Explanation?? Here's the only relevant bit of "explanation" from that thread
Let's break this down...
increasing difficulty for queues that are being completed at a higher rate than expected
So Cure Space, Crystalline Catastrophe are being completed at a higher rate than you expect? If you're going to use this as justification then perhaps you'd mind sharing what you feel the failure rate for this mission should be? I'd also like to throw this out there... premade teams are going to continue to have a 100% success rate. The only groups that contribute to your "fail rate" are PUGs, and the fewer PUGs that attempt these missions the higher the success rate will be. The effect of this change will be a reduction in participation with a percentage increase in successful completions.
decreasing rewards for queues that have been over-rewarding as compared to the reward levels we have established across all PvE queues.
Care to share the specific PvE queues that were used for comparison? Also, while we're on the topic of "explanations" care to share what you feel is a reasonable acquisition rate is for the rewards?
Sorry, but trying to throw out that the OP didn't link to that sad paragraph of an "explanation" doesn't really help the devs case on justifying this to be some type of improvement.
Close the spreadsheets, forget the metric data, and hop in game as regular players and PUG CSA and CC for a few days and then base your changes on first hand experience rather than data mining.
The most sensible argument I have seen on this topic.
However, I don't see them listening to it, because they don't actually care, to them it's just a way to force people to spend more, nothing more, nothing less.
I just wanted to point out that the kang is a sitting duck, unable to shoot back ( why nerf damage if the dealt damage is already 0? ).
I didn't even released that they swapped names of the ground and space vesions of cure until you guys mentioned it.
Honestly of them all, the one for Cure Normal seems the dumbest just because Normal difficult is the training-wheels version of any mission where new players learn how it works. If they're making 4-minute runs they're likely moving up Advanced anyways. I'm not sure what the intent is, to try and get veteran players to move down to give Advanced some sort of prestige, or to try and pretend Normal isn't training-wheels-mode and complicate life for newbie players, or what? I mean I don't like any of them in particular but that one just seems petty.
Seriously, what direction are you trying to steer this game in? Is someone there spiteful or something? Seems like any change to existing stuff over the last two months has been just one FU after another. Does someone need a hug?
I'm a huge Cryptic supporter and I really like this game.
These changes are going to kill it for me.
The only thing to do at end game are queues. Right now, succeeding in a PUG Advanced ANYTHING is a TRIBBLE shoot at best. These changes (especially the insane timers) is going to make pugging impossible.
So what am I supposed to do? The queues are already dead as it is for pugs and there is no way this will help with that. Plus, running normal versions of mission is useless because the rewards are garbage. If you want the rare mats to craft anything, you need to run advanced missions only.
Sorry but I really hope this doesn't make it to Holodeck. This is a step in the wrong direction.
PS
Mr pweadamanteus, the link you provided isn't an explanation at all. So... I'm not sure why you even linked that. Maybe go drink some more coffee or something because... that link is so NOT germane to the situation I don't understand why it even got posted.
Plus, Bug Hunt didn't exactly need a boost in rewards.
Maybe it they're buffing Bug Hunt so it wont seem so bad when they nerf it later.
We've already seen this approach when they buffed all the battlezone rewards, then nerfed the Dyson ground rewards shortly there after.
Kind of like when management in an organization raise their own salaries, then 3 months later slash all salaries by an equal amount, and then try to placate the angry employees under them by saying, "Look guys, we're getting slashed too!"
PWE: So... your budget for Delta Rising was quite high, how do the players like the content you have created?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: We see... and do you have any statistics to back up this statement?
sdangelo:: Er... erm... well... no... but we DEFINITELY will NEXT time we meet!
PWE: Ok, well... we certainly hope so, it would be a great shame if your budget was spent on something the players do not like...
MEANWHILE AT CRYPTIC HEADQUARTERS
sdangelo: This is bad, this is bad, oh boy! they are on to us, what shall we do?! what shall we do?!
crypticgeko: Calm down... I have a plan, the players are idiots, I'm sure they will fall for it!
sdangelo: What?! what is the plan, tell me, tell meeeeeee!
crypticgeko: Simples... we just make the 'old content' less desireable, and reward the players for doing even the most boring things in the delta quadrant... like patrols for instance.
sdangelo: I like it!, what else?!
crypticgeko: Lets... nerf the old stf's, and buff the DR stfs' thats sure to help with the metrics, next time we meet the PWE managers we will have solid evidence that the players love the new expansion.
sdangelo: Great! that's so great! thank you, thank you!
crypticgeko: No worries man, thats my job! I love manipulating metrics!
