactly the kind of thing they are trying to slip in!
It's ashame something like this has happened, and especially in the secretive way it happened.
Yeah, i was one of the people who eventually tried to be as efficient as possible doing the tour. Now it's being called an exploit; even though you really only use the systems cryptic offers itself.
Yeah, i was able to get 3+ mil per tour, but lets change perspective; with a rl-job i am unable to attend 95% of the actual events. I could just make enough ec a week to barely pay for all the rep expenses. Oh, and did i told you guys i am married? That means i wasn't even able to do a full hour of touring.
Ah well, it's another nerf in the last couple of weeks that brings this game to shame...
EDIT: oh and don't think it's that easy to get the 3-mil thing going, i was only able to do it after grinding for XI and XII rep or VR stuff. Yeah, lots of time. My problem isn't that they have done it, but how. Will the next thing i will grind for, still be available next week?
That's quite the paradox, how could you nerf nerf when the nerf is nerfed. But how would the nerf be nerfed when the nerf is nerfed? This allows the nerf not to be nerfed since the nerf is nerfed? But if the nerf isn't nerfed, it could still nerf nerfs. But as soon as the nerf is nerfed, the nerf power is lost. So paradoxally it the nerf nerf lost its nerf, while it's still nerfed, which cannot be because the nerf was unable to nerf.
I don't remember seeing 'instructions' as to how to do the mission. Please advise where they are in-game otherwise, you look like play the game my way or not at all mentality.
Think you quoted the wrong person. :P
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Yeah I'm hoping this is just a bug, found myself being really annoyed on handing in after my 1st run and being unable to pick the mission back up again. I'm really pretty useless at playing the exchange and the tour was a fun way for me to earn some ec.. it seems silly for me to be so vexed, but then it seems such a petty nerf if it is intentional.
Or... You're happy about the nerf because you are one of those players who feel "at a disadvantage" in relation to those of us who are able to have better gear than you (hence kick your butt and hand it back to you) simply because we worked for it and you just won't.
Well, guess what? That ain't gonna change because of this nerf. Eventually things will balance out and those who want the good gear will still work for it and those who won't will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage.
An update -- the change was unfortunately missing from Tribble and Holodeck patch notes. I've added it to yesterday's Holodeck patch notes now. We apologize that it was missing.
Please keep feedback constructive in this thread so that I may pass it along for consideration.
EDIT: It was changed to close an exploit, but we will still consider your constructive feedback.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
A 15-minute cd would work better.That way those who souped up their ships for legitimate runs can still do it multiple times per event.
Exactly, and as somebody already pointed out, this could be totally avoided by simply giving the reward as a lump sum upon completion of the tour. It would completely prevent people from exploiting it without taking something away from the people doing it legitimately.
I think the reason mention awhile ago for not doing this is quite often people would miss 1 sector block and not realize it to the end - so you might get back to ESD and can't complete and get zip/nadda/nothing - until you went back out to where ever to get that last block. This way you still would get something.
That wasn't the exploit. That's the full route. The exploit they're referring to was where people did two or three sectors and then dropped the mission, picked it up and did the same sectors again.
Though the community have already come up with several solutions in this thread that are a 100 times better than how Cryptic have dealt with this.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Cash cat: So our player base has been earning way to much EC of late and we need to curb this, as it is effecting our profits.
Voice of reason: How do you work that out?
Cash cat: well for an example players are having a tendency to grind large ammounts of ec through what ever means and so are buying ships of the exchange for set amounts of ec instead of buying into the lock boxe lottery with cash.
Voice of reason: But the ships on the exchange have already been brought by players with cash to sell on the exchange.
Cash cat: Yes thats the theory and we are happy with that for the moment and if the players are buying keys with cash to sell then add to any saved EC for the large sums needed for ships thats fine.
Especially as it means we are getting the cash twice once from the player who played the lock box lottery and once from the player who used key profits in EC to help buy the ship from the exchange.
But if there are ways to grind out those large sums of EC without any cash input then we are losing out.
