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.
Well, second to losing an stf is dying in an stf. I build a tactical romulan escort, but I like my cruiser and staying alive with an engineer more. I want to improve, always thinking about, flight paths, cooldown management and balancing toughness vs damage. I like testing stuff out, it being 100k dilithium (without upgrades) for three different setpieces is the motivator for all the grinding I do.
Reskill costs, romulan alt, all eat up so much, I feel I'm getting nowhere.
Two things come to mind.
You mean Dyson and Argala? I did a couple of Argala runs with the weekend bonus - and let me tell you - it didn't feel rewarding, took ages for a single point. I then decided to stop caring about spec points. I didn't do Dyson apart from the story missions, but I will try that one. From what I heard its 8k/h which seems adequat to me.
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.
Well no, there wasn't any confusion, you nerfd with no explanation, that prompted a perfectly reasonable response.
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.
Well no, you are railroading players into playing Bughunt.
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.
Well for the love of Q, don't reduce them, just bring others UP inline with them.
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:
Right, well make sure you don't nerf the existing rewards until you are ready to make the following changes, if you absolutely have to wait a few months to add better rewards, then don't touch the old ones until you have done fully.
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.
I like this one, but it may need to be a significant boost, especially on ground maps if you want people to play them all.
As long as it is available on replay rather than just on first run, bumping the Skill Point and Expertise for replaying old missions would be good as well as scaling loot to XII, maybe the rewards as well.
Sounds good
again, good.
I assume that APC are included here, if so good, though increasing the number of them given as rewards from STFs would be better, it would also keep people playing them.
And now some general points of my own to add:
Dilithium. Reward more from STFs, currently people can max out in Battlezones (Not me though, I can't stand the dinos), allow people to make the same dil on content they find fun.
Remove or reduce cooldowns on the fleet alert actions. Might actually encourage some KDF teems.
Purple R&D mats and Elite Reputation Marks (BNPs etc.) Standardise the amount you get per run rather than randomising it. Maybe two per run, not a lot but at least it's certain.
A 200% increase to XP levels across the board is a good start, it might even keep players hanging around for a bit whilst you sort out the rest.
Dilithium for maxing specialisation trees, you just introduced a new primary (or will have shortly), it's barely going to affect normal players.
Add marks to the gear/Dilithium only queues, even if it's only fleet marks (make sure to keep the gear/Dilithium as well dur)
Bring back the old Borg STFs ALONGSIDE the new ones, ramp them up to the new Elite and have them reward a splurge of marks, Dil, etc.
Get some more queues that reward Romulan Marks. Maybe allow them to be earnt from the Romulan featured arc.
Add Borg Marks to the Borg episodes (Angels, Gathering Darkness, Assimilation) and 8472 marks to the Undine episodes (Fluid Dynamics, Step Between, Surface Tension and Mindscape).
Most importantly DON'T nerf until you can add your new rewards, that would be bad.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Well, it sounds like we got your attention but the when and how are important as others have voiced.
I responded in the other post, but I'll respond here as well. The game as is stands does not appear to respect my time or effort. Grind patrol missions over and over to gain specialization points because there is not enough reward or content elsewhere? No thanks. Upgrade all of my gear at cost and time for marginal increases and gambles for rarity? Nah, I think I will just do what I can as I can to 14 and stop.
PVE may suffer worst because of the continued disconnect between what was Elite and what is now Advanced. I could go in with a PUG on Elite and if we failed the optional, I was out a small, but decent, amount of marks and still get more dilithium than I do now. Going into, say Infected space today and failing due to somebody blowing a generator early with us unable to control it, and I am hit pretty hard with just a few points as payout. On top of that, I am hit with a long cooldown before I can try again. So, when you speak of cuts to PVE, it really grates because I have already felt the burn there and in other places in the game.
Fun is a subjective thing, but I generally feel I am having fun when my effort is equaled or, better yet for a game, exceeded by my reward. A lot of changes over the last few months run completely counter to that for me.
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.
So reward is a function of time investment, risk of failure, number of players and other unknown factors?
Maybe you have the data to come up with a formula that more or less accurately represents that for the "average" player, but I think there's always going to be a percentage of players, (that could be quite large), that aren't going to weight all those factors the same way and make different choices.
I don't think I've gotten a BNP since DR launched since I weighed the risk of failure too high for most stfs potential rewards.
If rep sets costs are high and related queue rewards are low multiplied by a high percent chance of failing and getting nothing, (or 10 marks), I can see how some players would be throwing up their hands in frustration and not bothering.
Needing to fail a Borg stf 300 times for a set would take forever.
I'm probably off base here, but every time I see adjustments like this, I feel its aimed towards stopping the gold-farmers running the content with dozens of alts. It might have a small effect on them, but it's always going to be orders of magnitude larger on "average" players.
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
This at the very least seems encouraging. I just hope we can enjoy them for a while before a way to exploit them is found and they get nerfed.
one of the main problems in the past months was the "nerf now" and "fix/raise later" mentality that the developers showed towards the players...
"now" has a pretty clear definition while "later" is pretty vague and could mean that the players have to wait months... years... or wont see the promised changes if the developers change their mind (best example of that is not paying the announced dilithium for reaching the max amount of spec points.... just atm looks like a "everytime the players get close to this point we put more spec point grinding into the game")
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.
You have 2 ways to fix that discrepancy : buff the sub-par queues, or nerf the most played one. You choose the nerf path, and IMO, it's bad.
It's like letting someone be hungry and not giving him food for days. Then, you give him a bunch of food scrap. He will eat it like it's a feast, but it doesn't mean he is enjoying it, and that wouldn't be his first choice either.
Then, you have some ridiculous level of difficulty/length on some queued mission ("bail on bethan", anyone ?).
Players need an "easy way" to grind. And awarding challenges to. We need both.
Nerfing will only lead to a choice of "bad choice", and no good ones.
Increase the Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE queues.
Simple maths right there :
An average queue award 2K xp (vs 8K for Argala). We need 150K xp for a spec point, that's 75 stf.
If you keep releasing the new spec tree every ~4months, that means 2250STF to complete it before another one is added. That's 19 stf PER DAY. Or 5 Argala per day. Obviously, per character.
I don't think a lot of player are doing 19stf/day. I know I'm not.
Reward more Dilithium at lower levels and throughout the game by adding Dilithium to mission rewards.
I heard that one before. Oh yeah, several time per year since, I don't know, 2-3 years ? Dear quote, I'll see you for the next dilithium nerf !
Increase all rewards for sector patrols that are taking significantly longer than their counterparts so that they all have similar rewards per play time.
Sure, don't do anything for story mission (you know, the "fun" part of DR), but do something for the patrol grind.
Like we need it.
Is this how you play to have us completing the spec trees ? By playing patrol over and over ? What about "be rewarded for playing what you enjoy" or whatever you said ?
Add ways to earn Elite Reputation Marks (i.e. Borg Neural Processors, Voth Cybernetic Implants, etc.) from single-player content.
I heard that one before. I think the first time was with the Reputation being added to the game. 2 or 3 years ago ? Can't remember.
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
Now that we have some more clarification I can sort of see the logic behind what's going on, although I still do not agree with nerfing the missions.
Like it or not there will always be that one optimal build, that one optimal mission, that one optimal team makeup, etc that people run with. Even if it's a perceived increase above something else, alot of people will always go for it, that's just the nature of the beast. I get the whole wanting to bring all STFs in line with a certain curve and all. That said a 10 man queue should always reward more than a 5 man queue, and a 20 man queue should always reward more than a 10, and so on. Although yes it's divided into so many teams of 5 such as crystal being 2 teams of 5, it's still 10 people, that must coordinate their efforts towards a common goal. The more people the mission needs per team, the more rewards it should give on top of normal rewards it already gives. It shouldn't be a huge sum no, but it should be a little something extra such as 5-10 marks.
Don't take this the wrong way, I simply can't think of another way to say it but, when did you guys ever hear that something gives too much for too little effort? I'm legitimately curious on this as I've never heard that complaint brought up. On the contrary I always hear the complaint stuff doesn't give enough xp, or rewards and I've never heard that something gives too much.
For the xp and skill issues, I'm sorry (not really) but I have absolutely zero interest in grinding Argala for hours just to get decent xp, and grinding out repetitive missions in the delta episodes. As it sits right now pretty much anything that's not Delta, barring the first time you do an episode from another series, gives so little xp it's barely worth it. It shouldn't take nearly as long as it does right now to get levels. For someone such as myself who enjoys playing alts, the lack of decent places to get xp and skill points pretty much kills my motivation to get toons leveled up. I have 2 of my toons at 60 and it's not looking like I'm going to be getting the others to level 60 any time soon. Although I could grind my tail feathers off even further, the xp and skill things give right now, unless it's the first time you do an episode, is an insult to the kind of effort I have to put into it for such a meager payout. Again with respect to the dev team and everyone, you say you understand everyone's frustrations, but do you really? If you do then why has it taken until now for something to be done about it, let alone us even hear about it? As I said, not trying to be a jerk, but honestly it doesn't look good from our perspective.