PWE HEADQUARTERS - STAFF MEETING
PWE: So... it has been a while since our last meeting, and we are eager to know how the new expansion is going.
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: *stares momentarily* ...indeed, yes well we have heard this before, do you have any proof this time?
sdangelo: *swallows* Y..yes, look at this, you can clearly see from these metrics that players are visiting the new content more than the old content, this clearly shows that Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: Yes indeed, this is most interesting... but wait, what is this, it seems you have decreased rewards from old content and increased them for the new content... what is the reason for this?
sdangelo:: *Stares blankly*
PWE: Did you manipulate the metrics to make the new expansion look better?
sdangelo: *Splutters*
PWE: Can you please answer the question?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: That does not answer the question...
sdangelo:: *STARES OPEN MOUTHED* ....Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
lol... though I'm pretty sure all PWE meetings are more like this:
PWE: Did you add more monetary timegates to things?
Cryptic: We sure did!
PWE: Here's your bonus for the month!
Also, yes, Bug Hunt doesn't need a reward buff. It's already insane easy to pug on Elite. Of course now that I say that, Elite will get buffed to hell and it will be impossible unless you have a full suit of Epic gear.
lol... though I'm pretty sure all PWE meetings are more like this:
PWE: Did you add more monetary timegates to things?
Cryptic: We sure did!
PWE: Here's your bonus for the month!
Also, yes, Bug Hunt doesn't need a reward buff. It's already insane easy to pug on Elite. Of course now that I say that, Elite will get buffed to hell and it will be impossible unless you have a full suit of Epic gear.
This was announced separately. The spawnmother is getting a major HP fix.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I generally try not to overreact to the "tweaks" Cryptic makes, but at this point why don't they just post a blog on what content they want us play. It's getting harder to find fun in this game.
What possible incentive could there be to play in a queue that has gotten both harder and, at the same time, less rewarding?
That's a sure way to kill your PvE queues, not revive them.
We need the marks, we need the dilithium and we need the component drops. Since the release of DR all of those have consistently dropped while the content got harder. You guys are REDUCING our incentives to play the PvE queues NOT increasing them.
I don't know who's bright idea this was but he needs a good solid Gibbs slap.
I would urge you to change course on this and to change it quickly ... if/when this goes live the player reaction isn't going to be pretty.
It was like you had spys everywhere and knew everything. It was so real that I could see it, but then you broke the illusion at the end. I just don't see it ending like that.
Honestly though this nerf is just another step on the road to make us spend. Buffing mk XIII and mk XIV weapons wasn't enough to get people upgrading them, so now they are hitting the issue from the other side. Increasing the difficulty of content to the point that people can no longer earn rewards without upgrading.
Its all about segregating the player base to promote spending. If cryptic made a zone where more rewards per minute could be earnt but you had to pay to get in, that would be bad marketing. But if cryptic allows you to 'participate' in everything, but raises the difficulty to the point that you cant complete it without spending, then your less likely to notice the paywall.
And when coming back to the 'everything can be obtained without spending money' argument remember the time gates and the pace of development. Sure you can get everything if you work and wait, but by the time you do the goal posts have moved and those who spend still have better stuff then you.
So that's what this is. A symptom of the ongoing plan to erect covert paywalls in STO. Which is very sad, because there was a time when I could recommend friends to STO as a game without meaningfull paywalls.
Hate to say it, but that wasn't a very satisfactory explanation. We play those missions because they are the only ones you can complete with a PuG anymore due to the fact that if you fail at an optional on Advanced you fail the mission in less than a minute, don't get the rewards needed to get items from the rep system, and get locked out. Now you nerf the rewards so that it's less worthwhile playing the few that are still worth playing. This is NOT the proper solution, you need to fix Advanced queue difficulty on the rest of the missions so that we have a better chance of completing them in a PuG. Nothing else is going to make us go play the other missions.
