Not an unfair point. But the feedback since DR has largely been that the game has become increasingly grindy. Making this fundamental problem worsewhile asking for more feedbackis utterly tone-deaf.
I do like some of the BH and AA buffs, although AA isn't my cup of tea, really. And if the nerfs had been limited to small adjustments to rewards, I may have been fine with that (Admittedly, I have 15,000 fleet marks, so ten here and there is a drop in the bucket.).
But these nerfs are designed to make people fail the queues more. I strain to fathom why that's a good thing for our gaming experience.
Taking feedback, considering it, then ultimately choosing not to implement it is not the same as being ignored...
You'd be better off trying to explain it to bricks. Veruca Salt wants everything RIGHT NOW, and there is nothing you are going to say to convince them otherwise.
This particular batch of updates has focused on increasing difficulty for queues that are being completed at a higher rate than expected and decreasing rewards for queues that have been over-rewarding as compared to the reward levels we have established across all PvE queues.
The "Cryptic Golden Rule of Average Reward for Average Player over Average Time" is nothing new...and things have, imho, definitely been too easy or too rewarding or even too easy and too rewarding; but that's something Cryptic did. They created those paths of least resistance and let them sit there, even as it was obvious there were blatant paths of least resistance there.
So obviously any attempt at trying to fix those issues is going to result in claims of nerfing and generally increased anger/frustration toward Cryptic. Rightfully so, imho - cause those issues have existed for so long - it's not some discovered last week that there was an issue with things. It's been going on for years. There have been discussions going on for years about how pointless it is to run certain things and even to the point of how it is technically pointless to run anything because of how massively out of balance things are.
R = D&T (I don't know the correct symbol for what I'm trying to say there, I'm not a math guy).
Reward equals some combination of Difficulty and Time, right? There is some "base" Reward out there for some combination of "base" Difficulty and "base" Time, right? Something along those lines, yeah?
So then if you hit up various content...if the content has an increased Difficulty, then it would have an increased Reward, right? If the content has an increased Time investment/requirement, it would have an increased Reward, right? If it had some combination of increased Difficulty but reduced Time, then it might have the same Reward, right? Basically various combinations would result in various Rewards, right?
Then looking around at all sorts of things, then all sorts of things are painfully out of balance..imho.
There were a bunch of concessions over the years apparently made to the "single" player - which, imho, resulted in rewards being skewed away from team content toward solo content or mob content.
Then, imho, we have what appears to be an attempt at a mostly horizontal endgame. An attempt to avoid the carrot 'n stick progression of queues which would lead to dead queues as the playerbase moves beyond the early queues to the later queues...and leads to expansions that repeat that cycle over and over...leading to more dead queues and some need to introduce some trickery to get folks to play them again.
But we don't have to run Infected to get gear needed to run Cure to we can run Cure to get the gear needed to run Khitomer so we can run Khitomer to get the gear needed to run Hive so we can run Hive to get the gear needed to run Disconnected...
Nor do we have to run any Omega STFs to run any other queues nor any other queues to run any Omega STFs.
There is going to be the Normal, Advanced, and if applicable Elite...but the queues themselves, though they may have different difficulties, are not tied to any form of progression in that sense.
Which means, imho, when you look at certain queues compared to others - the R = D&T just stands out as a sore thumb and being way off.
Combine that with the concessions made to the "single" players, and well - you've killed off a bunch of your queues outside of folks that might private them from time to time because they enjoy them.
Work in the rewards for Normal, and you've killed those off while also turning Advanced/Leech into potential dens for AFKers/Leechers.
So there is this huge mess sitting there, imho, and you guys are taking a look at trying to address some of it from your point of view...getting back to that Cryptic Golden Rule.
I just don't see it working out. Could be entirely wrong, but I just don't see it working out. You've spoiled the players for too long, and they feel entitled to certain rewards for a certain investment of effort and time. I put those words in italics, because it's not necessarily a case that the folks were spoiled and entitled...but because the way the game has been for so long now, the natural and imho reasonable expectation they have is for it to be that way.
So increasing difficulty and decreasing rewards might be the thing to fix it as far as that Cryptic Golden Rule goes...but it's pitchforks and torches time. Cause even the fixes appear out of balance.
I picture there being a spreadsheet listing all of the content, with the rewards, the expected average difficulty, and the expected average duration. I'm picturing sorting that data...and...looking for what stands out.
Sure, there are going to be the things that stand out because they're too easy and/or over-rewarding...but aren't there going to be the too difficult and/or under-rewarding as well?
Cause in the end, have to believe that you did the horizontal endgame thing because you wanted to provide folks with a balanced selection of options so they could explore the game in many ways while maintaining a healthy population for that content, right?
Does it honestly feel like these changes are helping that be a reality? Is it telling players, okay Content A isn't going to be as rewarding but here's Content B-G that's better than it was because it was woefully under-rewarding...so in the end, not only won't you see a loss but you're going to see a gain!
Nope...imho...it just looks like it's pitchforks and torches time...meh.
and there is nothing you are going to say to convince them otherwise.
Not, you probably wont convice some players that all the nerfs and grind is fine. You probably wont convice us that DR is the best expancion ever and that cryptic is the best company in the world.