As it sits right now, most advanced missions are absolutely unpugable and can't be run with random people, and elite missions, well lets just say you have a better chance of winning the lottery twice in a row than getting a team capable of running elites.
As for mission rewards. Nerfing stuff isn't the way to get people back into queues and otherwise. Making it easier to fail a mission is even more motivation for me NOT to run missions with random people. If the rewards had been increased, along with the difficulty increase, instead of the rewards being decreased, then I would have had some motivation to do them. As it sits right now what you're doing is going to have the opposite effect. That again is just the nature of the beast, people will always go to where they believe there is more reward, even if it's perceived. If people feel they or something has been nerfed, they will find something that hasn't within the game. That's just the nature of mmos. If you want to get people to play different queues, instead of nerfing the rewards it should've been increased. The angry response was deserved as no explanation was given to the nerfs until now.
I get it that you want people playing the Delta stuff but there are other things outside of the Delta missions that people love to play, and I honestly do not believe that's being taken into consideration as much as it should be.
"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again." - Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek Generations
I've only skimmed this thread but I'd say I agree with the general consensus and will add a few thoughts that come to mind;
A thanks for the dev communication regarding intent but this should be up front not when the community is so up in arms, given up etc they've left or about to start lynching. True some people are out of line but you do bring it upon yourselves. You could save yourselves so much hassle and negativity and I've said this time and time again but you don't seem to be learning this lesson. A single post from you summing up the feedback goes a long way I'm not expecting 1:1 reply but something to show you've listened to the feedback and have a response to give isn't that much to ask. In the old days you'd be more transparent and pitch ideas but now we just get changes with nothing to explain them.
I'm sceptical as I'm well aware of intention not being acted upon (won't use the word 'promise' as you don't use it). You've said so many things that never happen. I'll judge you on what you do not what you say you'll do.
The nerf now, buff later isn't a good model especially when it looks like there are ulterior motives (i.e. more DR metrics). Look at the queues that work and ask yourself why then try and make those changes to the queues that don't work (bring thme in line a bit more) and then if need be nerf if at all the better queues. It's interesting how nerfs get implemented first or in record time but buffs seldom come first or anytime soon.
Adding to single player sounds like a good idea though I'm not sure what this will do to the PVE queues.
Metrics are a bad thing to rely on and someone's post on MS Windows 8 seems to be a valid point. I don't play Mine Trap because it takes 20 people, poor reward/time and people idle and would rather play e.g ISN because it's a better pay/time, 5 players and less temptation to idle. Just because I choose ISN doesn't mean it's over rewarding it just means the alternative isn't appealing enough. Try making MT 5-10 players and upping the rewards to make it more appealing and then maybe look at nerfing ISN. In your view I would see you thinking ISN is too rewarding lets nerf it so it's in line with MT, completely the wrong way around.
So yeah it sounds like I'm in agreement with the majority here, cautious, reluctant optimism that Cryptic is listening and might be acting on community feedback but I'll be clear, I am not confused in fact I think me and others have more of a clue than you do. You've not told us your intentions, now let's see the results.
Don't take this the wrong way, I simply can't think of another way to say it but, when did you guys ever hear that something gives too much for too little effort? I'm legitimately curious on this as I've never heard that complaint brought up. On the contrary I always hear the complaint stuff doesn't give enough xp, or rewards and I've never heard that something gives too much.
Don't quote me on this, but I think they said before that they want players to only earn X dilithium every 15 minutes. The same may go for rep marks. They also said that they want levels 50-60 to take... I think it was 36 hours? My guess is that the queue content players tend to flock to reaches higher than what they want to give us, while Bug Hunt is lower.
They also said that they want levels 50-660 to take...
Level 660, that's a lot of grinding .
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Now, here's the problem (beyond the fact that people believe that payouts aren't what they should be and that you're adjusting the wrong things in the wrong direction)... you bring the nerfs now and promise the buffs in "the next couple of months". That's a problem because, well, you say a lot of nice things are coming and then they never materialize or take a year or more to come to fruition. Like, say, Secondary Deflectors. Remember those? How long were those coming soon for?
So how about instead of thanking us for our patience you show some by delaying the nerfs until they can coincide with the buffs so that people have some material proof that they will in fact materialize since, in case you haven't noticed, your consumer trust and confidence levels aren't at an all time high.
/2cents
Yeah, I have to agree with this here. You take away rewards now and promise to make up for it later.
Maybe.
If the metrics show that they are warranted.
And if the metrics show it's not warranted, perhaps the only thing that will be given out later are more nerfs.
I suggest holding off on the nerfs until the buffs are ready to be implemented. Do them both at the same time and let them equal each other out, or even let the good outweigh the bad. You never want to tip the scales so far out of the customers favor that they fall off. Customers are fickle, they want value for their time and money. If they no longer see that value, they will seek it out someplace else. And if you're too harsh and push them away by always beating them with a stick, they may not come back. Even if later there are indeed plenty of carrots for them to have.
Trust is the big issue lately. A lot of the players, at least those on the forums, seem to not have any left for the decisions being made about the game. And IMO, rightfully so. Coming out and saying that the reason for the nerfs is because you, the Devs, want to balance things and that there WILL be buffs later is good to hear, but until those buffs arrive, it's all hollow words.
I just had a fleet member yesterday tell me they canceled their sub due to it being "obvious that the Devs aren't listening to the players". Now, they also did say they were going to continue playing as a silver, but that their days of paying to play are over unless "Cryptic can show (them) that they are serious about actually improving the game and not nerfing everything into oblivion".
While the communication IS indeed nice to see, actions speak louder than words. Personally, I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not giving up on the game, but I am playing less of late. Something positive has to happen, and the sooner the better.
Make a man a fire and keep him warm for the day.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
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
Well Mr. Gray I want to start out by saying more of this. Not the proposed changes, but the direct line of communication. In the future please don't leave us hanging. Perhaps revamped versions of engineering reports where rather than stating the specific changes like the patch notes, you fill us in on how you want major changes like this to affect the course of the game and how it fits into the overall vision.
As for these changes they are for the most part good if they make into the game.
Increase Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE Queues: GOOD. It was once said that the STFs were to be the ultimate end game and should have the best rewards. Constantly tangling with the Borg should grant solid experience.
Dilithium for mission rewards: GOOD. It's been something that's been requested and mentioned a lot since I got here a couple years back, so if it is finally implemented I will be all smiles, since your story content is generally excellent.
Sector Patrol Reward increase: GOOD. I'm not in the majority on the Sector Patrols as I found the DR Patrols very enjoyable as far as gameplay and contribution to the overall story arc. The things that infuriated me and the reason I don't play them is A) there is an immense amount of lag that occurs in several of those missions and when I played them when DR first dropped, I had to drastically reduce my graphics settings to even get them up to running slow, and it ended up taking half an hour for ten minute mission and which has been corrected gratefully, the absurd amount of HP that the enemy mobs had. It reminded me of original Defense of New Romulus....but with lag. Balancing the rewards to the time investment could be positive but it depends on how you do it. I could see myself preferring to do a longer mission to get the greater rewards per time investment easily. When I go to the store I balance whether to buy a twelve pack of soda at $3.99 vs a two liter for $1.99 going over the cost vs the convenience of individual cans. This is really no different.
Skill Points and Expertise added to Battlezones: NO BRAINER. I'm shocked that they weren't already there in general.
Elite Reputation Tokens added to single player: AMBIVALENT. I'm sincerely on the fence on this one. I'm a solo player by nature. At the beginning of my time here I didn't want to play the STFs because A) I heard about abusive player behavior if you screwed up, I also was terrified of bringing my team down due to being a rookie, C) I heard about people who played for months on end and never got the Prototype gear they needed to trade in for the elite sets and didn't want to go through the randomness. So the Reputation system was something I was very excited for, and overall I think it's been insanely successful. The anti-grinding measures taken throughout Season 8 have worked out well. I understand Iconians issues with being separated from his friends by having different goals but in my view, on the whole, the issues it was designed to address it defeated magnificently. I progressed through my reps steadily, and then someone a group of the friends of my fleet leader was kind enough to nursemaid me through my first few STFs. I found out I wasn't as bad as I thought and before long I was competent at all the space STFs and passable at the ground ones even on the old Elite. Gaining BNPs and the like are not an issue for me anymore. So while I'm quite pleased at the idea of being able to gain APCs in single player, it gives me no great reason to play a PvE Queue.
I'm no expert on computer coding or game design so while you say a couple of months, which I understand to mean within two months by the way, I have no clue how long it would take to actually code the changes you've proposed, since you didn't commit, two months could very well be the amount of time it takes to do that with all the other things being hooked up with the coming anniversary, command spec, and new BOFF training and whatever else the team has in the pipeline that we haven't been told about yet. I don't know how difficult it is to rip these changes OUT of the current builds. But in the future if you guys consider this the medicine, then please don't forget the spoonful of sugar goes with the medicine, not after it.