PWE: So... your budget for Delta Rising was quite high, how do the players like the content you have created?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: We see... and do you have any statistics to back up this statement?
sdangelo:: Er... erm... well... no... but we DEFINITELY will NEXT time we meet!
PWE: Ok, well... we certainly hope so, it would be a great shame if your budget was spent on something the players do not like...
MEANWHILE AT CRYPTIC HEADQUARTERS
sdangelo: This is bad, this is bad, oh boy! they are on to us, what shall we do?! what shall we do?!
crypticgeko: Calm down... I have a plan, the players are idiots, I'm sure they will fall for it!
sdangelo: What?! what is the plan, tell me, tell meeeeeee!
crypticgeko: Simples... we just make the 'old content' less desireable, and reward the players for doing even the most boring things in the delta quadrant... like patrols for instance.
sdangelo: I like it!, what else?!
crypticgeko: Lets... nerf the old stf's, and buff the DR stfs' thats sure to help with the metrics, next time we meet the PWE managers we will have solid evidence that the players love the new expansion.
sdangelo: Great! that's so great! thank you, thank you!
crypticgeko: No worries man, thats my job! I love manipulating metrics!
PWE HEADQUARTERS - STAFF MEETING
PWE: So... it has been a while since our last meeting, and we are eager to know how the new expansion is going.
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: *stares momentarily* ...indeed, yes well we have heard this before, do you have any proof this time?
sdangelo: *swallows* Y..yes, look at this, you can clearly see from these metrics that players are visiting the new content more than the old content, this clearly shows that Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: Yes indeed, this is most interesting... but wait, what is this, it seems you have decreased rewards from old content and increased them for the new content... what is the reason for this?
sdangelo:: *Stares blankly*
PWE: Did you manipulate the metrics to make the new expansion look better?
sdangelo: *Splutters*
PWE: Can you please answer the question?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: That does not answer the question...
sdangelo:: *STARES OPEN MOUTHED* ....Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
Hate to say it, but that wasn't a very satisfactory explanation. We play those missions because they are the only ones you can complete with a PuG anymore due to the fact that if you fail at an optional on Advanced you fail the mission in less than a minute, don't get the rewards needed to get items from the rep system, and get locked out. Now you nerf the rewards so that it's less worthwhile playing the few that are still worth playing. This is NOT the proper solution, you need to fix Advanced queue difficulty on the rest of the missions so that we have a better chance of completing them in a PuG. Nothing else is going to make us go play the other missions.
I really don't see how changing the marks by 10 actually matters...
It's not much of an explanation. The queues were over-rewarding and the players over-succeeding relative to some secret thresholds you've established. It's the prolix equivalent of "Because we said so."
I really don't see how changing the marks by 10 actually matters...
My take - for a large number of people, it's now down to the principle of the thing. The queues are pretty dead - that's hard to deny, and the result is to drop rewards on the ones still popping.
In my opinion, not a HUUUGE deal, but still a thing. Not a positive change in any case. Also, the changes to Fleet Alert, a mission to help build a Fleet - that can get ALL players involved, including low level ones, amount to a pretty severe cut. Especially if it's 5 people all in the same Fleet and contributing to the same project.
Really - the cuts aren't terribly unreasonable - if they were given with boosts elsewhere. Unfortunately, not seeing much on the boost side of the announcement.
"We'll get to it later as part of an overall plan." sounds misleading at best, considering that's kinda what we heard when the XP nerf happened last.
I honestly don't think boosting Atmo Assault will get people to play it. With the shuttle hanging in mid-air bug I experienced in there the last shuttle weekend, you couldn't pay me 8000 dil to play it.
While I enjoy shuttle missions (The Vault was so cool when it first came out and I still like it), I don't like having to build up my shuttle just to play them. As a result, my shuttle is pretty squishy and so you won't see me playing Atmospheric Assault any time soon either.
While I enjoy shuttle missions (The Vault was so cool when it first came out and I still like it), I don't like having to build up my shuttle just to play them. As a result, my shuttle is pretty squishy and so you won't see me playing Atmospheric Assault any time soon either.
I'd rather spend my Dil on building my starship.
I just swipe the gear of my ship. I often fly a delta flyer with the Borg set. Harghpengs are pretty sweet on a shuttle.
