test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Time to address ground.
johngazman
Member Posts: 2,826 Arc User
As I type this, i'm presently queueing for Mine Trap. It's been...call it close to 45 minutes, and the queue has been 16 players at most. And at the same time, i've been watching the the Elite STF channels and browsing the PvE queue list.
Whilst i've been sitting here, I small conversation broke out in ESTF. Basically, someone called for Khitomer Space when they were running Khitomer Ground, and one guy who had joined backed out after joining, stating "I don't touch ground".
Now, I can't say that i'm surprised to hear this. But my issue here is why? Why don't people bother with ground PvE queues, by and large?
The answer is simple - not enough incentive.
If you watch the PvE channel, you'll see Infected Space pop up and people will clamour to get on board. Infected Space is quick and easy, and for most, it's relatively worth the 70 or so Omega Marks and 960 Dilithium that you get as a reward. Fine - people have formed the tactics and created the builds that make it easy these days. But ostensibly, the reward feels appropriate for the amount of effort required to get it. As a result, the average wait time for Infected Space Elite, in a PuG team, is around 16 seconds.
By comparison, you'll wait nearly five minutes for a PuG team for Infected Ground, and unless people are after the optional or the accolade, it barely ever pops up in ESTF. Now, I will not argue - Infected Ground - to me - probably constitutes the hardest of the Elite Ground STFs (not counting Hive), and it is long to boot. But if you know what you're doing, it's still fun. But is it worth it? No, absolutely not. Because in the time it takes to run Infected Ground, you could probably get twice the Dilithium and the equivalent Omega Marks from running Infected Space and Cure Space.
Similarly, Mine Trap - probably my favorite of the big-team, ground PvE queues. Takes a long time, requires a lot of effort - still a very fun mission. Worth it? Nope. Yet Big Dig? Not particularly difficult, and I wouldn't go so far as to call it "good" - it's passable. Yet you can get a PuG team for that in six minutes or so (for a 20 man ground) and be done in five or so minutes, with a decent team. And it awards 960 Dilithium and some gear as a reward.
Worth the effort? Probably.
So here's the thing. Ground is clearly not bad if you can get people to run Big Dig every five minutes or so, or spend all day in the Battlezone fighting Voth. So why not go back, look at the rewards for the other ground missions and update them to take into account the time and effort required to complete them, and thus give people more incentive to play these missions.
I don't really know exactly how you would need to alter the rewards to make it more of an incentive. Maybe add a permanent +50% Dilithium bonus to the rewards for ground missions, and buff the base amount of marks recieved by the same, perhaps?
Thoughts?
Whilst i've been sitting here, I small conversation broke out in ESTF. Basically, someone called for Khitomer Space when they were running Khitomer Ground, and one guy who had joined backed out after joining, stating "I don't touch ground".
Now, I can't say that i'm surprised to hear this. But my issue here is why? Why don't people bother with ground PvE queues, by and large?
The answer is simple - not enough incentive.
If you watch the PvE channel, you'll see Infected Space pop up and people will clamour to get on board. Infected Space is quick and easy, and for most, it's relatively worth the 70 or so Omega Marks and 960 Dilithium that you get as a reward. Fine - people have formed the tactics and created the builds that make it easy these days. But ostensibly, the reward feels appropriate for the amount of effort required to get it. As a result, the average wait time for Infected Space Elite, in a PuG team, is around 16 seconds.
By comparison, you'll wait nearly five minutes for a PuG team for Infected Ground, and unless people are after the optional or the accolade, it barely ever pops up in ESTF. Now, I will not argue - Infected Ground - to me - probably constitutes the hardest of the Elite Ground STFs (not counting Hive), and it is long to boot. But if you know what you're doing, it's still fun. But is it worth it? No, absolutely not. Because in the time it takes to run Infected Ground, you could probably get twice the Dilithium and the equivalent Omega Marks from running Infected Space and Cure Space.
Similarly, Mine Trap - probably my favorite of the big-team, ground PvE queues. Takes a long time, requires a lot of effort - still a very fun mission. Worth it? Nope. Yet Big Dig? Not particularly difficult, and I wouldn't go so far as to call it "good" - it's passable. Yet you can get a PuG team for that in six minutes or so (for a 20 man ground) and be done in five or so minutes, with a decent team. And it awards 960 Dilithium and some gear as a reward.
Worth the effort? Probably.
So here's the thing. Ground is clearly not bad if you can get people to run Big Dig every five minutes or so, or spend all day in the Battlezone fighting Voth. So why not go back, look at the rewards for the other ground missions and update them to take into account the time and effort required to complete them, and thus give people more incentive to play these missions.
I don't really know exactly how you would need to alter the rewards to make it more of an incentive. Maybe add a permanent +50% Dilithium bonus to the rewards for ground missions, and buff the base amount of marks recieved by the same, perhaps?
Thoughts?
You're just a machine. And machines can be broken.
Post edited by johngazman on
0
Comments
The main reason I do not do ground STFs or large ground missions is time versus reward.
When I have done PUG groups for ground Infected, I found it took about 25 minutes to complete. I can do 2 space STFs in that same time.
My social group once did Infected, Cure and Kitomher (elite / space) in 30 minutes and then looked for other things to do (space) while we waited for the timers to reset.
Even after Cryptic forced us to spend skill points in ground, I still find it to be nothing more than a way to waste my time. When I login to the game I have a set time to play and I will use that time to earn what resources I need in the most efficient way possible.