Voice of reason: Ok I get the theory but why now. We have just built up a great deal of good will over the last 6 months with the LOR, summer event and soon the romulan vet rewards.
Cash cat: That my friend is exactly why we are going to implement changes to missions that reward excessive amounts of EC over and above what we designed the missions for and make sure they do not wrinkle our cash flow to much.
Voice of reason: Right. Fair enough we are a buisness and all that and if it really is making a serious dent in finances
I guess changes need to be made. Though you do realise these changes will not be popular.
Cash Cat: Many of our past decisions have not been but we are in profit now the game is improving we and seek to keep that trend going.
Voice of reason: Ok so when are we going to break the news to the player base?
Cash Cat: In the considerate, informed and delicate way we normally do.
I think the reason mention awhile ago for not doing this is quite often people would miss 1 sector block and not realize it to the end - so you might get back to ESD and can't complete and get zip/nadda/nothing - until you went back out to where ever to get that last block. This way you still would get something.
To be fair though, I'd prefer that people have to pay more attention to what they're doing, than us simply not getting the option to do it more than once.
I am, IMO, an average player. I do not have an unlimited time to play and the hours that I do play are pretty much within the same range. When by some freak occurance the TTG "Event" is available I do a full run because the thrill of this event really isnt about the ec for me. Its about creating a fast ship and challanging myself to try and finish as many runs as possible within the hour. I receantly aquired the Risa cruiser, equiped it with fast gear and selected my Doffs. I was so excited to see how well I can do. I took yesterday off work because it was my birthday. Got to club 42. waited...... Waited...... and.......GO! Pfzzzt at that exact moment power went down for 6 blocks in my nieghborhood......Sigh...Oh well there is always tomorrow. Todays race is scheduled for when I get home from work. I race home get my ship ready and GO! woohoo my ship is flying! I think I can do 5 laps! finish the first and....well you know. OK gonna end this wall of text with some positive suggestions. Instead of cool down make rewards less or only available if full tour completed. Also if you are intent on keeping the cool down then schedule the tour 6 times a day so I might be able to do it once a day, or just make it a daily and remove it from event schedule completly.
Come on people, we are not sheep we are customers and we have rights! This is exactly the same as you going to the Supermarket and buying a pack of 6 beers for 5 (Insert local denomination here) and then when you get home someone from the shop comes and says sorry we nerfed that product and taking two beers off you.
An update -- the change was unfortunately missing from Tribble and Holodeck patch notes. I've added it to yesterday's Holodeck patch notes now. We apologize that it was missing.
Please keep feedback constructive in this thread so that I may pass it along for consideration.
EDIT: It was changed to close an exploit, but we will still consider your constructive feedback.
Cheers,
Brandon =/\=
"oops"....really, i think we deserve a bit more than an "oops, forgot about it, now deal with it"
While there are many things about this I hate - the fact it is being called an "exploit" when it clearly isn't, and the fact it wasn't included in any patch notes - both stupid acts on behalf of cryptic that further damage everyone's opinion of them, I actually think this is a positive thing for the game economy.
Let me clarify - I don't think there should be a way for a player to make 3 million EC of freshly generated currency in an hour. I have no problems with people making 3 million EC in 60 seconds, so long as that EC hasn't been generated by the servers out of thin air (I.E they were buying/selling on the exchange, or buying doffs with fleet credits and selling them for EC from other players, not the game itself)
The amount of EC in this game is stupid, and inflation is at an all-time high and the value of EC is at an all time low. The reputation system helped, as it was the first proper EC sink we had - but loot drops + tour the universe (by far the two biggest ways to *create* EC) vastly outweighed it. Starbases helped again, but they aren't really much of an EC sink - in the sense that not much EC was actually being destroyed. Boffs/marks/doffs/dilithium are all created by the server without EC cost, so the only real sink was in commodities and weapons.
Summary: This is definitely a good thing for the STO economy and it will help curb the insane amounts of inflation - but Cryptic, the way you did it and handled it was absolutely shocking. How have you not learned ANYTHING by now? Stealth nerfs and calling things "exploits" to get your own way is ****** up and really irritates your playerbase.