On a personal note, I've been a bit down on the game lately. I just ran into the R&D DOFF wall, made worse by the fact I KNOW I've cast aside some R&D doffs that I already earned not knowing of their importance. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't gone through 6 months of grind to get to this point being ready and then...I'm still missing one thing. That was depressing, then the weight of the XP decreases was beginning to making think about moving on, which is not something I had ever gone through in this game.
So this statement from the Devs removes the general bad mood I have had about the game this last week, so thanks for that. I sincerely hope they're implemented as they are in fact good changes.
Sounds good. Dilithium rewards for playing story content is long overdue. Hope it applies to episode replays as well.
I think it would be irrelevant otherwise.
That said, this is one of the things I'm skeptical about just because it was mentioned quite a long time ago and seemingly left on the way side. Something they bring out when they want to appease the angered masses because it's known as popular but they don't seem to have any intention of pulling the trigger on...which is a shame. I originally thought that the dilithium for Spec points once you had maxed specializations out was their way of implementing it, but that was incorrect because A) the rate of gaining spec points was so low and they removed it almost immediately.
I like this one, but it may need to be a significant boost, especially on ground maps if you want people to play them all.
As long as it is available on replay rather than just on first run, bumping the Skill Point and Expertise for replaying old missions would be good as well as scaling loot to XII, maybe the rewards as well.
Sounds good
again, good.
I assume that APC are included here, if so good, though increasing the number of them given as rewards from STFs would be better, it would also keep people playing them.
And now some general points of my own to add:
Dilithium. Reward more from STFs, currently people can max out in Battlezones (Not me though, I can't stand the dinos), allow people to make the same dil on content they find fun.
Remove or reduce cooldowns on the fleet alert actions. Might actually encourage some KDF teems.
Purple R&D mats and Elite Reputation Marks (BNPs etc.) Standardise the amount you get per run rather than randomising it. Maybe two per run, not a lot but at least it's certain.
A 200% increase to XP levels across the board is a good start, it might even keep players hanging around for a bit whilst you sort out the rest.
Dilithium for maxing specialisation trees, you just introduced a new primary (or will have shortly), it's barely going to affect normal players.
Add marks to the gear/Dilithium only queues, even if it's only fleet marks (make sure to keep the gear/Dilithium as well dur)
Bring back the old Borg STFs ALONGSIDE the new ones, ramp them up to the new Elite and have them reward a splurge of marks, Dil, etc.
Get some more queues that reward Romulan Marks. Maybe allow them to be earnt from the Romulan featured arc.
Add Borg Marks to the Borg episodes (Angels, Gathering Darkness, Assimilation) and 8472 marks to the Undine episodes (Fluid Dynamics, Step Between, Surface Tension and Mindscape).
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If you mean bring back the classic STFs at Elite where the stories were linked so you play both the space and ground portion in one shot then yes definitely. Put a FAT reward package at the end, with a special accolade set and it could be money. I would suggest placing a buffer zone in the middle so you can change your specializations.
As a matter of fact if you could set default specializations like we do when you shift from ship to small craft. There's little opportunity to go from Pilot to Commando which kind of reduces the effectiveness of the Specializations. Just on the shift from space to ground though.
I agree completely on adding marks to corresponding story content, the Romulan Freedom Feature Episodes should give Romulan marks. Now that story takes places before rep unlocks, but having the head start in collecting the would be invaluable.
On the subject of the Advanced and Elite fail situation, I think these need a revamp of the revamp. I think Elite should have the harder fail conditions as it is elite. Advanced however needs something smoother. I also think the failure conditions need to be imminently logical.
Cure Space: Cure Space has a very clean, elegant, and most importantly SELF EVIDENT failure condition. The Kang must survive. If the Kang is destroyed, GAME OVER MAN! GAME OVER! When I first started playing that mission poor tactics meant that the blasted super Borg Raptors would swarm and there would be no way to save yourself let alone the Kang. People who were used to running with extreme DPS would get ticked if they were in a lower DPS team calling us noobs when they threw strategy to the wind and simply steamrolled with their high DPS. But since they couldn't be everywhere at once the Kang would be destroyed. Sticking to the plan should be rewarded. There shouldn't be a timer as long as the Kang survives. The optional that rewarded the bonus marks was keep the Kang's health above 75% that's perfect. That implies that not only did you save the ship, but you prevented casualties on the ship. If the timer runs out something else should happen. Like the Assimilated Carrier decloaks and attacks the Kang directly.
Infected Space: Infected is different. You're staving off an invasion by shutting down the conduit that way you can rescue the people on the Starbase. The Bonus Marks should be preventing the Borg from healing the generators, that makes perfect sense, if you're trying to run it as smooth and fast as possible that's a necessity. The 15 minute timer should be to stop them from bringing in reinforcements. So if you DON'T destroy the gate in fifteen minutes, you should get ANOTHER Tactical Cube to deal with, and maybe another one every five minutes. This is consistent with current player tactics because in a couple of years of running the mission people almost always target the gate before the cube.
Khitomer Space: In this scenario we're stopping a Temporal Invasion to the past...directly related to the very invasion that kicks off the game itself. We have to destroy two transwarp conduits and stave off a steady stream of Borg Probes heading to the past. Letting ten probes get through is a perfect failure condition for the mission as a whole. Like Cure above, I think the fifteen minute timer should be until Donatra gets there and starts assaulting you preventing you from doing the work of the mission.
Rather than auto failing us for not accomplishing an optional objective, I think a better idea would be for things to get WORSE for not having finished the mission already. In Infected The Conduit if you let the generators get healed things get worse for you as the stream of spheres coming to attack and repair hinder you from finishing the mission.
However this doesn't mitigate the problem of DPS being the primary motivating factor in how the game is played. So there needs to be additional optionals to changed up, so that everyone can be useful.
Like for Cure Space, Engineers should be able to beam demolition teams over to temporarily stop the stream of ships coming out to buy the team more time. Science should be able to team fortress the Kang's shields so it becomes impervious to bleed through.
Infected Space, would allow Science ships to jam the transwarp conduit so nothing can come through or let Engineers mine the conduit's entrance.
Khitomer Space is actually fairly good in that regard as everyone already has something that they can do generally well. Unless you want Science officers to be able to reroute the conduits so that some of the probes end up emerging back in the present thus keeping you from losing the optional and the objective, or allow Engineers to temporarily shut down the temporal portal.
Just some ideas, but you get the gist. I listed these three because everyone knows the Space STFs and they're relatively straightforward to tweak.
Don't kick us out of the mission because of a failed objective though, it's not like a Starfleet Officer to give up so easily. Unless the battle is actually over, let us finish the fight.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
This needs to be backed up with the correct actions (significant buffs) quickly to ensure that the words are taken seriously.
Late or halfhearted "in the narrow letter of the law/in the technical sense" fulfillment will be placed in the same category as a complete nonfulfillment of promises, given the fact that for whatever reason, Cryptic has gone back on its word regarding "Advanced = Old Elite difficulty" and "XP will be doubled." So Cryptic must now make this a top priority and for goodness sakes, QA test it and take Tribble feedback seriously instead of just using Tribble to accustom us to the pain a week in advance.
If things only begin to feel right on a double XP weekend, that should indicate something is wrong.
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1st off, thanks for the communication, it is sorely needed.
Secondly please meet an average joe.
Hi, im an average joe /waves.
Im not a huge poster on the forums, but recent events have made me feel i need to voice my thoughts in the hope that they may be considered, but if not, at least i can get it out.
Regarding the 1st post made in the Tribble forums:
I feel after what Delta Rising did to the game and since, to its player base, NERFS of any kind really must be avoided. The players i meet in game all ready feeling under the kosh so any reduction to currant rewards is really not gonna be appreiciated nor tolerated well, in fact, once i read the initial post i was in quite a foul mood all day.
I know its only 10 marks here or there, but that really adds up over time and especially for newer toons or players, will be felt.
Also me aswell as some friends still play the older borg STF's not so much for reward, but because we find it FUN, we like those missions, they're a nice lil get together, soemthing to do s a group.
NOW you are wanting to make these harder by reducing the timers?
Remember please, i consider myself an average player, with these changes your gonna make life ALOT more difficult and by doing this making the game LESS FUN.
This game atm already feels like a 2nd job, and so your going to make that feeling worse.
Did i read correctly Cure space timer going from 15mins to 4mins? i mean wow massive jump there.
So for me at the moment, i log in and see my dil earned today at zero, knowing i now need to try to get that 8k, i dont think "yay time to sto" i sigh and have to soul search if i can be bothered.
By making these stf's harder, it wont make me play the others, cos i did find these fun, i will just not play period, i mean, why? if im not having fun?
Now to what was posted by the OP in this thread.
Great, much more positive changes.....maybe.
