This being my first post ever on the forums and i do have a habbit of being extremely blunt, so let me start off by saying that i must admit that when i first signed up to play a few years back i seen the star trek name and their apparent claims to be authentic.
Since 8.5's release however...
I honestly can not bring myself to even attempt to conjure up the remote will power to even bring up the launcher through steam. (Cryptic can take that non-optional arc virus/spyware infested TRIBBLE and stuff it imo) The simple reason i have lost any and all interest period is not just because of the bugs and errors introduced with 8.5 BUT frankly as far as i am concerned i have had more server connection drops and lag delays since the release of that "quick-switch" feature which is in my opinion TRIBBLE-poorly done but also adds even more strain on cryptics already overloaded servers but also because in all honesty any more this so called "authentic" star trek game is apparently becoming nothing more then a space fantasy star trek themed MMO. Completely kills the game for me in my opinion along with this abhorrent grindfest.
Don't get me wrong ease of use features are great and i am all for them however if your going to claim authenticity then stick to the parameters of it otherwise it is nothing more then false advertising via misleading claims.
In short, i have been playing far less compared to what i was before 8.5 hit.
I fear their metrics will continue to show "success" with the weekend events. However, this will be somewhat false, because 1) weekend-type events would be big draws no matter what, and 2) people who WOULD play a lot during the hourly events may hyper-concentrate on those days.
Well it's hard to second guess the stats from our point of view. After all, we don't have them but you do seem to be lacking one key piece of qualitative information cryptic handed out with the "bye bye hourly" announcement.
Very few people were playing them.
Sure, that might have none the less included you but with what information we have it's not terribly reasonable to project your preference out onto the general population. It seems that, however concentrated a few people were becoming, most were giving the hourly events a miss. So why continue them when there are alternatives that in servicing a larger portion of the community can have a more meaningful impact on the game?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (unless they're main characters which I don't think any of us can claim here. :P)
Anyway, as far as my own post 8.5 playtime is concerned, I've found myself entering a maintenance cycle. Fine tune Boffs, keep up on dilithium refining, grind Q. The FE, while awesome, does take bit of effort (particularly combat with the dyson ship, the equipment setup on that ship is not optimal) and the remastered FED missions just don't have enough incentive behind them to justify returning to old plot points (dilithium rewards would probably make all the difference.) Once I get the dyson ships I'll probably hit STF's and Dyson sphere areas pretty heavily, but in the meantime I'm more or less just waiting for the celebration to be over.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Just the same as I was before 8.5. I don't often spend my time in the game just grinding (only if I'm in a hurry to get a rep or fleet project filled), tend to run episodes and foundry missions more and dailies on one or two of characters more often.
I'd probably say less now this week. I was doing the FE episode a lot on top of the Q event but I've earned what I needed from the episode now and the Q event is fairly short per day.
Without the event calendar I don't feel like waiting forever in queues to earn the lowest amount of marks.
There really is nothing to do in the game after lvl 50 except to continue to level through rep and starbase but if earning it is too hard then why bother? Getting better gear and skills to use them on a few old missions over and over really doesn't sound rewarding or fun. Losing faith in having any reason to play often. I thought the goal of an MMO to make money off you was to make you want to play as often as possible. Even with the mark events there wasn't more to do it just felt like you were being rewarded a little more at least.
Well it's hard to second guess the stats from our point of view. After all, we don't have them but you do seem to be lacking one key piece of qualitative information cryptic handed out with the "bye bye hourly" announcement.
Very few people were playing them.
No. Very few people were playing hourly events that emphasized dead content. No one is lamenting the loss of Vault Shuttle Event or Time to Craft. But the ones that rewarded content that people were doing (Bonus Mark Event, Dilithium Mining) were heavily attended. That's why people are so angry that they were removed: they just arbitrarily made the grind worse. Even with the rewards increased for weekend events, they don't stack up anywhere near as well as when you could do them once a day or once every other day. The dilithium weekend in particular is an enormous slap in the face since you can only do the mining once every 20 hours.
I personally am only playing about half as much as I used to, and my wallet is closed to this company until they bring the hourlies back.
Less. I really dislike rounding up the party patrol Qs so after i do it on all my characters I log out. Something about it just turns me off.
