Correct...you do not have infinite resources and cannot have everything now. You have to choose how to spend your resources.
You do have limited resources. And you do have to choose where to spend them. You're not wrong. However, what you seem to be trying to imply is that such a fact negates the massive grinding, and it really doesn't. In order to perform at maximum, you are grinding Dilithium constantly - probably on multiple characters, just to gear ONE - to gain access to any form of endgame gear. Oh, you want an Elite Fleet Warp Core? Cough up 15,000 Dilithium on the item itself (this does not mention that you need T3 Research to get, which is extraordinarily expensive). Oh, you want the Nukara shield and deflector? Yea, that'll be 1500 Nukara Marks and another 65,000 Dilithium. Oh, you want the Romulan Impulse Engines? That'll be another 32,500 Dilithium. Oh, you want decent weapons? Yea, that'll be a few dozen million energy credits. OH, you want to UPGRADE those weapons to XIV Ultra-Rares? Yea, that'll be 10,000 Dilithium. Each. Minimum. Plus the EC cost to buy the Kits. Oh, and now you want CONSOLES? Well, that's going to be...
I could keep going. I know a guy in the top 500 DPSers. I know the gear they use. It's absurdly expensive, and you NEED to be on that level to compete at endgame. You need MILLIONS of Dilithium. TENS, maybe even HUNDREDS, of millions of EC. Marks out the wazoo. And that's just assuming you buy whatever you can off the EXCHANGE. God help you if you want to do it all yourself. Especially if you're one of those people that wants to one-man the Fleet grind (like some people tried to). The fact of the matter is, there is way too much grind. And with this... they're making it that much worse. As I said in the original post the guy quoted, the playerbase has spent so much time grinding, they have been ground up into a fine powder. We're seeing it with player login trends. That fine dust is gradually blowing away in the wind. It's a problem. And this... This does not fix it. This makes it worse. Grey said that they're going to add other stuff later... but this is the same dev team that let it get this far. Can we really trust them to make good on that?
Indeed, however the gear that's hidden behind 900 Marks and 32500 Dil is also the most expensive to then upgrade to Mk XIV (UR/Gold or otherwise). If anything it should have had a discount on the upgrade rather than a penalty.
GW2 used a method similar to STO initially for Power levels. Each level was a set distance from the previous when it came to gear (say 10%). While this is easy on the maths it makes for a very tedious grind as there is little to keep one interested in the gear.
Since then they have added ways to modify the gear with sockets of different types and all sorts of customisation options allowing for different look and feel for the gear for the player. Obviously this results in both Sub-Optimal and Optimal builds for said gear and is one of the learning curves of the gameplay.
STO isn't too bad in that respect, though the actual Space Weaponry could do with some spicing up effects wise. The issue is that due to the way they are currently balanced (i.e. not balanced) there are literally 2 options. Beams or DBB's. Cannon's are so underpowered it's not funny. The Science Space Magic is underperforming in DPS vs AP Beams and a Tactical Captain. Because of the lack of balance between Enemy and Player the fights are either very short or way too long, rarely hitting the decent challenge middle ground, which in turn leads to massive powercreep by those who know vs those who don't.
As for rewards which is the main point of this post, the people who complain of there being too much rewarded in some areas are masochists. I can think of only 1 area that awards Dil in the right amounts. I can't think of any that award XP in the right amounts.
Whatever metric system has been deemed as appropriate is utterly wrong. It seems like a bunch of arbitrary numbers thrown together. For instance capping out Dil to 8K for a day should take about 15-30 minutes max. More than that is literally insane. You have the cap in place for a reason, so let it be used for that reason. 4hrs to make 8K dil (a quote from Mr Geko I believe) is just sheer lunacy. Most people won't have the time for the 4hr time frame. Let people gain said dil in 15-30 minutes from the gameplay too. Voth BZ is a good example of that working right. Everywhere else is a good example of it going horribly wrong.
While I've mentioned the Voth BZ, most of the issues there I covered in a post the other day. A minor alteration to the Map allowing multiple V-Rex Sites in each zone and a fix for all the poor collision geometry in the map at the same time would fix a lot of the issues. The other fix would be to have a reduction in Dil for the Dino's and an increase in Dil for the capture points. Marks are fine as is.
TBH a revamp of the zone mechanics would be pretty well received (except by those who hate change!).
First up the idea to grab "control" areas:
The 3 control point types aren't too bad, though there's not enough happening at each point to warrant a player's interest for long. A half setup player with Mk X gear can easily complete a point. They should be setup to be soloable, but you should need good gear for it (Mk XI Blue at least). This would encourage people to run together a bit.
Increase the rewards in EC and Dil for these points. Currently 90 dil isn't a whole lot as to get 5 points takes a good 25 mins at fastest. Seeing as most players can complete around 2 - 5 points before the Dino extravaganza around 200 dil per point would be a nice tasty treat for the players. A reward of 20K EC wouldn't be sniffed at either as it wouldn't massively upset the apple cart.
The time to complete each control point should be aimed to last for 3 minutes. With the waves increased in speed a bit as currently they can take far too long with a player looking at the same rock for FAR too long.
The Second part is actually the Mini-Bosses:
They need to be beefed up a bit. Say 480 Dil reward and a good helping of teamwork needed. Maybe a scaling resistance to damage depending on players in combat, requring at least a group of 2 players and BoFF's to complete easily. Soloing is possible by those with enough skill.
Add in a Daily kill the Mini-Boss mission too with an added Dil reward (360 or 480)
The Final Part - Venomous Ex:
This needs the largest overhaul. Currently the camping issues are primarily a placement thing. You have 3 static locations where Dino's are going to pop. They always pop there regardless and a good group can down a Dino in a short enough time that players the other side of the same area can't get a shot in. Not to mention that currently tagging is a very very hit or miss affair with it usually only working if I fight for around 20-30s at each Dino. Even then I still usually only get 2/3 registered Dino's
So to overhaul this area all that needs to happen is have 3 locations in each zone that are Silo's where the Dino can Spawn. Only a single dino spawns in each main zone (City, Outskirts, Park) and with the random position, there is an announce from Commander Arnold as to which one it is in each zone, akin to "The North City Silo shielding has failed, target that Silo"...
The spawn's are also staggered, with 45s between the first dino and the second, and 45s between the second and third. This would allow for people to work together more, less camping, and also give players the chance to actually tag all three. The initial spawn would be random as would the second and third, meaning prediction of the Dino position is pointless as it could leave you miles away from the actual spawn.
Seeing as the rewards for the earlier parts were increased the rewards for tagging a dino are reduced to just 1200 per dino. With each Dino requiring around 180s to defeat with an avg mixed group (dedicated high damage group probably reduces that to 60s) That's still a very short time for 3600 Dil, with the points dil being around 5x 200 making it 4600 and a mini-boss at 480 making 5080 without taking into account the Dailies.
It results in the same amount of Dil as currently, but evenly spread out and encouraging group coordination and teamwork.
The last pill:
The Battle Mark's should just be handed to the player on completion of a control point. They are a needless mechanic that only results in griefing. 20 per point liberated would do the job fine. Even Random number between 20 and 30 would be fine. But the current pick up the pink candy is silly.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
You do have limited resources. And you do have to choose where to spend them. You're not wrong. However, what you seem to be trying to imply is that such a fact negates the massive grinding, and it really doesn't. In order to perform at maximum, you are grinding Dilithium constantly - probably on multiple characters, just to gear ONE - to gain access to any form of endgame gear. Oh, you want an Elite Fleet Warp Core? Cough up 15,000 Dilithium on the item itself (this does not mention that you need T3 Research to get, which is extraordinarily expensive). Oh, you want the Nukara shield and deflector? Yea, that'll be 1500 Nukara Marks and another 65,000 Dilithium. Oh, you want the Romulan Impulse Engines? That'll be another 32,500 Dilithium. Oh, you want decent weapons? Yea, that'll be a few dozen million energy credits. OH, you want to UPGRADE those weapons to XIV Ultra-Rares? Yea, that'll be 10,000 Dilithium. Each. Minimum. Plus the EC cost to buy the Kits. Oh, and now you want CONSOLES? Well, that's going to be...
eek. even a 1/6th-1/4th trim to the prices would make it less expensive, gearing one char takes like forever to get this stuff.