You may belive that, but you wont convice evryone.
Not, you probably wont convice some players that all the nerfs and grind is fine. You probably wont convice us that DR is the best expancion ever and that cryptic is the best company in the world.
You may belive that, but you wont convice evryone.
He didn't say that he was trying to convince you of that - probably just that to some, it's legitly not as bad as claimed. There's more to the arguments than just 'DR is the best expansion' and 'DR is the worst expansion'
Plus, things are rarely that black-and-white
Was named Trek17.
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
So increasing difficulty and decreasing rewards might be the thing to fix it as far as that Cryptic Golden Rule goes...but it's pitchforks and torches time. Cause even the fixes appear out of balance.
That does not explain the buff to Bug Hunt!
Bug Hunt is easy (even on elite).
Bug Hunt gives good reward (even on normal).
Bug Hunt takes short time to be finish (even on elite).
Why buff it? And is not a 5 marks buff.. is a 70% buff!! Is really clear that they dont was US to play CC or The Cure, they want us in the DR content. Eather be Argala or the DR pve queues.
Dont take me wrong, the buff is welcome, any buff is welcome, but why buff a DR mission and nerf the rest? I want to play what I wont to play, but they try to force us in to DR.. is due to the metrics?
The rewards for successfully completing the Normal difficulty version of this PvE queue have been increased by an additional 25% above what they have been previously, while the rewards for successfully completing the Advanced difficulty version have been increased by an additional 50% and the rewards for successfully completing the Elite difficulty version have been increased by 75%.
This boggles my mind. This mission in all it's forms is one of the easiest in the game, and yet you've dramatically increased the rewards, Not to sound ungrateful, but where do you get your metrics from?
Bug Hunt is fun, but the only difficult thing about it is the near-impossible to complete optional.
If it were completable, we'd be doing it.
The Cure Applied<--- isn't this a GROUND mission? You'd think that you'd at least get the name right.
The I.K.S. Kang has had its hull, shields and damage bonuses for Advanced difficulty reduced by half. The mark rewards for successfully completing the optional objective in Normal difficulty have been reduced from 25 marks to 15 marks. The optional objective in Normal difficulty has been updated for completing the queue in 15 minutes to completing the queue in 4 minutes or less. The objective in Advanced difficulty requiring that players complete the queue in 15 minutes or less has been updated to requires players to complete the queue in 9 minutes or less.
Crystalline Catastrophe
The base mark rewards for successfully completing Normal difficulty have been decreased from 40 to 30 marks and for successfully completing Advanced difficulty have been decreased from 70 to 60 marks. Additionally, the failure rewards for Advanced difficulty have been increased from 5 to 10 marks. The optional objective in Advanced difficulty has been updated from completing the queue in 10.5 minutes to completing the queue in 5 minutes or less. The optional objective in Normal difficulty and the objective in Advanced difficulty requiring that no more than 50% of players die during the Crystalline Entity’s pulse power, now requires that no more than 30% of players die during this same phase. The Crystalline Entity’s pulse power no longer has a safe inner distance and this pulse no longer damages or destroys Crystalline Fragments (large or small).
Colony Invasion
The base mark rewards for successfully completing this PvE queue have been decreased from 40 to 30 marks.
Fleet Alert
The mark rewards for completing waves one and two have been decreased from 10 to 5 marks. The mark rewards for completing wave five has been decreased from 18 to 15. The mark rewards for completing waves three and four remain unchanged at 10 marks.
Congratulations on adding another nail to the casual player coffin. For those of us in the DPS league these changes are absolutely meaningless. For the average player and the few that still pug via the queues, you've killed any chance for them to progress without forking over money to you.
The rewards for successfully completing the Normal difficulty version of this PvE queue have been increased by an additional 250% above what they have been previously while the rewards for successfully completing the Advanced difficulty version have been increased by an additional 400% above what they have been previously. Additionally, the Elachi Walkers have had their hull and shields reduced.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
This last change might be enough motivation to build out my fighters again with the increase of the rewards.
Combine that with the concessions made to the "single" players, and well - you've killed off a bunch of your queues outside of folks that might private them from time to time because they enjoy them.
Work in the rewards for Normal, and you've killed those off while also turning Advanced/Leech into potential dens for AFKers/Leechers.
So there is this huge mess sitting there, imho, and you guys are taking a look at trying to address some of it from your point of view...getting back to that Cryptic Golden Rule.
I just don't see it working out. Could be entirely wrong, but I just don't see it working out. You've spoiled the players for too long, and they feel entitled to certain rewards for a certain investment of effort and time. I put those words in italics, because it's not necessarily a case that the folks were spoiled and entitled...but because the way the game has been for so long now, the natural and imho reasonable expectation they have is for it to be that way.
So increasing difficulty and decreasing rewards might be the thing to fix it as far as that Cryptic Golden Rule goes...but it's pitchforks and torches time. Cause even the fixes appear out of balance.
... excellent commentary ....
Virusdancer is likely the best friend you'll ever have Charles. And if you've made him angry...
Overall these changes seem ham-fisted, almost lashing out at the casual player. Is it you intention to kill the public queues? It look like you're successfully on your way to doing it.
