The rewards are not worth the headache. I'm ten months away from any meaningful R&D, and to be frank there are other games that deserve my attention and dollars.
At the rate dilithium can be earned with a reasonable amount of effort, theres no way I can outfit/refit all of the ships on all my alts without spending serious money. Three years of playing, with hundreds invested - only to be forced to spend again to be competitive.
Killing the desire to grind by making it hard that it scares away a chunk of the player base.
I'll be on to do my daily R&D - but beyond that Cryptic got it's last dollars from me.
Note the last time I said that it was 23 months without dropping a coin. Canceled my subscription. I just spent $250, and am feeling serious buyers remorse.
The ships are neat, the boffs meh, the content is pretty good, but when your friends leave - there is little reason to play. Other than to be a beta tester with the number of bugs that impact pretty much every facet of gameplay.
Nobody ever asked for normal and elite to be changed; most of us asked for a nightmare mode. Why couldn't you have just left the old difficulties alone and added a tougher one with better rewards?
Now there's a question for Geko & D'Angelo ! :cool:
I have not touched an STF since DR went live. I love a challenge but I am no TRIBBLE. I have been doing the Dyson Sphere Space/Ground for Dil and marks. Thankfully only my newest few alts don't have maxed rep with the ones that actually require STFs to progress. I 6 50s and 1 22. My day looks like the following, Log in each and set Doof assignments. Pick one and do Dyson. Get rep ticking down and move to the next. When all have rep, just do the Battlezones till my Dil is maxed on as many as I can before I burn out and log out.
Cryptic gets a 10/10 for the new storyline but they get a 0/10 in my book for how stf's were rebalanced and how the reward scheme was changed. Nobody ever asked for normal and elite to be changed; most of us asked for a nightmare mode. Why couldn't you have just left the old difficulties alone and added a tougher one with better rewards?
QFT
They never should have nerfed the rewards. If anything they should have increased them by double.
I have not touched an STF since DR went live. I love a challenge but I am no TRIBBLE. I have been doing the Dyson Sphere Space/Ground for Dil and marks. Thankfully only my newest few alts don't have maxed rep with the ones that actually require STFs to progress. I 6 50s and 1 22. My day looks like the following, Log in each and set Doof assignments. Pick one and do Dyson. Get rep ticking down and move to the next. When all have rep, just do the Battlezones till my Dil is maxed on as many as I can before I burn out and log out.
QFT
They never should have nerfed the rewards. If anything they should have increased them by double.
Agreed. Its not like this game has a great drop rate for items anyway. 99.9% of drops in this game is trash. The only place outside of the Exchange and Fleets to get good gear was PvE Queues. Now theres absolutely no real incentive to do a Que besides Rep Marks and to say you ran it.
Nope, I can barley hold what used to be a competent STF ship together in this game. So until I get to Level 60, and get my gear equally leveled, I won't embarrass myself, or pain other players with my explode -O- matic.
My question is more related to player behavior then to our current issues , but at the same time it is our current issues that are at the core of my question .
So my question is two fold:
- Now that you can no longer get the same awards as before , nor can many of you play the missions themselves for half of the previous awards -- do you still play the STF's , and if you do, why ?
- I'm also curious as to how you substitute your time in the STF's, aside from playing the DR mission content, and what do you see yourself doing once you're done with DR ?
I myself have chosen to prolong DR as much as I can by not playing it's story content every day , and when I do play , its usually on Elite mode that is a bit tedious , but at least I don't burn through it .
As someone who usually plays STF's , I have decided not to play them now as I see that my attempts at playing them would only show up on Cryptic's metrics as a justification for their perverse handling of the STF's & HP's and awards in general , and I'm not willing to pat them on the back for a job well done .
Answer: I no longer play STFs. The rewards are insulting for the time spent trying to earn them; the game play isn't as much fun. This applies to Normal and Advanced. (I'm omitting Elite, as I'm lacking the gear and skill sets to be effective in a PUG situation; I don't have a team or fleet mates to join with on short notice.)