Basically i read both in conjunction and i get this.
"we're nerfing the stf's rewards AND making them harder, but may give you goodies in a couple of months...maybe"
Although the post its self is at least going in the right direction, you tend to come away totally unenthused.
I WANT to LOVE the game again, i WANT to have FUN again....pls pls please, stop making it so hard to do so.
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.
I... , I'm sorry ... .
I'm sorry because I could not read the highlighted passage with a straight face .
I'm sorry that I could not read the highlighted passage with a straight face because unless I am mistaken you are the Dev that creates , monitors and adjusts the awards for the PVE queues .
In short ... , you are "Argala guy" ... -- meaning that you are the person who deliberately put that "outlier" (to use your term) in the game , while nerfing XP across the board to next to nil .
Thus ... , you are with one hand removing the "outliers" (just recently you started with the Borg STF's, by nerfing their awards to hell at the beginning of DR) , with the exact same excuse used here about "a unified gaming experience" , and that was done at the very same time Argala (the new "outlier") was introduced to the game (but has yet to be discovered by the players) .
Now forgive me , but if you do that kind of bait and switch on the players , it makes me question the list intended "benefits" that you depicted within your post .
... after all , I also remember the pitiful awards you saddled the Borg STF's with once DR launched ... , only to "monitor the metrics" and up them ever so slightly later on ... , and these supposed incoming benefits smell exactly like the ever so slightly increases to the Borg STF awards after that major nerf ...
I'm ok with re-balancing pve that is too easy/fast. I'm not ok with time limit fail conditions. That is not a good idea. This will discourage many who have not mastered dps builds, and eliminates choice of builds. Also, it is not consistent with trying to make the pve hard/longer.
Consider any other fail condition, it would probably work better for a team. Or maybe more npcs or greater challenge if time limit is not met. Example, command ships in Hive space start sending out repair spheres after a time.
But just plain failing because of time limit. come on!
I like long hard battles, not blowing everything to hell as quick as possible and expecting the whole team to do the same.
This needs to be backed up with the correct actions (significant buffs) quickly to ensure that the words are taken seriously.
Late or halfhearted "in the narrow letter of the law/in the technical sense" fulfillment will be placed in the same category as a complete nonfulfillment of promises, given the fact that for whatever reason, Cryptic has gone back on its word regarding "Advanced = Old Elite difficulty" and "XP will be doubled." So Cryptic must now make this a top priority and for goodness sakes, QA test it and take Tribble feedback seriously instead of just using Tribble to accustom us to the pain a week in advance.
If things only begin to feel right on a double XP weekend, that should indicate something is wrong.
Very much what this guy has said, it is becoming increasingly hard to take seriously what is said, credibility gap is the ideal term.
Truth is there was no need to make progression in the game harder like you have done and the grinds so insanely out of touch with the rewards, the upgrade system and the spec point system are horrendous. Granted, harder content was needed, but not at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Very much what this guy has said, it is becoming increasingly hard to take seriously what is said, credibility gap is the ideal term.
Truth is there was no need to make progression in the game harder like you have done and the grinds so insanely out of touch with the rewards, the upgrade system and the spec point system are horrendous. Granted, harder content was needed, but not at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
Thank you, to someone whose sig means you are presumably a member of the DPS bloc, for being willing to stand up for the majority of the playerbase that cannot afford to spend the time and money to get your kinds of numbers, or who wants to have a game experience other than the DPS route. (Let me tell ya, I felt vindicated in this when I heard all the hue and cry about the Vaadwaur but I had a balanced/survivable CC build and was *used to* not just vaping my enemies, and did WELL with them...)
Now if you could please help convince the DPS community to change its behavior (no showing off that attracts the wrong kind of dev attention until they get their priorities straight), that would be very helpful. I hope a message of disinterest and lack of publicity will get the point across to them, in addition to not standing up and pointing out areas that are "too easy" (but insane to the majority of players). A moratorium on brag videos would be a good place to start.
As would coming together as a group for a "DPS'ers For Diversity (in playstyles)" push (instead of certain members of your community just telling people to "do better DPS noob!") to show Cryptic that they are wrong about the wants and needs of the few players that seem to drive a lot of their decisions. If you believe they are reading you wrong, make that CLEAR to where no one could possibly miss it, by your words and behaviors.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Thank you, to someone whose sig means you are presumably a member of the DPS bloc, for being willing to stand up for the majority of the playerbase that cannot afford to spend the time and money to get your kinds of numbers, or who wants to have a game experience other than the DPS route. (Let me tell ya, I felt vindicated in this when I heard all the hue and cry about the Vaadwaur but I had a balanced/survivable CC build and was *used to* not just vaping my enemies, and did WELL with them...)
Now if you could please help convince the DPS community to change its behavior (no showing off that attracts the wrong kind of dev attention until they get their priorities straight), that would be very helpful. I hope a message of disinterest and lack of publicity will get the point across to them, in addition to not standing up and pointing out areas that are "too easy" (but insane to the majority of players). A moratorium on brag videos would be a good place to start.
As would coming together as a group for a "DPS'ers For Diversity (in playstyles)" push (instead of certain members of your community just telling people to "do better DPS noob!") to show Cryptic that they are wrong about the wants and needs of the few players that seem to drive a lot of their decisions. If you believe they are reading you wrong, make that CLEAR to where no one could possibly miss it, by your words and behaviors.
I'm not a member of the DPS league, I gave them their chance and they wasted it. I'm actually a ground person, something the DPS people can't do at all well in most cases. I still agree with what you're saying, you're just asking the wrong person
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
There is a ground STF I really love too although in the current climate I do not wish to call attention to it.
"Do not attract our attention again."
Fixing things appropriately and openly would be a great step towards removing that fear some in the community rightly have now, of openly sharing success. As it is right now we feel we must guard our sources and methods...and I think that is *corrosive* to the community. A community that has trust enough to share openly is a healthy one, and a community that feels it must be closed to protect itself and not help each other where devs can see is not.
IMO devs should be able to recognize success by seeing not just happy posts, but OPEN posts where people help each other and can share success without fearing the Iconians are coming. It's not as easily quantifiable like the Net Promoter Score I discussed in another post, but it's definitely a metric of sorts.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
There is a ground STF I really love too although in the current climate I do not wish to call attention to it.
"Do not attract our attention again."
Fixing things appropriately and openly would be a great step towards removing that fear some in the community rightly have now, of openly sharing success. As it is right now we feel we must guard our sources and methods...and I think that is *corrosive* to the community. A community that has trust enough to share openly is a healthy one, and a community that feels it must be closed to protect itself and not help each other where devs can see is not.
IMO devs should be able to recognize success by seeing not just happy posts, but OPEN posts where people help each other and can share success without fearing the Iconians are coming. It's not as easily quantifiable like the Net Promoter Score I discussed in another post, but it's definitely a metric of sorts.
We all get things wrong man, no worries
Personally, I think the devs ought to read your review series on DR, because a lot of the problems you flagged up in that were very well thought out and deserve to be taken into serious consideration.
I've actually recently had a fair amount of interaction with what could have been new players to the game, who were keen to play but they came to realise that the game seems to be moving toward, in their words 'a Korean-style grindfest'. That's becoming quite a regular statement and it does put people off, because these same people told me they want a game that's friendly to casual players.
The issues that got released with DR are not being visibly addressed, or like you say people would feel less fearful about helping others and would also mean people hear the good news about the game and not 'stay away it's getting worse.'
By the way, love the Iconian reference, even if not in the best context.
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head. - Euripides
I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
The thing about my review is you can see the effects and interactions of all parts of the economy simultaneously. What I am unsure of right now is whether this same sort of comprehensive picture is being looked at by the devs or if only a small subset of (all quantitative) metrics is being looked at and the impact of a change in one spot is considered on other areas of the game and its economy.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-) Proudly F2P.Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
The thing about my review is you can see the effects and interactions of all parts of the economy simultaneously. What I am unsure of right now is whether this same sort of comprehensive picture is being looked at by the devs or if only a small subset of (all quantitative) metrics is being looked at and the impact of a change in one spot is considered on other areas of the game and its economy.
What worries me more than anything is the extremely slow pace of any changes being pushed to live. At the current rate the next expansion will be out before they have even half of the rewards and difficulty reasonably balanced only for the new stuff to muck it all up again.
It shouldn't take three months to realize the SP rewards are far too low, or that the patrols offer far more than any other content. Or to fix it. And we don't even have an eta on that beyond 'next few months'...
Poke it with a stick a few times, tweak a little here, then a little there, and don't take months between each tweak. The endgame is basically in 'beta quality' at the moment if the goal is to have a variety of content with good rewards instead of obvious 'good' and 'terrible'.
Don't take forever and attempt to implement the 'perfect fix'. The game is living so to speak and will always need tweaking to keep it reasonably balanced. Don't overly worry about the exact precise amount of SP needed to be rewarded by queues when you know they are obviously far too low. Just push out a 10%-50% increase every week until it hits the right spot.