Five years later they still don't have a formula for time and effort equals x reward.
Who cares if x takes 20 minutes and Y takes 15, choices of what to play should be on content.
The entire idea that people are picking missions based on rewards is TRIBBLE up the game.
Let people play what they want and not because this has a better reward based on time and effort.
Guess what they would also know what missions stink and need tweaking.
But by offering a mission that takes 20 minutes and a mission that takes 15 minutes where they have the same reward...you've created the incentive to run the 15 minute mission instead, no?
It's precisely by addressing the time/effort involved in a mission and rewarding accordingly that you would have what you're looking for...your suggestion contradicts that.
Playing 3x 20 minute mission and 4x 15 minute missions should reward the same after an hour, for example. But if playing 4x 15 minute missions rewarded more in than hour than the 3x 20 minute missions, 100% the reward vs. 75% the reward...tada...
Exactly a time/effort curve is required not a linear methodology.
However the overall result should be ~ the same after an hour of playing.
Chris Robert's on SC:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
But by offering a mission that takes 20 minutes and a mission that takes 15 minutes where they have the same reward...you've created the incentive to run the 15 minute mission instead, no?
On a basic numerics level? Yes. But if that 20-minute mission is more FUN? I'll take that unless I desperately want the item I'm grinding for. And that is the crux of it: There is so much grinding to be done, no one can afford to play the longer, more fun missions. Case in point: How many people do you honestly think play Foundry missions? Those are fun, and they reward generous amounts of Dilithium. But they take time, and no one is willing to put that time in when they can go elsewhere. The only real way to bring fun back to STO is to massively trim the grind.
Dreaming the impossible dream? Across the board, reduce Dilithium costs by 75%. That brings most items down to the point where you can gear a character in a couple of days. When they don't need to mark your calendar for some time in the next 6 months to finish gearing that character, you will find that players tend to play more fun missions. Do other things. Because they won't see it as a second job.
Hey cryptic over here, maybe, just maybe if you would've released this explanation first ( before the tribble patch notes ), some of the rage posts could of been avoided ( maybe ).
I like the idea of obtaining reputation rewards from single-player content. Whenever the general stf queues lack players, I can see myself relying upon the single-player content. I like that overall logic.
Some of my followup concerns are:
(1) I like to be substantially rewarded for my time and effort. Whenever I walk away with a handful of marks, I find myself reluctant to log into the game. I understand you are working on the reward versus effort issue. Obtaining anything less than fifty marks feels like a waste. How are you going to balance the reward system, so that players will walk away with a sense of fulfillment?
(2) I don't have allot of time to play "Star Trek: Online". Before I took my leave of absence, I found myself playing roughly three nights a week. I am a very casual player. How will the new reward system affect my casual game play? Will I see longer progression periods?
(3) After your first play through of a mission, the episode rewards are drastically reduced. Will the single-player reputation system rewards be reduced after each play through?
(4) Single-player and offline games reward players steadily. Within a good one to two hour period, players can walk away with some very useful gear. Whenever I complete a two hour session, while playing "Star Trek: Online", I don't feel as though I have obtained anything rewarding. I am usually stuck waiting to fill resource requirements and timegates. How will the new reward system compete with less expensive, more rewarding, single-player and offline games?
(5) Endlessly grinding content is not a rewarding experience. Since I like making steady progress, while also being substantially rewarded, I am finding the grinding mechanic to be too much like work. Will the new reward system attempt to reduce the sense of work?
(6) During my first three years on "Star Trek: Online", the anniversary ships were given away for free. Cryptic use to give anniversary ships away, so they can show their overall appreciation. Why did the free anniversary ship get replaced with a grinding ship? Have you thought about going back to the old way?
(7) Progress between level fifty and sixty is insanely slow. Upon reaching level fifty-eight, I ended up walking away from "Star Trek: Online. I needed to take a rest. Will the new reward system also speed up leveling?
As far as general feedback, I have two things you might consider:
If you make a negative adjustment now, and plan on a positive adjustment in the future, which of the two impacts the present state of the game?
If something feels rewarding, and something else does not, does reducing the reward for the former improve the latter?
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
I could keep going. I know a guy in the top 500 DPSers. I know the gear they use. It's absurdly expensive, and you NEED to be on that level to compete at endgame.
You know a guy in the top 500 DPSers...#500 is currently at 38,337.9 DPS. What content is that needed for? No content. Nothing requires that kind of DPS.
Saying that you want to compete with the top 5% or better of the folks on the DPS League tables...well, that's going to be a more expensive investment than what anybody needs to run the content. That's not an average player's problem...and there's also the simple bit that if it was just a case of having the gear, then everybody would be parsing at 38k+ right? Not just that 5% group, eh?
It really sounds like an I want issue...not an I need issue. Yes, you may feel the need/see the need for the gearing to compete with that that top 5% in the DPS League...maybe hit up that top 1% by trying to do the 63k+...etc, etc, etc...but really? That's the argument for their being too much grind, Dil costs too high, and the rest? Wanting to compete with that top 5% or better?
Your sig says you're @Lord-Ice...you're not even in the DPS League Tables. Are you competing at endgame with a different account or with some other group? Or are you just trying to use the DPS folks as a scapegoat for the argument of reducing Dil cost?
Too many years of too many broken and severely delayed "promises". I just can't take anything you say at face value anymore.
The game used to be fun. It is no longer. If you think after the long string of broken promises that any of us are actually going to believe you, you're even more lost than we thought.
Keep nerfing. You're just digging your own graves.
Let me know if/when you finally get around to those buffs you so eloquently promise. Maybe then I'll come back. That is, if they ever materialize.
I for one am tired of having smoke blown up my TRIBBLE. Too little, too late. Any goodwill you might have earned is gone. You say you're listening, but you're not. You say we're confused, but we're not -- we play the game, we know what's going on, we see it every time we log in. You sit behind a spreadsheet making decisions based on metrics and datamining while completely ignoring the massive volume of feedback from actual living players. It is sheer stupidity, and it will be this game's downfall.
We did not sign up to play Star Grind Online. Please stop while you're already so far behind.
I think the saddest part is that this thread will explode with the same sentiments repeated over and over and absolutely nothing will change, because you simply do not listen to us. The game you want to make isn't the game we want to play. And by the time you figure that out it will be far far too late to get us back.
I really hope you have a plan B, because plan A is going to backfire spectacularly.
I couldn't agree with you more. As much as I like the game and I've I vested both time and money. And until late last year I was on a monthly sub since starting play in December 2009. But given how things are going I'm spending less and less time in game.
Space has always been favoured over ground, because it's faster and easier to do. Isa is used for the bench mark for dps parses. So it makes sense that this would get run more often than anything other.
Cryptic are ramping up the rewards from bug hunt yet haven't touched the borg queues which take longer to complete and actually require a lot more effort to gain the objectives. Then we come to the xp awarded for these missions which is a tenth of that from argala or gerren patrolsl. Yet the xp was the first thing to get cut. Or is a ploy to raise the later on making it look like they're giving us a carrot. Instead of constantly beating us down with stick and nerf bat again.
You know a guy in the top 500 DPSers...#500 is currently at 38,337.9 DPS. What content is that needed for? No content. Nothing requires that kind of DPS.
Saying that you want to compete with the top 5% or better of the folks on the DPS League tables...well, that's going to be a more expensive investment than what anybody needs to run the content. That's not an average player's problem...and there's also the simple bit that if it was just a case of having the gear, then everybody would be parsing at 38k+ right? Not just that 5% group, eh?
It really sounds like an I want issue...not an I need issue. Yes, you may feel the need/see the need for the gearing to compete with that that top 5% in the DPS League...maybe hit up that top 1% by trying to do the 63k+...etc, etc, etc...but really? That's the argument for their being too much grind, Dil costs too high, and the rest? Wanting to compete with that top 5% or better?