As a result, I spend most of my time (right now) doing DOff assignments and Crafting leveling. That includes going to Starfleet Academy. I'm also endeavoring to help my fleets by contributing; what I earn is turned around to help level them. (With the latest T5-U updates I realize I'd still like to try a couple of fleet ships on the FED side -- and we're not at Tier V shipyards yet...)
Which brings me to the other topic...
I haven't started DR yet.
I own the TR Ops Pack; I've unpacked ships, Intel officers, etc. But I feel there's too many issues (based on bug reports) to invest any time in the Delta Quadrant.
So... I'll continue in maintenance mode for a while. My inventories are cleaned up; my BOffs feel balanced; it might be time for a crew-wide uniform change for one of my toons. All in all, I expect STFs to change (based on BorticusCryptic's recent comments). And I look forward to the Delta Quadrant missions AFTER the next major patching this Thursday, so I can also do STFs again.
BUT...
No major fixes, less in-game happiness, no game play, no Zen spent by me, no desire.
And I'll write off my expenditures and move on.
Yes, STF issues and DR problems (such as the low Delta Marks payouts) are actually killing my desire to continue. And I know I'm not alone on that.
They are talking about space and not ground for the HP value adjustment...as adjusting ground would be just stupid silly...and ground does not suffer from the horrible scaling that space does. For instance, ground advance does not have 10X the HP of normal. Or at least that is one's hope. They can't be THAT stupid can they?!?
Lol I dont know there so lets stay tuned. I had fun on ground so far but the reward is still pitiful. I'm curious how this quick fix is gonna be applied.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I use to run elites everyday. ISE, KVW, VCE, UIE(ground), DRSE(ground), CSE if I had atl least one friend from the fleet with me. Hive Elite, but only with a full fleet run.
I loved pugging and keeping everyone's bacon out of the frying pan with my agro monster cruiser. It allowed me to play whenever I had time without needing members of my fleet on to back me up.
Because I opted to make my cruiser heal and threat heavy I cant pull 40k dps. My play style no longer fits in Advance content. The dps race has been magnified a billion fold, with optionals that now fail entire missions.
I no longer pug. I no longer do any of the above mentioned content, Even with all the millions in gear, doffs, and years of subscribed playtime. I am unhappy to say the least.
This engineer didn't even feel like he got dinner and a movie first!
At the moment im ignoring the pve Queue as im not lvl 60 on any of my 5 chars and have lots of marks for all but the new rep.
I agree the big nerf to dill rewards is a big put off to me, as that was the only reason i kept doing STF once i had maxed my reps out.
They're really not as bad as people are making them out to be, yea they take more time, much more difficult to steamroll. The only beef I have is the rewards not being quite enough in my opinion.
TheGrateLordeCheesus Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM Doesn't Owe AnyoneEC Kirks Prot
Haven't done a single STF since DR launched. I found the nerf to rewards to be thoroughly disgusting. Plus, changing up the difficulties makes for more annoyance than I'm generally prepared to expose myself to. Those are reasons enough for me to boycott.
They're really not as bad as people are making them out to be, yea they take more time, much more difficult to steamroll. The only beef I have is the rewards not being quite enough in my opinion.
Having leveled a bit, the increase in difficulty is probably warranted. However, why did they mess with the rewards? If elite leads to lots of failures then a dil increase would be warranted. However, right now because they scaled the rewards back for everything else with elites make the same amount they did when they were easy the time investment is not warranted. There are other ways to make dil. But soloing everyday gets old fast. Cryptic would be wise to keep people using queues post 50, without that interaction with other players, I would be far less involved in the game. And less involvement --> less inclination to spend money.
The core problem with the STF is that in the end, you have to grind them over and over again. So even IF the advanced version would be fun at first, after a while they would become annoying.
Since there is no fun in them either way, people just want them to be over as quickly as possible, so that they can get their loot. That is the fundamental flaw in the system.
Today I did a CSA, and we wound up doing it with only 3 ppl; and we made the Optional, after all.