Dr. Miranda Jones: I understand, Mr. Spock. The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.
Mr. Spock: And the ways our differences combine, to create meaning and beauty.
According to who? You? Like I said it's very hard to criticize the devs in this case when they have numbers and we emphatically do not. They can see precisely how many people were playing the "good" hourlies and thereby judge precisely how many people would be affected by this change over.
I'm not one to usually cede power and responsibility to an authority, but Cryptic is in the best position to see what effect this actually has on the community. Getting huffy because the loss of hourlies has negatively impacted you (and the relative minority in your situation) can only be taken so far.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
According to who? You? Like I said it's very hard to criticize the devs in this case when they have numbers and we emphatically do not. They can see precisely how many people were playing the "good" hourlies and thereby judge precisely how many people would be affected by this change over.
I'm not one to usually cede power and responsibility to an authority, but Cryptic is in the best position to see what effect this actually has on the community. Getting huffy because the loss of hourlies has negatively impacted you (and the relative minority in your situation) can only be taken so far.
Numbers are actually very easy to acquire.
Bonus Mark Event: Open up your pve queue window. Numbers as to who are playing right now are readily available.
Dilithium Mining Event: Click your zone tab on the asteroid. That shows you how many people are on the ferengi-owned asteroid, not counting people mining on their own base.
Each of these events would regularly show at least a doubling of players in the content from when the event was not running. Often more.
Dilithium Mining Event: Click your zone tab on the asteroid. That shows you how many people are on the ferengi-owned asteroid, not counting people mining on their own base.
Each of these events would regularly show at least a doubling of players in the content from when the event was not running. Often more.
A doubling of current numbers I suppose is possible, except that now we aren't constrained to a timetable, some people feel more free to just show up at any time. So whilst before you'd find a handful of people there, you likely find a more respectable number mining 'round the clock.
I use to be online a lot, because am disabled. I would do the events when they came up, but then would play around between the ones I liked to do. Because of that, I farmed a lot of Dilithium to convert into Zen so that I could buy more storage space. Though I don't have money, the game made money from the person I got the Zen from.
With not playing as much now, I don't see that I need to buy any more space. I am getting online to do the anniversary grind, fleet events. Other than that, I will not be online anymore till the weekend events.
Tim.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
Less. Partly because im back playing console stuff for awhile, and partly because im tired of running the same junk queues over and over again, just to earn marks and dil for stuff.
I dont bother with PvP because the min/maxers ruin that for me. Doing nothing but lose is not fun.
Frankly the game is dying and they are just throwing as many random ideas as they can in to keep it going, and the ideas are bottom of the barrel, and poorly implemented.
The only team doing their jobs, and doing their jobs extremely well is the art team. Everyone else is just sitting easy collecting paychecks until the final DOOM lands.
Dont get me wrong, i love the game, and would love for it to continue longer and have reasons to play. But the old content is beyond played out, the "new" content isnt challenging, isnt fun, and is barely passable on repetition.
The new FE is fantastic though, pretty decent writing, the new suits are AWESOME, and this FE offers you something no other mission does. A CHOICE!!!! Even if that choice is only to change the suit you get it is still a CHOICE. If more missions where well written, made sense and were visuaully as appealing that would be great, along with having little choices that alter HOW you experience the mission.
As far as the rest. a big old resounding....MEH...
Inertia just means you can do Powerslides in you carrier!
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Aside from getting deathly sick over the weekend, I find that before the update I was running around the galaxy a lot more - working on reps and commendations(finally hit rank 4 in all categories on one of my characters); now I've mostly just been hopping on for a few minutes before and after the weekend to do the daily 'grind' for the Sci-stroyers.. not to have fun and build my characters.
It's rather ironic, really. I'm sure the intention with the anniversary reputation was to give players something to do to make them play more, but it has made me want to play less.
Less since season 8 launched. Adding a new rep grind burned me out. And I found the dyson sphere in both the atmosphere and the ground battlezone to be very repetitive. But now even more less since the removal hourly events. It makes the grind even slower. I've been struggling to catch up on the rep on my Romulan alt for months but now this has just killed my interest.
I've also skipped the event grinds for both winter and the 4 year anniversary.
less. no hourlies was a huge blow to my desire to play the game.
like others have indicated, the FE was great...the first time i played it. im not grinding it out (as im not a collector) but the 40 qmendations/day is absolute bunk.