The mark reduction might not be that drastic, but we're starting to reach critical mass here, leaning heavily towards the: This game isn't fun anymore., side.
Don't their metrics show all the players leaving too?
My fleet's been a ghost town. It's really sad. It was thriving before DR.
The devs really should take steps towards balancing the fun vs grind ratio before they drive the rest of us away.
I am beginning to wonder if you're actually playing this game.
They do play the game occasionally at the very least, both on dev accounts where they can do anything they want, and personal accounts that work exactly like ours.
And I'm not just saying that; Crypticfrost indirectly mentioned it recently:
wish bug hunt was this buffed back when i still played, and was leveling delta rep. ran it on elite more times then i can count, it should have been instantly obvious that it massively under rewarded marks, even if it was pretty fool proof.
How about you start increasing rewards with the most dead queues and work your way from there to the most popular ones?
Also, how about no nerfs to rewards, and adjusting other queues rewards up based on existing values in queues.
FYI - Stop nerfing everything in the game and driving off players.
This. In the nicest possible way I can put it:
Instead of nerfing what people like, how about giving us a reason to play the things we don't? This won't do that. It will just irritate people who like these STFs. If some things are avoided, maybe figure out why, instead of trying to make everything else less attractive to compensate.
There is no way it wasn't known that this would be unpopular. Honestly, things are getting worse.
My feedback is that there isn't enough rewards, the fail conditions are too strict, and the monotony of where your directing the players to new content only makes this game not fun to play anymore.
The mark reduction might not be that drastic, but we're starting to reach critical mass here, leaning heavily towards the: This game isn't fun anymore., side.
Don't their metrics show all the players leaving too?
My fleet's been a ghost town. It's really sad. It was thriving before DR.
The devs really should take steps towards balancing the fun vs grind ratio before they drive the rest of us away.
Completely agree.
Delta Rising is just a meme. It's the management who don't play the game making the decisions.
I've been playing a while, but the devs seem determined to see what will be the straw that breaks the backs of the players and makes us all leave. Is that what you want, DEVS? Are you seriously trying to reduce the player base to the point where you can just shutter the game and move on to something else?
I don't get these changes... The Bug Hunt buff wasn't bad, and I suppose that there were reasons for the CC nerf (People were playing it instead of certain other queues for Nukara and Rommie marks) and Atmosphere Assault buff (Was a dead queue especially post-DR, but even before it) but the rest of these changes... I just don't get it. Cure Space nerf? That just funnels more people into ISN/ISA. Colony Invasion and Fleet Alert nerf? What? That pair of queues was already dead AFAIK... We want LESS dead queues and wasted development time on useless content, not more... right?
It seems to me that part of the "empty queue" problem is that there are so many options, where every one queues for different events but only a few fill.
Would it be possible to have a few queues on a rotation, like the DOFF missions, every couple of hours? We don't need to choose from 9 different missions with 3 difficulty levels for Omega marks for instance.
Also, make there be a point where the Normal difficulty phases out, maybe when someone gains access to Elite level, so there's not the excess of options to choose from their either. Tweak advanced difficulty so that the optionals reward (heavily) for completion instead of fail for incompletion, and the pve queues will be fun and worth playing again.
They do play the game occasionally at the very least, both on dev accounts where they can do anything they want, and personal accounts that work exactly like ours.
And I'm not just saying that; Crypticfrost indirectly mentioned it recently:
I'm not talking about the employees. I'm talking about the management who are making these poor, un-thought-out choices. I can't fault the people who do the work. Just the decision makers.
Also, make there be a point where the Normal difficulty phases out, maybe when someone gains access to Elite level, so there's not the excess of options to choose from their either.
I can't say that I agree with this option. I'm not always in the mood for a dps fest, I like having the option to test out builds and tactics on normal before I attempt advanced.
But even still, advanced on Borg Disconnect, even though, I personally think I'm good at it on normal, fails EVERY TIME on any advanced pug I join.
I no longer have the option of playing with fleetmates, they're just about gone.
Elite, I just don't have the discipline for those anymore. Pre DR, yeah, I was doing them more and more, but after DR's changes.....
Make elite mandatory and I'm gone.
So...I normally try to look at the bright side, or at least find something that I can understand in terms of the logic behind changes made to the game even if I don't agree with it.
This, I'm having some very real trouble seeing the logic here. I know what you're saying it's for and why you're saying it, but from a player perspective I'm not seeing anything in this round of changes that's encouraging me to play other content, only discouraging me from playing content I already play, albeit sometimes grudgingly (as in the case of Bug Hunt).
I am especially having trouble seeing the logic in reducing the marks rewarded for Fleet Alert and Colony Invasion. Those two are normal only queues and explicitly reward only Fleet Marks. They're a decent, but not spectacular source of Fleet Marks - and thus fleet credits - for new players trying to get some fleet gear to meet the minimum standards for running Advanced queues without/before having to grind their way to level 60. This change makes that much harder for them as while 10 marks per run doesn't seem like much it adds up very quickly.
If you were announcing the addition of Advanced (and Elite!) versions of those queues I could look at it sideways and almost understand the logic, but if those missions were going to receive advanced versions they would have been given them at Delta Rising launch along with all the other missions that received overhauls.