I think the reason mention awhile ago for not doing this is quite often people would miss 1 sector block and not realize it to the end - so you might get back to ESD and can't complete and get zip/nadda/nothing - until you went back out to where ever to get that last block. This way you still would get something.
I think a better way to do it would be increasing rewards for each set completed.
So the rewards could be like 10,000 for the first set completed, 20,000 for the next, then 40,000, then 80,000, etc (with the actual values being tweaked to give a fair effort to reward ratio) regardless of what order they are explored in.
I made a new thread earlier (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=11592181&postcount=630) that got merged into the CS sticky thread so it would not get any attention anymore. A "mild" version of censorship. Your open call for a boycott will probably get you a ban.....................
I totally agree with you. The best way for things to change in a positive way for the customer is just that, speak in others ways besides forum posting, because obviously they could care less about what is said here, and what their customers feel about the service that some are paying for.
Unfortunately there are alot of people who dont care, they take what they are given and do not ask for anything, even though they are the customer and have the right to certain expectations from the company they are purchasing goods/service from.
Personally, I do not care about the Tour event, I have never done it. I makes hundreds of millions of EC from selling fleet doff's and keys. but I can understand why the people who do fly around sector space in some kind of race are upset..4 hour cooldown is a little much. Should be like 30 min or something.
But ya, I am going to stop opening my wallet for awhile now too, at least until we have bugs squashed and a working and intelligent AI for fighters.
I made a new thread earlier (http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=11592181&postcount=630) that got merged into the CS sticky thread so it would not get any attention anymore. A "mild" version of censorship. Your open call for a boycott will probably get you a ban.....................
It's not really any form of censorship - it's the mods doing their job and keeping the billion threads that will no doubt be made on this subject in the same place to stop the main page from clogging up.
Hahahaha, good one. While the whole Tour the universe nerf was absolutely stupid, let me tell you a little somethin' about economics and business.
Business gets no money? Business dies.
If that business happens to be Cryptic? STO dies.
So you want STO to die?
Sounds like your perfectly at peace with the less the marginal customer service and game qualtiy and more than willing to continue to support these terrible decisions regardless if it upsets customers or not..
Yes, if a game dies, another will rise from somewhere else, and probably for the better
Business in trouble - business will start to think and reflect. Usually changes the way things go
Let's just for the sake of argument, say every player boycotted buying stuff for STO.
No money comes in to PWE from STO. PWE sees that STO is not profitable and is losing them money. They tell Cryptic to do something about it and that employees have to be let go because of the loss in revenue. Devs are fired, and the game development slows down. Even if they restore the Tour, the damage is still done. If they don't return it in time or at all, PWE decides to shut down STO.
Comments
RIIIIGHT
And after a while, STFs will become the main source of EC, and it will be NERFED.
Then what?
Your comments throughout this thread only reflect an authoritarian method of thinking.
YOU may prefer to do things one way but others may not share or believe in what you do.
one thing about STO that made me go for an LTS was its free market economy and balanced nature. All the currency in game is somewhat balanced and players need not spend real $$$ to obtain them.
And people do NOT like to be told how to do things.
In every successful MMOs, there waill be a variety of ways to obtain currency.
Tour the Universe was one of those ways. STFs and others are another
Tour by itself is NOT easy and requires proper equipment to match the rewards. You claim >3mil ec / tour? What is the basis of your argument and what is the percentage of the alleged tour exploiters getting this amount per tour? Your statement is akin to people completing STFs in record time and claiming it is an easy source of money.To get that amount of EC per tour requires using top end equipment. Regular players using the so called exploit will be getting 1-2.5 mil on average for a WHOLE hour of work.
YOUR suggestions only attempt to move the Tour players to STFs and i can tell you that sooner or later, you will start to see more AFKers in STFs.. Mark my word on this one because in any game, elites complaining about the cheesy.easy ways a farmer can obtain currency, ends up indirectly inviting the farmers to their turf, thereby ruining their gaming experience. This has happened before and will not be new to STO.
