Sigh... We're getting real close to an overall loss of players, folks.
Interesting to note: While peaks are expected and seen on weekends, the typical trend is either a slow increase or relatively static number during weekdays (based on the 3 month data). Post-DR, there has been a marked decrease during the workweek.
I spent an evening downloading DR. Fired up the game. After finding out with shock and horror that all my super expensive lobi/lockbox ships are now in the same not-T6 trash tier as everything else, I fired up ISE just to warm up. Or whatever ISE is called nowadays.
Imagine how much fun I had, how excited I was to find that the mission's enemies now took 3 times longer to kill and "optional" objectives were now required objectives. Imagine how much that fun and excitement compounded when we finally got to the end screen, and we got half the reward that was the previous norm.
Miission is harder, takes 3 times longer, gives half the reward, and you're wondering why the queues are dead?
^^^^ Cryptic, Take note. This, so much this.
A shame they don't seem to play the game or they might discover what makes it fun/worthwile for players.
Please bring back the old Normal, Elite ( renamed Advanced ) STFs and Fleet actions and simply create new harder Elite versions to be added to the ques with a proper scaled up reward.
Please bring back the old Normal, Elite ( renamed Advanced ) STFs and Fleet actions and simply create new harder Elite versions to be added to the ques with a proper scaled up reward.
Right!
I fail to understand totally why Cryptic u know like in what intention they had to take well running contend away from players.
Granted, it must be quiet embarrassing that basically only 6 maps where continuously running by 90% of the in game population. Reason was that they were good u know... not some sort of exploitable, power creeped environment needed to be removed. All the other contend was simply not quiet able to hold up to those borg STF and the customers behaviour demonstrated that of course.
Well I checked my fleets yesterday and asked if someone feels to queue up for an advanced STF. I got no response you know
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
you think that's bad? i can't even QUE an elite, the only one i was looking for that seemed to have any interest a few times was Nukara ground, the one with the boss guy in it and the portals, and that didn't even pop, was like wow, tumble weeds anyone?
I play STOs endgame for almost 3 years, I was forced to reduce it down to 5% the past 2 weeks, tendency dropping. Reason is the fact that they killed the fun to play with casuals and only doing PvEs in elite teams gets boring and former benefits as in grinding are removed as well.
Players (New ones, casuals as well as seasoned veterans with massive investments into STO) all start talking about leaving the game just because of this.
Think the general STO player is used to painful grinds and slow rewards and could live with the cutback. However at the moment there is hardly anything to play with at all. Thats the problem which needs a solution. And it better be a quick one.
As it has been stated multiple times, all the extra hull for ship in PvE does nothing for the game but limit any chance of doing them to ultra high DPS players (Scimies with plasma & co).
As it has been stated multiple times, all the extra hull for ship in PvE does nothing for the game but limit any chance of doing them to ultra high DPS players (Scimies with plasma & co).
Exactly, it has destroyed the success of the average team in STO making it difficult for strong and weak players to team up for a joyful gaming experience, one they could always have the past years without many problems. Nothing more has been accomplished.
The result are empty queue lists and thereby a social hub for likeminded but different skilled players to meet, interact and help one another is gone.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
they should try nerf batting something that is NOT players, like some of these slug fests that drag for hours shoved into these 15 minute fail maps, like a combo nerf bat, like 3 to the stomach, 1 to the back on the way down, and 5 to the head kinda nerf batting lol
Reason, crickets and tumbleweeds looks kinda bleak.
like being dropped in the Antarctic and told to build a house and live there (starting with just a shovel) and that says nothing for the food or heating lol :S
you think that's bad? i can't even QUE an elite, the only one i was looking for that seemed to have any interest a few times was Nukara ground, the one with the boss guy in it and the portals, and that didn't even pop, was like wow, tumble weeds anyone?
I know what you mean. Last night the number of queues that were utterly dead (and these used to be at least semi-popular) was terrifying. People just aren't bothering anymore. This game is in serious trouble.