Maybe that is the problem though. Perhaps the Cryptic development cycle doesn't allow for the weekly tweaking of values. I'm just rambling now.
I will just stay confused I guess. I was put on for asking a question because I was confused so not even going to ask either. Right now, I'm simply confused about who is confused. Here are a couple reasons why...
"Don't trash advanced if you can't do advanced." Ok, queuing my alt for normal. Oh... it looks like I am the only person in the normal queue. I will just wait. ***Waits*** I could have got more marks failing 10 advanced by now in the time I have waited for a normal queue to pop. It never did pop. So the math is a computational error. 1 hour waiting divided by 0 gain = "You cannot divide by 0."
Now, we are going to equalize time and effort. So either Argala is going to be worth 10 XP or a story mission is going to be worth 10 million? Story content? Why? The only story I need is "We should help the Benthans" then kill 5 sets of X.
Oh yeah, and don't ask a question. It's spreading misinformation. I think I mentioned that already though.
Wasn't there a big hullabaloo among the devs awhile back about power creep? About the gap between new players at cap and old players at cap being too great and potentially getting greater? About not being able to effectively tailor content for end game because the gap between the haves and have-nots was so great? And that was over a few traits from the Reputation System. As such they revamped the Rep System and limited the number of traits we could slot at any one time. So... tell me, did they fix the power creep? Are people at the "height" of the level cap now closer in line with "newbies" than they were then?
I mean, is it just me or has that gotten exponentially worse? There are now Starship Traits, mostly locked behind $30 purchases (one each). All of these little perks throughout the Specialization system, including more Starship Traits tossed at the end of them. Several new marks of items locked behind dilithium and R&D. New levels of T5U ships and T6 ships with "Mastery" levels to knock out and none of these are available for free through leveling as ships at different levels have been previously. Tonnes of new must have gear locked behind Fleets and Reputation grinds with yet more dilithium and mark requirements.
So... how have things not gotten worse? While endless Reputation trait additions had the potential to be worse over, uh, maybe decades Cryptic have made things much worse now with DR than the old Reputation system had the potential to make things over years and years at the speed of development and Reputation releases.
So now we have Cryptic trying to tailor content to the problems they've created. Instead of solving power creep they made it worse, seemingly intentionally, and put it in the CStore. So now they're trying to make things harder for the people at the far end of the scale all while forgetting how huge and broken they've made that scale. And if this is the case... how much sense does it make to not only make things harder to appease the haves, but to lower rewards to make the climb for the havenots take even longer.
How do they make content for that gap? Obviously based on the fact that they're making things harder while the many PUGs are failing things now shows, well... they can't.
Now, lets say for a moment that Cryptic does follow through with the "buffs" put forward in Mr. Gray's post (which is, based on their history, a large leap of faith on it's own)... is that really likely to help? Is that going to turn the have-nots into the haves any faster so that Cryptic can make reasonable, balanced content that your average PUG can complete? I'm not so sure based on his own post. He flat out tells us that they want to drag everything into the same range, that there should be not better or worse choices. Generally though... that range seems to be lower than where most would want it. It seems to be increasing that "grind" we all love, or in other words lengthening the road the have-nots need to travel to join the haves thanks to the power creep they created... directly after saying they were trying to combat power creep.
Which begs the question; Do Cryptic really have a plan? Do they have any idea what they're doing?
They suggest they want to combat power creep then they introduce power creep unlike any that we've seen before. Then they start making things harder, presumably in response to what they did, and start lessening rewards making getting from A to B somewhere between tedious and impossible, and this in a game where everyone was already fairly resource strapped. How is any of this helping them design content or tailor it to players?
As far as I can see? It isn't. They keep having to tinker with rewards and revisit old content. They're just repeatedly shooting everyone in the foot... players and themselves and they don't even seem to notice. They're making the game worse to play, and harder to design for. They keep doing this. Repeatedly. All while telling us to take it on faith that they know what they're doing, that things will get better, that there is a design plan that... well, isn't entirely addled.
And what is that plan? This "explanation" doesn't explain that. Not really. It doesn't tell us how much we should fail in their eyes. It doesn't tell us how wide the power gap should be. It doesn't tell us how long they think it should take have-nots to become haves. It doesn't tell us anything. What we know is that they're nerfing this content's rewards and making this content harder. What they suggest is they'd like to maybe add rewards elsewhere but not how much, and also that there should be "no bad choices"... as such all things should be equal. So, is them adding rewards elsewhere really a good thing when they're telling us that they're fixing this content by making it worse and they want all choices to be equally viable as, well... this?
So if they start adding Skill Point rewards elsewhere or Dilithium rewards elsewhere do you really think they're going to add them in the amounts anyone wants? In amounts that matter? The goal seems to be to slow down progression,so does anyone really think everything is going to suddenly become Argala? Does anyone believe that everything will payout better when things are taken into account across the board or will rewards simply be wider spread and underwhelming everywhere? Because the changes to the Queues certainly don't seem to be hinting at them making things more appealing or bringing things into check.
So I suppose what I'm saying is... I don't trust Cryptic to make this work. I don't think they know how. I don't think they know what they're doing. I don't think they have a plan, or at least not one that is actually thought out. They even seem to admit this. They flatly say that they need to take "extra due diligence" for the buffs in other areas... meaning they need to look closer and harder because, by their own admission, they don't know. So they don't know where to put those rewards, but if they don't know where to put those rewards how can they know where to put these rewards? How can they know if this content if paying out properly when they don't know what content should be paying out? If what they're saying is true, there should be no bad choices, everything should pay off equally and if that's the case then if they know what this should reward then they should know what everything should reward, and yet they don't. Either that or... they don't know what the actual rewards they're giving us are worth... which may be an even scarier thought. Essentially the alternative is that they don't understand the basic systems and values of the currencies they've created... they've just haphazardly thrown all this together while shrugging and scratching their heads.
Which brings us back to what I sit here wondering...
Does anyone trust Cryptic in this regard and think they should start implementing this plan in phases, starting here with this and if so... why? What has given you this faith because I think you must have seen something I've missed entirely.
Comments
Reskill costs, romulan alt, all eat up so much, I feel I'm getting nowhere.
You mean Dyson and Argala? I did a couple of Argala runs with the weekend bonus - and let me tell you - it didn't feel rewarding, took ages for a single point. I then decided to stop caring about spec points. I didn't do Dyson apart from the story missions, but I will try that one. From what I heard its 8k/h which seems adequat to me.
Well no, there wasn't any confusion, you nerfd with no explanation, that prompted a perfectly reasonable response.
Well no, you are railroading players into playing Bughunt.
Well for the love of Q, don't reduce them, just bring others UP inline with them.
Right, well make sure you don't nerf the existing rewards until you are ready to make the following changes, if you absolutely have to wait a few months to add better rewards, then don't touch the old ones until you have done fully.
Most importantly DON'T nerf until you can add your new rewards, that would be bad.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
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'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
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I responded in the other post, but I'll respond here as well. The game as is stands does not appear to respect my time or effort. Grind patrol missions over and over to gain specialization points because there is not enough reward or content elsewhere? No thanks. Upgrade all of my gear at cost and time for marginal increases and gambles for rarity? Nah, I think I will just do what I can as I can to 14 and stop.
PVE may suffer worst because of the continued disconnect between what was Elite and what is now Advanced. I could go in with a PUG on Elite and if we failed the optional, I was out a small, but decent, amount of marks and still get more dilithium than I do now. Going into, say Infected space today and failing due to somebody blowing a generator early with us unable to control it, and I am hit pretty hard with just a few points as payout. On top of that, I am hit with a long cooldown before I can try again. So, when you speak of cuts to PVE, it really grates because I have already felt the burn there and in other places in the game.
Fun is a subjective thing, but I generally feel I am having fun when my effort is equaled or, better yet for a game, exceeded by my reward. A lot of changes over the last few months run completely counter to that for me.
So reward is a function of time investment, risk of failure, number of players and other unknown factors?
Maybe you have the data to come up with a formula that more or less accurately represents that for the "average" player, but I think there's always going to be a percentage of players, (that could be quite large), that aren't going to weight all those factors the same way and make different choices.
I don't think I've gotten a BNP since DR launched since I weighed the risk of failure too high for most stfs potential rewards.
If rep sets costs are high and related queue rewards are low multiplied by a high percent chance of failing and getting nothing, (or 10 marks), I can see how some players would be throwing up their hands in frustration and not bothering.
Needing to fail a Borg stf 300 times for a set would take forever.
I'm probably off base here, but every time I see adjustments like this, I feel its aimed towards stopping the gold-farmers running the content with dozens of alts. It might have a small effect on them, but it's always going to be orders of magnitude larger on "average" players.
This at the very least seems encouraging. I just hope we can enjoy them for a while before a way to exploit them is found and they get nerfed.