Your sig says you're @Lord-Ice...you're not even in the DPS League Tables. Are you competing at endgame with a different account or with some other group? Or are you just trying to use the DPS folks as a scapegoat for the argument of reducing Dil cost?
Or he could just be talking about someone he plays with, like he said. In any case, the point is about the grind being already pretty annoying and this only makes it worse. He was using the DPS people as an EXAMPLE rather than an argument, from what I read.
There has been a lot of confusion expressed about some of the recent updates made specifically to PvE queues. Weve been monitoring your posts and would like to respond to the requests made by many of you for more information about why these changes (and those that came before) are being made.
Our recent updates have focused on PvE queues because we have the most data on them and because they are one of the only sources for reputation marks. As a result, they are a more closed system. The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made. That being said, these changes are being discussed and planned and while the details are still being hammered out, we are willing to commit to the following updates taking place in the next couple of months:
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Add Skill Point and Expertise rewards to all Adventure and Battle Zones.
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
We thank you for your continuing patience as we get these updates through the development process and out to the players.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Here is another update for everyone about some of the current changes, as well as upcoming changes.
Please have a look through and let us know your feedback here. I will monitor for TOS adherence.
Thanks again everyone!
~CaptainSmirk
Thank you for this update. Some feedback I want to leave here and I hope it gets taken into consideration.
These "optionals", IMO, have to go.... pre DR the optionals didn't mean autofail.. it meant you just didn't get bonus marks.
With the recommended time shortening of some of the more poplular ques I believe it will be a problem for some... I also include myself in that. I am a casual player who just really wants to play. Sure I like the occasional challenge but at the end of the day I want to feel good when I log out and not frustrated at an aspect of the game that I enjoy.
If I may suggest... bring back the "optionals" pre DR. Which again all you lost is bonus marks and NOT the whole mission. THAT is what some are not so happy about as you speak of "time invested"... well nothing sucks more than being in a mission for say 10 mins and somethings goes wrong and bam.... whole thing is failed.
I don't mind the time limit but don't have us fail it if we don't make it.
Optionals should be... well optionals.
Also, I remember reading pre DR that the old Elites were going to be the new Advanced and that NOTHING was going to change. That wasn't the case... there are way more npcs that hit harder and have larger HP. I understand if that is part of the challenge but then why make the payout less?... it was suppose to be exactly like the old Elite but again.. that is NOT the case.
I mention these things as these are some of the things that I've noticed and don't agree with 100%.
I do appreciate the communication and only hope that responses are more frequent as I'm sure you've noticed that the playerbase assumes that "you" don't care especially when there are endless pages of discontent going on.
Also I wanted to add something else.. the previous XP weekend was awesome BUT it felt like I had to "grind" my points by doing patrols. I must say though it felt how it should've felt all along.
Something else I wanted to ask... I remember that we were suppose to get dill whenever we got another spec point.. why was that removed? It's always nice to have something to work towards and the dill along with the spec point was a good motivator. I may have missed the answer to this so I apologize if that was answered somewhere.
The only thing I wanted to leave this on was... make STO more casual friendly. I, as a casual player, like the feeling that I get my shinies within reasonable time. I don't need it right away but I want my overall "time invested" in STO to show something at the end of the day. What does that look like? I don't have the answers but I know it was friendlier pre DR.
On that note.. I hope that I was coming across respectful with my rants as it is meant to be respectful and is meant to come across from a casual point of view as well as one who LOVES Star Trek.... nothing like living out my fantacy of being the Captain of a starship that I am in command of.
You know a guy in the top 500 DPSers...#500 is currently at 38,337.9 DPS. What content is that needed for? No content. Nothing requires that kind of DPS.
Saying that you want to compete with the top 5% or better of the folks on the DPS League tables...well, that's going to be a more expensive investment than what anybody needs to run the content. That's not an average player's problem...and there's also the simple bit that if it was just a case of having the gear, then everybody would be parsing at 38k+ right? Not just that 5% group, eh?
It really sounds like an I want issue...not an I need issue. Yes, you may feel the need/see the need for the gearing to compete with that that top 5% in the DPS League...maybe hit up that top 1% by trying to do the 63k+...etc, etc, etc...but really? That's the argument for their being too much grind, Dil costs too high, and the rest? Wanting to compete with that top 5% or better?
Your sig says you're @Lord-Ice...you're not even in the DPS League Tables. Are you competing at endgame with a different account or with some other group? Or are you just trying to use the DPS folks as a scapegoat for the argument of reducing Dil cost?
I'm not in that league because I can't grind enough to get there. There's so much grind that I cannot feasibly reach that point. Or, any point coming anywhere close. And that's how it is for the other 95% of players. I know HOW, it's simply so expensive and time consuming that it's not possible in any reasonable length of time. Those that HAVE done it, did it when those grinds first came out and haven't stopped since. And no, it is a need issue. Because the Devs said, when they announced that they were adding a new difficulty to queues, that you would NEED to function at that level in order to compete. And even then, even NOT trying to compete, just getting gear good enough to run an Advanced with a measure of competence... You really don't think 10, 20, 30, 40,000 Dilithium is too much for single items? No. That's absurd. 40,0000 Dilithium is nearly a week's worth of refining. For one item.
Now, cut that by 75%. You can get, with a bit of planning and a well-built Fleet, one item a day from a Reputation. Or a couple items from a few stores. It's reasonable. You work, you get a reward, you can use the reward. You should not need a grinding schedule and a sense of "I have to play THIS much to get what I want" for every single item. If a sensible one item a day pace is too much of a compromise... then there's a problem. But, open up the ability to get that item a day... People will go, get that item, and go do FUN things. Or, they'll do slower, more enjoyable tasks to get that item. It is as I have said: Trim the grind, and the players will enjoy the game. Do not make it easy... but make it enough of a challenge that they will value what they get, without making it so hard that the only way to maintain your ability to do missions without getting flak is to treat the game like a second job.
I'll conclude thusly: No, I'm not using DPS as a scapegoat. It's called an example. "This is what is commonly expected. This is the level people try to get at and the level Cryptic expects us to be at. It is no longer possible."
I've been saying since DR came out rewards are not worth the time invested. The Ques are the most obvious place this disconnect appears. But it also exists nearly throughout the whole game. And there seems to be little to no interest upon the part of anyone at pwe/cryptic in addressing this.
Until now. And while I thank you for noticing and deigning to speak with us peons here in the Forums, I have to ask: What took so long?
I like Star Trek. Lifelong fan. I will remain a Star Trek fan long after this game is done. I like STO a lot. What I do not like is being taken advantage of or having the truth misrepresented to me. This makes me, a player of STO, just like you, the Devs.
Here is something the Dev Team has allowed themselves to forget or ignore:
STO players want this game to be successful as much as you people on the Dev Team do. Star Trek fans are known for putting up with a lot just to get that fix we all crave. We are also very passionate about anything connected to Star Trek. We can be amazingly patient. But everyone's patience has limits beyond which they will not go.
There are other places to go to get my Star Trek fix, guys. DR and the Great Exploit Fiasco, along with the Nerf of the Day on the rewards have made those other places much more attractive. I do not want to stop playing STO. You do not want me to stop spending money on STO, either. But I am not going to continually throw good money away if the entertainment value of STO remains at the level it is now.
This game is currently not fun to play. It used to be. I'd like to think it will be again and very soon. It feels like a second job right now. A bottom of the pay scale wage slave job at that. I enjoyed Winter Wonderland. First time in awhile I had fun playing STO. When it ended, I went back to running in place as fast as I can. I understand pwe/cryptic not wanting people to burn through content or max out a character inside of a day. The longer I play, the more likely it is I will spend money on STO. I also understand players not wanting to spend years of their lives just to acquire one point on the Specialization Tree. If I am here for a month or six with no apparent progress towards my current goals in the game, why not go someplace else where my money and my time will be appreciated?
Participating in the Forums and actually reading what we post is a start. Thank you. The recent changes where Foundry Missions are accessible through Sector Space is also a good start. Again, thank you. But they are only starting points. The execution and the troubleshooting and the response time to problems has to come way way up from what they are now. You guys showed you can move very quickly when you want to with the whole Japori 17x thing. I am wondering why you do not move this quickly on other things.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Why I no longer the PvE queue, because I do not want to lose and I want a gain.
