you have no idea how much that is in the back of my mind with this. considering what cryptic did with the snowpiles in the winter event. they didnt fix the issue with keyboard macro players, they just punished everyone for it and instead removed it. if cryptic follows its own tradition, the shell game would be the only thing standing because its getting the most attention, positive or negative makes no difference, its still attention.
Got to love how this anniversary event has really spread the feeling of goodwill throughout the player base.
Cynicism, bickering, fatalism, lets-just-make-the-best-of-it-ism,......not seeing a vast amount of appreciation and celebration.
(Fed example)
1. Go to ESD space from wherever you are. Maybe transwarp, if available.
2. Close to docking range.
3. Go to ESD ground, then proceed to the club to get the mission from Q.
4. Now go back to the transporters in order to go to the Academy.
5. Run around getting your 5 successful mini-Q's
6. Beam back up to ESD, then proceed to the club to turn in the mission.
That's a lot of enforced running around in a rather short period of time. Time spent zoning and running from place to place is time that is arguably spent not playing the game and not interacting with anybody.
We should be able to go directly to the Academy and be able to pick up Party Patrol from there. After that, I wouldn't mind beaming up to ESD to turn it in.
A word of advice:
From the "episodes" tab there is a free transwarp option to esd (directly to the transporter room)
Also you can hail q from there and therefore turn in the mission from the academy itsself
Got to love how this anniversary event has really spread the feeling of goodwill throughout the player base.
Cynicism, bickering, fatalism, lets-just-make-the-best-of-it-ism,......not seeing a vast amount of appreciation and celebration.
*shrugs* thats cryptics job, if they wanted a better then average approach they should of designed it better, nothing we can say about it that will change that approach, its here and its getting exploited by the playerbase. that there is already clear evidence it isnt designed well.
doesnt matter how cynical or fatalistic you look at it, the point is that they could of not taken this route at all and just left it a simple pick up the keys mission like the previous years. i mean what was wrong with that approach?
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
You done an excellent job burying all the posts explaining how to do this quickly and easily.
I mean really.... there are four different ways to "cheat" in the box game.... It's not really all that hard at all.
The point was never about difficulty. Well, except for a few people maybe. But it is more about the fact it's annoying, and you have to wait about 1m for the box to shuffle.
This shell game is not fun for a lot of people. Cheating or not.
You done an excellent job burying all the posts explaining how to do this quickly and easily.
Someone's got to offset the Pollyannas talking about how everything is sunshine and roses and trying to make it look like everything is fine and it's only a couple of vocal malcontents who don't like the "grindus quo."
You done an excellent job burying all the posts explaining how to do this quickly and easily.
I mean really.... there are four different ways to "cheat" in the box game.... It's not really all that hard at all.
Really?
Ad hominem from you now?
Let me see if I can spell it out for you.
The problem here is that there has to be four player generated workarounds to this mini game.
The fact is, this mini game was so poorly designed and ill thought through that players are having to find emergent strategies to make it bearable.
Thats not just a solution, it's clear evidence of the problem.
Instead of blaming players for being, lets say, less than delighted by Cryptics treatment of this event why don't you put some of that righteous ire to work on the dev that thought this was a good idea in the first place.
And the running version is more challenging? I could (and have) done it with my eyes closed.
A brain-dead monkey could do the running version. The present version requires you to pay attention and not be a mindless borg drone (which I think is why so many people hate it).
Hey. I'd be glad to start chasing the lil monsters. Just give me a working left hand instead of two fingers so i can actually jump when i'm chasing and I'm there.. Till then. too bad. You have fully working hands, i dont. Therefore, I aint chasing anything. get over it.
The problem here is that there has to be four player generated workarounds to this mini game.
The fact is, this mini game was so poorly designed and ill thought through that players are having to find emergent strategies to make it bearable.
Thats not just a solution, it's clear evidence of the problem.
Instead of blaming players for being, lets say, less than delighted by Cryptics treatment of this event why don't you put some of that righteous ire to work on the dev that thought this was a good idea in the first place.