Explanation?? Here's the only relevant bit of "explanation" from that thread
Let's break this down...
increasing difficulty for queues that are being completed at a higher rate than expected
So Cure Space, Crystalline Catastrophe are being completed at a higher rate than you expect? If you're going to use this as justification then perhaps you'd mind sharing what you feel the failure rate for this mission should be? I'd also like to throw this out there... premade teams are going to continue to have a 100% success rate. The only groups that contribute to your "fail rate" are PUGs, and the fewer PUGs that attempt these missions the higher the success rate will be. The effect of this change will be a reduction in participation with a percentage increase in successful completions.
decreasing rewards for queues that have been over-rewarding as compared to the reward levels we have established across all PvE queues.
Care to share the specific PvE queues that were used for comparison? Also, while we're on the topic of "explanations" care to share what you feel is a reasonable acquisition rate is for the rewards?
Sorry, but trying to throw out that the OP didn't link to that sad paragraph of an "explanation" doesn't really help the devs case on justifying this to be some type of improvement.
Close the spreadsheets, forget the metric data, and hop in game as regular players and PUG CSA and CC for a few days and then base your changes on first hand experience rather than data mining.
Brilliant post.
Instead of improving the DR content, it seems like they are gonna nerf everything else, to make DR look more attractive.
Going out on a limb here. If I give you guys the benifit of the doubt, I'm assuming that when groverclvld said "being completed at a higher rate than expected" he did not mean "stop winning you're supposed to fail" but that he instead meant "people are all playing these and ignoring the others". And when he said " over rewarding" he meant that you have some average marks/dil per hour metric and you see that we've gotten, on average better than that metric because we only do these few and ignore all the others, so we are good at them.
So, I'm guessing, that what he meant and should have said was "our internal data mining has shown that some queues are very popular and others are very unpopular. We are in the early stages of trying to make all queues equally attractive and popular, which will involve both carrots and sticks in several rounds of balancing. Our end-goal is to have roughly the same number of players in each queue. This round,unfortunately, is focusing on the stick end of the equation, specifically to encourage players to try out the less popular queues by reducing the incentives from the most popular few."
Now, if I'm right, what would really have been a smart thing to say (assuming it is true) would be something like " don't worry the next round will include some carrots, but we want to see which queues are the next most popular at their current level of reward vs difficulty".
If I'm wrong, then please add my voice to the w.t.f. chorus. Because, seriously, w.t.f?
Also, why do they call it an 'Optional' when it's anything but optional?
I'm pretty sure half the Dev team don't actually realise the 'optionals' became mandatory on a lot of missions when DR went live. A few weeks back during a livestream one of them (I wont name and shame :P) ran ISA and then got really confused why everybody warped out when they "failed the optional"... They didn't even realise the mission had failed, which doesn't fill me with confidence about them knowing what the game needs.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Then it seems you haven't thought about it much, maybe because you've played it for so long and don't need the marks.
Say if you want to buy 3 items with the marks, and it comes to 1500, then all these -10's are gonna add up. (I'm not doing the maths lol).
1500/10=150 So you'd have to do 150 queues to lose out on 1500 marks. Got grinding? But seriously... with the daily bonus, it comes down to a difference between 95 and 105, or so...
Also, why do they call it an 'Optional' when it's anything but optional?
Mandatory "optionals" shouldn't say optional in the task window. If they do it's a bug. In point of fact, I know the UIA mission DOESN'T call the additional objective optional at all. It's the same objective as normal, but without the optional tag.
1500/10=150 So you'd have to do 150 queues to lose out on 1500 marks. Got grinding? But seriously... with the daily bonus, it comes down to a difference between 95 and 105, or so...Mandatory "optionals" shouldn't say optional in the task window. If they do it's a bug. In point of fact, I know the UIA mission DOESN'T call the additional objective optional at all. It's the same objective as normal, but without the optional tag.
There are no mandatory objectives labeled optional. There are a handful of optional objectives that aren't marked as such (Undine Infiltration, for instance, "set to stun" isn't labeled as an optional, but it is on all three difficulties). I wish they were consistent, but an optional not being labeled as such isn't a big deal compared to the opposite.
I was really hoping people would stop calling non-optional objectives "optionals" by now. It's been months now, you're just confusing people. If it doesn't say optional, always assume you have to do it.