Why CE is popular, because radiogenic particule (update beam).
why players are angry, because you only reduce the gain or you delete the contents.
You do not want to say it but it shows there was a massive departure of players, it makes sense that you are on the wrong way. And you do not want to recognize your mistakes.
Saving STO. We want to find fun playing.
There has been a lot of confusion expressed about some of the recent updates made specifically to PvE queues. Weve been monitoring your posts and would like to respond to the requests made by many of you for more information about why these changes (and those that came before) are being made.
Our recent updates have focused on PvE queues because we have the most data on them and because they are one of the only sources for reputation marks. As a result, they are a more closed system. The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made. That being said, these changes are being discussed and planned and while the details are still being hammered out, we are willing to commit to the following updates taking place in the next couple of months:
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Add Skill Point and Expertise rewards to all Adventure and Battle Zones.
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
We thank you for your continuing patience as we get these updates through the development process and out to the players.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
I assumed as much. It's good to see you took my advice and explained your reasonings better. Perhaps that was your intention, in either event I will take full credit for it .
So level out the rewards across the board so no-one will gravitate toward certain missions for marks, check. The list looks good as well, I like the idea of dispersing Dil and elite drops across more content, those BNP's are impossible for fresh 50's at the moment.
I do anticipate one problem however, and that is the design of the content itself. Even with the rewards balanced perfectly a player will still be more likely to go into a familiar mission that is basically shooting lots of stuff to death instead of one that has harsh failure conditions or is just unfamiliar with it. It could even just be a question of habit after all the grinding.
So in the future you may change things yet again in a way that contradicts what you are doing now, and then you've gone full circle.
edit: In the end, it's not worth pursuing that line of discussion. As I said, there's no arguing that somebody doesn't feel the way they do and it's not really up to me to decide whether their reasoning behind why they feel that way has any merit.
It was a good idea to pull someone out of the dev-crowd who is not known for being rude or is insulting customers on a regular basis. but maybe it wasnt a good idea to take someone who lied in previous posts (xp-nerf/spec-progression). But i suppose it is hard to find someone who is willing to publicly represent this point of view and still has an intact reputation.
For a better understanding i would suggest to replace reward with compensation. some content isnt really fun to play for various reasons. sadly, i didn't read something about that in the post. changing compensation doesn't make a mission more or less fun to play. increasing reward just makes them less annoying. Oh, and by the way: if you release something that includes only running/flying from A to B - pressing f;kill kill kill kiil waves after waves; skipping walls of texts ... then don't call it new content. it's just other content.
Before announcing changes (doing only the bad ones and just promising good ones may be not the best decision) you should really have started with an honest, extensive post titled "what is wrong with star trek online" - where you describe in detail what is bad, what is/was not working as intended, why it is as it is, why do you think it is not working/accepted by the playerbase, what you are planning to do to improve this and - important: steps/consequences taken to prevent the same mistakes in the future (which in my humble opinion includes replacing decision-makers).
The change of course since DR doesnt want me to play this game anymore. and i haven't read anything yet which will change my mind (even if i took the "promises" for real). so, from this side of the monitor .. yes, cryptic is still doing a good job in killing this game - intended or not.
edit: Virusdancer, you edited your post, but you wanted to say, that top end gear is not required for completing stfs und thus not mandatory
Player A) 26,857
Player 23,946
Player Me) 11,207
Player D) 7,191
Player E) 5,137
Looks like you could have come with a shuttle and still completed the mission with player a and b. :P
Fact is, you have to work harder when you're less geared. That makes the reward feel underwhelming compared to satisfying when you're murdering the stf.
You have to take more effort, yet the reward is the same. The reward/time balance is heavily gear dependend, that's why dps is all the rage right now. :cool:
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made.
There is now place in the game where I feel like I am rewarded too much skill points or dilithium. If you would share those, that would be great to understanding of what is in store for us next.
The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
(Snip)
thank you, the principle is good, but it seems to me that instead of making the sub-optimal better, the Optimal is being made worse to match
The confusion isn't about the rewards themselves, nor about what we want/need the reward changes to look like to make the game playable. The confusion is about the motives behind you guys doing the complete opposite of what the game needs, which leads nicely onto this list I made
The game needs:-
1: Double (preferably triple) the exp rewards for everything and the per level exp has to remain UNCHANGED.
2: Rewards for queued PvE missions at normal and advanced need to be increased and objectives that make these missions when PuGed easy to fail (be it due to not paying attention or due to dps limitations) need to be either removed or made easier to achieve. This will entice more players to queue up.
I also did some thinking last night about adjustments that could be made to the update schedule that would make it more difficult for players to run out of content before the next major release that doesn't involve level gating.
Weekly:
Current standard updates
Fortnightly:
More bug fixes and a set of story missions (maybe up to 7)
Monthly:
See fortnightly but add a new PvE queue or two
Every three and six months you put out a major release anyway so you just carry one with that. This change to the update schedule would keep players busy between releases and the continuous flow of new content would prevent boredom. An additional benefit of this is that you can reduce the grindy feel of the game without losing playtime which in turn will increase the number of players playing which should improve the money flow into the game.
There has been a lot of confusion expressed about some of the recent updates made specifically to PvE queues. Weve been monitoring your posts and would like to respond to the requests made by many of you for more information about why these changes (and those that came before) are being made.
Our recent updates have focused on PvE queues because we have the most data on them and because they are one of the only sources for reputation marks. As a result, they are a more closed system. The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made. That being said, these changes are being discussed and planned and while the details are still being hammered out, we are willing to commit to the following updates taking place in the next couple of months:
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Add Skill Point and Expertise rewards to all Adventure and Battle Zones.
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
We thank you for your continuing patience as we get these updates through the development process and out to the players.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Mr. Gray, I appreciate your desire to calm the general public down regarding DR updates, however, the Cryptic team is leaving a large swath of its player community in danger.
An example of a critical mistake would be earning elite reputation marks via single player content. Player sentiment has already expressed disapproval of solo grinding, aka Argala, so adding more incentive to play the game solo is a very bad idea!
First, understand I am not against a daily solo mission to earn elite reputation tokens, but the reason the players have fled the queues in masses and hide in harder to access private matches is best summed up like this. Zero percent of zero is zero. I use to pug all the time in space. Since DR I wont touch it with a 10 foot pole.
I use to be able to queue for pretty much any mission but since DR I am limited to but a few.
Cryptic is NOT addressing the SOURCE of the problem. Incentive! Failure and long drawn out battles with hit point sponges is NOT fun. Period. As a suggestion from a nearly disinterested third party I highly recommend Cryptic get it's nose out of the Metric book, buy a fun book, open it, and get to work.
Lastly, I will once again implore you to put effort into pvp. Pile incentive to the rafters if you have to, but do not stop until it is vibrant again.
There has been a lot of confusion expressed about some of the recent updates made specifically to PvE queues. Weve been monitoring your posts and would like to respond to the requests made by many of you for more information about why these changes (and those that came before) are being made.
Our recent updates have focused on PvE queues because we have the most data on them and because they are one of the only sources for reputation marks. As a result, they are a more closed system. The intent of these updates is to have all PvE queues reward at similar rates that take into account their individual makeups including (but not limited to) time investment, risk of failure, and number of players required. As the PvE queues exist right now there are outliers queues that reward a lot more for less time and less effort than other queues (optimal choices) and queues that reward a lot less for more time and more effort than other queues (sub-optimal choices). In fixing these discrepancies we are trying to remove the feeling of making a bad choice as a player for playing what you want to play instead of feeling forced to play something based on how much it rewards you for playing it.
We understand the sentiment expressed that there are a lot of places outside of PvE queues that either feel like they are rewarding too much for too little effort or rewarding too little for too much effort. These rewards are typically of Skill Points, Expertise, or Dilithium, all of which touch many more parts of the game and therefore need extra due diligence before any changes are made. That being said, these changes are being discussed and planned and while the details are still being hammered out, we are willing to commit to the following updates taking place in the next couple of months:
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Add Skill Point and Expertise rewards to all Adventure and Battle Zones.