"has" means there is a compulsion to. There is nothing (in the game, that is) that compels the need to have to use the cheat. The shell game is completable without using a cheat. As such your emphasis on the "has" is wrong, and an improper use of the term. I'm pretty sure there is a compulsion involved in this, but the compulsion is more of impatient players who have little to no care about anything but themselves. But that is a player fault, not a game fault. And the only way to fix that is to eliminate the player in question. This could be by removal of the player from the game, or via an aforementioned strategy of tying the mini-q activation to a global cooldown to prevent the activation of another mini-q by that player untill the cooldown/previous activation is complete.
Hey. I'd be glad to start chasing the lil monsters. Just give me a working left hand instead of two fingers so i can actually jump when i'm chasing and I'm there.. Till then. too bad. You have fully working hands, i dont. Therefore, I aint chasing anything. get over it.
If your claim is true, you're the worst kind of handicapped person: The "**** you, I'm disabled" guilt trip kind.
So everyone else has gotta suffer a broken mini-game because you physically can't (or, most likely, don't want to find a way to: humans are very adaptive) play the alternative.
Spock has a saying that applies to your complaint.
A question bears asking: if you physically can't run after a mini-Q, how the hell are you doing ground or space missions? Obviously you've found a way to pilot and fight on the ground with just two fingers.
The problem here is that there has to be four player generated workarounds to this mini game.
The fact is, this mini game was so poorly designed and ill thought through that players are having to find emergent strategies to make it bearable.
Thats not just a solution, it's clear evidence of the problem.
Instead of blaming players for being, lets say, less than delighted by Cryptics treatment of this event why don't you put some of that righteous ire to work on the dev that thought this was a good idea in the first place.
And what are you doing? Nothing constructive.... flaming the devs is futile. And of course "give us free stuff for logging in" goes against the core principles of MMO design.
Aside from agreeing with tekehd...
The mini game isn't much different from last year. I think there's only been one tiny change. It wasn't hard last year, and I doubt it will be next year. I don't actually NEED to cheat at all.
Seriously, none of the minigames in this game is hard....
Oh and I miscounted, there's 5 cheats I know of.... though two are either hard or unreliable... But 3 that are easy and practical is more than enough.
And what are you doing? Nothing constructive.... flaming the devs is futile. And of course "give us free stuff for logging in" goes against the core principles of MMO design.
Funny how this goes against your "core principles of MMO design" and yet somehow IS the core principle of the Holliday, summer and now anniversary event....
"has" means there is a compulsion to. There is nothing (in the game, that is) that compels the need to have to use the cheat. The shell game is completable without using a cheat. As such your emphasis on the "has" is wrong, and an improper use of the term. I'm pretty sure there is a compulsion involved in this, but the compulsion is more of impatient players who have little to no care about anything but themselves. But that is a player fault, not a game fault. And the only way to fix that is to eliminate the player in question. This could be by removal of the player from the game, or via an aforementioned strategy of tying the mini-q activation to a global cooldown to prevent the activation of another mini-q by that player untill the cooldown/previous activation is complete.
Hmmm, fair enough.
I didn't phrase myself exactly.
As stated, i see your point.
however, the compulsion comes in when players attempt to play the game in a way that protects their sanity.
The enforced repetition of this activity, coupled with its poor design and execution, compel players to find ways to perform the activity in the least annoying way.
Funny how this goes against your "core principles of MMO design" and yet somehow IS the core principle of the Holliday, summer and now anniversary event....
Really? Did you actually get anything for logging in in the last winter event? I didn't. You have to complete some sort of minigame or mini mission to get rewards for that. The last winter event had 4-5 different sub-events (and doffing) that you got rewards for completing. You got nothing without doing one of those.
And what are you doing? Nothing constructive.... flaming the devs is futile. And of course "give us free stuff for logging in" goes against the core principles of MMO design.
ahh, so its flaming now to speak up about how badly designed something is.
This mini game is poorly designed, thats a fact.
This grind is poorly designed, as you have acknowledged elsewhere, in how it discriminates against weekend players.
The problem is, Cryptics defenders have conflated valid criticism with flaming.
The mini game isn't much different from last year. I think there's only been one tiny change.
You've repeated this canard a number of times and have been corrected pretty much each time.
Last year the mini game was optional and did not need to be repeated 15 times per toon to get the ship.
You're being fantastically disingenuous here.
