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Let the top performers go, Cryptic.
leviathan99
Member Posts: 7,747 Arc User
I am not a top performer, first of all. I consume content semi-fast but I'd wager I do replay more than average. I DO upgrade gear. I doubt I'm a top DPSer and I made a decision a long time ago not to run with a DPS meter or look at charts.
But I made this observation recently:
And this is why I'm saying right now:
- Like most players, I don't PvP. I don't want you to try to entice me into PvP.
- Getting outDPSed by other players is not really that demoralizing.
- I spend money but am about done with any desire I had to because of what I perceive as balancing around curbing top performers.
- Let them go. Let them finish grinding spec points in no time flat. I don't care and I don't think Cryptic should either. If these changes are designed to target and stop them, I really feel Cryptic's systems teams have become Javert pursuing Jean Valjean over what is, in the end, just a loaf of bread. Somebody else progressing too fast won't interfere with my spending but Cryptic disrupting my much more modest gameplay in an attempt to police top performers will disrupt my spending and my activity and my loyalty towards, interest in, and willingness to recommend the game.
In short, where overperformers go...?
Let it go. Blow up the balance metrics.
http://youtu.be/O7h7Mfe8BDw
But I made this observation recently:
Cryptic seems to be basing decisions around what the top performers are doing. Most of the nerfs, rollbacks, etc. all seem to be based around curbing the rate of gains for top players (probably around one tenth of one percent of players). Cryptic seems to freak whenever the top one tenth of one percent of players dramatically outperform Cryptic's goals and they seem to be unable to let that go. So they keep coming up with solutions that influence the rest of us.
I think the skillpoint rollback was targeted at the top 0.1% to top 2% of all players and wound up claiming unintended targets and upsetting more people. So I think Cryptic then came up with this approach again (which is a stealth nerf to DOffing and critter kills) under some theory that it would rein in the top 0.1-2% of players and that the rest of us wouldn't notice or might even benefit. (I don't think they really stopped to think that people playing on normal difficulty without chain grinding were relying more on critter kills than mission skillpoints and thought a stealth kill SP nerf would slow down overperformers.) I think they honestly didn't consider how much it would affect the rest of us.
And this is why I'm saying right now:
- Like most players, I don't PvP. I don't want you to try to entice me into PvP.
- Getting outDPSed by other players is not really that demoralizing.
- I spend money but am about done with any desire I had to because of what I perceive as balancing around curbing top performers.
- Let them go. Let them finish grinding spec points in no time flat. I don't care and I don't think Cryptic should either. If these changes are designed to target and stop them, I really feel Cryptic's systems teams have become Javert pursuing Jean Valjean over what is, in the end, just a loaf of bread. Somebody else progressing too fast won't interfere with my spending but Cryptic disrupting my much more modest gameplay in an attempt to police top performers will disrupt my spending and my activity and my loyalty towards, interest in, and willingness to recommend the game.
In short, where overperformers go...?
Let it go. Blow up the balance metrics.
http://youtu.be/O7h7Mfe8BDw
Post edited by Unknown User on
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The lower tiered/newer players have to do adv content to get these items to upgrade their ships.
Its not fair to them.
And to think we had a chance to earn 14 bnp's in a single stf a while ago (which was way easier content then what we have today).
Once the developers prove their supremacy, hopefully they will go back and Nerf things back down so that it is enjoyable for the non-elite again. We just need to wait till they win this fight of theirs.
It just had one major flaw, though; namely, the assumption that people who finish their Specialization tree super-fast will leave. Ironically, it's the same false, panicky reaction Cryptic has to their speed-leveling. Truth is, they won't leave. They didn't leave when there was no more content to be played. They didn't leave when there were no more reps to fill. They didn't leave when there were no more Fleet goals to reach. Etc.
What Cryptic needs to do, is simply let go. Period. They should start trusting that the people who stayed through all previous periods of content drought, will stay now too.