Instead of improving the DR content, it seems like they are gonna nerf everything else, to make DR look more attractive.
Sorry, but that's messed up.
This is pretty much exactly what they're doing. They're buffing DR and nerfing everything else to make DR "the best expansion ever" because "the players love it" by default. Why would people want to play missions that reward less for more work? They use the metrics to determine how the game is, but the thing people don't always remember is they control the metrics. They adjust everything to suit them. They always have, and then they use metrics to show how it's okay. That's like using Whales to determine how the shop works. These few players are spending way too much money on their multiple characters across multiple accounts, so they say the metrics show that all these things are being bought, but never by how many people. They can tell you how many new players come into the game each month, but they will never tell you how many of them stay for more than two. They can say people love DR because they're playing so much of it, but when they're making it the only profitable game in town, obviously people are going to grind it more. I'm surprised they're not putting argala on cooldown and selling cooldown resets in the C-store. There are reasons they never show the metrics to anyone.
You don't have to be wearing a tin foil hat as shiny as mine to see just what they're doing and how wrong it is.
Comments
It is quite clear now
THey want people to stop grinding old content for things
And encourage people to grind the newer content
Thus nerf old rewards, buff newer ones
Gotcha
The most sensible argument I have seen on this topic.
However, I don't see them listening to it, because they don't actually care, to them it's just a way to force people to spend more, nothing more, nothing less.
I just wanted to point out that the kang is a sitting duck, unable to shoot back ( why nerf damage if the dealt damage is already 0? ).
I didn't even released that they swapped names of the ground and space vesions of cure until you guys mentioned it.
The hell kinds of changes are those?
Honestly of them all, the one for Cure Normal seems the dumbest just because Normal difficult is the training-wheels version of any mission where new players learn how it works. If they're making 4-minute runs they're likely moving up Advanced anyways. I'm not sure what the intent is, to try and get veteran players to move down to give Advanced some sort of prestige, or to try and pretend Normal isn't training-wheels-mode and complicate life for newbie players, or what? I mean I don't like any of them in particular but that one just seems petty.
Seriously, what direction are you trying to steer this game in? Is someone there spiteful or something? Seems like any change to existing stuff over the last two months has been just one FU after another. Does someone need a hug?
These changes are going to kill it for me.
The only thing to do at end game are queues. Right now, succeeding in a PUG Advanced ANYTHING is a TRIBBLE shoot at best. These changes (especially the insane timers) is going to make pugging impossible.
So what am I supposed to do? The queues are already dead as it is for pugs and there is no way this will help with that. Plus, running normal versions of mission is useless because the rewards are garbage. If you want the rare mats to craft anything, you need to run advanced missions only.
Sorry but I really hope this doesn't make it to Holodeck. This is a step in the wrong direction.
PS
Mr pweadamanteus, the link you provided isn't an explanation at all. So... I'm not sure why you even linked that. Maybe go drink some more coffee or something because... that link is so NOT germane to the situation I don't understand why it even got posted.
That's not an explanation, you deleted the bullet points and created sentence fragments.
D-
Yes it's supposed to be 100% in PUGs (with 0% participation), everything else is just an exploit ! :P
Maybe it they're buffing Bug Hunt so it wont seem so bad when they nerf it later.
We've already seen this approach when they buffed all the battlezone rewards, then nerfed the Dyson ground rewards shortly there after.
Kind of like when management in an organization raise their own salaries, then 3 months later slash all salaries by an equal amount, and then try to placate the angry employees under them by saying, "Look guys, we're getting slashed too!"
PWE: So... your budget for Delta Rising was quite high, how do the players like the content you have created?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: We see... and do you have any statistics to back up this statement?
sdangelo:: Er... erm... well... no... but we DEFINITELY will NEXT time we meet!