You know the context surrounding the mini game is drastically different, yet you keep insisting its the same as last year.
Really? Did you actually get anything for logging in in the last winter event? I didn't. You have to complete some sort of minigame or mini mission to get rewards for that. The last winter event had 4-5 different sub-events (and doffing) that you got rewards for completing. You got nothing without doing one of those.
But the mini game itself is just filler. Us logging in is what they are after.
You've repeated this canard a number of times and have been corrected pretty much each time.
Last year the mini game was optional and did not need to be repeated 15 times per toon to get the ship.
It's still optional.... unless you want the 40 Qms. :P And like I've explained to you many times already.... Last year's ship was barely worth having. This year's event has better rewards overall.
You know the context surrounding the mini game is drastically different, yet you keep insisting its the same as last year.
Not so much. A lot of people ground it incessantly last year, why? The 500 dil reward.... now there is an EXTRA reward on top of that and now it's suddenly bad?
You're seriously contending these are well designed mini games?
Seriously?
Really? where? Nothing in this game caters to people who only play on weekends...
er.....again, seriously? After they junk the hourly event schedule in favour of weekend events, explicitally catering for weekend players?
Are you paying attention?
Valid criticism has more thought behind it than "I hate this".
Indeed. and there has been tons of valid criticism, skads of potential fixes, pages and pages of posts where some players have patiently laid out why the changes are not working for them.
All of it, utterly ignored by cryptic for over a week.
But apparently you didn't notice any?
It's still optional.... unless you want the 40 Qms. :P And like I've explained to you many times already.... Last year's ship was barely worth having. This year's event has better rewards overall.Not so much. A lot of people ground it incessantly last year, why? The 500 dil reward.... now there is an EXTRA reward on top of that and now it's suddenly bad?
Disingenuous.
It's not optional if you want the 'free' ship.
It's not optional if you want the fourth part of the space set.
And if you think that making players play it fifteen times per toon if they want said ships is such a small change that a reasonable player wouldnt notice the difference you have your head in the sand.
At the conservative 5 minutes per run, thats 75 minutes playing the mini game that you didnt have to do last year to get the ship. Per toon.
Can you please see if you can do something about players who are at the Academy and activate the mini Q's and then run off when they don't get the ones that they have to chase. Maybe make it where if they activate Q then they are forced to participate with the one they activate. It makes it harder on the rest of us.
No, no, no.
The proper request is to have the devs NUKE the shell game from orbit. It's horrible game design and it is no wonder that people quit it like the waste of time it is. The chase is fun, the other is glitchy, buggy and a huge waste of time. I wasn't fun last year and it isn't this year. The difference is that people who want the substandard Dyson ships are FORCED to run it, whereas last year people could ignore it with no consequence.
At the minimum, you have about 9 days left to be annoyed before the ship grinders will disappear from your zone.
Or, you know, press that change instance button and move to one with less people instead of sticking to the crowded instances the game initially puts you in.
No one made me a Dev and the ruler of the game. Just like no one gave you the rule maker either. And if there were a choice then no one would choose the shell game option and it would be useless. That is why a player should be made to take what they get. That is my opinion.
I would tell you what you could do with that opinion, but it would probably earn me a forum ban.
Let me explain the situation in a concise manner:
Players want ships, or at least the 4-pc. sets, often for multiple characters.
Most of them don't want to shell out hundreds of lobi to get those "naow!"
Players also don't want to stare at their screens as mini-Q runs back and forth between boxes and NPCs legs.
Players do want to obtain their daily dose of Qmendations / dilithium / grind currency of choice as quickly and efficiently as possible, especially if there's no "fun" way available.
Players will do whatever they want within the bounds of the game and there is nothing you can do about it.
...
How about:
Dear Devs -
"Party Patrol" sucks out loud. How about next go around, we beam to a map with mini-Qs running everywhere, and we get to bag five of the little TRIBBLE with a Q-net cannon? Or anything else besides staring at a screen totally motionless until we go cross-eyed? TYVM
Signed,
- Your playerbase.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
"Party Patrol" sucks out loud. How about next go around, we beam to a map with mini-Qs running everywhere, and we get to bag five of the little TRIBBLE with a Q-net cannon? Or anything else besides staring at a screen totally motionless until we go cross-eyed? TYVM
Signed,
- Your playerbase.