While I cannot speak for the rest of Star Trek Online players, I feel that I am not alone in that, time is money in these games and in this game - space is where the fast cash / dill and so on is.
Cure and infected are considerably harder so I don't blame them, but KAGE? It's a walk in the park.
That's precisely my point. But the issue is that asking Cryptic to go back and rebuild every ground STF and PvE queue so that it's on par with Space STFs and PvE's in terms of time taken is a bit of a stretch.
Hence why I think addressing the rewards is a more viable option. I'm not trying to be greedy here, but I don't think that doubling what you get for - for example - Infected Ground is such a bad idea, considering it takes twice as long to complete as Infected Space. But that's just my opinion.
Ultimately, we've seen what Cryptic can do with ground gameplay if they put their mind to it - the Battlezone is the prime example of this; it's not absurdly difficult, but it's worth the effort at the same time. So I don't see why they aren't looking at making older ground PvE's much more appealing, even if it is only upping the rewards to reflect the difficulty.
I still greatly prefer ground though. Space is kind of boring in comparison, IMO. I don't think there is anything wrong with ground eSTFs, and I really don't understand why people complain about it.
THe issue has always been about the length and I would disagree IGE is probably the easiest out there straight line shooting nothing to defend and clickies to to do. Cure Ground has clickies but no real hordes to prevent them from unclicking. KA is a PITA if the people do not have at least the right gear to keep hordes away from the clickies
I also mildly detest fighting The Borg on the ground due to their adaptive shielding. It... Irritates me.
with mine trap it was always a struggle to get a quick instance running outside for the bonus rep 3 hours. removing that bonus in a time slot sadly has had a massive negative impact on an stf such as mine trap.
the bonus rep 3 hour time slot certainly focused a players game play, it also lead to stf queues always being busy and therefore quick. I think longest I ever waited was 5 mins for mine trap most of the time it was much less that that.
mine trap is certainly a great team play ground stf and lots of fun. down side is while grinding it can become repetitive. sad to hear the queues aren't running quick enough.
something to encourage people to play mine trap. a romulan rep ground set. that needs a generic romulan component similar to the borg neural processors. that is only awarded by playing mine trap. then excess 'romulan generic component' can be convert to dilithium just like with voth and borg components.
I agree.
I spent loads of time setting up my Rom/KDF and my Klingon engineers with mines and bombs, threat control and do enjoy setting up traps for the NPCs to walk in to.
But, I only ever get to do it, if I have enough time left over.
If I could spend the time earning just as much - I would break my game play up. I've had like 3 "breaks" (3 months or more away from the game) from STO since launch due to feeling no smarter than the NPCs, doing the same stuff over and over every day.
I'd love to earn max dil on 9 toons on ground maps in a few hours, but until that can happen, I will play only space, until I get bored again. Then it's off to Planetside 2, where I spend cash when I do not spend it here (love my purple floating tank on Miller!!)
Im going to go back and finish reading this thread but, I had to stop and respond to this
The borgs adaptive shielding has annoyed starfleet captains for almost 60 years now lol it is designed to exactly that haha
This is true. The lack of players could have been attributed to the timing, as i've just managed to get through a Mine Trap run. First time i've done it on my Rom Engineer, and I got the Saviour title on this run. But again, while it was fun, it wasn't worth 52 Romulan marks and 30 Fleet marks.
When you consider that because of the lack of players willing to do missions like Mine Trap means that you may do one, maybe two, runs per day, it's no more efficient a method of gaining Romulan Marks as the Dewa Sector Patrol Daily. Not to mention that Mine Trap doesn't give Dilithium, either. The only bonus you have is the chance that perhaps enough players will be around to allow more than one run per day.
I fear some of these opinions may be coloured by the fact that i'm doing the Romulan Rep again, and it has reaffirmed my belief that Rom Marks are absurdly hard to come by, unless you want to be bored out of your mind tagging Epohhs.
You got it. Tip of the Spear regularly does the ground STFs, and they are 15 minutes each. Please don't make them any easier, as most content is so easy now that the game is mostly boring.
also the timing of the sponsorship token for me was awful. I had just finished doing my 8th characters romulan reputation when they announced that it was coming lol talk about sods law. the sponsorship token is a nice addition but I did 8 characters reputations grinding mine trap. I wish there was a ground set, I know I deserve one after the amount of runs I did.
maybe increasing the marks rewarded a little would be a nice touch. but a real incentive would be to have dilithium added. if the anti squatter/sponger/leech mechanism is working well for mine trap, then surely adding dilthium would be deserved and beneficial to both the stf and the players.
You mean the clicky in the room? It's easy to deal with. The whole STF consists of clearing the large room, someone enters clicky room, B3, A3, B2, A2, B1, A1 while the others take out the generators and ignore all borg that spawn. The person in the room watches the minimap and when everyone arrives at next generator he clicks the next in the sequence. Easy as can be. If the person in the room can't kill the borg they can kite them, and if they can't do that either they shouldn't be in the room.
Like I said it's so simple I finished it with just three of us including optional. Granted we were all engineers and engineers wtfpwn ground. Three engineers with mines = GG.
My usual STF run is the conduit for space, KAGE for ground, log on another character, repeat. Or at least that's what it used to be. Those are the two fastest, easiest STFs.
2 very few space stfs, even non borg queues fail. By contrast many pugs fail ground
3 all ground queues are significantly longer than the space queues. Both the wait to start and time to complete.
4 marks per hour are half to a fifth of space.
5 no boffs
The sphere shows that fixing these gets people to run ground.