Exactly, and as somebody already pointed out, this could be totally avoided by simply giving the reward as a lump sum upon completion of the tour. It would completely prevent people from exploiting it without taking something away from the people doing it legitimately.
But riddle me this: Why do you need a four hour cd for a one hour event that a normal player can do three times a week?
They have known about the Tour of the Universe for a long time so ask yourself why have they waited until now to change it. It was not an exploit you could only earn 3 million in the hour with a perfect run and now you can only earn 350k per event! It just competed with their profit margins where there are game breaking bugs that go unfixed because they simply do not care an iota about us, they care about profit plain and simple. It is exactly the reason they do not deal with AFK players in STF's there is no profit in that for them!
They are releasing Fleet consoles that are bound to character and that trash console drops. Always look a gift horse in the mouth!
If we want to take our game back and stop this lob sided action we need to teach them that their actions have consequences.
I suggest that we ALL! stop spending any money on the game whatsoever until the Tour is restored. It is the only way we will get their attention!
Someone earlier on the forums warned about stealth nerfs and this is exactly the kind of thing they are trying to slip in!
Yeah, i was one of the people who eventually tried to be as efficient as possible doing the tour. Now it's being called an exploit; even though you really only use the systems cryptic offers itself.
Yeah, i was able to get 3+ mil per tour, but lets change perspective; with a rl-job i am unable to attend 95% of the actual events. I could just make enough ec a week to barely pay for all the rep expenses. Oh, and did i told you guys i am married? That means i wasn't even able to do a full hour of touring.
Ah well, it's another nerf in the last couple of weeks that brings this game to shame...
EDIT: oh and don't think it's that easy to get the 3-mil thing going, i was only able to do it after grinding for XI and XII rep or VR stuff. Yeah, lots of time. My problem isn't that they have done it, but how. Will the next thing i will grind for, still be available next week?
I call it, the Stoutes paradox.
Think you quoted the wrong person. :P
Haha, we've all been there. You did make a valid point though.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=271579
Google search returned this in about .125 sec
Yeah, you're trolling.
Or... You're happy about the nerf because you are one of those players who feel "at a disadvantage" in relation to those of us who are able to have better gear than you (hence kick your butt and hand it back to you) simply because we worked for it and you just won't.
Well, guess what? That ain't gonna change because of this nerf. Eventually things will balance out and those who want the good gear will still work for it and those who won't will ALWAYS be at a disadvantage.
Cheers.
A 15-minute cd would work better.That way those who souped up their ships for legitimate runs can still do it multiple times per event.
I think the reason mention awhile ago for not doing this is quite often people would miss 1 sector block and not realize it to the end - so you might get back to ESD and can't complete and get zip/nadda/nothing - until you went back out to where ever to get that last block. This way you still would get something.
That wasn't the exploit. That's the full route. The exploit they're referring to was where people did two or three sectors and then dropped the mission, picked it up and did the same sectors again.
Though the community have already come up with several solutions in this thread that are a 100 times better than how Cryptic have dealt with this.
Names have been changed for anti flame reasons.
Cash cat: So our player base has been earning way to much EC of late and we need to curb this, as it is effecting our profits.
Voice of reason: How do you work that out?
Cash cat: well for an example players are having a tendency to grind large ammounts of ec through what ever means and so are buying ships of the exchange for set amounts of ec instead of buying into the lock boxe lottery with cash.
Voice of reason: But the ships on the exchange have already been brought by players with cash to sell on the exchange.
Cash cat: Yes thats the theory and we are happy with that for the moment and if the players are buying keys with cash to sell then add to any saved EC for the large sums needed for ships thats fine.
Especially as it means we are getting the cash twice once from the player who played the lock box lottery and once from the player who used key profits in EC to help buy the ship from the exchange.
But if there are ways to grind out those large sums of EC without any cash input then we are losing out.