I suppose it boils down to the fact that while I'm quite sure you've put a lot of thought into these changes I just don't understand how disincentivizing queues that are currently popular is supposed to be an incentive to play other, less popular queues.
Edit:
I realized that I gave the impression that Bug Hunt's changes were bad. They're not, I just don't play Bug Hunt for marks, I play it for the Ancient Power Cells. While the additional marks will be nice, they're just not why I play that mission, and likely never will be.
Another round of PvE queue updates have been made and are making their way to Tribble for extra testing. This particular batch of updates has focused on increasing difficulty for queues that are being completed at a higher rate than expected and decreasing rewards for queues that have been over-rewarding as compared to the reward levels we have established across all PvE queues. We expect that these will be the only queues changed in such ways during this first pass of updates. As mentioned previously, this is an ongoing effort to improve STO and this update (and those that came before) are not the entirety of what will be done.
New to Tribble this week:
Bug Hunt
The rewards for successfully completing the Normal difficulty version of this PvE queue have been increased by an additional 25% above what they have been previously, while the rewards for successfully completing the Advanced difficulty version have been increased by an additional 50% and the rewards for successfully completing the Elite difficulty version have been increased by 75%.
The Cure Applied
The I.K.S. Kang has had its hull, shields and damage bonuses for Advanced difficulty reduced by half. The mark rewards for successfully completing the optional objective in Normal difficulty have been reduced from 25 marks to 15 marks. The optional objective in Normal difficulty has been updated for completing the queue in 15 minutes to completing the queue in 4 minutes or less. The objective in Advanced difficulty requiring that players complete the queue in 15 minutes or less has been updated to requires players to complete the queue in 9 minutes or less.
Crystalline Catastrophe
The base mark rewards for successfully completing Normal difficulty have been decreased from 40 to 30 marks and for successfully completing Advanced difficulty have been decreased from 70 to 60 marks. Additionally, the failure rewards for Advanced difficulty have been increased from 5 to 10 marks. The optional objective in Advanced difficulty has been updated from completing the queue in 10.5 minutes to completing the queue in 5 minutes or less. The optional objective in Normal difficulty and the objective in Advanced difficulty requiring that no more than 50% of players die during the Crystalline Entitys pulse power, now requires that no more than 30% of players die during this same phase. The Crystalline Entitys pulse power no longer has a safe inner distance and this pulse no longer damages or destroys Crystalline Fragments (large or small).
Colony Invasion
The base mark rewards for successfully completing this PvE queue have been decreased from 40 to 30 marks.
Fleet Alert
The mark rewards for completing waves one and two have been decreased from 10 to 5 marks. The mark rewards for completing wave five has been decreased from 18 to 15. The mark rewards for completing waves three and four remain unchanged at 10 marks.
Available on Tribble next week:
Atmosphere Assault
The rewards for successfully completing the Normal difficulty version of this PvE queue have been increased by an additional 250% above what they have been previously while the rewards for successfully completing the Advanced difficulty version have been increased by an additional 400% above what they have been previously. Additionally, the Elachi Walkers have had their hull and shields reduced.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Are you people REALLY THIS STUPID????
Well if you have not already hammered a nail securely in the PVE queues coffin then you most certainly will now!
After the last bout of nerfs you hit the PVE queues we they became DEAD JIM, I know that one of you devs claimed it was a reporting issue and showing incorrect figures BLA BLA BLA but guess what! I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT
Are PWE really pushing cryptic that hard or are cryptic just that incompetent to run this game?
Since Delta Grinding this game has just become NERF after NERF after NERF
and just to think i recently purchased the romulan pack, i would like that money back please as it has occoured to me what a waste it has become considering cryptic are clearly trying to push all its players away from a game that they LOVED.
The only way out of this for you cryptic is to stop with the stupid and put this game back on track and clearly get a better metrics system because it is clearly flawed! how about show us some of these metrics you all speak so highly off?
OH WAIT why am i even bothering posting this? it will fall on deaf ears like everyone elses!
BTW i really was not joking about the refund on the Romulan pack i really do want my money back as it is clear this game is spiralling out of control at an alarming rate with all the nerfs
This particular batch of updates has focused on increasing difficulty for queues that are being completed at a higher rate than expected
Ability to complete the queue is the reason they are popular and enjoyable. Failing repeatedly because my PuG mates are either terrible at the game, or don't even speak the same language is extremely frustrating leading me to not want to play. This applies to Advanced difficulty by the way, Elite should be Elite. Speaking of which three of the current easiest queues with my personal highest completion rate at the moment (aside from CCA) are all ground at Elite.
and decreasing rewards for queues that have been over-rewarding as compared to the reward levels we have established across all PvE queues.
That is a good idea, the difficulty idea not so much. By the way, what is the expected completion rate and does it distinguish the PuG from the premade? What is the expected rate for both that you guys are even shooting for?
I can't say that I agree with this option. I'm not always in the mood for a dps fest, I like having the option to test out builds and tactics on normal before I attempt advanced.
But even still, advanced on Borg Disconnect, even though, I personally think I'm good at it on normal, fails EVERY TIME on any advanced pug I join.
I no longer have the option of playing with fleetmates, they're just about gone.