I completely agree with this post.... leave the rewards alone.... especially the marks.... it's already ridiculously difficult as it is....
"now" has a pretty clear definition while "later" is pretty vague and could mean that the players have to wait months... years... or wont see the promised changes if the developers change their mind (best example of that is not paying the announced dilithium for reaching the max amount of spec points.... just atm looks like a "everytime the players get close to this point we put more spec point grinding into the game")
I think the best explanation that describes what cryptic wants to turn this game into is:
https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/wwd-sisyphus-small.jpg
You have 2 ways to fix that discrepancy : buff the sub-par queues, or nerf the most played one. You choose the nerf path, and IMO, it's bad.
It's like letting someone be hungry and not giving him food for days. Then, you give him a bunch of food scrap. He will eat it like it's a feast, but it doesn't mean he is enjoying it, and that wouldn't be his first choice either.
Then, you have some ridiculous level of difficulty/length on some queued mission ("bail on bethan", anyone ?).
Players need an "easy way" to grind. And awarding challenges to. We need both.
Nerfing will only lead to a choice of "bad choice", and no good ones.
Simple maths right there :
An average queue award 2K xp (vs 8K for Argala). We need 150K xp for a spec point, that's 75 stf.
If you keep releasing the new spec tree every ~4months, that means 2250STF to complete it before another one is added.
That's 19 stf PER DAY. Or 5 Argala per day. Obviously, per character.
I don't think a lot of player are doing 19stf/day. I know I'm not.
I heard that one before. Oh yeah, several time per year since, I don't know, 2-3 years ? Dear quote, I'll see you for the next dilithium nerf !
Sure, don't do anything for story mission (you know, the "fun" part of DR), but do something for the patrol grind.
Like we need it.
Is this how you play to have us completing the spec trees ? By playing patrol over and over ? What about "be rewarded for playing what you enjoy" or whatever you said ?
I heard that one before. I think the first time was with the Reputation being added to the game. 2 or 3 years ago ? Can't remember.
Now that we have some more clarification I can sort of see the logic behind what's going on, although I still do not agree with nerfing the missions.
Like it or not there will always be that one optimal build, that one optimal mission, that one optimal team makeup, etc that people run with. Even if it's a perceived increase above something else, alot of people will always go for it, that's just the nature of the beast. I get the whole wanting to bring all STFs in line with a certain curve and all. That said a 10 man queue should always reward more than a 5 man queue, and a 20 man queue should always reward more than a 10, and so on. Although yes it's divided into so many teams of 5 such as crystal being 2 teams of 5, it's still 10 people, that must coordinate their efforts towards a common goal. The more people the mission needs per team, the more rewards it should give on top of normal rewards it already gives. It shouldn't be a huge sum no, but it should be a little something extra such as 5-10 marks.
Don't take this the wrong way, I simply can't think of another way to say it but, when did you guys ever hear that something gives too much for too little effort? I'm legitimately curious on this as I've never heard that complaint brought up. On the contrary I always hear the complaint stuff doesn't give enough xp, or rewards and I've never heard that something gives too much.
For the xp and skill issues, I'm sorry (not really) but I have absolutely zero interest in grinding Argala for hours just to get decent xp, and grinding out repetitive missions in the delta episodes. As it sits right now pretty much anything that's not Delta, barring the first time you do an episode from another series, gives so little xp it's barely worth it. It shouldn't take nearly as long as it does right now to get levels. For someone such as myself who enjoys playing alts, the lack of decent places to get xp and skill points pretty much kills my motivation to get toons leveled up. I have 2 of my toons at 60 and it's not looking like I'm going to be getting the others to level 60 any time soon. Although I could grind my tail feathers off even further, the xp and skill things give right now, unless it's the first time you do an episode, is an insult to the kind of effort I have to put into it for such a meager payout. Again with respect to the dev team and everyone, you say you understand everyone's frustrations, but do you really? If you do then why has it taken until now for something to be done about it, let alone us even hear about it? As I said, not trying to be a jerk, but honestly it doesn't look good from our perspective.
As it sits right now, most advanced missions are absolutely unpugable and can't be run with random people, and elite missions, well lets just say you have a better chance of winning the lottery twice in a row than getting a team capable of running elites.
As for mission rewards. Nerfing stuff isn't the way to get people back into queues and otherwise. Making it easier to fail a mission is even more motivation for me NOT to run missions with random people. If the rewards had been increased, along with the difficulty increase, instead of the rewards being decreased, then I would have had some motivation to do them. As it sits right now what you're doing is going to have the opposite effect. That again is just the nature of the beast, people will always go to where they believe there is more reward, even if it's perceived. If people feel they or something has been nerfed, they will find something that hasn't within the game. That's just the nature of mmos. If you want to get people to play different queues, instead of nerfing the rewards it should've been increased. The angry response was deserved as no explanation was given to the nerfs until now.
I get it that you want people playing the Delta stuff but there are other things outside of the Delta missions that people love to play, and I honestly do not believe that's being taken into consideration as much as it should be.
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A thanks for the dev communication regarding intent but this should be up front not when the community is so up in arms, given up etc they've left or about to start lynching. True some people are out of line but you do bring it upon yourselves. You could save yourselves so much hassle and negativity and I've said this time and time again but you don't seem to be learning this lesson. A single post from you summing up the feedback goes a long way I'm not expecting 1:1 reply but something to show you've listened to the feedback and have a response to give isn't that much to ask. In the old days you'd be more transparent and pitch ideas but now we just get changes with nothing to explain them.
I'm sceptical as I'm well aware of intention not being acted upon (won't use the word 'promise' as you don't use it). You've said so many things that never happen. I'll judge you on what you do not what you say you'll do.
The nerf now, buff later isn't a good model especially when it looks like there are ulterior motives (i.e. more DR metrics). Look at the queues that work and ask yourself why then try and make those changes to the queues that don't work (bring thme in line a bit more) and then if need be nerf if at all the better queues. It's interesting how nerfs get implemented first or in record time but buffs seldom come first or anytime soon.
Adding to single player sounds like a good idea though I'm not sure what this will do to the PVE queues.
Metrics are a bad thing to rely on and someone's post on MS Windows 8 seems to be a valid point. I don't play Mine Trap because it takes 20 people, poor reward/time and people idle and would rather play e.g ISN because it's a better pay/time, 5 players and less temptation to idle. Just because I choose ISN doesn't mean it's over rewarding it just means the alternative isn't appealing enough. Try making MT 5-10 players and upping the rewards to make it more appealing and then maybe look at nerfing ISN. In your view I would see you thinking ISN is too rewarding lets nerf it so it's in line with MT, completely the wrong way around.
So yeah it sounds like I'm in agreement with the majority here, cautious, reluctant optimism that Cryptic is listening and might be acting on community feedback but I'll be clear, I am not confused in fact I think me and others have more of a clue than you do. You've not told us your intentions, now let's see the results.
That's my guess, at least.
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Level 660, that's a lot of grinding
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Yeah, I have to agree with this here. You take away rewards now and promise to make up for it later.
Maybe.
If the metrics show that they are warranted.
And if the metrics show it's not warranted, perhaps the only thing that will be given out later are more nerfs.
I suggest holding off on the nerfs until the buffs are ready to be implemented. Do them both at the same time and let them equal each other out, or even let the good outweigh the bad. You never want to tip the scales so far out of the customers favor that they fall off. Customers are fickle, they want value for their time and money. If they no longer see that value, they will seek it out someplace else. And if you're too harsh and push them away by always beating them with a stick, they may not come back. Even if later there are indeed plenty of carrots for them to have.
Trust is the big issue lately. A lot of the players, at least those on the forums, seem to not have any left for the decisions being made about the game. And IMO, rightfully so. Coming out and saying that the reason for the nerfs is because you, the Devs, want to balance things and that there WILL be buffs later is good to hear, but until those buffs arrive, it's all hollow words.
I just had a fleet member yesterday tell me they canceled their sub due to it being "obvious that the Devs aren't listening to the players". Now, they also did say they were going to continue playing as a silver, but that their days of paying to play are over unless "Cryptic can show (them) that they are serious about actually improving the game and not nerfing everything into oblivion".
While the communication IS indeed nice to see, actions speak louder than words. Personally, I'll believe it when I see it. I'm not giving up on the game, but I am playing less of late. Something positive has to happen, and the sooner the better.
Set a man on fire and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
As for these changes they are for the most part good if they make into the game.
Increase Skill Point and Expertise rewards in PvE Queues: GOOD. It was once said that the STFs were to be the ultimate end game and should have the best rewards. Constantly tangling with the Borg should grant solid experience.
Dilithium for mission rewards: GOOD. It's been something that's been requested and mentioned a lot since I got here a couple years back, so if it is finally implemented I will be all smiles, since your story content is generally excellent.