People seem now to play bug hunt as it drops the rep-needed makrs, nukara trans-as it can be completed in even under 5 min (and it's fun) and station defense (where most fail due to the insufficient time to rescue the 6 engineers - lets face it, again, without uber-DPS and sniper rifles, it takes Rainbox 6-like planning to do this eng rescue in the station defense mission).
Anyway, as I already said, we had like 3 events to push people logging in for DR. Free lobi, dilithium WE (one of the player's favorite event), and for German/French, another free lobis/keys event.
They REALLY want to push people logging in, as in DR didn't work.
I've said this in another thread - they are trying to salvage the metrics, knowing they have to be shown to the upper brass who will flip when they see the game in such a desperate way less than three weeks after a major expansion. The Lobi, this Mirror event, all of it has been dragged out to get more logins and bump up the appearance of active users per day.
I'd love to see how they plan on making content worthwhile for people who've hit level 60. We've been hit with insultingly low XP for kills and parts of the game (Ker'rat) have become completely inaccessible for level 60s. The mirror event is on its way, and from the sound of things the NPCs will be level 50 so killing them will net me a grand total of 0 xp.
I joined teh DPS channel for an ISA run on one of my alts level 54, MK XII ap beams, three spire tac consoles and one green mk xii - 18k dps we finished it in like 5 minutes or so. It doesn't take awesome gear to do the queues, it does take dps and folks wanting to pump out the dps. So Cryptic has effectively pushed me to seggregate myself from the masses because it's not viable to run ISA in a pug. Or any other advanced queue other than crystalline really.
This whole mess is due to metrics. The old elite borg queues paid out more than the others in a time/reward metric and cryptic instead of making the AI better decided to just add HP and call it a day. So now bring the deeps or don't bother. It's annoying because some of my fun BOP builds are no longer viable (I had a nice little torp build I liked to bring out).
I also think that Cryptic pushed this far out so they could roll out the power creep. Doesn't help the average joe now, but it creates this incentive to go for the new shiny thing. Tier 6 ships, then new lockbox ships/traits/gear, and on and on. There has to be an incentive to buy new stuff after all. It's a business.
They miscalculated, even though I found a way to complete content my wallet is still firmly shut. That is until I see the queues fixed. I think the game will die if they don't allow the casual player to have a chance at finishing an advanced queue without bringing the DPS.
this does not help watching S1 Ep15 Shuttlepod One of Enterprise and reading these :S LOL
I'll have to try bug hunt though, i have not played it, so i will do a normal first and see how it goes, ty for the tip
Think its the best about the new release and a good job by cryptic. Cuz its needed by many atm in light of delta reput u also have a fair chance to queue up.
I's really a fun map!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Queues are remarkable dead, yes. I don't think it's necessarily the result of a mass protest and/or exodus, though. It's probably ere an indication that the difficulty of some of the queues throws too many people off.
Queues are remarkable dead, yes. I don't think it's necessarily the result of a mass protest and/or exodus, though. It's probably ere an indication that the difficulty of some of the queues throws too many people off.
People won't play it if it's not fun and/or rewarding.
The new ques are neither so no wonder people don't play them.
Since this was pretty much the entire endgame for STO, they just stuck a knife in the entire game.
Eventually, they'll have to change it.. they won't have a choice. But they're going to be stubborn and drag it out as long as they can trying to compensate by doing things like Dilithium Weekends, Mirror Event, etc to try and get people to log in.
They want to hold on as long as possible to the illusion that DR is a success.
so... how long till cryptic admits the vast majority of the playerbase is outright ignoring/refusing to play STFs, fleet actions/etc? and decides to... you know, tune them?
queues are somehow deader than they were pre-DR, the only queue that actually sees some degree of moderate activity is mostly crystalline catastrophe and disconnected with some low activity for infected and khitomer.
before there used to be 70-150 people playing infected on any given time, 50-100+ doing crystalline, 30-80+ doing khitomer, not to mention plenty of other queues also saw some activity like undine infiltration, vicious cycle, rh'lhho station, the breach, gorn minefield, colony invasion, starbase defense.
the state of the queues is depressing, and this is supposed to be an expansion release.
good, let them stay dead, as there is no point to play them any way.