Now that would be fun, or we also could have a Whack a Q competition, where you can use a big hammer and target little Qs.
Now I have a headache, thankyou. I logged in today and spent a piffling few minutes doing the silly miniquest on the toons I'm getting the ships for, chasing Q is easy, finding him in the presents is easy, this does not need to be fixed. It takes much longer to whine in the forum about the stupid minigame than to just do it.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
Cease and desist the hostility and personal attacks or I will be forced to start moderating this thread more aggressively.
Feel free to report any posts that offend you, personally.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Didn't read most of what came before... but I would like the devs to fix the problem of people activating the Q's and running off. I just spent a good 10 minutes running around on the least populated instance of ESD and couldn't interact with a single Q, because all of them are on cool down.
I personally saw at least 3 seperate people (out of 12 when I entered the instance) who were leaving their Q's as soon as they saw that it wasn't going to be a runner.
If your gonna make us grind, and give that grind a time limit, make sure that a handful of jerks can't ruin the fun for everyone.
On the one hand, its dull. On the other, it nets 980 Dil for five minutes 'work'. 500 for the mission, and 480 to duck off to the side for 30 seconds for Path to 2409 - Which I'd skip most days as I wouldn't otherwise be at the Academy.
Comments
Got to love how this anniversary event has really spread the feeling of goodwill throughout the player base.
Cynicism, bickering, fatalism, lets-just-make-the-best-of-it-ism,......not seeing a vast amount of appreciation and celebration.
A word of advice:
From the "episodes" tab there is a free transwarp option to esd (directly to the transporter room)
Also you can hail q from there and therefore turn in the mission from the academy itsself
*shrugs* thats cryptics job, if they wanted a better then average approach they should of designed it better, nothing we can say about it that will change that approach, its here and its getting exploited by the playerbase. that there is already clear evidence it isnt designed well.
doesnt matter how cynical or fatalistic you look at it, the point is that they could of not taken this route at all and just left it a simple pick up the keys mission like the previous years. i mean what was wrong with that approach?
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
I mean really.... there are four different ways to "cheat" in the box game.... It's not really all that hard at all.
My character Tsin'xing
This shell game is not fun for a lot of people. Cheating or not.
Someone's got to offset the Pollyannas talking about how everything is sunshine and roses and trying to make it look like everything is fine and it's only a couple of vocal malcontents who don't like the "grindus quo."
That would be a great feature, alone. I'm for it.
Really?
Ad hominem from you now?
Let me see if I can spell it out for you.
The problem here is that there has to be four player generated workarounds to this mini game.
The fact is, this mini game was so poorly designed and ill thought through that players are having to find emergent strategies to make it bearable.
Thats not just a solution, it's clear evidence of the problem.
Instead of blaming players for being, lets say, less than delighted by Cryptics treatment of this event why don't you put some of that righteous ire to work on the dev that thought this was a good idea in the first place.
They both suck. Runners just suck a bit less.
"has" means there is a compulsion to. There is nothing (in the game, that is) that compels the need to have to use the cheat. The shell game is completable without using a cheat. As such your emphasis on the "has" is wrong, and an improper use of the term. I'm pretty sure there is a compulsion involved in this, but the compulsion is more of impatient players who have little to no care about anything but themselves. But that is a player fault, not a game fault. And the only way to fix that is to eliminate the player in question. This could be by removal of the player from the game, or via an aforementioned strategy of tying the mini-q activation to a global cooldown to prevent the activation of another mini-q by that player untill the cooldown/previous activation is complete.
If your claim is true, you're the worst kind of handicapped person: The "**** you, I'm disabled" guilt trip kind.
So everyone else has gotta suffer a broken mini-game because you physically can't (or, most likely, don't want to find a way to: humans are very adaptive) play the alternative.
Spock has a saying that applies to your complaint.
A question bears asking: if you physically can't run after a mini-Q, how the hell are you doing ground or space missions? Obviously you've found a way to pilot and fight on the ground with just two fingers.
Aside from agreeing with tekehd...
The mini game isn't much different from last year. I think there's only been one tiny change. It wasn't hard last year, and I doubt it will be next year. I don't actually NEED to cheat at all.