Voice of reason: Ok I get the theory but why now. We have just built up a great deal of good will over the last 6 months with the LOR, summer event and soon the romulan vet rewards.
Cash cat: That my friend is exactly why we are going to implement changes to missions that reward excessive amounts of EC over and above what we designed the missions for and make sure they do not wrinkle our cash flow to much.
Voice of reason: Right. Fair enough we are a buisness and all that and if it really is making a serious dent in finances
I guess changes need to be made. Though you do realise these changes will not be popular.
Cash Cat: Many of our past decisions have not been but we are in profit now the game is improving we and seek to keep that trend going.
Voice of reason: Ok so when are we going to break the news to the player base?
Cash Cat: In the considerate, informed and delicate way we normally do.
Voice of reason: Oh dear!
To be fair though, I'd prefer that people have to pay more attention to what they're doing, than us simply not getting the option to do it more than once.
Brilliant, and totally how I imagine the conversation having gone.
You would not accept that so do not accept this!
"oops"....really, i think we deserve a bit more than an "oops, forgot about it, now deal with it"
Let me clarify - I don't think there should be a way for a player to make 3 million EC of freshly generated currency in an hour. I have no problems with people making 3 million EC in 60 seconds, so long as that EC hasn't been generated by the servers out of thin air (I.E they were buying/selling on the exchange, or buying doffs with fleet credits and selling them for EC from other players, not the game itself)
The amount of EC in this game is stupid, and inflation is at an all-time high and the value of EC is at an all time low. The reputation system helped, as it was the first proper EC sink we had - but loot drops + tour the universe (by far the two biggest ways to *create* EC) vastly outweighed it. Starbases helped again, but they aren't really much of an EC sink - in the sense that not much EC was actually being destroyed. Boffs/marks/doffs/dilithium are all created by the server without EC cost, so the only real sink was in commodities and weapons.
Summary: This is definitely a good thing for the STO economy and it will help curb the insane amounts of inflation - but Cryptic, the way you did it and handled it was absolutely shocking. How have you not learned ANYTHING by now? Stealth nerfs and calling things "exploits" to get your own way is ****** up and really irritates your playerbase.
Kirk's Protege.
I think a better way to do it would be increasing rewards for each set completed.
So the rewards could be like 10,000 for the first set completed, 20,000 for the next, then 40,000, then 80,000, etc (with the actual values being tweaked to give a fair effort to reward ratio) regardless of what order they are explored in.
Well, it still makes the concept of running fast in sector space build obsolete, but I have no qualms about it.
Unfortunately there are alot of people who dont care, they take what they are given and do not ask for anything, even though they are the customer and have the right to certain expectations from the company they are purchasing goods/service from.
Personally, I do not care about the Tour event, I have never done it. I makes hundreds of millions of EC from selling fleet doff's and keys. but I can understand why the people who do fly around sector space in some kind of race are upset..4 hour cooldown is a little much. Should be like 30 min or something.
But ya, I am going to stop opening my wallet for awhile now too, at least until we have bugs squashed and a working and intelligent AI for fighters.
Business gets no money? Business dies.
If that business happens to be Cryptic? STO dies.
So you want STO to die?
It's not really any form of censorship - it's the mods doing their job and keeping the billion threads that will no doubt be made on this subject in the same place to stop the main page from clogging up.
Kirk's Protege.
You forgot something.
Business in trouble - business will start to think and reflect. Usually changes the way things go
Sounds like your perfectly at peace with the less the marginal customer service and game qualtiy and more than willing to continue to support these terrible decisions regardless if it upsets customers or not..
Yes, if a game dies, another will rise from somewhere else, and probably for the better
Let's just for the sake of argument, say every player boycotted buying stuff for STO.
No money comes in to PWE from STO. PWE sees that STO is not profitable and is losing them money. They tell Cryptic to do something about it and that employees have to be let go because of the loss in revenue. Devs are fired, and the game development slows down. Even if they restore the Tour, the damage is still done. If they don't return it in time or at all, PWE decides to shut down STO.
:cool: