Tribble Maintenance and Release Notes - January 22, 2015

coldsnapped

Tribble is being brought down for maintenance to update it to build ST.47.20150112a.6.

New Feature:

Foundry Top 3

• The Foundry Top 3 System is a new way for players to access Foundry missions in sector space.
• When at a point in Sector Space, up to 3 Foundry missions can be started from an interact, such as a system, if Foundry missions were created for that particular system.
  • Players will not see any missions not qualified for.
  • Missions that need review will also not be available.
• Currently, only Foundry missions that start at an interact in Sector Space will be used in the Top 3 System, not missions which start on a ground map.
• For more details, please visit the Foundry Top 3 blog at: http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9062663-foundry-top-three-system

General:

• Resolved an issue where Bridge Officers would be missing slotted powers just after being created.
• No Win Scenario is no longer available.
• The Cure Applied:
  • Decreased IKS Kang’s HP and Damage in Advanced mode.
  • Decreased mark rewards for meeting Normal optional objective from 25 to 15.
  • Changed the normal optional objective to completing the queue in 4 minutes.
  • Changes the Advanced required objective to completing the queue in 9 minutes.
  • Updated optional information contact to reflect these changes.
• Crystalline Catastrophe:
  • Decreased base mark rewards on Normal from 40 to 30.
  • Decreased base mark rewards on Advanced from 70 to 60.
  • Increased fail mark rewards on Advanced from 5 to 10.
  • Decreased Advanced optional timer from 10.5 minutes to 5 minutes.
  • Decreased maximum allowed defeated players for Normal optional from 5 to 3.
  • Decreased maximum allowed defeated players for Advanced required from 5 to 3.
  • Crystalline Entity:
    • There is no longer a safe inner distance on the Entity’s AOE shockwave.
    • The AOE shockwave no longer damages/destroys Crystalline Fragments large or small.
• Colony Invasion: No longer gives rewards for mandatory mission objectives.
• Fleet Alert:
  • Decreased mark rewards earned from waves 1 and 2 from 10 to 5.
  • Decreased mark rewards earned from wave 5 from 18 to 15.
• Bug Hunt
  • Normal rewards have been increased by 25%
  • Advanced rewards have been increased by 50%.
  • Elite rewards have been increased by 75%.

Systems:

• Concentrate Firepower:
  • Increased chance of free High Yield proc on Ranks I and II.
  • Added a buff icon when player receives a free High Yield mode.
  • Altered stacking behavior: Gaining a second free High Yield while the first is still active will now refresh the duration instead of being discarded.
• Command Bridge Officer Powers:
  • "Call Emergency Artillery"
    • May no longer be used while Cloaked.
  • "Phalanx Formation"
    • May no longer be used while Cloaked, or in a Social Zone.
    • Phalanx Formation's Rings can no longer be targeted by hostile NPCs.
    • Phalanx Formation cannot be activated while Engines are offline, but will no longer be cancelled if your Engines are knocked offline after it is activated.
• Reduced the time and Dilithium cost for making PADDs in the R&D Officer Training School.
  • Dilthium cost has been reduced to 200.
  • Creation time has been reduced to 30 minutes.
• Resolved an AI issue with all versions of Palm Strike that was sometimes causing AI to use this power at long range, or when there was no valid target to hit with it.
• Resolved an issue that was causing Crafted Space Shields to sometimes have Engine mods instead of Shield mods.
• Combat Hyper-Impulse Engines can be upgraded.

Content:

• “Empress Sela”
  • Updated the rewards to now include the Overcharged Plasma Sniper Rifle and Personal Covariant Shields as choices.
  • The Overcharged Plasma Sniper Rifle can be upgraded.
  • Personal Covariant Shields can be upgraded.
• "Desperate Measures"
  • Updated the rewards to now include the Prototype Gravitic Modulation Impulse Engine as a choice.
  • The Prototype Gravitic Modulation Impulse Engine can be upgraded.
• "Taris"
  • Updated the rewards to now include the Numiri Regenerative Shield Array as a choice.
  • The Numiri Regenerative Shield Array can be upgraded.

UI:

• Added the option to shut off Simple Ship Transition.
  • This option is found under Options>Basic >“Move equipped items to newly readied ships”.
• Bridge Officer Training Manuals now have search filters in the Exchange.

Known Issues:

• New systems are currently a work in progress including:
  • Captain Specialization Tree: Command Officer
  • Bridge Officer Specialization: Command Officer
  • Bridge Officer Training Revamp
  • New Research and Development School: Officer Training
    • All 3 classes are available to craft.
• VO in the new revamped Romulan episodes is not in its final state.

doublecha

I read "decreased","decreased","decreased","decreased","decreased"...
I understand nobody in PvE queues.

drake122svk

You know, decreasing rewards in PVE queues is not a good way to encourage people to play them again... just saying.

ussackerman

As I did read through ALL the notes here, I will make two points.

1) Decreasing rewards in non-Delta STFs while making them harder, and increasing Delta STF rewards does not entice me to want to play ANY STFs more.