Log in. Check if there a hourly event to take advantage of (Yea. Cryptic took that away.). Hmmm. Logs out. Wait 15 hours to do a 3 minute grind for the new ship then log off.
Find myself playing lot less now and feeling frustrated when I log out.
I came back from a long hiatus just as the sphere started and had high hopes that for all the laser dino strangeness the game seemed to improve.
Somewhat interesting new ground combat, and between sphere space and battlezone the freedom to let the player decide what he enjoys enough to spend his time on at what time of day.
But seeing where it is going now... needless killing of hourly events for the sake of a weekend bonus no one asked for, putting all sorts of things into daily wrappers, making 'free' gifts another mindless grind, podcasts touting a further simplification of the skill system instead of working on actually improving it.
Seems I am up for another long leave once I got the Dyson ships for my romulans scis. Not that those are that very enticing anymore, between [expletive] q minigames and having to play a nice mission until you are sick of it just to get the consoles, but anything to get them out of the ha'nom at least.
I'm playing less because the Voth seem to require top end gear, Rep bonuses, and random teaming.
I am playing more when there are new story missions made.
However, I do not state this to strongly suggest that because Season 8 wasn't being tailored to me, it's a failure. Only babymen would do something like that. I state this in the hopes that more FEs will be coming out on a regular basis to draw me back.
The only thing I've been logging on for is the daily qmmendations. With the loss of hourly events like academy event, dilithium mining and officer reports I have no desire to log on. My play time was mostly about dilithium grinding and those were the ways I did it. The academy event alone would nearly max out one of my characters for the day.
I think I can safely predict that once I get the anniversary ship I'll not log in at all.
Though I am not a fan of having the hourly events taken away, I can see how some might prefer that they have the weekend events, and the loss of the hourly events doesn't affect them.
Through this, and other threads, there have been some that said that the hourly events didn't fit with their schedules, and because of this, they didn't get the benefit from it. So, I can see how the change will benefit them. Makes sense.
However, for the ones that were able to use the hourly events, and optimize on them, this has been a blow to our weekly grind, and has slowed it a lot. Then, on top of that, they have the weekend events spaced so far out that we go 9 days at a time with NO events to do. (This is not including the anniversary event that is made into a daily grind).
That is why I believe that if they want to go this route, they need to give those of us they took a great benefit from something to tide us over. For example, they could make the events every weekend, in stead of every other weekend. This will give us only 2 days out of the week that there is nothing going on. Or, they could make these weekly events, that run every week. When one ends, the next one begins.
Like I said, I know that there are some that this change does not affect, because they never benefited from the hourly events. They can do their regular grind, and see no difference. I am glad for them that this change has not hurt their experience.
There was one comment that Steven made during a podcast made on Thursday (The release date of 8.5). He mentioned that many of the players were able to progress through the Dyson rep system faster than expected, and that is not good for longevity of a game. However, that fast progression was NOT because we had the hourly events.
The reason that many players were able to progress through the Dyson rep system was because there was nothing else for them. Most of the players had already had their other rep systems to Tier 5 already. This meant that by the time the Dyson Rep came along, there was nothing else to do but that grind. So, yeah, it progressed faster.
Think about it like this, each of the individual grinds can go from Tier 0 to Tier 5 in less than a month, without the sponsorship being used. You run 1-2 hours worth of missions every other day, and collect the marks. Then, you should be able to run the projects for the rep systems for 2-4 says without needing to grind for a while. Doing them every other day just kept you supplied with a lot of extra marks so that after you reach Tier 5, you can have the marks needed to get the good gear, and consoles.
With doing those missions during the hourly marks event, it let you get a lot more marks in that 1-2 hour period. Thereby collecting more marks. And the Dyson rep system is the same.
Therefore, by removing the rep system, it didn't change how fast a rep system can be progressed. They only made it harder on those that like to grind for less.
Those of us that were able to work around the hourly events were working smart, not hard. (This is not a insult to those that could not use the hourly events). What I mean by this comment is this: If you couldn't use the hourly events, you had no choice. But, those of us that could had a choice, we could work smart, in that we could do our grind during the hourly events, and get more rewards for our effort, or we could choose to not use the hourly events, and grind things out at a slower pace to get the same amount of marks.