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
We thank you for your continuing patience as we get these updates through the development process and out to the players.
Charles Gray
Lead Content Designer
Star Trek Online
Thats a joke, isnt it?
You developers have many of such promises in the past and broke your word.
When will we finally see our XP rewards returned to normal values just like you promised months ago?
Yes... of course you doubled the xp for specific patrol missions but infact only the base xp for the mission was doubled, not the xp for the entire mission while just at the same time you trippled the requirements for the level ups.
And now you come here to tell us about new fairy tales?
The rewards in all areas of the game have been nerfed in the past 3 months (this includes XP, dilithium, EC,...) and at the same time you guys have increased costs of almost everything in STO.
The upgrade system is consuming such high amount of resources that players dont have enough resources anymore to support their fleets or buy stuff from the reputation system (for the fact that the rep items are not only expensive when you buy them... but also come only as mk12 version which costs incredible amounts of dil to update to mk14).
In no area of the game the mission pay out enough rewards to cover the newly introduced costs. And with every newly introduced feature its getting worse.
And you have the nerves to reduce the already very low reward payouts even more?!?
I think you dont even have an idea about your own metrics or how it really is to play on the server. You have no idea how long it takes for an average player to level up, gain the resources needed for the reputation system and finally getting to the point where such players can actually even consider to start playing adv. or elite missions.
You want to increase skill points in PVEs?
Thats great... but since you raise the difficulty of those the average player will see very little of these xp.
You want to add dilithium to the mission rewards?
WOW
You clearly mean the reward of the story missions... but what you dont tell us here that to complete these missions you need to invest even more time than on the PVEs.
This is just an alibi for you to tell us that you increased the rewards for us players.
Fact is that players wont play these story missions since the rewards will never reflect the amount of time that they have to invest in order to get them.
You want to raise the rewards for sector patrols?
Aha... well... so why did you call us exploiters when running patrols in tau dewa?
I guess after this change we will have 2-3 additional patrols worth to grind while PVE remains dead.
Adding skill points and expertice to adventure zones and battle zones?
Well... yeah... how much xp?
enough to be worth it?
Adding Elite Reputation Marks to SP content?
WTF?!?!
1. this clearly removes every need to play PVEs any longer
play easy stupid SP content to get elite rewards... yes... great idea...
this will clearly push this game even more into a sinpleplayer direction where players dont have to work together anymore
2. this does clearly kill the entire purpose behind the reputation system
3. you really want to add such items to missions that were designed for players which mostly dont even have access to the reputation system at that point?
Yeah... it certainly makes sense if a lvl10 player gets his neural processors to buy MK12 maco shields while this lvl10 player does not even meet the level requirements for this kind of equipment nor do such players have enough reputation marks
You can not be serious to move end game items into the beginners section of the game.
WTF are you guys smoking when you come up with such stupid ideas?
None of the above mentioned measurements has any positive effect on the game... nothing of that will fix any of the serious ingame problems.
Thats just some stupid alibi **** that will cause even more problems.
Btw. what happened with the:
Second, all existing content, all new story content, patrols and most queues will not require a Tier 6 or Upgraded Tier 5 starship. Only the most challenging new level 60 content will strongly benefit from using an upgraded Tier 5 starship or a Tier 6 starship, however it will not strictly require it.
A lie?
Afterall you just now want to increase the difficulty of old game content to a level that is beyond what an ordinary level 50 player with a t5 ship can deal with.
What happened to the developers announcement that adv. missions will be just like the elite missions prior delta rising?
Sorry... but adv. missions are already more difficult than the elite missions we had prior delta rising and now you want to make them even more difficult without any real justification other than "oh my god... our players are able to win"
Guess what... if this game keeps developing into this direction you developers should already start to look for a new job because you will lose the very few loyal STO members that remained in the game.
Looks like you could have come with a shuttle and still completed the mission with player a and b. :P
Heh, given the average combined DPS of the other runs I'd listed there - yeah, if the three others of us had shown up in shuttles it still would have been done without issue. Would take some deep analysis to see how much those two aided the DPS of the others or hampered it - there was quite a bit of there simply not being targets there going on vs. the damage that was being done looking better because of the shorter duration. The boat I was in was too slow to take advantage of the pace those two guys were taking, so it was just a case of trying to toss out some debuffs while eating the range penalty trying at least to get some shots in.
Fact is, you have to work harder when you're less geared. That makes the reward feel underwhelming compared to satisfying when you're murdering the stf.
You have to take more effort, yet the reward is the same. The reward/time balance is heavily gear dependend, that's why dps is all the rage right now. :cool:
See, that's where it's going to get into different things for different folks. I feel zero satisfaction lobbing thermonuclear grenades into a barrel of goldfish. It's tedious and just not any fun. I like a challenge - I like the potential for failure - I like feeling like I actually was part of a team that accomplished something.
I don't run STFs for any rewards - for everything but BNPs/APCs, everything else to me offers far better rewards. And well, I just don't need any BNPs/APCs...so if I'm running something, it's not for any reward - it's cause I'm looking to have some fun. I like to fly goofball builds - I prefer doing support, I like to tank, toss heals, buff, debuff, and stuff like that. I got my 22,846 high in a run where the comment I put was "Damage In Testing". I wasn't trying to DPS, I was testing a perceived issue taking place with Attack Pattern Expertise and Shields. It wasn't a boat built to do damage...course, there was a guy there that grabbed too much aggro, lol - so I only pulled 45.9% of the attacks and 40.0% of the damage. For me, even though it set my high for DPS it was a failed run because I was trying to test something else.
I can still have fun losing if it was a good fight, a good try. It does irritate me some when folks show up doing the DPS that would guarantee a fail in the hopes that they can get carried - cause you can end up on a team with four folks leeching. Then again, that's less painful to me that groups that have more than enough DPS but are off chasing butterflies to cause the fail (those somebody dropped a Gen, so pop the the other three and the Trans - but they're off chasing the Spheres from the Trans (not off trying to slow the Nanites, but just chasing the Spheres from the Trans around)...meh. There's no reason those should be a fail.
But all the same, it's probably why when I do run stuff I do it in my goofball builds and in PUGs...cause odds are I'm going to have to push myself. There there will be the challenge that the content itself just doesn't provide...in its own way, pugging is a form of PvP...you vs. the folks that maybe shouldn't be there for whatever reason.
There is now place in the game where I feel like I am rewarded too much skill points or dilithium. If you would share those, that would be great to understanding of what is in store for us next.
This is a positive step. I don't personally agree with the nature of several of the changes you are making - it has felt as if Cryptic is using its 'stick' rather than 'carrots' to incentivise us to play less popular PVE queues - by nerfing/penalising the ones we currently play and enjoy. I retain these concerns even despite the positive steps you have outlined in your original post.
That said, more two-way communication is a positive step. Your post does show that Cryptic has listened to (as opposed to just 'reading') some of the things we have been saying. I hope this type of interaction is sustained.
Comments
You do have limited resources. And you do have to choose where to spend them. You're not wrong. However, what you seem to be trying to imply is that such a fact negates the massive grinding, and it really doesn't. In order to perform at maximum, you are grinding Dilithium constantly - probably on multiple characters, just to gear ONE - to gain access to any form of endgame gear. Oh, you want an Elite Fleet Warp Core? Cough up 15,000 Dilithium on the item itself (this does not mention that you need T3 Research to get, which is extraordinarily expensive). Oh, you want the Nukara shield and deflector? Yea, that'll be 1500 Nukara Marks and another 65,000 Dilithium. Oh, you want the Romulan Impulse Engines? That'll be another 32,500 Dilithium. Oh, you want decent weapons? Yea, that'll be a few dozen million energy credits. OH, you want to UPGRADE those weapons to XIV Ultra-Rares? Yea, that'll be 10,000 Dilithium. Each. Minimum. Plus the EC cost to buy the Kits. Oh, and now you want CONSOLES? Well, that's going to be...