No, this isn't one of the many granstanding posts, saying it's all easy. Quite the opposite. Mostly, it's utter fail. Then you're busting your chops for a pathetic 10 Omega marks consolation-prize. Besides, I do these for the Advanced R&D packs, to begin with.
Failing the Optional should not fail the mission, entirely. Period. You already made them 3 times as hard. I usually bring 20-22k, but I can't control what others bring to the table. And I'm getting tired, very rapidly, of having to pay for someone else's fail.
Today I did a CSA, and we wound up doing it with only 3 ppl; and we made the Optional, after all.
No, this isn't one of the many granstanding posts, saying it's all easy. Quite the opposite. Mostly, it's utter fail. Then you're busting your chops for a pathetic 10 Omega marks consolation-prize. Besides, I do these for the Advanced R&D packs, to begin with.
Failing the Optional should not fail the mission, entirely. Period. You already made them 3 times as hard. I usually bring 20-22k, but I can't control what others bring to the table. And I'm getting tired, very rapidly, of having to pay for someone else's fail.
If you're doing advanced and only 3 people you're obviously exploiting the system as elites were made for your kind.
If you're doing advanced and only 3 people you're obviously exploiting the system as elites were made for your kind.
LOL @ Elite for me. I feel flattered, don't get me wrong. :P But, sadly, you're utterly missing the point: in PUGs you don't get to choose who you wind up with. And THAT is really the problem. These Advanced are far from undoable, was my example, but you simply don't have any control over the rest of your team. And since I bet the vast majority isn't at lv 60 yet, or has invested in upgrading their gear, chances are these Advaned are, in the PUG, at least, almost guaranteed fail. 4 ppl of my level and (still moderate) DPS can do these Advanced queues relatively easily. Getting 4 of us together, in a PUG, is quite another matter, was the point.
Did some more queues last night. ISA was a total disaster, some pug popped a gen early and it was over... the HP levels on the borg were insane. After that we did CSA which we somehow got optional on which was shocking seeing how the borg BoPs had over half a mil health each... whole mission felt off to me especially seeing how easy it was to pop the cubes yet the spheres and BoPs took forever to kill. Also tried out Bug Hunt advanced which felt like I was playing Starship Trooper Online the whole time, and the so called 'explosive expert' takes forever to plant his explosives during the last part, my doffs could have done better. Overall it was kind of a lame mission that felt out of place to me. Lastly I did the Elachi ground mission on elite difficulty, was able to complete it, didn't get the optional because honestly the spiders just come out of nowhere sometimes and on elite setting they aren't as fragile as they usually are. After my experience last night I think I'm going to stick with ground queues once they improve the rewards because right now elite space is only for tacs in 30k dps boats which sucks because it limits what I can do and it really throws scis and tanks under the bus, it wouldn't be so bad if everything wasn't time sensitive now. Definitely no queues until the rewards improve.
Comments
At the rate dilithium can be earned with a reasonable amount of effort, theres no way I can outfit/refit all of the ships on all my alts without spending serious money. Three years of playing, with hundreds invested - only to be forced to spend again to be competitive.
Killing the desire to grind by making it hard that it scares away a chunk of the player base.
I'll be on to do my daily R&D - but beyond that Cryptic got it's last dollars from me.
Note the last time I said that it was 23 months without dropping a coin. Canceled my subscription. I just spent $250, and am feeling serious buyers remorse.
The ships are neat, the boffs meh, the content is pretty good, but when your friends leave - there is little reason to play. Other than to be a beta tester with the number of bugs that impact pretty much every facet of gameplay.
Those will be back, they are mentionee in the latest patch notes as temporarily removed while being fixed.
Now there's a question for Geko & D'Angelo ! :cool:
QFT
They never should have nerfed the rewards. If anything they should have increased them by double.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Campaign: The Battle of Neverwinter - NWS-DOQXFA4ZD
Prologue: A not so simple plan - NW-DCJG75B9D
Agreed. Its not like this game has a great drop rate for items anyway. 99.9% of drops in this game is trash. The only place outside of the Exchange and Fleets to get good gear was PvE Queues. Now theres absolutely no real incentive to do a Que besides Rep Marks and to say you ran it.