Queues are remarkable dead, yes. I don't think it's necessarily the result of a mass protest and/or exodus, though. It's probably ere an indication that the difficulty of some of the queues throws too many people off.
I happen to know difficulty, protest AND left people contribute to the reason for them being empty.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
<- longtime STO player, have played with people since the early days, more or less continuously.
We (our collective group) have been through a lot and put up with a lot and frankly we're fairly happy to keep playing with only a slight small problem.
There is basically no driving reason to do STFs now assuming you already have any marks you needed for rep grinding. I'll let the implications of that sink in. It's also been made clear that if you grind anything like mad you risk a surprise character rollback. Huge loss of trust there.
This means the endgame queues are largely dead outside of a few instances. Hope you really, really like CCE because there isn't much else going on in space once you hit true endgame. In addition, PVP queues have been dead for a long time already.
There just isn't anything to do anymore. My fellow fleet members are fairly hardcore long time players who spend significant money on this game but most of the endgame queues dead people are just moving on.
I suspect that many of those who are no longer queuing are the Scimitard Vapers, who suddenly found that they are no longer able to finish Infected in two minutes, and their vape build doesn't really vape anymore.
Oh but they still can do all that but you hardly encounter them in public queues contributing to a successful pug. But your right of course, result is the same queue list empty still.
There is basically no driving reason to do STFs now assuming you already have any marks you needed for rep grinding. I'll let the implications of that sink in.
I still do them for the Advanced R&D packs.
It's also been made clear that if you grind anything like mad you risk a surprise character rollback. Huge loss of trust there.
'Specgate' was a major faux pas on their end. I was surprised to see no mention of a huge nerf of Argala in the patch notes today (although, last time, they didn't exactly announce the rollbacks, either; so, Brace For Impact). Should they be so deluded as to repeat the same mistake today, then I'll quit, before I can say "I quit." Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though.
There is basically no driving reason to do STFs now assuming you already have any marks you needed for rep grinding. I'll let the implications of that sink in. It's also been made clear that if you grind anything like mad you risk a surprise character rollback. Huge loss of trust there.
There just isn't anything to do anymore. My fellow fleet members are fairly hardcore long time players who spend significant money on this game but most of the endgame queues dead people are just moving on.
Precisely the problem.
Now imagine what happens when new players and season players who return have leveled to 60 and begin to upgrade their gear in this awesome joyfully experience of DR and they find themselves in ISA instead of ISE.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
LoR could be "done" as fast as DR, if not even faster. Just run the Romulan missions one after the other, and you're done.
I didn't have that kind of stamina. I could only do a couple of missions a day. The "paradise city" arc took at least half a week. And once you finished that, you could level a Klingon in an additional 20 levels of new content.
The gatedness of DR content breaks the flow for me, so I'll play until I hit a barrier, then doff for a couple of days, occasionally upgrading something, until I can play the storyline again.
The combination of the level gates in DR, the loadout bugs, and the ongoing doffing/crafting/upgrading bugs has really sapped my enthusiasm.
Plus, I now have Diablo 3 for the PS4 which has no story, but lets me cut slaughter hordes of demons, so that's been some strong time competition.
There just isn't anything to do anymore. My fellow fleet members are fairly hardcore long time players who spend significant money on this game but most of the endgame queues dead people are just moving on.
I've reached that roadblock as well. I'm at Endgame but am essentially locked out of Endgame since I'm not one of the 5% of Godlike players who can literally DPS the Gods out of existence. No chance of being able to complete the Advance queues, no one playing them and the frustration around cooldowns from Optional failure is in no way enticing me to come back soon.