I could keep going. I know a guy in the top 500 DPSers. I know the gear they use. It's absurdly expensive, and you NEED to be on that level to compete at endgame. You need MILLIONS of Dilithium. TENS, maybe even HUNDREDS, of millions of EC. Marks out the wazoo. And that's just assuming you buy whatever you can off the EXCHANGE. God help you if you want to do it all yourself. Especially if you're one of those people that wants to one-man the Fleet grind (like some people tried to). The fact of the matter is, there is way too much grind. And with this... they're making it that much worse. As I said in the original post the guy quoted, the playerbase has spent so much time grinding, they have been ground up into a fine powder. We're seeing it with player login trends. That fine dust is gradually blowing away in the wind. It's a problem. And this... This does not fix it. This makes it worse. Grey said that they're going to add other stuff later... but this is the same dev team that let it get this far. Can we really trust them to make good on that?
Indeed, however the gear that's hidden behind 900 Marks and 32500 Dil is also the most expensive to then upgrade to Mk XIV (UR/Gold or otherwise). If anything it should have had a discount on the upgrade rather than a penalty.
GW2 used a method similar to STO initially for Power levels. Each level was a set distance from the previous when it came to gear (say 10%). While this is easy on the maths it makes for a very tedious grind as there is little to keep one interested in the gear.
Since then they have added ways to modify the gear with sockets of different types and all sorts of customisation options allowing for different look and feel for the gear for the player. Obviously this results in both Sub-Optimal and Optimal builds for said gear and is one of the learning curves of the gameplay.
STO isn't too bad in that respect, though the actual Space Weaponry could do with some spicing up effects wise. The issue is that due to the way they are currently balanced (i.e. not balanced) there are literally 2 options. Beams or DBB's. Cannon's are so underpowered it's not funny. The Science Space Magic is underperforming in DPS vs AP Beams and a Tactical Captain. Because of the lack of balance between Enemy and Player the fights are either very short or way too long, rarely hitting the decent challenge middle ground, which in turn leads to massive powercreep by those who know vs those who don't.
As for rewards which is the main point of this post, the people who complain of there being too much rewarded in some areas are masochists. I can think of only 1 area that awards Dil in the right amounts. I can't think of any that award XP in the right amounts.
Whatever metric system has been deemed as appropriate is utterly wrong. It seems like a bunch of arbitrary numbers thrown together. For instance capping out Dil to 8K for a day should take about 15-30 minutes max. More than that is literally insane. You have the cap in place for a reason, so let it be used for that reason. 4hrs to make 8K dil (a quote from Mr Geko I believe) is just sheer lunacy. Most people won't have the time for the 4hr time frame. Let people gain said dil in 15-30 minutes from the gameplay too. Voth BZ is a good example of that working right. Everywhere else is a good example of it going horribly wrong.
While I've mentioned the Voth BZ, most of the issues there I covered in a post the other day. A minor alteration to the Map allowing multiple V-Rex Sites in each zone and a fix for all the poor collision geometry in the map at the same time would fix a lot of the issues. The other fix would be to have a reduction in Dil for the Dino's and an increase in Dil for the capture points. Marks are fine as is.
Here's the full quote:
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
eek. even a 1/6th-1/4th trim to the prices would make it less expensive, gearing one char takes like forever to get this stuff.
But by offering a mission that takes 20 minutes and a mission that takes 15 minutes where they have the same reward...you've created the incentive to run the 15 minute mission instead, no?
It's precisely by addressing the time/effort involved in a mission and rewarding accordingly that you would have what you're looking for...your suggestion contradicts that.
Playing 3x 20 minute mission and 4x 15 minute missions should reward the same after an hour, for example. But if playing 4x 15 minute missions rewarded more in than hour than the 3x 20 minute missions, 100% the reward vs. 75% the reward...tada...
However the overall result should be ~ the same after an hour of playing.
"You don't have to do something again and again and again repetitive that doesn't have much challange, that's just a general good gameplay thing."
WOW, if this happens they are listening
On a basic numerics level? Yes. But if that 20-minute mission is more FUN? I'll take that unless I desperately want the item I'm grinding for. And that is the crux of it: There is so much grinding to be done, no one can afford to play the longer, more fun missions. Case in point: How many people do you honestly think play Foundry missions? Those are fun, and they reward generous amounts of Dilithium. But they take time, and no one is willing to put that time in when they can go elsewhere. The only real way to bring fun back to STO is to massively trim the grind.
Dreaming the impossible dream? Across the board, reduce Dilithium costs by 75%. That brings most items down to the point where you can gear a character in a couple of days. When they don't need to mark your calendar for some time in the next 6 months to finish gearing that character, you will find that players tend to play more fun missions. Do other things. Because they won't see it as a second job.
I think this pretty much covers most of my questions.... probably better than I could have expressed them.
As far as general feedback, I have two things you might consider:
You know a guy in the top 500 DPSers...#500 is currently at 38,337.9 DPS. What content is that needed for? No content. Nothing requires that kind of DPS.
Saying that you want to compete with the top 5% or better of the folks on the DPS League tables...well, that's going to be a more expensive investment than what anybody needs to run the content. That's not an average player's problem...and there's also the simple bit that if it was just a case of having the gear, then everybody would be parsing at 38k+ right? Not just that 5% group, eh?
It really sounds like an I want issue...not an I need issue. Yes, you may feel the need/see the need for the gearing to compete with that that top 5% in the DPS League...maybe hit up that top 1% by trying to do the 63k+...etc, etc, etc...but really? That's the argument for their being too much grind, Dil costs too high, and the rest? Wanting to compete with that top 5% or better?
Your sig says you're @Lord-Ice...you're not even in the DPS League Tables. Are you competing at endgame with a different account or with some other group? Or are you just trying to use the DPS folks as a scapegoat for the argument of reducing Dil cost?
I couldn't agree with you more. As much as I like the game and I've I vested both time and money. And until late last year I was on a monthly sub since starting play in December 2009. But given how things are going I'm spending less and less time in game.
Space has always been favoured over ground, because it's faster and easier to do. Isa is used for the bench mark for dps parses. So it makes sense that this would get run more often than anything other.
Cryptic are ramping up the rewards from bug hunt yet haven't touched the borg queues which take longer to complete and actually require a lot more effort to gain the objectives. Then we come to the xp awarded for these missions which is a tenth of that from argala or gerren patrolsl. Yet the xp was the first thing to get cut. Or is a ploy to raise the later on making it look like they're giving us a carrot. Instead of constantly beating us down with stick and nerf bat again.
Or he could just be talking about someone he plays with, like he said. In any case, the point is about the grind being already pretty annoying and this only makes it worse. He was using the DPS people as an EXAMPLE rather than an argument, from what I read.
Thank you for this update. Some feedback I want to leave here and I hope it gets taken into consideration.
These "optionals", IMO, have to go.... pre DR the optionals didn't mean autofail.. it meant you just didn't get bonus marks.
With the recommended time shortening of some of the more poplular ques I believe it will be a problem for some... I also include myself in that. I am a casual player who just really wants to play. Sure I like the occasional challenge but at the end of the day I want to feel good when I log out and not frustrated at an aspect of the game that I enjoy.
If I may suggest... bring back the "optionals" pre DR. Which again all you lost is bonus marks and NOT the whole mission. THAT is what some are not so happy about as you speak of "time invested"... well nothing sucks more than being in a mission for say 10 mins and somethings goes wrong and bam.... whole thing is failed.
I don't mind the time limit but don't have us fail it if we don't make it.
Optionals should be... well optionals.
Also, I remember reading pre DR that the old Elites were going to be the new Advanced and that NOTHING was going to change. That wasn't the case... there are way more npcs that hit harder and have larger HP. I understand if that is part of the challenge but then why make the payout less?... it was suppose to be exactly like the old Elite but again.. that is NOT the case.
I mention these things as these are some of the things that I've noticed and don't agree with 100%.
I do appreciate the communication and only hope that responses are more frequent as I'm sure you've noticed that the playerbase assumes that "you" don't care especially when there are endless pages of discontent going on.