Elite, I just don't have the discipline for those anymore. Pre DR, yeah, I was doing them more and more, but after DR's changes.....
Make elite mandatory and I'm gone.
I don't think it should be JUST elite, but I think normal should fall of as an option at 60 (or something), and Advanced be reduced slightly in difficulty.
Alternate idea: you can access the Elite queues once you hit Tier 5 in the appropriate Reputation, but you cannot do regular after you have accessed Elite. Advanced is always accessible.
Changes to advanced queues:
A) No failure for not completing optionals Reduce base rewards slightly
C) Increase rewards for optionals a lot
I'll be honest in that I love playing Crystalline Catastrophe, as that is the fastest way for me to get fleet marks to really try to work on my fleet starbase. I can see the point of potentially jacking up the difficulty due to players being able to plow through a mission with ease. What I don't get is reducing the rewards for the doing of more work in a mission, if you get what I mean. If it's harder, shouldn't the rewards reflect that, and go up as well? Some of the folks here have pointed out that the crafting materials R&D boxes are certainly coveted for working on crafting stuff. Making it harder to get these may make it less likely people will want to even mess with the crafting system.
Granted, I have seen many people still firing at the CE while it's charging up for its shockwave bit. I make sure I back off so that I don't get creamed by said shockwave, and yet they don't get blown up by it. I do find that frustrating, as I never knew there was said "inner safe ring" as it's been put. Otherwise, I probably would've been using it, too, admittedly.
Cutting that timer in half makes it really hard, because you're still fending off Tholian ships that are showing up to the party WHILE you're still working on dealing with the Entity. That may make the Advanced optional unable to be completed, regardless of the skill of the team, unless you have absolute crazy DPS. On average, when I've played it, it takes about 7 - 9 minutes to complete on Advanced, and that's barring getting taken out by either the Entity or the Tholian ships while working to defeat the Entity. Is this now to mean that we focus on the Entity exclusively while being TRIBBLE at by the Tholian ships, and hoping we can keep healing ourselves enough to avoid being blown to smithereens in the process by either? "The Cure: Space"
Holy cow... Where do I begin? Please explain to me how we can complete the mission in 4 minutes or less on Normal / 9 minutes or less on Advanced, unless that timer kicks in only after the 3 Borg-Klingon shipyards have been destroyed and we're going after the carrier at the end of the mission. If that timer is for the whole thing, then.... there's no way I see that happening, unless you manage to have an insanely well-geared, well-armed team.
Without you guys using your "dev magic" talents, I'd love to see you guys actually beat that in 4 minutes or less on normal, regularly, just to see if it's possible, without blowing the objective, with a good team, and then doing it several times over with inexperienced teams, aka PUGs. If you can do that regularly, then I won't be so critical of this. However, I want to see unedited videos of this success.
For that particular change, I'd hope that the rewards get jacked way up for being able to meet those timer-based objectives.
Judging by some of the reactions here, if these changes proceed, they'll have folks fuming to say the least, but more than likely having "BLEEP"-worthy posts here.
I am normally a fairly quiet person here on the forums, unless I really come up with some cool ideas, or get irritated by certain bugs... Please take that into account with my post here...
Actually my last post brings me to this one very simple question.
What is the % success rate desired by a pick up group using the queues for an advanced queue by you guys? Is it even supposed to be puged?
And what, exactly, will happen if the player base gets better overall in the next month or two. Will the queues be made more difficult just to appease the metric?
I am one of the casuals VD was talking about. The entire redacted reason I enjoyed this game was the casual nature of the endgame. That I could expect to play in a PuG and achieve success. That I could actually carry even a terrible group without much worry. Rewards I don't really care about, beyond Skill Points which are already embarrassingly low from queues, I want to be able to PuG the content.
Well I do want the rewards to offer the necessary components to purchase gear and craft upgrades I guess I should mention.
If you have no intention of catering to the casual audience with your endgame let me know so I can either go somewhere that actually has an enjoyable hardcore endgame, or will cater to the more casual audience with it's endgame.
Devs answer to dead queues: nerf the rewards of the most played STFs and make them harder to beat. Players will then gravitate to other queued missions not being played.
Sadly this will not have the desired effect. It makes people want to stop playing all together.
You'd be better off trying to explain it to bricks. Veruca Salt wants everything RIGHT NOW, and there is nothing you are going to say to convince them otherwise.
I will say this the brown nosers are now the minority. I wish we could get stahl back to give us the metrics on brown nosers vs Disgruntled Raged-Players Rising and see if it equals out to 18% so we can make them their own faction using the foundry with all assets beings snowmen, gingerbread men/women, and maybe the borg queen trying to assimilate candy crush.
Comments
I would tell you to keep it up, but I already know you will.
You're the best.
Not an unfair point. But the feedback since DR has largely been that the game has become increasingly grindy. Making this fundamental problem worsewhile asking for more feedbackis utterly tone-deaf.
I do like some of the BH and AA buffs, although AA isn't my cup of tea, really. And if the nerfs had been limited to small adjustments to rewards, I may have been fine with that (Admittedly, I have 15,000 fleet marks, so ten here and there is a drop in the bucket.).
But these nerfs are designed to make people fail the queues more. I strain to fathom why that's a good thing for our gaming experience.
