Idea: Fleet Activity Bonus

bluegeek

Rewarding Active Fleets

I was reading the thread about a fleet tax and while I'm not a fan of that idea I had a thought about a way to reward fleets with active members.

What Cryptic/PWE really wants is players who are spending time in the game interacting with other players. Fleets have a similar issue, trying to encourage inactive members to be active.

Aside from the normal dilithium rewards that people get for completing select missions, what if the game generated a bonus allocation that goes directly to the fleet of the person who's playing?

Here's a hypothetical for you:

Let's say that G'eek is online. He has a choice about what to do, but if he joins a team and plays cooperative content instead of just playing solo, he can earn a bonus for his fleet.

Let's say that for every 5 minutes he's in a team (rounded up) and in a qualifying instance (not just hanging out in sector space), 1 refined dilithium ore goes into his fleet's daily allocation pool.

It doesn't matter what content he's playing or who he's teamed up with. If he's in a team, if he's not afk, and if he's not in sector space or a social zone, the bonus is earned.

If he plays for an hour per day, 12 dil goes into the allocation pool (per day). If he's in a fleet with ten other people doing the same thing, that's 120 dil per day. A fleet of 25 players doing the same thing would earn 300 dil per day. 600 per day for a fleet of 50. All the way up to a "whopping" 4,800 per day for a fleet of 400 players active for an hour a day.

I would suggest capping out the allocation pool at no more than 5K.

Let's not get too caught up in those numbers up there, because those can be tweaked. It's the concept I'm pitching.

Now say that every 24 hours, the game empties out each fleet's allocation pool and divides the dilithium equally among all of that fleet's open projects. If there are no projects open that require dilithium, that day's dilithium bonus is lost, not stockpiled -- that will encourage fleet leaders to keep slotting dilithium projects and prevent fleets from "banking" time for future projects.

And the point of this is...?

It's an incentive for fleets to plan activities that involve getting as many of their players online and teamed up as often as possible, without forcing anybody to play any content they don't want to play.

They could PvP, queue up for STF's or PvE events, or run through Foundry missions together. They just have to be on a team, playing the stuff Cryptic wants them to play in the first place.

The potential for exploit is reduced, because the player never earns any direct benefit from the bonus personally. They are indirectly rewarded by fleet advancement.

The "free dilithium" would keep projects moving forward and I believe it would create a desire to spend more from their personal stockpiles to make them go faster, especially as they get nearer to completion.

But it's not so much dilithium that it would affect the game economy too negatively (I think). Players will still want to spend dilithium on fleet stores and will still need to provide the other project resources normally.

It would increase the value of fleet members to a fleet, even those who choose not to contribute directly to projects, and create an incentive for fleet leaders to keep their members happy and engaged.

bluegeek

Maybe, but...

"It's not fair to small fleets" and "too much advantage for mega-fleets"

I don't think so. This would be about active members. True, large fleets would potentially benefit more... but how many fleets have 100% active members every single day?

Small, active fleets would have an easier time organizing their members to team up and it would provide an extra source of much-needed dilithium for their projects.

Hey, free is free. It's a free bonus. And if that free bonus has a daily cap, it reduces the amplification factor of a large fleet while encouraging smaller fleets to spend more time online to make up for fewer members.

"Cryptic/PWE will never do it... it would hurt their profits."

I don't think it would hurt their profits. The bonus allocation would be capped out at something reasonable, and only useful if there were open dilithium projects in the queue. There are lots of means Cryptic could build in to keep the bonus in check at the level they want it at.

It also potentially increases their profits.

The bonus would be low enough that it won't let fleets complete projects too quickly, while enough to show the kind of steady progress that keeps people from getting discouraged that fleet advancement is "stuck" and "too expensive".

Discouraged people don't willingly contribute, or even want to play.

Unlocking Tiers a bit faster means more gear becomes available in the fleet store that much sooner, which encourages players to spend their own dilithium on 'fun' purchases.

Most importantly, it would facilitate Cryptic's main goal: To get players in the game on a regular basis, because regular players are more likely to buy Zen.

Let's not forget that the real purpose of dilithium is to reward players for spending time in the game, to encourage them to keep coming back to play.

Tweaking the Numbers

Again, hypothetically, supposing that Cryptic wants to encourage small fleets to keep grinding away but prevent large fleets from advancing with no real effort or strong participation on their part?

Juggling the numbers, let's say that G'eek's fleet allocation bonus is 10 dilithium for every 15 minutes of team play, or about 40 dilithium per hour. And let's say he spends 2 hours playing every day. And he and his four fleet buddies are doing it together, earning their fleet 400 bonus dilithium a day.

Now say that you have a fleet of 25 active players doing that. 2K of bonus dilithium every day. And that's the cap.