Also I wanted to add something else.. the previous XP weekend was awesome BUT it felt like I had to "grind" my points by doing patrols. I must say though it felt how it should've felt all along.
Something else I wanted to ask... I remember that we were suppose to get dill whenever we got another spec point.. why was that removed? It's always nice to have something to work towards and the dill along with the spec point was a good motivator. I may have missed the answer to this so I apologize if that was answered somewhere.
The only thing I wanted to leave this on was... make STO more casual friendly. I, as a casual player, like the feeling that I get my shinies within reasonable time. I don't need it right away but I want my overall "time invested" in STO to show something at the end of the day. What does that look like? I don't have the answers but I know it was friendlier pre DR.
On that note.. I hope that I was coming across respectful with my rants as it is meant to be respectful and is meant to come across from a casual point of view as well as one who LOVES Star Trek.... nothing like living out my fantacy of being the Captain of a starship that I am in command of.
07
I'm not in that league because I can't grind enough to get there. There's so much grind that I cannot feasibly reach that point. Or, any point coming anywhere close. And that's how it is for the other 95% of players. I know HOW, it's simply so expensive and time consuming that it's not possible in any reasonable length of time. Those that HAVE done it, did it when those grinds first came out and haven't stopped since. And no, it is a need issue. Because the Devs said, when they announced that they were adding a new difficulty to queues, that you would NEED to function at that level in order to compete. And even then, even NOT trying to compete, just getting gear good enough to run an Advanced with a measure of competence... You really don't think 10, 20, 30, 40,000 Dilithium is too much for single items? No. That's absurd. 40,0000 Dilithium is nearly a week's worth of refining. For one item.
Now, cut that by 75%. You can get, with a bit of planning and a well-built Fleet, one item a day from a Reputation. Or a couple items from a few stores. It's reasonable. You work, you get a reward, you can use the reward. You should not need a grinding schedule and a sense of "I have to play THIS much to get what I want" for every single item. If a sensible one item a day pace is too much of a compromise... then there's a problem. But, open up the ability to get that item a day... People will go, get that item, and go do FUN things. Or, they'll do slower, more enjoyable tasks to get that item. It is as I have said: Trim the grind, and the players will enjoy the game. Do not make it easy... but make it enough of a challenge that they will value what they get, without making it so hard that the only way to maintain your ability to do missions without getting flak is to treat the game like a second job.
I'll conclude thusly: No, I'm not using DPS as a scapegoat. It's called an example. "This is what is commonly expected. This is the level people try to get at and the level Cryptic expects us to be at. It is no longer possible."
I've been saying since DR came out rewards are not worth the time invested. The Ques are the most obvious place this disconnect appears. But it also exists nearly throughout the whole game. And there seems to be little to no interest upon the part of anyone at pwe/cryptic in addressing this.
Until now. And while I thank you for noticing and deigning to speak with us peons here in the Forums, I have to ask: What took so long?
I like Star Trek. Lifelong fan. I will remain a Star Trek fan long after this game is done. I like STO a lot. What I do not like is being taken advantage of or having the truth misrepresented to me. This makes me, a player of STO, just like you, the Devs.
Here is something the Dev Team has allowed themselves to forget or ignore:
STO players want this game to be successful as much as you people on the Dev Team do. Star Trek fans are known for putting up with a lot just to get that fix we all crave. We are also very passionate about anything connected to Star Trek. We can be amazingly patient. But everyone's patience has limits beyond which they will not go.
There are other places to go to get my Star Trek fix, guys. DR and the Great Exploit Fiasco, along with the Nerf of the Day on the rewards have made those other places much more attractive. I do not want to stop playing STO. You do not want me to stop spending money on STO, either. But I am not going to continually throw good money away if the entertainment value of STO remains at the level it is now.
This game is currently not fun to play. It used to be. I'd like to think it will be again and very soon. It feels like a second job right now. A bottom of the pay scale wage slave job at that. I enjoyed Winter Wonderland. First time in awhile I had fun playing STO. When it ended, I went back to running in place as fast as I can. I understand pwe/cryptic not wanting people to burn through content or max out a character inside of a day. The longer I play, the more likely it is I will spend money on STO. I also understand players not wanting to spend years of their lives just to acquire one point on the Specialization Tree. If I am here for a month or six with no apparent progress towards my current goals in the game, why not go someplace else where my money and my time will be appreciated?
Participating in the Forums and actually reading what we post is a start. Thank you. The recent changes where Foundry Missions are accessible through Sector Space is also a good start. Again, thank you. But they are only starting points. The execution and the troubleshooting and the response time to problems has to come way way up from what they are now. You guys showed you can move very quickly when you want to with the whole Japori 17x thing. I am wondering why you do not move this quickly on other things.
Why CE is popular, because radiogenic particule (update beam).
why players are angry, because you only reduce the gain or you delete the contents.
You do not want to say it but it shows there was a massive departure of players, it makes sense that you are on the wrong way. And you do not want to recognize your mistakes.
Saving STO. We want to find fun playing.
I assumed as much. It's good to see you took my advice and explained your reasonings better. Perhaps that was your intention, in either event I will take full credit for it
So level out the rewards across the board so no-one will gravitate toward certain missions for marks, check. The list looks good as well, I like the idea of dispersing Dil and elite drops across more content, those BNP's are impossible for fresh 50's at the moment.
I do anticipate one problem however, and that is the design of the content itself. Even with the rewards balanced perfectly a player will still be more likely to go into a familiar mission that is basically shooting lots of stuff to death instead of one that has harsh failure conditions or is just unfamiliar with it. It could even just be a question of habit after all the grinding.
So in the future you may change things yet again in a way that contradicts what you are doing now, and then you've gone full circle.
Here is my feedback;
PvE queues are dead...
PUGs out of the question...
Long time playerbase either not logging in or gone...
New players overwhelmed and then leave...
Grind levels are off the charts...
Effort vs. reward just not worth it all...
Maybe you should take your Dev hat off and try seeing it from our side, the customer, and ask your self this...
Would I play this game the way it currently is?
So the bottom line is stop nerfing. Do something to bring back players and attract new ones.
It was a good idea to pull someone out of the dev-crowd who is not known for being rude or is insulting customers on a regular basis. but maybe it wasnt a good idea to take someone who lied in previous posts (xp-nerf/spec-progression). But i suppose it is hard to find someone who is willing to publicly represent this point of view and still has an intact reputation.
For a better understanding i would suggest to replace reward with compensation. some content isnt really fun to play for various reasons. sadly, i didn't read something about that in the post. changing compensation doesn't make a mission more or less fun to play. increasing reward just makes them less annoying. Oh, and by the way: if you release something that includes only running/flying from A to B - pressing f;kill kill kill kiil waves after waves; skipping walls of texts ... then don't call it new content. it's just other content.
Before announcing changes (doing only the bad ones and just promising good ones may be not the best decision) you should really have started with an honest, extensive post titled "what is wrong with star trek online" - where you describe in detail what is bad, what is/was not working as intended, why it is as it is, why do you think it is not working/accepted by the playerbase, what you are planning to do to improve this and - important: steps/consequences taken to prevent the same mistakes in the future (which in my humble opinion includes replacing decision-makers).
The change of course since DR doesnt want me to play this game anymore. and i haven't read anything yet which will change my mind (even if i took the "promises" for real). so, from this side of the monitor .. yes, cryptic is still doing a good job in killing this game - intended or not.
Looks like you could have come with a shuttle and still completed the mission with player a and b. :P
Fact is, you have to work harder when you're less geared. That makes the reward feel underwhelming compared to satisfying when you're murdering the stf.
You have to take more effort, yet the reward is the same. The reward/time balance is heavily gear dependend, that's why dps is all the rage right now. :cool:
There is now place in the game where I feel like I am rewarded too much skill points or dilithium. If you would share those, that would be great to understanding of what is in store for us next.
thank you, the principle is good, but it seems to me that instead of making the sub-optimal better, the Optimal is being made worse to match
The game needs:-
1: Double (preferably triple) the exp rewards for everything and the per level exp has to remain UNCHANGED.