You'd be better off trying to explain it to bricks. Veruca Salt wants everything RIGHT NOW, and there is nothing you are going to say to convince them otherwise.
The "Cryptic Golden Rule of Average Reward for Average Player over Average Time" is nothing new...and things have, imho, definitely been too easy or too rewarding or even too easy and too rewarding; but that's something Cryptic did. They created those paths of least resistance and let them sit there, even as it was obvious there were blatant paths of least resistance there.
So obviously any attempt at trying to fix those issues is going to result in claims of nerfing and generally increased anger/frustration toward Cryptic. Rightfully so, imho - cause those issues have existed for so long - it's not some discovered last week that there was an issue with things. It's been going on for years. There have been discussions going on for years about how pointless it is to run certain things and even to the point of how it is technically pointless to run anything because of how massively out of balance things are.
R = D&T (I don't know the correct symbol for what I'm trying to say there, I'm not a math guy).
Reward equals some combination of Difficulty and Time, right? There is some "base" Reward out there for some combination of "base" Difficulty and "base" Time, right? Something along those lines, yeah?
So then if you hit up various content...if the content has an increased Difficulty, then it would have an increased Reward, right? If the content has an increased Time investment/requirement, it would have an increased Reward, right? If it had some combination of increased Difficulty but reduced Time, then it might have the same Reward, right? Basically various combinations would result in various Rewards, right?
Then looking around at all sorts of things, then all sorts of things are painfully out of balance..imho.
There were a bunch of concessions over the years apparently made to the "single" player - which, imho, resulted in rewards being skewed away from team content toward solo content or mob content.
Then, imho, we have what appears to be an attempt at a mostly horizontal endgame. An attempt to avoid the carrot 'n stick progression of queues which would lead to dead queues as the playerbase moves beyond the early queues to the later queues...and leads to expansions that repeat that cycle over and over...leading to more dead queues and some need to introduce some trickery to get folks to play them again.
But we don't have to run Infected to get gear needed to run Cure to we can run Cure to get the gear needed to run Khitomer so we can run Khitomer to get the gear needed to run Hive so we can run Hive to get the gear needed to run Disconnected...
Nor do we have to run any Omega STFs to run any other queues nor any other queues to run any Omega STFs.
There is going to be the Normal, Advanced, and if applicable Elite...but the queues themselves, though they may have different difficulties, are not tied to any form of progression in that sense.
Which means, imho, when you look at certain queues compared to others - the R = D&T just stands out as a sore thumb and being way off.
Combine that with the concessions made to the "single" players, and well - you've killed off a bunch of your queues outside of folks that might private them from time to time because they enjoy them.
Work in the rewards for Normal, and you've killed those off while also turning Advanced/Leech into potential dens for AFKers/Leechers.
So there is this huge mess sitting there, imho, and you guys are taking a look at trying to address some of it from your point of view...getting back to that Cryptic Golden Rule.
I just don't see it working out. Could be entirely wrong, but I just don't see it working out. You've spoiled the players for too long, and they feel entitled to certain rewards for a certain investment of effort and time. I put those words in italics, because it's not necessarily a case that the folks were spoiled and entitled...but because the way the game has been for so long now, the natural and imho reasonable expectation they have is for it to be that way.
So increasing difficulty and decreasing rewards might be the thing to fix it as far as that Cryptic Golden Rule goes...but it's pitchforks and torches time. Cause even the fixes appear out of balance.
I picture there being a spreadsheet listing all of the content, with the rewards, the expected average difficulty, and the expected average duration. I'm picturing sorting that data...and...looking for what stands out.
Sure, there are going to be the things that stand out because they're too easy and/or over-rewarding...but aren't there going to be the too difficult and/or under-rewarding as well?
Cause in the end, have to believe that you did the horizontal endgame thing because you wanted to provide folks with a balanced selection of options so they could explore the game in many ways while maintaining a healthy population for that content, right?
Does it honestly feel like these changes are helping that be a reality? Is it telling players, okay Content A isn't going to be as rewarding but here's Content B-G that's better than it was because it was woefully under-rewarding...so in the end, not only won't you see a loss but you're going to see a gain!
Nope...imho...it just looks like it's pitchforks and torches time...meh.
Not, you probably wont convice some players that all the nerfs and grind is fine. You probably wont convice us that DR is the best expancion ever and that cryptic is the best company in the world.
You may belive that, but you wont convice evryone.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Plus, things are rarely that black-and-white
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
That does not explain the buff to Bug Hunt!
Bug Hunt is easy (even on elite).
Bug Hunt gives good reward (even on normal).
Bug Hunt takes short time to be finish (even on elite).
Why buff it? And is not a 5 marks buff.. is a 70% buff!! Is really clear that they dont was US to play CC or The Cure, they want us in the DR content. Eather be Argala or the DR pve queues.
Dont take me wrong, the buff is welcome, any buff is welcome, but why buff a DR mission and nerf the rest? I want to play what I wont to play, but they try to force us in to DR.. is due to the metrics?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This boggles my mind. This mission in all it's forms is one of the easiest in the game, and yet you've dramatically increased the rewards, Not to sound ungrateful, but where do you get your metrics from?