The end result was still the same. We could still reach Tier on any rep system in less than a month even if we didn't use the hourly events. We would just have a lot less marks to spend on our gear and things at the end of it.
So, removing the marks event was a move that for some of us has cut our weekly game play by a large amount. I will wait till the weekend events, and then grind out what I need to. During the rest of the time, it is just the mini Q grind on each of my characters, and DOFFing. However, that is it for me. I will watch youtube movies, Netflix, or read a book during the weeks now.
There are always things I can do for fun. But, with them trying to make us grind the entire time we play is not my kind of thing.
Tim.
Leader of Elite Guardian Academy.Would you like to learn how to run a fleet? Would you like to know how to do ship builds (true budget as well as high end)?The join the Academy today!
No. It's called maximizing gameplay with what resources we have. Its also called efficiency.
Why do something for two weeks when it could be done in a hour?
Lol wut?
Two weeks???? reality check: bonus marks was only a 20% boost. It was the difference between playing 5 STFs and 6. There was no way at all to get two weeks worth of grinding done in an hour that way. So yeah, it is very untruthful to say that the lack of bonus marks makes STFs pointless. It might be true that you choose not to play them now, but that's on you.
Comments
Since 8.5's release however...
I honestly can not bring myself to even attempt to conjure up the remote will power to even bring up the launcher through steam. (Cryptic can take that non-optional arc virus/spyware infested TRIBBLE and stuff it imo) The simple reason i have lost any and all interest period is not just because of the bugs and errors introduced with 8.5 BUT frankly as far as i am concerned i have had more server connection drops and lag delays since the release of that "quick-switch" feature which is in my opinion TRIBBLE-poorly done but also adds even more strain on cryptics already overloaded servers but also because in all honesty any more this so called "authentic" star trek game is apparently becoming nothing more then a space fantasy star trek themed MMO. Completely kills the game for me in my opinion along with this abhorrent grindfest.
Don't get me wrong ease of use features are great and i am all for them however if your going to claim authenticity then stick to the parameters of it otherwise it is nothing more then false advertising via misleading claims.
In short, i have been playing far less compared to what i was before 8.5 hit.
LOL... Yeah that's basically what I'm doing but it takes far less time than the other things I used to do.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
Well it's hard to second guess the stats from our point of view. After all, we don't have them but you do seem to be lacking one key piece of qualitative information cryptic handed out with the "bye bye hourly" announcement.
Very few people were playing them.
Sure, that might have none the less included you but with what information we have it's not terribly reasonable to project your preference out onto the general population. It seems that, however concentrated a few people were becoming, most were giving the hourly events a miss. So why continue them when there are alternatives that in servicing a larger portion of the community can have a more meaningful impact on the game?
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (unless they're main characters which I don't think any of us can claim here. :P)
Anyway, as far as my own post 8.5 playtime is concerned, I've found myself entering a maintenance cycle. Fine tune Boffs, keep up on dilithium refining, grind Q. The FE, while awesome, does take bit of effort (particularly combat with the dyson ship, the equipment setup on that ship is not optimal) and the remastered FED missions just don't have enough incentive behind them to justify returning to old plot points (dilithium rewards would probably make all the difference.) Once I get the dyson ships I'll probably hit STF's and Dyson sphere areas pretty heavily, but in the meantime I'm more or less just waiting for the celebration to be over.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Without the event calendar I don't feel like waiting forever in queues to earn the lowest amount of marks.
There really is nothing to do in the game after lvl 50 except to continue to level through rep and starbase but if earning it is too hard then why bother? Getting better gear and skills to use them on a few old missions over and over really doesn't sound rewarding or fun. Losing faith in having any reason to play often. I thought the goal of an MMO to make money off you was to make you want to play as often as possible. Even with the mark events there wasn't more to do it just felt like you were being rewarded a little more at least.
Does anyone go dilithium mining anymore?
No. Very few people were playing hourly events that emphasized dead content. No one is lamenting the loss of Vault Shuttle Event or Time to Craft. But the ones that rewarded content that people were doing (Bonus Mark Event, Dilithium Mining) were heavily attended. That's why people are so angry that they were removed: they just arbitrarily made the grind worse. Even with the rewards increased for weekend events, they don't stack up anywhere near as well as when you could do them once a day or once every other day. The dilithium weekend in particular is an enormous slap in the face since you can only do the mining once every 20 hours.