Its now log on, do the odd story mission (which I am taking my time through), DOFF for ten mins and then leave the game in the dying state it's in.
It's 1% at most, not 5%.
I'm willing to be with the most that consider themselves superior DPSers that they utterly fail to complete Borg DCed Elite and BoK Elite.
The hope was that people would spend millions of dil on re-buying their old gear just for permission to take a 200% reduction in dil drop on "old-elite".
They are holding out in the hope that people are just working on upgrading but that it will take time.
Really, all failures I see in advanced queues at this point in time have been due to poor tactics being exercised during pugs rather than lack of DPS. For example, yes, I know a cube over a transformer in KSA has more HP. Concentrate more on it and team attack it, don't spawn three cubes at the same time and then get pissed when you're overwhelmed and next thing you know the probe watch has to attempt to fend off two or three cubes while keeping probes out of the gate. These things are really not hard to succeed at without uber DPS if you use your brain more and your spacebar less.
Comments
Interesting to note: While peaks are expected and seen on weekends, the typical trend is either a slow increase or relatively static number during weekdays (based on the 3 month data). Post-DR, there has been a marked decrease during the workweek.
^^^^ Cryptic, Take note. This, so much this.
A shame they don't seem to play the game or they might discover what makes it fun/worthwile for players.
Please bring back the old Normal, Elite ( renamed Advanced ) STFs and Fleet actions and simply create new harder Elite versions to be added to the ques with a proper scaled up reward.
Right!
I fail to understand totally why Cryptic u know like in what intention they had to take well running contend away from players.
Granted, it must be quiet embarrassing that basically only 6 maps where continuously running by 90% of the in game population. Reason was that they were good u know... not some sort of exploitable, power creeped environment needed to be removed. All the other contend was simply not quiet able to hold up to those borg STF and the customers behaviour demonstrated that of course.
Well I checked my fleets yesterday and asked if someone feels to queue up for an advanced STF. I got no response you know
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
As it has been stated multiple times, all the extra hull for ship in PvE does nothing for the game but limit any chance of doing them to ultra high DPS players (Scimies with plasma & co).
Exactly, it has destroyed the success of the average team in STO making it difficult for strong and weak players to team up for a joyful gaming experience, one they could always have the past years without many problems. Nothing more has been accomplished.
The result are empty queue lists and thereby a social hub for likeminded but different skilled players to meet, interact and help one another is gone.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
Reason, crickets and tumbleweeds looks kinda bleak.
like being dropped in the Antarctic and told to build a house and live there (starting with just a shovel) and that says nothing for the food or heating lol :S
I know what you mean. Last night the number of queues that were utterly dead (and these used to be at least semi-popular) was terrifying. People just aren't bothering anymore. This game is in serious trouble.
I've said this in another thread - they are trying to salvage the metrics, knowing they have to be shown to the upper brass who will flip when they see the game in such a desperate way less than three weeks after a major expansion. The Lobi, this Mirror event, all of it has been dragged out to get more logins and bump up the appearance of active users per day.
Awesome.
Free Tibet!
This whole mess is due to metrics. The old elite borg queues paid out more than the others in a time/reward metric and cryptic instead of making the AI better decided to just add HP and call it a day. So now bring the deeps or don't bother. It's annoying because some of my fun BOP builds are no longer viable (I had a nice little torp build I liked to bring out).
I also think that Cryptic pushed this far out so they could roll out the power creep. Doesn't help the average joe now, but it creates this incentive to go for the new shiny thing. Tier 6 ships, then new lockbox ships/traits/gear, and on and on. There has to be an incentive to buy new stuff after all. It's a business.
They miscalculated, even though I found a way to complete content my wallet is still firmly shut. That is until I see the queues fixed. I think the game will die if they don't allow the casual player to have a chance at finishing an advanced queue without bringing the DPS.
I'll have to try bug hunt though, i have not played it, so i will do a normal first and see how it goes, ty for the tip
Think its the best about the new release and a good job by cryptic. Cuz its needed by many atm in light of delta reput u also have a fair chance to queue up.