Sector Patrol Reward increase: GOOD. I'm not in the majority on the Sector Patrols as I found the DR Patrols very enjoyable as far as gameplay and contribution to the overall story arc. The things that infuriated me and the reason I don't play them is A) there is an immense amount of lag that occurs in several of those missions and when I played them when DR first dropped, I had to drastically reduce my graphics settings to even get them up to running slow, and it ended up taking half an hour for ten minute mission and
Skill Points and Expertise added to Battlezones: NO BRAINER. I'm shocked that they weren't already there in general.
Elite Reputation Tokens added to single player: AMBIVALENT. I'm sincerely on the fence on this one. I'm a solo player by nature. At the beginning of my time here I didn't want to play the STFs because A) I heard about abusive player behavior if you screwed up,
I'm no expert on computer coding or game design so while you say a couple of months, which I understand to mean within two months by the way, I have no clue how long it would take to actually code the changes you've proposed, since you didn't commit, two months could very well be the amount of time it takes to do that with all the other things being hooked up with the coming anniversary, command spec, and new BOFF training and whatever else the team has in the pipeline that we haven't been told about yet. I don't know how difficult it is to rip these changes OUT of the current builds. But in the future if you guys consider this the medicine, then please don't forget the spoonful of sugar goes with the medicine, not after it.
On a personal note, I've been a bit down on the game lately. I just ran into the R&D DOFF wall, made worse by the fact I KNOW I've cast aside some R&D doffs that I already earned not knowing of their importance. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't gone through 6 months of grind to get to this point being ready and then...I'm still missing one thing. That was depressing, then the weight of the XP decreases was beginning to making think about moving on, which is not something I had ever gone through in this game.
So this statement from the Devs removes the general bad mood I have had about the game this last week, so thanks for that. I sincerely hope they're implemented as they are in fact good changes.
I think it would be irrelevant otherwise.
That said, this is one of the things I'm skeptical about just because it was mentioned quite a long time ago and seemingly left on the way side. Something they bring out when they want to appease the angered masses because it's known as popular but they don't seem to have any intention of pulling the trigger on...which is a shame. I originally thought that the dilithium for Spec points once you had maxed specializations out was their way of implementing it, but that was incorrect because A) the rate of gaining spec points was so low and
If you mean bring back the classic STFs at Elite where the stories were linked so you play both the space and ground portion in one shot then yes definitely. Put a FAT reward package at the end, with a special accolade set and it could be money. I would suggest placing a buffer zone in the middle so you can change your specializations.
As a matter of fact if you could set default specializations like we do when you shift from ship to small craft. There's little opportunity to go from Pilot to Commando which kind of reduces the effectiveness of the Specializations. Just on the shift from space to ground though.
I agree completely on adding marks to corresponding story content, the Romulan Freedom Feature Episodes should give Romulan marks. Now that story takes places before rep unlocks, but having the head start in collecting the would be invaluable.
On the subject of the Advanced and Elite fail situation, I think these need a revamp of the revamp. I think Elite should have the harder fail conditions as it is elite. Advanced however needs something smoother. I also think the failure conditions need to be imminently logical.
Rather than auto failing us for not accomplishing an optional objective, I think a better idea would be for things to get WORSE for not having finished the mission already. In Infected The Conduit if you let the generators get healed things get worse for you as the stream of spheres coming to attack and repair hinder you from finishing the mission.
However this doesn't mitigate the problem of DPS being the primary motivating factor in how the game is played. So there needs to be additional optionals to changed up, so that everyone can be useful.
Just some ideas, but you get the gist. I listed these three because everyone knows the Space STFs and they're relatively straightforward to tweak.
Don't kick us out of the mission because of a failed objective though, it's not like a Starfleet Officer to give up so easily. Unless the battle is actually over, let us finish the fight.
"I am not a crook!"
This needs to be backed up with the correct actions (significant buffs) quickly to ensure that the words are taken seriously.
Late or halfhearted "in the narrow letter of the law/in the technical sense" fulfillment will be placed in the same category as a complete nonfulfillment of promises, given the fact that for whatever reason, Cryptic has gone back on its word regarding "Advanced = Old Elite difficulty" and "XP will be doubled." So Cryptic must now make this a top priority and for goodness sakes, QA test it and take Tribble feedback seriously instead of just using Tribble to accustom us to the pain a week in advance.
If things only begin to feel right on a double XP weekend, that should indicate something is wrong.
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Secondly please meet an average joe.
Hi, im an average joe /waves.
Im not a huge poster on the forums, but recent events have made me feel i need to voice my thoughts in the hope that they may be considered, but if not, at least i can get it out.
Regarding the 1st post made in the Tribble forums:
I feel after what Delta Rising did to the game and since, to its player base, NERFS of any kind really must be avoided. The players i meet in game all ready feeling under the kosh so any reduction to currant rewards is really not gonna be appreiciated nor tolerated well, in fact, once i read the initial post i was in quite a foul mood all day.
I know its only 10 marks here or there, but that really adds up over time and especially for newer toons or players, will be felt.
Also me aswell as some friends still play the older borg STF's not so much for reward, but because we find it FUN, we like those missions, they're a nice lil get together, soemthing to do s a group.
NOW you are wanting to make these harder by reducing the timers?
Remember please, i consider myself an average player, with these changes your gonna make life ALOT more difficult and by doing this making the game LESS FUN.
This game atm already feels like a 2nd job, and so your going to make that feeling worse.
Did i read correctly Cure space timer going from 15mins to 4mins? i mean wow massive jump there.
So for me at the moment, i log in and see my dil earned today at zero, knowing i now need to try to get that 8k, i dont think "yay time to sto" i sigh and have to soul search if i can be bothered.
By making these stf's harder, it wont make me play the others, cos i did find these fun, i will just not play period, i mean, why? if im not having fun?
Now to what was posted by the OP in this thread.
Great, much more positive changes.....maybe.
Basically i read both in conjunction and i get this.
"we're nerfing the stf's rewards AND making them harder, but may give you goodies in a couple of months...maybe"
Although the post its self is at least going in the right direction, you tend to come away totally unenthused.
I WANT to LOVE the game again, i WANT to have FUN again....pls pls please, stop making it so hard to do so.
Thanks
Keep the post flowing and thanks for not turning this into a slap and cry thread.
We all want a challenging and fun game, I just don't see why they want to keep hurting the community.
I'm talking about Cryptic now, every player, every fleet has lost people after DR.
Now they want to push the people on the tipping point off the cliff.
Just the worst PR move and the worst time right after a huge disaster.
Metrics just shows a person left the game and they don't know what a players true worth was.
Was the person a major recruiter for a fleet or player good at getting people to play together.
Maybe the player was a Starbase builder or a popular fleet leader that's what numbers don't show.
A top DPSer in a small fleet that enabled the team to get optionals.
That's what numbers show the real impact to community when we loose a person over terrible PR Nerfs.
I... , I'm sorry ... .
I'm sorry because I could not read the highlighted passage with a straight face .
I'm sorry that I could not read the highlighted passage with a straight face because unless I am mistaken you are the Dev that creates , monitors and adjusts the awards for the PVE queues .
In short ... , you are "Argala guy" ... -- meaning that you are the person who deliberately put that "outlier" (to use your term) in the game , while nerfing XP across the board to next to nil .
Thus ... , you are with one hand removing the "outliers" (just recently you started with the Borg STF's, by nerfing their awards to hell at the beginning of DR) , with the exact same excuse used here about "a unified gaming experience" , and that was done at the very same time Argala (the new "outlier") was introduced to the game (but has yet to be discovered by the players) .
Now forgive me , but if you do that kind of bait and switch on the players , it makes me question the list intended "benefits" that you depicted within your post .
... after all , I also remember the pitiful awards you saddled the Borg STF's with once DR launched ... , only to "monitor the metrics" and up them ever so slightly later on ... , and these supposed incoming benefits smell exactly like the ever so slightly increases to the Borg STF awards after that major nerf ...
Consider any other fail condition, it would probably work better for a team. Or maybe more npcs or greater challenge if time limit is not met. Example, command ships in Hive space start sending out repair spheres after a time.
But just plain failing because of time limit. come on!
I like long hard battles, not blowing everything to hell as quick as possible and expecting the whole team to do the same.
Very much what this guy has said, it is becoming increasingly hard to take seriously what is said, credibility gap is the ideal term.
Truth is there was no need to make progression in the game harder like you have done and the grinds so insanely out of touch with the rewards, the upgrade system and the spec point system are horrendous. Granted, harder content was needed, but not at the expense of the rest of the playerbase.
this is where most of the talk is happening
So thank you on that point and long may it continue.
Cheers guys.
Thank you, to someone whose sig means you are presumably a member of the DPS bloc, for being willing to stand up for the majority of the playerbase that cannot afford to spend the time and money to get your kinds of numbers, or who wants to have a game experience other than the DPS route. (Let me tell ya, I felt vindicated in this when I heard all the hue and cry about the Vaadwaur but I had a balanced/survivable CC build and was *used to* not just vaping my enemies, and did WELL with them...)