2: Rewards for queued PvE missions at normal and advanced need to be increased and objectives that make these missions when PuGed easy to fail (be it due to not paying attention or due to dps limitations) need to be either removed or made easier to achieve. This will entice more players to queue up.
I also did some thinking last night about adjustments that could be made to the update schedule that would make it more difficult for players to run out of content before the next major release that doesn't involve level gating.
Weekly:
Current standard updates
Fortnightly:
More bug fixes and a set of story missions (maybe up to 7)
Monthly:
See fortnightly but add a new PvE queue or two
Every three and six months you put out a major release anyway so you just carry one with that. This change to the update schedule would keep players busy between releases and the continuous flow of new content would prevent boredom. An additional benefit of this is that you can reduce the grindy feel of the game without losing playtime which in turn will increase the number of players playing which should improve the money flow into the game.
Mr. Gray, I appreciate your desire to calm the general public down regarding DR updates, however, the Cryptic team is leaving a large swath of its player community in danger.
An example of a critical mistake would be earning elite reputation marks via single player content. Player sentiment has already expressed disapproval of solo grinding, aka Argala, so adding more incentive to play the game solo is a very bad idea!
First, understand I am not against a daily solo mission to earn elite reputation tokens, but the reason the players have fled the queues in masses and hide in harder to access private matches is best summed up like this. Zero percent of zero is zero. I use to pug all the time in space. Since DR I wont touch it with a 10 foot pole.
I use to be able to queue for pretty much any mission but since DR I am limited to but a few.
Cryptic is NOT addressing the SOURCE of the problem. Incentive! Failure and long drawn out battles with hit point sponges is NOT fun. Period. As a suggestion from a nearly disinterested third party I highly recommend Cryptic get it's nose out of the Metric book, buy a fun book, open it, and get to work.
Lastly, I will once again implore you to put effort into pvp. Pile incentive to the rafters if you have to, but do not stop until it is vibrant again.
Brody ToS Veteran
+1
/10char
Thats a joke, isnt it?
You developers have many of such promises in the past and broke your word.
When will we finally see our XP rewards returned to normal values just like you promised months ago?
Yes... of course you doubled the xp for specific patrol missions but infact only the base xp for the mission was doubled, not the xp for the entire mission while just at the same time you trippled the requirements for the level ups.
And now you come here to tell us about new fairy tales?
The rewards in all areas of the game have been nerfed in the past 3 months (this includes XP, dilithium, EC,...) and at the same time you guys have increased costs of almost everything in STO.
The upgrade system is consuming such high amount of resources that players dont have enough resources anymore to support their fleets or buy stuff from the reputation system (for the fact that the rep items are not only expensive when you buy them... but also come only as mk12 version which costs incredible amounts of dil to update to mk14).
In no area of the game the mission pay out enough rewards to cover the newly introduced costs. And with every newly introduced feature its getting worse.
And you have the nerves to reduce the already very low reward payouts even more?!?
I think you dont even have an idea about your own metrics or how it really is to play on the server. You have no idea how long it takes for an average player to level up, gain the resources needed for the reputation system and finally getting to the point where such players can actually even consider to start playing adv. or elite missions.
You want to increase skill points in PVEs?
Thats great... but since you raise the difficulty of those the average player will see very little of these xp.
You want to add dilithium to the mission rewards?
WOW
You clearly mean the reward of the story missions... but what you dont tell us here that to complete these missions you need to invest even more time than on the PVEs.
This is just an alibi for you to tell us that you increased the rewards for us players.
Fact is that players wont play these story missions since the rewards will never reflect the amount of time that they have to invest in order to get them.
You want to raise the rewards for sector patrols?
Aha... well... so why did you call us exploiters when running patrols in tau dewa?
I guess after this change we will have 2-3 additional patrols worth to grind while PVE remains dead.
Adding skill points and expertice to adventure zones and battle zones?
Well... yeah... how much xp?
enough to be worth it?
Adding Elite Reputation Marks to SP content?
WTF?!?!
1. this clearly removes every need to play PVEs any longer
play easy stupid SP content to get elite rewards... yes... great idea...
this will clearly push this game even more into a sinpleplayer direction where players dont have to work together anymore
2. this does clearly kill the entire purpose behind the reputation system
3. you really want to add such items to missions that were designed for players which mostly dont even have access to the reputation system at that point?
Yeah... it certainly makes sense if a lvl10 player gets his neural processors to buy MK12 maco shields while this lvl10 player does not even meet the level requirements for this kind of equipment nor do such players have enough reputation marks
You can not be serious to move end game items into the beginners section of the game.
WTF are you guys smoking when you come up with such stupid ideas?
None of the above mentioned measurements has any positive effect on the game... nothing of that will fix any of the serious ingame problems.
Thats just some stupid alibi **** that will cause even more problems.
Btw. what happened with the: A lie?
Afterall you just now want to increase the difficulty of old game content to a level that is beyond what an ordinary level 50 player with a t5 ship can deal with.
What happened to the developers announcement that adv. missions will be just like the elite missions prior delta rising?
Sorry... but adv. missions are already more difficult than the elite missions we had prior delta rising and now you want to make them even more difficult without any real justification other than "oh my god... our players are able to win"
Guess what... if this game keeps developing into this direction you developers should already start to look for a new job because you will lose the very few loyal STO members that remained in the game.
That was the gist of it, but I realized I wasn't communicating that in the best way with my post.
Heh, given the average combined DPS of the other runs I'd listed there - yeah, if the three others of us had shown up in shuttles it still would have been done without issue. Would take some deep analysis to see how much those two aided the DPS of the others or hampered it - there was quite a bit of there simply not being targets there going on vs. the damage that was being done looking better because of the shorter duration. The boat I was in was too slow to take advantage of the pace those two guys were taking, so it was just a case of trying to toss out some debuffs while eating the range penalty trying at least to get some shots in.
See, that's where it's going to get into different things for different folks. I feel zero satisfaction lobbing thermonuclear grenades into a barrel of goldfish. It's tedious and just not any fun. I like a challenge - I like the potential for failure - I like feeling like I actually was part of a team that accomplished something.
I don't run STFs for any rewards - for everything but BNPs/APCs, everything else to me offers far better rewards. And well, I just don't need any BNPs/APCs...so if I'm running something, it's not for any reward - it's cause I'm looking to have some fun. I like to fly goofball builds - I prefer doing support, I like to tank, toss heals, buff, debuff, and stuff like that. I got my 22,846 high in a run where the comment I put was "Damage In Testing". I wasn't trying to DPS, I was testing a perceived issue taking place with Attack Pattern Expertise and Shields. It wasn't a boat built to do damage...course, there was a guy there that grabbed too much aggro, lol - so I only pulled 45.9% of the attacks and 40.0% of the damage. For me, even though it set my high for DPS it was a failed run because I was trying to test something else.
I can still have fun losing if it was a good fight, a good try. It does irritate me some when folks show up doing the DPS that would guarantee a fail in the hopes that they can get carried - cause you can end up on a team with four folks leeching. Then again, that's less painful to me that groups that have more than enough DPS but are off chasing butterflies to cause the fail (those somebody dropped a Gen, so pop the the other three and the Trans - but they're off chasing the Spheres from the Trans (not off trying to slow the Nanites, but just chasing the Spheres from the Trans around)...meh. There's no reason those should be a fail.
But all the same, it's probably why when I do run stuff I do it in my goofball builds and in PUGs...cause odds are I'm going to have to push myself. There there will be the challenge that the content itself just doesn't provide...in its own way, pugging is a form of PvP...you vs. the folks that maybe shouldn't be there for whatever reason.
Two things come to mind.
This is a positive step. I don't personally agree with the nature of several of the changes you are making - it has felt as if Cryptic is using its 'stick' rather than 'carrots' to incentivise us to play less popular PVE queues - by nerfing/penalising the ones we currently play and enjoy. I retain these concerns even despite the positive steps you have outlined in your original post.
That said, more two-way communication is a positive step. Your post does show that Cryptic has listened to (as opposed to just 'reading') some of the things we have been saying. I hope this type of interaction is sustained.