I's really a fun map!
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
People won't play it if it's not fun and/or rewarding.
The new ques are neither so no wonder people don't play them.
Since this was pretty much the entire endgame for STO, they just stuck a knife in the entire game.
Eventually, they'll have to change it.. they won't have a choice. But they're going to be stubborn and drag it out as long as they can trying to compensate by doing things like Dilithium Weekends, Mirror Event, etc to try and get people to log in.
They want to hold on as long as possible to the illusion that DR is a success.
good, let them stay dead, as there is no point to play them any way.
I happen to know difficulty, protest AND left people contribute to the reason for them being empty.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
It sucks to sink time and effort into something for peanut crumbs.
Probably all true.
The dead queues is something Cryptic will need to address, though: if for nothing else, it makes em look bad.
We (our collective group) have been through a lot and put up with a lot and frankly we're fairly happy to keep playing with only a slight small problem.
There is basically no driving reason to do STFs now assuming you already have any marks you needed for rep grinding. I'll let the implications of that sink in. It's also been made clear that if you grind anything like mad you risk a surprise character rollback. Huge loss of trust there.
This means the endgame queues are largely dead outside of a few instances. Hope you really, really like CCE because there isn't much else going on in space once you hit true endgame. In addition, PVP queues have been dead for a long time already.
There just isn't anything to do anymore. My fellow fleet members are fairly hardcore long time players who spend significant money on this game but most of the endgame queues dead people are just moving on.
To other games
Oh but they still can do all that but you hardly encounter them in public queues contributing to a successful pug. But your right of course, result is the same queue list empty still.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1275941
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I still do them for the Advanced R&D packs.
'Specgate' was a major faux pas on their end. I was surprised to see no mention of a huge nerf of Argala in the patch notes today (although, last time, they didn't exactly announce the rollbacks, either; so, Brace For Impact). Should they be so deluded as to repeat the same mistake today, then I'll quit, before I can say "I quit." Let's hope it doesn't come to that, though.
Precisely the problem.
Now imagine what happens when new players and season players who return have leveled to 60 and begin to upgrade their gear in this awesome joyfully experience of DR and they find themselves in ISA instead of ISE.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
I didn't have that kind of stamina. I could only do a couple of missions a day. The "paradise city" arc took at least half a week. And once you finished that, you could level a Klingon in an additional 20 levels of new content.
The gatedness of DR content breaks the flow for me, so I'll play until I hit a barrier, then doff for a couple of days, occasionally upgrading something, until I can play the storyline again.
The combination of the level gates in DR, the loadout bugs, and the ongoing doffing/crafting/upgrading bugs has really sapped my enthusiasm.
Plus, I now have Diablo 3 for the PS4 which has no story, but lets me cut slaughter hordes of demons, so that's been some strong time competition.
... PER CHARACTER
I am also not going to rebuy all my old gear for millions of dil or put dil into the crafting-upgrading lottery with the missing mods they promised.
And the copy-paste t5u can get a bucket to jump in, just to play queues with 200% reduced dil and forced failures
Either one of the those alone ranks as top stupidity in history of online - in a game that was already working
What a waste
So I mean you can add the stolen dil back or the stolen levels but then you still got the 25 other problems they introduced ruining the game still
I've reached that roadblock as well. I'm at Endgame but am essentially locked out of Endgame since I'm not one of the 5% of Godlike players who can literally DPS the Gods out of existence. No chance of being able to complete the Advance queues, no one playing them and the frustration around cooldowns from Optional failure is in no way enticing me to come back soon.
Its now log on, do the odd story mission (which I am taking my time through), DOFF for ten mins and then leave the game in the dying state it's in.
I'm willing to be with the most that consider themselves superior DPSers that they utterly fail to complete Borg DCed Elite and BoK Elite.
They are holding out in the hope that people are just working on upgrading but that it will take time.