2) I appreciate that the DEVs are listening to "some" of what we are saying.
a) Simple Ship Transition opt-out
b) Reduced time/cost of R&D PADDs
c) Adding special items from classic Romulan Missions as options on the new ones

majortiraomega

Cryptic, please, fix the crazy high hit point and shield point modifiers on NPCs. If you want to make the content more difficult, then please give NPCs DAMAGE RESISTANCE RATING and bridge officer abilities to cycle. Adding DRR will actually reduce player DPS because it will cut into beta stacking by the "high DPS crowd" and will greatly improve gameplay.

We all hate fighting meat shields with exponentially scaled hull/shield mods. Ignoring this fact is slowly killing off the existing longterm playerbase. Reducing the existing space rewards a third time in the last year is quite baffling. Is the intent to get players to stop playing space and move to ground combat?

ddesjardins

Is it the intention of Cryptic management to remove the STF's entirely?

If it is, you're doing a great job. Congratulations.

Now that we've got the upgrades, and worked out how to play each mission again - time to switch it up a notch. Reduce the rewards. Increase the difficulty.

I don't get it.

jam3s1701

ddesjardins wrote: »

Is it the intention of Cryptic management to remove the STF's entirely?

If it is, you're doing a great job. Congratulations.

Now that we've got the upgrades, and worked out how to play each mission again - time to switch it up a notch. Reduce the rewards. Increase the difficulty.

I don't get it.

Normally I'm not one to say wtf. .

But WTF

Pve is almost dead as is and now your "adjusting" ((nerf)) the only pve worth playing due to the non insta fail timers you put in. .

Oh well. . .

rtk142

coldsnapped wrote: »

Systems:

• Reduced the time and Dilithium cost for making PADDs in the R&D Officer Training School.
  • Dilthium cost has been reduced to 200.
  • Creation time has been reduced to 30 minutes.

Thank you.

And I agree with what appears to be the general sentiment, those changes to STFs aren't going to make people want to play them. Up the the dilithium for normal/advanced back to 480/960.

neos472

from what i am seeing and we most likely do not have the full picture is the first changes to make some less used STFs more viable to play as the rewards will be better. we are seeing the changes as soon as they agree upon them so im waiting till we have the full picture to render judgement.

hypl

RIP fleet marks. You've had a good run. *salutes*

dragonsbrethren

Already been phasing queues out of my rotation when I need marks because they're not worth the time investment to me, reducing mark payouts just pushes me farther in that direction.

I really don't understand this at all. At least it's not a blanket nerf, maybe those were paying out too good or something? But effortless Bug Hunt gets bumped up... So bizarre to care about that when there's no semblance of rewards scaling with effort anywhere else.

lucho80

Last couple of Tribble patches were going in the right direction. Then this one dropped like an atomic bomb.

Why would you decrease marks when people already complain about the grind?

Devs philosophy:
One step forward, two steps back.:mad:

jam3s1701

dragonsbrethren wrote: »

Already been phasing queues out of my rotation when I need marks because they're not worth the time investment to me, reducing mark payouts just pushes me farther in that direction.

I really don't understand this at all. At least it's not a blanket nerf, maybe those were paying out too good or something. So bizarre to care about that when there's no semblance of rewards scaling with effort anywhere else.

Its not marks that bother me. . . I can get them else where and atm I'm sat on thousands of them.

It's the fact as it is Very Rare mats in certain ques are almost impossible to obtain and now the ques that are worth while playing are getting the nerf so to speak which will make crafting harder even though they are adding some good features to it like the three on one school twenty hour projects they are making obtaining Very Rare mats harder.

What they need to do tbh is let them drop from normal ques with increasing amounts the harder they pve gets. .

Or let them drop else where etc. .

trekkat

Blood from a stone.

dragonsbrethren

jam3s1701 wrote: »

What they need to do tbh is let them drop from normal ques with increasing amounts the harder they pve gets. .

Or let them drop else where etc. .

Agreed. I think the queues would be in a much healthier state if normal had better rewards.

To break from the negativity, nice change on the PADDs! I thought the original pricing/timegate was alright, but this is a welcome change.

executiveone

lucho80 wrote: »

Why would you decrease marks when people already complain about the grind?

Exactly. Whatever the merits of these changes, they make CCA––one of the last PUG-able queues––more difficult and less rewarding. And the optics of doing that are just terrible.

eltatus

They really want us to play Argala and Bug Hunt, the metrics demand it.

pwecaptainsmirk

Hey everyone,
We have a post about some of this news going live in just a few minutes.

I will post a link to it here for easy reference.

We will do our best to answer any questions about it in the dedicated thread.

Thanks everyone!
~CaptainSmirk

colonelsanderz

Star Grind Online: Dilithium Rising

That is all...

eltatus

pwecaptainsmirk wrote: »

Hey everyone,
We have a post about some of this news going live in just a few minutes.

I will post a link to it here for easy reference.

We will do our best to answer any questions about it in the dedicated thread.

Thanks everyone!
~CaptainSmirk

What the blog is going to be about? The reward nerf or about the the fact that you guys keep ignoring the players? I hope both..

lucho80

I don't think there is any post that can fix player's minds with so many nerfs in a single post.