I agree, though, they really should stop including the top 1% in their metrics, and make a good game playable for the average player. And those wanting to go 17x faster than elsewhere, let them.
i believe this is called a causality loop, where they inadvertently CAUSE the very event they are trying to avoid lol
Yup. They should talk to Janeway about that.
Love your sigs, btw! Super-cute!
I don't necessarily think they will.
When I say "let it go", I mean it in the sense Lily Sloane meant it when she said "blow up the ship" in First Contact. I feel like there's almost vendetta level focus here in slowing down fast progression.
Pretend the Borg are elite players and pretend Picard is a systems dev here.
http://youtu.be/oeGMHbK4NlA
LILY: You stealth nerfed us.
PICARD: This really isn't the time.
LILY: Okay. I don't know jack about game development systems design but everybody out there thinks that staying here and following this content grind strategy is suicide. They're just afraid to come in here and say it.
PICARD: The players are accustomed to adapting to my patches.
LILY: They're probably accustomed to your patches making sense.
PICARD: None of them understand the grind as I do. ...No one does. No one can.
LILY: What is that supposed to mean?
PICARD: Six years ago, I was invited to play a game called 'Farmville'. I had their app implanted throughout my social media profiles. My credit card was linked to my account, every trace of disposable income erased. I was one of them. So you can imagine, my dear, I have a somewhat unique perspective on the grind and I know how to implement strategy. Now if you will excuse me I have work to do.
LILY: I am such an idiot. ...It's so simple. The elite players hurt you, and now you're going to milk them dry.
PICARD: At my company we don't succumb to monetization. We have a more evolved sensibility.
LILY: Bull...! I saw the look on your face when you lowered those numbers on the spreadsheet. You were almost enjoying it!
PICARD: How dare you!?
LILY: Oh, come on, Captain. You're not the first man to get a thrill from nerfing someone. I see it all the time.
PICARD: Get out!
LILY: Or what? You'll nerfl me, like you nerfed the players who ground STFs after launch?
PICARD: There was no way to distinguish them from exploiters.
LILY: You didn't even try. Where was your evolved sensibility then?
PICARD: I don't have time for this.
LILY: Oh! Hey! I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your little quest. Captain Zynga has to go hunt his whales.
PICARD: What?
LILY: You do have facebook in the twenty-fourth century?
PICARD: This is not about monetization.
LILY: Liar!
PICARD: This is about saving the future of free-to-play gaming.
LILY: Jean-Luc, delete the friggin' spreadsheets!
PICARD: No! ...No!
(Picard breaks the starship display cabinet with his phaser rifle)
PICARD: No! ...I will not sacrifice the systems design. We've made too many compromises already. Too many retreats. They invade our space patrols and we fall back. They assimilate entire keybind systems, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be drawn here, ...this far, no further! And I will make them pay for their dilithium.
LILY: You broke your little ships. ...See you around, Zynga.
aww *blushes*
I refused to grind for the pidly story at the end of rep grinds. Im at level 55 on my main, and Im quickly losing interest in the rest of the story before I get there. My other 5 toons, havnt touched them. I was strongly considering buying more upgrade tokens for the rest of my alts, but not until the diamond quarry slave labor under the whip of a Christopher Walken villain is removed. I kept my alt family low with no plans to expand beyond 4 Feds, 1 Rom, and 1 Klink. Now my family of 6 feels like a family of 20 mouths to feed. Ugh. Its true about the queues. Was on 2 nights ago, barely any queues to play. 20 man queues are ghost towns, didnt dare wait for those to fill. I though of all the "thousands and thousands" playing this game, what a pathetic showing on a weeknight.
As OP says, what are those 1%ers hurting the rest of us. They were crazy enough to overspend to get that way before DR, they'll likely keep spending.
Ive never even posted in the famous Doom thread, but its really looking like the End Times are here. Now I know theres no point in making the few foundry missions I always told myself Id get around to make. There literally is NO ONE left to play them when 5 man queues are starving for attention.
Bravo Stephen DeAngelo you dumbf***. Way to kill off the last remaining visual morsel of the Prime Universe of this IP. Hope you're proud of yourself. And all this time I hated Dan Stahls leadership, Stephen makes Dan look like a saint...
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
PWE/Cryptic probably doesn't care about the Elites as much as they;re making out, what they care about is that the Elites show up, supermaxgrind their way to the new top level stuff and buy the cool shinies they want, then leave.
They don't stick around, they're the player spike when new content comes out, and they're the ones that leave during the ho-hum average days of the game.
They don't show up for weekend events.
They don't show up for Featured Episode Re-Runs.
They sure as &%#$ don't show up every time new shinies hit the Cash Shop.
And that's the problem.
PWE/Cryptic want them to hang out and stay, get caught in the grind, be tempted to spend money for Zen, be in game the day new shinies hit the Cash Shop and be here to buy them, they want them to be stuck in the same slow grind the rest of us are and be here for their gimmicks and sales and new shinies..
That's why they're focused on making the endgame one big grind. They want all the Elites and PvPers at the end game to flock to buy Zen to trade with the casual grinders for Dilithium.
They want the Content Tourists to stick around to grind to get to the new content, hence why all of DR is level locked at steps to lvl60, they don't want someone to burn through the content and ditch, they want them to experience the grind, get frustrated, buy Zen, and then trade for Dilithium.
Everything boils down to "How can we drive players to give us money".
They don't give a %^&* about player metrics, not really, that's just the convenient excuse.
Almost called it.
Thats Gold Jerry! GOLD!
Capt. Will Conquest of the U.S.S. Crusader
That made me smile
any company who follows this path has sold it's soul to the devil. the only thing that held meaning was the brand name, and when i found them, the people that where nice and what not, when it dies, i re/build elsewhere to try to keep the spirit alive, even if just for my own sense of fun. love it, and it will live long after this MMO dies some day.
It almost seems like Cryptic has taken on the role of a nun in an old style Catholic school, wrapping the players across the knuckles with a ruler whenever they deviate from the given way of playing the game.
"You grind those PvE queues this instant, boy! Don't even think about playing patrols, or Foundry content. You will grind, and you will like it!" *WHAP!*
This character is why I don't play my Romulan any more. Tovan Khev is NOT my BFF! Get him off my bridge!
Except those people buy more overpriced garbage than anyone. Every ship for every trait, all their gear up to gold 14, every lobi console, on and on and on. They're the people who don't slog through the grind, but instead blow through it and measure themselves as they play it dozens of times. All the craptons of HP and repetitive content is to try and get us to be like that, flying DPS spreadsheets buying the absolute latest everything to trim down the slog, yet repeating things so often we convince ourselves that that IS the game. DR was built with them in mind, trying to create more players like that. Why would Cryptic care if they stick around, so long as they drop back in to buy each new shiny and encourage others to do the same?
and they don't even have the normal mission balances straight. I took Drummond into the delta to do the patrol mission on my way to finish the content. I'm in an eclipse, mk XIII A.M.A.C.O shield all beams are mk XIII everything else purple mk XII. flying the eclipse becasue i want that trait.
firt opponent is a vaadwaur frigate. FRIGATE. he had my shields down and hull south of 50% in about 90 seconds. that should not happen in normal difficulty. especially not when that same toon goes toe to toe with typhoons in the MU with zero difficulty.
and it's not like I have not seen this content. I just finished it with Deety just before the skills nerf.
The cure, though, is not to blame those going 17x faster, but Cryptic for their obsessively punitive, knee-jerk reaction to their progress.
Except it's not the 1%ers that generate a majority of STO's income, it's the average joe players who spend $20 on zen here and there, and maybe get suckered into impulse buying a lifetime membership when they go on sale or one of the megabundles like the LoR or DR packs because ooh, shiny! The 1%ers know how to get what they want without spending a dime, they're the ones who game the system and get their dil in game to trade for zen that the average joes put up for sale because they need the dil for fleet holding projects and now gear upgrades and don't know how to farm it in game efficiently. The "elite" players can hit their 8k refine cap across multiple characters daily in just a few hours, the average joe struggles to hit 8k on one or two characters.