Bug Hunt is fun, but the only difficult thing about it is the near-impossible to complete optional.
If it were completable, we'd be doing it.
Congratulations on adding another nail to the casual player coffin. For those of us in the DPS league these changes are absolutely meaningless. For the average player and the few that still pug via the queues, you've killed any chance for them to progress without forking over money to you.
This last change might be enough motivation to build out my fighters again with the increase of the rewards.
Virusdancer is likely the best friend you'll ever have Charles. And if you've made him angry...
Overall these changes seem ham-fisted, almost lashing out at the casual player. Is it you intention to kill the public queues? It look like you're successfully on your way to doing it.
My Two Bits
Admiral Thrax
Don't their metrics show all the players leaving too?
My fleet's been a ghost town. It's really sad. It was thriving before DR.
The devs really should take steps towards balancing the fun vs grind ratio before they drive the rest of us away.
And I'm not just saying that; Crypticfrost indirectly mentioned it recently:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=21834001#post21834001
Been playing STO since Open Beta, and have never regarded anything as worse than 'meh', if only due to personal standards.
This. In the nicest possible way I can put it:
Instead of nerfing what people like, how about giving us a reason to play the things we don't? This won't do that. It will just irritate people who like these STFs. If some things are avoided, maybe figure out why, instead of trying to make everything else less attractive to compensate.
There is no way it wasn't known that this would be unpopular. Honestly, things are getting worse.
Completely agree.
Delta Rising is just a meme. It's the management who don't play the game making the decisions.
Would it be possible to have a few queues on a rotation, like the DOFF missions, every couple of hours? We don't need to choose from 9 different missions with 3 difficulty levels for Omega marks for instance.
Also, make there be a point where the Normal difficulty phases out, maybe when someone gains access to Elite level, so there's not the excess of options to choose from their either. Tweak advanced difficulty so that the optionals reward (heavily) for completion instead of fail for incompletion, and the pve queues will be fun and worth playing again.
I'm not talking about the employees. I'm talking about the management who are making these poor, un-thought-out choices. I can't fault the people who do the work. Just the decision makers.
This was a bad decision.
I can't say that I agree with this option. I'm not always in the mood for a dps fest, I like having the option to test out builds and tactics on normal before I attempt advanced.
But even still, advanced on Borg Disconnect, even though, I personally think I'm good at it on normal, fails EVERY TIME on any advanced pug I join.
I no longer have the option of playing with fleetmates, they're just about gone.
Elite, I just don't have the discipline for those anymore. Pre DR, yeah, I was doing them more and more, but after DR's changes.....
Make elite mandatory and I'm gone.
This, I'm having some very real trouble seeing the logic here. I know what you're saying it's for and why you're saying it, but from a player perspective I'm not seeing anything in this round of changes that's encouraging me to play other content, only discouraging me from playing content I already play, albeit sometimes grudgingly (as in the case of Bug Hunt).
I am especially having trouble seeing the logic in reducing the marks rewarded for Fleet Alert and Colony Invasion. Those two are normal only queues and explicitly reward only Fleet Marks. They're a decent, but not spectacular source of Fleet Marks - and thus fleet credits - for new players trying to get some fleet gear to meet the minimum standards for running Advanced queues without/before having to grind their way to level 60. This change makes that much harder for them as while 10 marks per run doesn't seem like much it adds up very quickly.
If you were announcing the addition of Advanced (and Elite!) versions of those queues I could look at it sideways and almost understand the logic, but if those missions were going to receive advanced versions they would have been given them at Delta Rising launch along with all the other missions that received overhauls.
I suppose it boils down to the fact that while I'm quite sure you've put a lot of thought into these changes I just don't understand how disincentivizing queues that are currently popular is supposed to be an incentive to play other, less popular queues.
Edit:
I realized that I gave the impression that Bug Hunt's changes were bad. They're not, I just don't play Bug Hunt for marks, I play it for the Ancient Power Cells. While the additional marks will be nice, they're just not why I play that mission, and likely never will be.
Are you people REALLY THIS STUPID????
Well if you have not already hammered a nail securely in the PVE queues coffin then you most certainly will now!
After the last bout of nerfs you hit the PVE queues we they became DEAD JIM, I know that one of you devs claimed it was a reporting issue and showing incorrect figures BLA BLA BLA but guess what! I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT
Lets see:
Join Queue - wait wait wait wait pop (i have seen doctors see patients quicker than these queues popping)
Dev - we have a reporting issue with queues!
Join Queue - wait wait wait wait pop
CM - http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1330751 please fill out survey
Join Queue - wait wait wait wait pop
Now - http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1354311 MOAR NERFS
Tomorrow - wait wait wait wait give up
Are PWE really pushing cryptic that hard or are cryptic just that incompetent to run this game?
Since Delta Grinding this game has just become NERF after NERF after NERF
and just to think i recently purchased the romulan pack, i would like that money back please as it has occoured to me what a waste it has become considering cryptic are clearly trying to push all its players away from a game that they LOVED.
The only way out of this for you cryptic is to stop with the stupid and put this game back on track and clearly get a better metrics system because it is clearly flawed! how about show us some of these metrics you all speak so highly off?
OH WAIT why am i even bothering posting this? it will fall on deaf ears like everyone elses!