Also, are we ever going to see some older bugs that are verified be fixed? We went most of December without bug fixes, and I don't see patches for the older stuff that has been verified.

Example of old verified bugs by crypticfrost:
1) Gamma Orionis sector patrol accolade still tied to removed old mission
2) Aceton Assimilator drain

eltatus wrote: »

What the blog is going to be about? The reward nerf or about the the fact that you guys keep ignoring the players? I hope both..

Unless that post ends in them saying more xp and mark increases are coming and they're dedicating S10 to trying to finally lower the amount of bugs in this game, I doubt that thread will serve much purpose except bring out more bad feelings from the players.

pwecaptainsmirk

Here is the Forum Post about these changes with more details for everyone.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1354311

Have a look through and please post feedback and questions in the linked thread.

~CaptainSmirk

crypticarmsman

Wow - I guess Cryptic REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to make sure the DR metrics are skewed towards 'enticing' players to play DR content so that they can use the metrics in PWE meetings to still proclaim:

"Delta Rising in THE BEST EXPANSION EVER! and The players LOVE it."

It's really sad to me that the Lead STO game designers feel the best way to do it is decrease rewards in practically any other STF (and other PvE queue content.) I honestly do not understand the logic behind it. It really just is making me consider DROPPING this game entirely as in the last few patches we get one small positive (if you like the Foundry) but a MASSIVE amount of:

- Removed game content (NEVER a good thing for ANY MMO.)

- Decreased rewards in a lot of existing content which I again see as an attempt to skew metrics so Cryptic can go in to a PWE management meeting and tout how much of a 'success' Delta Rising has been since it launched.

It's really sad (IMO).

lucho80

crypticarmsman wrote: »

Wow - I guess Cryptic REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to make sure the DR metrics are skewed towards 'enticing' players to play DR content so that they can use the metrics in PWE meetings to still proclaim:

"Delta Rising in THE BEST EXPANSION EVER! and The players LOVE it."

Lol, I find it funny that they nerfed most things, but they increased Bug Hunt Elite (one of the more popular PvEs for premades) by 75%. Way to stack the deck in your favor.

toiva

Err... okay. Now 200 dil and half an hour for a training padd is more reasonable. Good that the exchange is being updated with the new category (not that it doesn't need to be looked at in detail and rebuilt to allow better filtering...).

Good the option for disabling 'Simple ship transition is in.


But hell, what is this new round of nerfing. Yes, you're buffing Bug Hunt (DR content, what a coincidence) and maybe Atmosphere assault next week, but nerfing all the other PvE queues that actually get to be played at least somewhat?! "Not cool!" as a cool kid would say some years ago.

hevach

The reward changes don't seem to make sense, except maybe Crystalline Catastrophe, which when the event isn't running has usually been one of the more reliably winnable queues for a long time.

Even the buff seems weird, since Bug Hunt seems to be the only active DR queue and the most reliably winnable one to boot.



If you look at the queues that people ran before DR (half the list or more) vs. the ones they run now (about five of them), it's not about rewards, it's about winnability. Before DR, it was more about rewards and to a lesser extent queue size, with a handful being left out for winnability reasons. But now it's ruled by winnability.

jam3s1701

hevach wrote: »

The reward changes don't seem to make sense, except maybe Crystalline Catastrophe, which when the event isn't running has usually been one of the more reliably winnable queues for a long time.

Even the buff seems weird, since Bug Hunt seems to be the only active DR queue and the most reliably winnable one to boot.



If you look at the queues that people ran before DR (half the list or more) vs. the ones they run now (about five of them), it's not about rewards, it's about winnability. Before DR, it was more about rewards and to a lesser extent queue size, with a handful being left out for winnability reasons. But now it's ruled by winnability.

The addition of the "instafail" timers are what have made 70% of ques not playable that's what imho needs to change :-\

hevach

If you want to look at rewards, too, the limiting factor right now is exp more than marks. The biggest reason the queues are dead is that huge swarm of people around Argala. They're there because experience gains in queues are almost trivial.

hevach

jam3s1701 wrote: »

The addition of the "instafail" timers are what have made 70% of ques not playable that's what imho needs to change :-\

There aren't instafail timers in most normal queues, and they're just as dead as advanced and elite. In fact, slightly more dead, since Crystalline Catastrophe only seems to run on elite anymore.

squackie

Look, Cryptic, if you're not going to make use of the info garnered from the testing on tribble, then just SHUT TRIBBLE DOWN, and QUIT WASTING OUR TIME, AND YOUR MONEY!!! Since it's a beta server, it's purpose is to allow players to test features, and use their feedback to refine the game further! And yet, every system players have EVER complained about on tribble seems to have made it to Holodech, with exceptions to that being so rare that when it happens, I see a lot of shock from the community! what does it mean when players are actually shocked that you listened, huh? You're not listening to the tribble-testers' feedback. Thus, tribble doen't serve the intended purpose of a beta-server. Thus, my advice? ACTUALLY USE TRIBBLE, OR GET RID OF IT!!!!!!