Seriously, none of the minigames in this game is hard....
Oh and I miscounted, there's 5 cheats I know of.... though two are either hard or unreliable... But 3 that are easy and practical is more than enough.
My character Tsin'xing
Funny how this goes against your "core principles of MMO design" and yet somehow IS the core principle of the Holliday, summer and now anniversary event....
Hmmm, fair enough.
I didn't phrase myself exactly.
As stated, i see your point.
however, the compulsion comes in when players attempt to play the game in a way that protects their sanity.
The enforced repetition of this activity, coupled with its poor design and execution, compel players to find ways to perform the activity in the least annoying way.
I should have expressed myself more rigorously.
My character Tsin'xing
ahh, so its flaming now to speak up about how badly designed something is.
This mini game is poorly designed, thats a fact.
This grind is poorly designed, as you have acknowledged elsewhere, in how it discriminates against weekend players.
The problem is, Cryptics defenders have conflated valid criticism with flaming.
You've repeated this canard a number of times and have been corrected pretty much each time.
Last year the mini game was optional and did not need to be repeated 15 times per toon to get the ship.
You're being fantastically disingenuous here.
You know the context surrounding the mini game is drastically different, yet you keep insisting its the same as last year.
But the mini game itself is just filler. Us logging in is what they are after.
Exactly the point, they could have made us just log in, go and see Q and say "hi" and get the 40 stupid qmendations.
My character Tsin'xing
You're seriously contending these are well designed mini games?
Seriously?
er.....again, seriously? After they junk the hourly event schedule in favour of weekend events, explicitally catering for weekend players?
Are you paying attention?
Indeed. and there has been tons of valid criticism, skads of potential fixes, pages and pages of posts where some players have patiently laid out why the changes are not working for them.
All of it, utterly ignored by cryptic for over a week.
But apparently you didn't notice any?
Disingenuous.
It's not optional if you want the 'free' ship.
It's not optional if you want the fourth part of the space set.
And if you think that making players play it fifteen times per toon if they want said ships is such a small change that a reasonable player wouldnt notice the difference you have your head in the sand.
At the conservative 5 minutes per run, thats 75 minutes playing the mini game that you didnt have to do last year to get the ship. Per toon.
That is a difference. Not trivial.
No, no, no.
The proper request is to have the devs NUKE the shell game from orbit. It's horrible game design and it is no wonder that people quit it like the waste of time it is. The chase is fun, the other is glitchy, buggy and a huge waste of time. I wasn't fun last year and it isn't this year. The difference is that people who want the substandard Dyson ships are FORCED to run it, whereas last year people could ignore it with no consequence.
At the minimum, you have about 9 days left to be annoyed before the ship grinders will disappear from your zone.
Or, you know, press that change instance button and move to one with less people instead of sticking to the crowded instances the game initially puts you in.
I would tell you what you could do with that opinion, but it would probably earn me a forum ban.
Let me explain the situation in a concise manner:
Players want ships, or at least the 4-pc. sets, often for multiple characters.
Most of them don't want to shell out hundreds of lobi to get those "naow!"
Players also don't want to stare at their screens as mini-Q runs back and forth between boxes and NPCs legs.
Players do want to obtain their daily dose of Qmendations / dilithium / grind currency of choice as quickly and efficiently as possible, especially if there's no "fun" way available.
Players will do whatever they want within the bounds of the game and there is nothing you can do about it.
...
How about:
Dear Devs -
"Party Patrol" sucks out loud. How about next go around, we beam to a map with mini-Qs running everywhere, and we get to bag five of the little TRIBBLE with a Q-net cannon? Or anything else besides staring at a screen totally motionless until we go cross-eyed? TYVM
Signed,
- Your playerbase.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Now that would be fun, or we also could have a Whack a Q competition, where you can use a big hammer and target little Qs.
R.I.P. Leonard Nimoy
Feel free to report any posts that offend you, personally.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I personally saw at least 3 seperate people (out of 12 when I entered the instance) who were leaving their Q's as soon as they saw that it wasn't going to be a runner.
If your gonna make us grind, and give that grind a time limit, make sure that a handful of jerks can't ruin the fun for everyone.