I personally am only playing about half as much as I used to, and my wallet is closed to this company until they bring the hourlies back.
Mr. Spock: And the ways our differences combine, to create meaning and beauty.
-Star Trek: Is There in Truth No Beauty? (1968)
According to who? You? Like I said it's very hard to criticize the devs in this case when they have numbers and we emphatically do not. They can see precisely how many people were playing the "good" hourlies and thereby judge precisely how many people would be affected by this change over.
I'm not one to usually cede power and responsibility to an authority, but Cryptic is in the best position to see what effect this actually has on the community. Getting huffy because the loss of hourlies has negatively impacted you (and the relative minority in your situation) can only be taken so far.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Numbers are actually very easy to acquire.
Bonus Mark Event: Open up your pve queue window. Numbers as to who are playing right now are readily available.
Dilithium Mining Event: Click your zone tab on the asteroid. That shows you how many people are on the ferengi-owned asteroid, not counting people mining on their own base.
Each of these events would regularly show at least a doubling of players in the content from when the event was not running. Often more.
A doubling of current numbers I suppose is possible, except that now we aren't constrained to a timetable, some people feel more free to just show up at any time. So whilst before you'd find a handful of people there, you likely find a more respectable number mining 'round the clock.
With not playing as much now, I don't see that I need to buy any more space. I am getting online to do the anniversary grind, fleet events. Other than that, I will not be online anymore till the weekend events.
Tim.
I dont bother with PvP because the min/maxers ruin that for me. Doing nothing but lose is not fun.
Frankly the game is dying and they are just throwing as many random ideas as they can in to keep it going, and the ideas are bottom of the barrel, and poorly implemented.
The only team doing their jobs, and doing their jobs extremely well is the art team. Everyone else is just sitting easy collecting paychecks until the final DOOM lands.
Dont get me wrong, i love the game, and would love for it to continue longer and have reasons to play. But the old content is beyond played out, the "new" content isnt challenging, isnt fun, and is barely passable on repetition.
The new FE is fantastic though, pretty decent writing, the new suits are AWESOME, and this FE offers you something no other mission does. A CHOICE!!!! Even if that choice is only to change the suit you get it is still a CHOICE. If more missions where well written, made sense and were visuaully as appealing that would be great, along with having little choices that alter HOW you experience the mission.
As far as the rest. a big old resounding....MEH...
I am Il Shadow and i approve these Shennanigans!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
It's rather ironic, really. I'm sure the intention with the anniversary reputation was to give players something to do to make them play more, but it has made me want to play less.
I've also skipped the event grinds for both winter and the 4 year anniversary.
like others have indicated, the FE was great...the first time i played it. im not grinding it out (as im not a collector) but the 40 qmendations/day is absolute bunk.
Log in. Check if there a hourly event to take advantage of (Yea. Cryptic took that away.). Hmmm. Logs out. Wait 15 hours to do a 3 minute grind for the new ship then log off.
My 24 hours of STO.
My character Tsin'xing
The grind elements have been making the game less enjoyable for me for a while now and I find myself playing other games a lot more than I use to.
I came back from a long hiatus just as the sphere started and had high hopes that for all the laser dino strangeness the game seemed to improve.
Somewhat interesting new ground combat, and between sphere space and battlezone the freedom to let the player decide what he enjoys enough to spend his time on at what time of day.
But seeing where it is going now... needless killing of hourly events for the sake of a weekend bonus no one asked for, putting all sorts of things into daily wrappers, making 'free' gifts another mindless grind, podcasts touting a further simplification of the skill system instead of working on actually improving it.
Seems I am up for another long leave once I got the Dyson ships for my romulans scis. Not that those are that very enticing anymore, between [expletive] q minigames and having to play a nice mission until you are sick of it just to get the consoles, but anything to get them out of the ha'nom at least.
I am playing more when there are new story missions made.
However, I do not state this to strongly suggest that because Season 8 wasn't being tailored to me, it's a failure. Only babymen would do something like that. I state this in the hopes that more FEs will be coming out on a regular basis to draw me back.