BTW i really was not joking about the refund on the Romulan pack i really do want my money back as it is clear this game is spiralling out of control at an alarming rate with all the nerfs
Ability to complete the queue is the reason they are popular and enjoyable. Failing repeatedly because my PuG mates are either terrible at the game, or don't even speak the same language is extremely frustrating leading me to not want to play. This applies to Advanced difficulty by the way, Elite should be Elite. Speaking of which three of the current easiest queues with my personal highest completion rate at the moment (aside from CCA) are all ground at Elite.
That is a good idea, the difficulty idea not so much. By the way, what is the expected completion rate and does it distinguish the PuG from the premade? What is the expected rate for both that you guys are even shooting for?
Thanks.
I don't think it should be JUST elite, but I think normal should fall of as an option at 60 (or something), and Advanced be reduced slightly in difficulty.
Alternate idea: you can access the Elite queues once you hit Tier 5 in the appropriate Reputation, but you cannot do regular after you have accessed Elite. Advanced is always accessible.
Changes to advanced queues:
A) No failure for not completing optionals
C) Increase rewards for optionals a lot
I question the logic of some of these changes.
"Crystalline Catastrophe"
I'll be honest in that I love playing Crystalline Catastrophe, as that is the fastest way for me to get fleet marks to really try to work on my fleet starbase. I can see the point of potentially jacking up the difficulty due to players being able to plow through a mission with ease. What I don't get is reducing the rewards for the doing of more work in a mission, if you get what I mean. If it's harder, shouldn't the rewards reflect that, and go up as well? Some of the folks here have pointed out that the crafting materials R&D boxes are certainly coveted for working on crafting stuff. Making it harder to get these may make it less likely people will want to even mess with the crafting system.
Granted, I have seen many people still firing at the CE while it's charging up for its shockwave bit. I make sure I back off so that I don't get creamed by said shockwave, and yet they don't get blown up by it. I do find that frustrating, as I never knew there was said "inner safe ring" as it's been put. Otherwise, I probably would've been using it, too, admittedly.
Cutting that timer in half makes it really hard, because you're still fending off Tholian ships that are showing up to the party WHILE you're still working on dealing with the Entity. That may make the Advanced optional unable to be completed, regardless of the skill of the team, unless you have absolute crazy DPS. On average, when I've played it, it takes about 7 - 9 minutes to complete on Advanced, and that's barring getting taken out by either the Entity or the Tholian ships while working to defeat the Entity. Is this now to mean that we focus on the Entity exclusively while being TRIBBLE at by the Tholian ships, and hoping we can keep healing ourselves enough to avoid being blown to smithereens in the process by either?
"The Cure: Space"
Holy cow... Where do I begin? Please explain to me how we can complete the mission in 4 minutes or less on Normal / 9 minutes or less on Advanced, unless that timer kicks in only after the 3 Borg-Klingon shipyards have been destroyed and we're going after the carrier at the end of the mission. If that timer is for the whole thing, then.... there's no way I see that happening, unless you manage to have an insanely well-geared, well-armed team.
Without you guys using your "dev magic" talents, I'd love to see you guys actually beat that in 4 minutes or less on normal, regularly, just to see if it's possible, without blowing the objective, with a good team, and then doing it several times over with inexperienced teams, aka PUGs. If you can do that regularly, then I won't be so critical of this. However, I want to see unedited videos of this success.
For that particular change, I'd hope that the rewards get jacked way up for being able to meet those timer-based objectives.
Judging by some of the reactions here, if these changes proceed, they'll have folks fuming to say the least, but more than likely having "BLEEP"-worthy posts here.
I am normally a fairly quiet person here on the forums, unless I really come up with some cool ideas, or get irritated by certain bugs... Please take that into account with my post here...
What is the % success rate desired by a pick up group using the queues for an advanced queue by you guys? Is it even supposed to be puged?
And what, exactly, will happen if the player base gets better overall in the next month or two. Will the queues be made more difficult just to appease the metric?
I am one of the casuals VD was talking about. The entire redacted reason I enjoyed this game was the casual nature of the endgame. That I could expect to play in a PuG and achieve success. That I could actually carry even a terrible group without much worry. Rewards I don't really care about, beyond Skill Points which are already embarrassingly low from queues, I want to be able to PuG the content.
Well I do want the rewards to offer the necessary components to purchase gear and craft upgrades I guess I should mention.
If you have no intention of catering to the casual audience with your endgame let me know so I can either go somewhere that actually has an enjoyable hardcore endgame, or will cater to the more casual audience with it's endgame.
Sadly this will not have the desired effect. It makes people want to stop playing all together.
I will say this the brown nosers are now the minority. I wish we could get stahl back to give us the metrics on brown nosers vs Disgruntled Raged-Players Rising and see if it equals out to 18% so we can make them their own faction using the foundry with all assets beings snowmen, gingerbread men/women, and maybe the borg queen trying to assimilate candy crush.
Why reduce the rewards on PvE that are really hard to finish...
Why remove content "No Win" that is pretty much the only thing my fleet runs, with out it, my fleet is pretty much dead...
I am not liking where this is going...
Really... Please please rethink this update...
Comrademoco