And that is why cryptic is on this apparent crusade to make things difficult for them, they AREN'T spending money and cryptic wants them to. Only cryptic is always one step behind, and by the time they notice what's going on and nerf whatever the new flavor of the week is the 1%ers have already accomplished whatever it is they were doing and the following nerfs only hurt the average joes.
Do not mix up the whales with the 1%ers, the whales are average joes with big wallets, the 1%ers don't need to spend money to get everything they want from the game.
We have money to spend in this game but it has to be a worth wile investment. I bought the Voyager Bundle for the skins and the ship interior more than anything. That interior is so nice, I feel I got my monies worth there even though I have no intention of actually flying the Pathfinder. I can't make enough DL or EC to buy or make Superior Tech to upgrade enough of my ship to actually feel competitive in STO. I can easily breeze through the normal content but it just doesn't reward enough. I am not up to par with the advanced because I make enough to upgrade my ship to do better. This is really discouraging and has me looking for other games to play instead of STO.
I really hope who ever makes these decisions gets their elitist head out of their butt soon and starts to make some changes to STO that are more in line with the level most of the players are at. Bringing back the fun this game once offered is tied to how much money I feel I want to spend in this game.
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Here's the problem. What you describe is not an average joe.
What you describe is between 5-10% of players.
Here's the F2P trick.
Take a game with 100k active players cycling in and out, 50k in any given month, spending $15 a month. $750k a month.
Turn it into F2P. Get 300k+ players. 10% of them spend an average of $50 in any given month but the spread is wide, ranging from $5 to $500+ and the AVERAGE is $50. $1.5 million a month. Revenue has doubled and profits may be higher still if you've kept costs down. On a BAD month, revenue is back down to $750k. You can sustain the 30k cycling through spending easier because there's always fresh chum flowing through and the ones who stay are surrounded by people.
The smart move is not to be happy with just 5-10% spending and shoot for more people buying at smaller amounts. But it's a tempting (dumb) business model.
but the other end of it is, how long vs the old way, yes they would get more, but would it damage things in the long term squishing it actually to less over all if it runs people away then they would have made by not doing it? like, if you pick a plant slowly, it CAN come back, but to like do it over and over really quick it just falls over and dies off
What they fail to realize is that new players do not have level 50 gear. Most players already have high-end gear, but not the new ones. New players probably have Solanae set or Jemhadar set from the FE's.
It is really easy for pre-DR players to level up through content, but us newer players are having the expectation that we should have been playing before DR.
how about....working in a coal mine by DEVO?? would be fitting
I've been telling people this for ages but it's a hard concept to grasp.
The general belief is that gaming companies go free to play because they are about to go bankrupt.
No, they go free to play to make more money than they already were.
The game itself isn't that great, but it had some clear advantages over competing F2P games. Advantages that actually made it possible to recommend the game, in spite of its flaws. Now the advantages are gone, but the flaws remain.
I completely agree, and I said as such when PWE came in. When PWE bought Cryptic I went and read up on their other games, Lockboxes, random boxes, lockbox currencies (lobi) all of it is par for the course for PWE, and I went around like Cassandra calling attention to it, trying to warn the playerbase, and nobody listened, everyone said I was crazy and paranoid..
Which is exactly why PWE/Cryptic wants them to hang around and be caught in the grind between Content releases, they want them to stick around & buy all the time not just when they come back for the new content.
You misunderstand which 1% I'm referring to, I'm not talking about the ones that stick around PvPing between Content Releases, I'm talking about the ones who come back, buy up new ships and buy Zen for Dil to upgrade and gear up, do the new content, grind for marks (or whatever) to get the special gear, then leave until they hear about new content, I call them Content Tourists, they stop in, but don't stay, PWE/Cryptic wants them to stay, so they make everything they (and the rest of us) do as grindy as possible and encourage even more trips to the cash shop in the interim.
Lev gets it, btw, how have you been Lev? Long time no see.
Almost called it.