Love the Dyson zone as an addition to the normal stuff there is to do.
I think not doing stf's because you don't get a bonus atm is the dumbest thing I've ever heard and reeks of untruthful QQ.
I still pvp from time to time and do other dailies that ive always done
I think I can safely predict that once I get the anniversary ship I'll not log in at all.
No. It's called maximizing gameplay with what resources we have. Its also called efficiency.
Why do something for two weeks when it could be done in a hour?
I'm glad you're enjoying the recent changes.
However, untruthful?
Are you calling people who don;t have the same unalloyed love of those changes liars?
I do find it odd that, certainly in recent threads, those who dont like the changes are largely respectful of those who do.
However, a proportion of the changes defenders seem to think that they have the right to be rude and disrespectful
Gonjaa, it may not be how you experience things in STO, but if someone has a different experience perhaps you could hold off on calling them liars.
Through this, and other threads, there have been some that said that the hourly events didn't fit with their schedules, and because of this, they didn't get the benefit from it. So, I can see how the change will benefit them. Makes sense.
However, for the ones that were able to use the hourly events, and optimize on them, this has been a blow to our weekly grind, and has slowed it a lot. Then, on top of that, they have the weekend events spaced so far out that we go 9 days at a time with NO events to do. (This is not including the anniversary event that is made into a daily grind).
That is why I believe that if they want to go this route, they need to give those of us they took a great benefit from something to tide us over. For example, they could make the events every weekend, in stead of every other weekend. This will give us only 2 days out of the week that there is nothing going on. Or, they could make these weekly events, that run every week. When one ends, the next one begins.
Like I said, I know that there are some that this change does not affect, because they never benefited from the hourly events. They can do their regular grind, and see no difference. I am glad for them that this change has not hurt their experience.
There was one comment that Steven made during a podcast made on Thursday (The release date of 8.5). He mentioned that many of the players were able to progress through the Dyson rep system faster than expected, and that is not good for longevity of a game. However, that fast progression was NOT because we had the hourly events.
The reason that many players were able to progress through the Dyson rep system was because there was nothing else for them. Most of the players had already had their other rep systems to Tier 5 already. This meant that by the time the Dyson Rep came along, there was nothing else to do but that grind. So, yeah, it progressed faster.
Think about it like this, each of the individual grinds can go from Tier 0 to Tier 5 in less than a month, without the sponsorship being used. You run 1-2 hours worth of missions every other day, and collect the marks. Then, you should be able to run the projects for the rep systems for 2-4 says without needing to grind for a while. Doing them every other day just kept you supplied with a lot of extra marks so that after you reach Tier 5, you can have the marks needed to get the good gear, and consoles.
With doing those missions during the hourly marks event, it let you get a lot more marks in that 1-2 hour period. Thereby collecting more marks. And the Dyson rep system is the same.
Therefore, by removing the rep system, it didn't change how fast a rep system can be progressed. They only made it harder on those that like to grind for less.
Those of us that were able to work around the hourly events were working smart, not hard. (This is not a insult to those that could not use the hourly events). What I mean by this comment is this: If you couldn't use the hourly events, you had no choice. But, those of us that could had a choice, we could work smart, in that we could do our grind during the hourly events, and get more rewards for our effort, or we could choose to not use the hourly events, and grind things out at a slower pace to get the same amount of marks.
The end result was still the same. We could still reach Tier on any rep system in less than a month even if we didn't use the hourly events. We would just have a lot less marks to spend on our gear and things at the end of it.
So, removing the marks event was a move that for some of us has cut our weekly game play by a large amount. I will wait till the weekend events, and then grind out what I need to. During the rest of the time, it is just the mini Q grind on each of my characters, and DOFFing. However, that is it for me. I will watch youtube movies, Netflix, or read a book during the weeks now.
There are always things I can do for fun. But, with them trying to make us grind the entire time we play is not my kind of thing.
Tim.
Two weeks???? reality check: bonus marks was only a 20% boost. It was the difference between playing 5 STFs and 6. There was no way at all to get two weeks worth of grinding done in an hour that way. So yeah, it is very untruthful to say that the lack of bonus marks makes STFs pointless. It might be true that you choose not to play them now, but that's on you.
My character Tsin'xing