PWE: Ok, well... we certainly hope so, it would be a great shame if your budget was spent on something the players do not like...
sdangelo: This is bad, this is bad, oh boy! they are on to us, what shall we do?! what shall we do?!
crypticgeko: Calm down... I have a plan, the players are idiots, I'm sure they will fall for it!
sdangelo: What?! what is the plan, tell me, tell meeeeeee!
crypticgeko: Simples... we just make the 'old content' less desireable, and reward the players for doing even the most boring things in the delta quadrant... like patrols for instance.
sdangelo: I like it!, what else?!
crypticgeko: Lets... nerf the old stf's, and buff the DR stfs' thats sure to help with the metrics, next time we meet the PWE managers we will have solid evidence that the players love the new expansion.
sdangelo: Great! that's so great! thank you, thank you!
crypticgeko: No worries man, thats my job! I love manipulating metrics!
PWE: So... it has been a while since our last meeting, and we are eager to know how the new expansion is going.
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: *stares momentarily* ...indeed, yes well we have heard this before, do you have any proof this time?
sdangelo: *swallows* Y..yes, look at this, you can clearly see from these metrics that players are visiting the new content more than the old content, this clearly shows that Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: Yes indeed, this is most interesting... but wait, what is this, it seems you have decreased rewards from old content and increased them for the new content... what is the reason for this?
sdangelo:: *Stares blankly*
PWE: Did you manipulate the metrics to make the new expansion look better?
sdangelo: *Splutters*
PWE: Can you please answer the question?
sdangelo:: Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: That does not answer the question...
sdangelo:: *STARES OPEN MOUTHED* ....Delta rising is our best expansion ever, and the players love it!
PWE: ....You're fired.
PWE: Did you add more monetary timegates to things?
Cryptic: We sure did!
PWE: Here's your bonus for the month!
Also, yes, Bug Hunt doesn't need a reward buff. It's already insane easy to pug on Elite. Of course now that I say that, Elite will get buffed to hell and it will be impossible unless you have a full suit of Epic gear.
This was announced separately. The spawnmother is getting a major HP fix.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
What possible incentive could there be to play in a queue that has gotten both harder and, at the same time, less rewarding?
That's a sure way to kill your PvE queues, not revive them.
We need the marks, we need the dilithium and we need the component drops. Since the release of DR all of those have consistently dropped while the content got harder. You guys are REDUCING our incentives to play the PvE queues NOT increasing them.
I don't know who's bright idea this was but he needs a good solid Gibbs slap.
I would urge you to change course on this and to change it quickly ... if/when this goes live the player reaction isn't going to be pretty.
It was like you had spys everywhere and knew everything. It was so real that I could see it, but then you broke the illusion at the end. I just don't see it ending like that.
Honestly though this nerf is just another step on the road to make us spend. Buffing mk XIII and mk XIV weapons wasn't enough to get people upgrading them, so now they are hitting the issue from the other side. Increasing the difficulty of content to the point that people can no longer earn rewards without upgrading.
Its all about segregating the player base to promote spending. If cryptic made a zone where more rewards per minute could be earnt but you had to pay to get in, that would be bad marketing. But if cryptic allows you to 'participate' in everything, but raises the difficulty to the point that you cant complete it without spending, then your less likely to notice the paywall.
And when coming back to the 'everything can be obtained without spending money' argument remember the time gates and the pace of development. Sure you can get everything if you work and wait, but by the time you do the goal posts have moved and those who spend still have better stuff then you.
So that's what this is. A symptom of the ongoing plan to erect covert paywalls in STO. Which is very sad, because there was a time when I could recommend friends to STO as a game without meaningfull paywalls.
Hate to say it, but that wasn't a very satisfactory explanation. We play those missions because they are the only ones you can complete with a PuG anymore due to the fact that if you fail at an optional on Advanced you fail the mission in less than a minute, don't get the rewards needed to get items from the rep system, and get locked out. Now you nerf the rewards so that it's less worthwhile playing the few that are still worth playing. This is NOT the proper solution, you need to fix Advanced queue difficulty on the rest of the missions so that we have a better chance of completing them in a PuG. Nothing else is going to make us go play the other missions.
:P:P:P
http://captiongenerator.com/26781/In-STO-Everything-is-Awesome
My character Tsin'xing
It's not much of an explanation. The queues were over-rewarding and the players over-succeeding relative to some secret thresholds you've established. It's the prolix equivalent of "Because we said so."
My take - for a large number of people, it's now down to the principle of the thing. The queues are pretty dead - that's hard to deny, and the result is to drop rewards on the ones still popping.