Now if you could please help convince the DPS community to change its behavior (no showing off that attracts the wrong kind of dev attention until they get their priorities straight), that would be very helpful. I hope a message of disinterest and lack of publicity will get the point across to them, in addition to not standing up and pointing out areas that are "too easy" (but insane to the majority of players). A moratorium on brag videos would be a good place to start.
As would coming together as a group for a "DPS'ers For Diversity (in playstyles)" push (instead of certain members of your community just telling people to "do better DPS noob!") to show Cryptic that they are wrong about the wants and needs of the few players that seem to drive a lot of their decisions. If you believe they are reading you wrong, make that CLEAR to where no one could possibly miss it, by your words and behaviors.
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I'm not a member of the DPS league, I gave them their chance and they wasted it. I'm actually a ground person, something the DPS people can't do at all well in most cases. I still agree with what you're saying, you're just asking the wrong person
There is a ground STF I really love too although in the current climate I do not wish to call attention to it.
"Do not attract our attention again."
Fixing things appropriately and openly would be a great step towards removing that fear some in the community rightly have now, of openly sharing success. As it is right now we feel we must guard our sources and methods...and I think that is *corrosive* to the community. A community that has trust enough to share openly is a healthy one, and a community that feels it must be closed to protect itself and not help each other where devs can see is not.
IMO devs should be able to recognize success by seeing not just happy posts, but OPEN posts where people help each other and can share success without fearing the Iconians are coming. It's not as easily quantifiable like the Net Promoter Score I discussed in another post, but it's definitely a metric of sorts.
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We all get things wrong man, no worries
Personally, I think the devs ought to read your review series on DR, because a lot of the problems you flagged up in that were very well thought out and deserve to be taken into serious consideration.
I've actually recently had a fair amount of interaction with what could have been new players to the game, who were keen to play but they came to realise that the game seems to be moving toward, in their words 'a Korean-style grindfest'. That's becoming quite a regular statement and it does put people off, because these same people told me they want a game that's friendly to casual players.
The issues that got released with DR are not being visibly addressed, or like you say people would feel less fearful about helping others and would also mean people hear the good news about the game and not 'stay away it's getting worse.'
By the way, love the Iconian reference, even if not in the best context.
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What worries me more than anything is the extremely slow pace of any changes being pushed to live. At the current rate the next expansion will be out before they have even half of the rewards and difficulty reasonably balanced only for the new stuff to muck it all up again.
It shouldn't take three months to realize the SP rewards are far too low, or that the patrols offer far more than any other content. Or to fix it. And we don't even have an eta on that beyond 'next few months'...
Poke it with a stick a few times, tweak a little here, then a little there, and don't take months between each tweak. The endgame is basically in 'beta quality' at the moment if the goal is to have a variety of content with good rewards instead of obvious 'good' and 'terrible'.
Don't take forever and attempt to implement the 'perfect fix'. The game is living so to speak and will always need tweaking to keep it reasonably balanced. Don't overly worry about the exact precise amount of SP needed to be rewarded by queues when you know they are obviously far too low. Just push out a 10%-50% increase every week until it hits the right spot.
Maybe that is the problem though. Perhaps the Cryptic development cycle doesn't allow for the weekly tweaking of values. I'm just rambling now.
"Don't trash advanced if you can't do advanced." Ok, queuing my alt for normal. Oh... it looks like I am the only person in the normal queue. I will just wait. ***Waits*** I could have got more marks failing 10 advanced by now in the time I have waited for a normal queue to pop. It never did pop. So the math is a computational error. 1 hour waiting divided by 0 gain = "You cannot divide by 0."
Now, we are going to equalize time and effort. So either Argala is going to be worth 10 XP or a story mission is going to be worth 10 million? Story content? Why? The only story I need is "We should help the Benthans" then kill 5 sets of X.
Oh yeah, and don't ask a question. It's spreading misinformation. I think I mentioned that already though.
Wasn't there a big hullabaloo among the devs awhile back about power creep? About the gap between new players at cap and old players at cap being too great and potentially getting greater? About not being able to effectively tailor content for end game because the gap between the haves and have-nots was so great? And that was over a few traits from the Reputation System. As such they revamped the Rep System and limited the number of traits we could slot at any one time. So... tell me, did they fix the power creep? Are people at the "height" of the level cap now closer in line with "newbies" than they were then?
I mean, is it just me or has that gotten exponentially worse? There are now Starship Traits, mostly locked behind $30 purchases (one each). All of these little perks throughout the Specialization system, including more Starship Traits tossed at the end of them. Several new marks of items locked behind dilithium and R&D. New levels of T5U ships and T6 ships with "Mastery" levels to knock out and none of these are available for free through leveling as ships at different levels have been previously. Tonnes of new must have gear locked behind Fleets and Reputation grinds with yet more dilithium and mark requirements.
So... how have things not gotten worse? While endless Reputation trait additions had the potential to be worse over, uh, maybe decades Cryptic have made things much worse now with DR than the old Reputation system had the potential to make things over years and years at the speed of development and Reputation releases.
So now we have Cryptic trying to tailor content to the problems they've created. Instead of solving power creep they made it worse, seemingly intentionally, and put it in the CStore. So now they're trying to make things harder for the people at the far end of the scale all while forgetting how huge and broken they've made that scale. And if this is the case... how much sense does it make to not only make things harder to appease the haves, but to lower rewards to make the climb for the havenots take even longer.
How do they make content for that gap? Obviously based on the fact that they're making things harder while the many PUGs are failing things now shows, well... they can't.
Now, lets say for a moment that Cryptic does follow through with the "buffs" put forward in Mr. Gray's post (which is, based on their history, a large leap of faith on it's own)... is that really likely to help? Is that going to turn the have-nots into the haves any faster so that Cryptic can make reasonable, balanced content that your average PUG can complete? I'm not so sure based on his own post. He flat out tells us that they want to drag everything into the same range, that there should be not better or worse choices. Generally though... that range seems to be lower than where most would want it. It seems to be increasing that "grind" we all love, or in other words lengthening the road the have-nots need to travel to join the haves thanks to the power creep they created... directly after saying they were trying to combat power creep.
Which begs the question; Do Cryptic really have a plan? Do they have any idea what they're doing?
They suggest they want to combat power creep then they introduce power creep unlike any that we've seen before. Then they start making things harder, presumably in response to what they did, and start lessening rewards making getting from A to B somewhere between tedious and impossible, and this in a game where everyone was already fairly resource strapped. How is any of this helping them design content or tailor it to players?
As far as I can see? It isn't. They keep having to tinker with rewards and revisit old content. They're just repeatedly shooting everyone in the foot... players and themselves and they don't even seem to notice. They're making the game worse to play, and harder to design for. They keep doing this. Repeatedly. All while telling us to take it on faith that they know what they're doing, that things will get better, that there is a design plan that... well, isn't entirely addled.
And what is that plan? This "explanation" doesn't explain that. Not really. It doesn't tell us how much we should fail in their eyes. It doesn't tell us how wide the power gap should be. It doesn't tell us how long they think it should take have-nots to become haves. It doesn't tell us anything. What we know is that they're nerfing this content's rewards and making this content harder. What they suggest is they'd like to maybe add rewards elsewhere but not how much, and also that there should be "no bad choices"... as such all things should be equal. So, is them adding rewards elsewhere really a good thing when they're telling us that they're fixing this content by making it worse and they want all choices to be equally viable as, well... this?
So if they start adding Skill Point rewards elsewhere or Dilithium rewards elsewhere do you really think they're going to add them in the amounts anyone wants? In amounts that matter? The goal seems to be to slow down progression,so does anyone really think everything is going to suddenly become Argala? Does anyone believe that everything will payout better when things are taken into account across the board or will rewards simply be wider spread and underwhelming everywhere? Because the changes to the Queues certainly don't seem to be hinting at them making things more appealing or bringing things into check.
So I suppose what I'm saying is... I don't trust Cryptic to make this work. I don't think they know how. I don't think they know what they're doing. I don't think they have a plan, or at least not one that is actually thought out. They even seem to admit this. They flatly say that they need to take "extra due diligence" for the buffs in other areas... meaning they need to look closer and harder because, by their own admission, they don't know. So they don't know where to put those rewards, but if they don't know where to put those rewards how can they know where to put these rewards? How can they know if this content if paying out properly when they don't know what content should be paying out? If what they're saying is true, there should be no bad choices, everything should pay off equally and if that's the case then if they know what this should reward then they should know what everything should reward, and yet they don't. Either that or... they don't know what the actual rewards they're giving us are worth... which may be an even scarier thought. Essentially the alternative is that they don't understand the basic systems and values of the currencies they've created... they've just haphazardly thrown all this together while shrugging and scratching their heads.
Which brings us back to what I sit here wondering...
Does anyone trust Cryptic in this regard and think they should start implementing this plan in phases, starting here with this and if so... why? What has given you this faith because I think you must have seen something I've missed entirely.