As a result, I spend most of my time (right now) doing DOff assignments and Crafting leveling. That includes going to Starfleet Academy. I'm also endeavoring to help my fleets by contributing; what I earn is turned around to help level them. (With the latest T5-U updates I realize I'd still like to try a couple of fleet ships on the FED side -- and we're not at Tier V shipyards yet...)
Which brings me to the other topic...
I haven't started DR yet.
I own the TR Ops Pack; I've unpacked ships, Intel officers, etc. But I feel there's too many issues (based on bug reports) to invest any time in the Delta Quadrant.
So... I'll continue in maintenance mode for a while. My inventories are cleaned up; my BOffs feel balanced; it might be time for a crew-wide uniform change for one of my toons. All in all, I expect STFs to change (based on BorticusCryptic's recent comments). And I look forward to the Delta Quadrant missions AFTER the next major patching this Thursday, so I can also do STFs again.
BUT...
No major fixes, less in-game happiness, no game play, no Zen spent by me, no desire.
And I'll write off my expenditures and move on.
Yes, STF issues and DR problems (such as the low Delta Marks payouts) are actually killing my desire to continue. And I know I'm not alone on that.
Lol I dont know there so lets stay tuned. I had fun on ground so far but the reward is still pitiful. I'm curious how this quick fix is gonna be applied.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I loved pugging and keeping everyone's bacon out of the frying pan with my agro monster cruiser. It allowed me to play whenever I had time without needing members of my fleet on to back me up.
Because I opted to make my cruiser heal and threat heavy I cant pull 40k dps. My play style no longer fits in Advance content. The dps race has been magnified a billion fold, with optionals that now fail entire missions.
I no longer pug. I no longer do any of the above mentioned content, Even with all the millions in gear, doffs, and years of subscribed playtime. I am unhappy to say the least.
This engineer didn't even feel like he got dinner and a movie first!
Brody ToS
I agree the big nerf to dill rewards is a big put off to me, as that was the only reason i kept doing STF once i had maxed my reps out.
Ship build coordinator for The Breakfast Club http://WWW.TBCSTO.COM
Doesn't Owe Anyone EC
Kirks Prot
Having leveled a bit, the increase in difficulty is probably warranted. However, why did they mess with the rewards? If elite leads to lots of failures then a dil increase would be warranted. However, right now because they scaled the rewards back for everything else with elites make the same amount they did when they were easy the time investment is not warranted. There are other ways to make dil. But soloing everyday gets old fast. Cryptic would be wise to keep people using queues post 50, without that interaction with other players, I would be far less involved in the game. And less involvement --> less inclination to spend money.
Since there is no fun in them either way, people just want them to be over as quickly as possible, so that they can get their loot. That is the fundamental flaw in the system.
No, this isn't one of the many granstanding posts, saying it's all easy. Quite the opposite. Mostly, it's utter fail. Then you're busting your chops for a pathetic 10 Omega marks consolation-prize. Besides, I do these for the Advanced R&D packs, to begin with.
Failing the Optional should not fail the mission, entirely. Period. You already made them 3 times as hard. I usually bring 20-22k, but I can't control what others bring to the table. And I'm getting tired, very rapidly, of having to pay for someone else's fail.
If you're doing advanced and only 3 people you're obviously exploiting the system as elites were made for your kind.
Awoken Dead
Now shaddup about the queues, it's a BUG
LOL @ Elite for me. I feel flattered, don't get me wrong. :P But, sadly, you're utterly missing the point: in PUGs you don't get to choose who you wind up with. And THAT is really the problem. These Advanced are far from undoable, was my example, but you simply don't have any control over the rest of your team. And since I bet the vast majority isn't at lv 60 yet, or has invested in upgrading their gear, chances are these Advaned are, in the PUG, at least, almost guaranteed fail. 4 ppl of my level and (still moderate) DPS can do these Advanced queues relatively easily. Getting 4 of us together, in a PUG, is quite another matter, was the point.