In my opinion, not a HUUUGE deal, but still a thing. Not a positive change in any case. Also, the changes to Fleet Alert, a mission to help build a Fleet - that can get ALL players involved, including low level ones, amount to a pretty severe cut. Especially if it's 5 people all in the same Fleet and contributing to the same project.
Really - the cuts aren't terribly unreasonable - if they were given with boosts elsewhere. Unfortunately, not seeing much on the boost side of the announcement.
"We'll get to it later as part of an overall plan." sounds misleading at best, considering that's kinda what we heard when the XP nerf happened last.
I honestly don't think boosting Atmo Assault will get people to play it. With the shuttle hanging in mid-air bug I experienced in there the last shuttle weekend, you couldn't pay me 8000 dil to play it.
I'd rather spend my Dil on building my starship.
My character Tsin'xing
Brilliant post.
Instead of improving the DR content, it seems like they are gonna nerf everything else, to make DR look more attractive.
Sorry, but that's messed up.
Going out on a limb here. If I give you guys the benifit of the doubt, I'm assuming that when groverclvld said "being completed at a higher rate than expected" he did not mean "stop winning you're supposed to fail" but that he instead meant "people are all playing these and ignoring the others". And when he said " over rewarding" he meant that you have some average marks/dil per hour metric and you see that we've gotten, on average better than that metric because we only do these few and ignore all the others, so we are good at them.
So, I'm guessing, that what he meant and should have said was "our internal data mining has shown that some queues are very popular and others are very unpopular. We are in the early stages of trying to make all queues equally attractive and popular, which will involve both carrots and sticks in several rounds of balancing. Our end-goal is to have roughly the same number of players in each queue. This round,unfortunately, is focusing on the stick end of the equation, specifically to encourage players to try out the less popular queues by reducing the incentives from the most popular few."
Now, if I'm right, what would really have been a smart thing to say (assuming it is true) would be something like " don't worry the next round will include some carrots, but we want to see which queues are the next most popular at their current level of reward vs difficulty".
If I'm wrong, then please add my voice to the w.t.f. chorus. Because, seriously, w.t.f?
Then it seems you haven't thought about it much, maybe because you've played it for so long and don't need the marks.
Say if you want to buy 3 items with the marks, and it comes to 1500, then all these -10's are gonna add up. (I'm not doing the maths lol).
Also, why do they call it an 'Optional' when it's anything but optional?
I'm pretty sure half the Dev team don't actually realise the 'optionals' became mandatory on a lot of missions when DR went live. A few weeks back during a livestream one of them (I wont name and shame :P) ran ISA and then got really confused why everybody warped out when they "failed the optional"... They didn't even realise the mission had failed, which doesn't fill me with confidence about them knowing what the game needs.
I'd just stop the comment right there. Might as well eliminate the "Quick Play" option.
Star Trek Online: Hardcore "Go Pro or Get Bent".
Around here, the blatantly obvious somehow never is.
My character Tsin'xing
There are no mandatory objectives labeled optional. There are a handful of optional objectives that aren't marked as such (Undine Infiltration, for instance, "set to stun" isn't labeled as an optional, but it is on all three difficulties). I wish they were consistent, but an optional not being labeled as such isn't a big deal compared to the opposite.
I was really hoping people would stop calling non-optional objectives "optionals" by now. It's been months now, you're just confusing people. If it doesn't say optional, always assume you have to do it.
This is pretty much exactly what they're doing. They're buffing DR and nerfing everything else to make DR "the best expansion ever" because "the players love it" by default. Why would people want to play missions that reward less for more work? They use the metrics to determine how the game is, but the thing people don't always remember is they control the metrics. They adjust everything to suit them. They always have, and then they use metrics to show how it's okay. That's like using Whales to determine how the shop works. These few players are spending way too much money on their multiple characters across multiple accounts, so they say the metrics show that all these things are being bought, but never by how many people. They can tell you how many new players come into the game each month, but they will never tell you how many of them stay for more than two. They can say people love DR because they're playing so much of it, but when they're making it the only profitable game in town, obviously people are going to grind it more. I'm surprised they're not putting argala on cooldown and selling cooldown resets in the C-store. There are reasons they never show the metrics to anyone.
You don't have to be wearing a tin foil hat as shiny as mine to see just what they're doing and how wrong it is.