Thoughts?

cincyman39

bluegeek wrote: »

Maybe, but...

"It's not fair to small fleets" and "too much advantage for mega-fleets"

I don't think so. This would be about active members. True, large fleets would potentially benefit more... but how many fleets have 100% active members every single day?

Small, active fleets would have an easier time organizing their members to team up and it would provide an extra source of much-needed dilithium for their projects.

Hey, free is free. It's a free bonus. And if that free bonus has a daily cap, it reduces the amplification factor of a large fleet while encouraging smaller fleets to spend more time online to make up for fewer members.

"Cryptic/PWE will never do it... it would hurt their profits."

I don't think it would hurt their profits. The bonus allocation would be capped out at something reasonable, and only useful if there were open dilithium projects in the queue. There are lots of means Cryptic could build in to keep the bonus in check at the level they want it at.

It also potentially increases their profits.

The bonus would be low enough that it won't let fleets complete projects too quickly, while enough to show the kind of steady progress that keeps people from getting discouraged that fleet advancement is "stuck" and "too expensive".

Discouraged people don't willingly contribute, or even want to play.

Unlocking Tiers a bit faster means more gear becomes available in the fleet store that much sooner, which encourages players to spend their own dilithium on 'fun' purchases.

Most importantly, it would facilitate Cryptic's main goal: To get players in the game on a regular basis, because regular players are more likely to buy Zen.

Let's not forget that the real purpose of dilithium is to reward players for spending time in the game, to encourage them to keep coming back to play.

Tweaking the Numbers

Again, hypothetically, supposing that Cryptic wants to encourage small fleets to keep grinding away but prevent large fleets from advancing with no real effort or strong participation on their part?

Juggling the numbers, let's say that G'eek's fleet allocation bonus is 10 dilithium for every 15 minutes of team play, or about 40 dilithium per hour. And let's say he spends 2 hours playing every day. And he and his four fleet buddies are doing it together, earning their fleet 400 bonus dilithium a day.

Now say that you have a fleet of 25 active players doing that. 2K of bonus dilithium every day. And that's the cap.

Thoughts?

I like your concept it would be a great tool for inactivity. But at the same time for mega fleets that has there projects finished fast and on cool down the bonus would not affect them they would lose it everyday or perhaps put a cap and let them hold a little. But overall your ideal has real merit.

iceeaglex

I think this would actually hurt fleets.

Most people would think "Hey, why should i waste my hard earned dil by putting it into a project, when the fleet can use its daily allotment."

Especially if that allotment is wasted if not used each day.

So people will purposely NOT use their dil, thinking it will be filled up by the fleet.
Then they log off, and don't think about it.

Then at the end of the day, and the projects need 50k dil, and the fleet can only put in 5k, its wasted a day of time.

So the next day (if you are lucky) fleet members use their own dil to finish the projects. Then the fleet allotment is wasted.

So the next day.......The cycle starts again.


I really like your idea, and think a fleet activity bonus would be awesome and needs to be put in. But I think your idea just needs some tweaks to stop it becoming a massive mess.

breygorn

It is an interesting idea, and could possibly work.
How about using the fleet event that is already tied into the fleet window?

futurepastnow

Fleet credits are what people want. They're what people need to buy stuff. They're the incentive to contribute to fleet projects. I don't think people will be inclined to change their activity level or playstyle to get their fleet a bonus that they'll never see, that earns them nothing personally.

But what's to stop some fleet's jerk leaders from punishing members who don't participate in this? I mean, you can see from that dilithium tax thread that there are some fleets already that maintain an ongoing contribution requirement. You must give X per week. Well, at least giving X earns credits. But now they'll have to give Y per week, too, and get nothing out of it.

Want to help fleets big and small? Increase the credit reward from contributing dilithium by an order of magnitude.

doffingcomrade

This could actually be quite harmful to fleet finances. Dilithium-dumping is a major source of FC, while many other bars can potentially run at a loss. If the bar started filling itself, leaving players with no bar to dump into, they would be unable to get FC.

majortiraomega

Alright, let's suppose you have a small fleet of 20 people online every day. They each play for 4 hours per day, which is about average for the playerbase. Collectively, they are earning 960 dilithium per day for the fleet projects. Many fleet holdings have large dilithium sinks. Let's take the Tier II Embassy upgrade, that's 1,000,000 Dilithium. It would take 2.85 years to collect enough dilithium via 20 people to finish that project. If it's going to take that long to collect 1,000,000 dilithium, I'm sorry, but I don't see that as very helpful to small fleets. Assuming those 20 people capped their dilithium every day (8500), they would make 176,963,625 dilithium collectively in 2.85 years. The bonus you are proposing is an 0.57% increase to their total dilithium acquisition.