I've mentioned before in a few podcasts, I play STO every day with a character that has no special "dev hacks." I've worked up tier 5 in all of the reputations, earned starship mastery traits on multiple ships, and I'm still earning specialization points. I have multiple alts as well, across all the different factions and careers. When I decided that I wanted to fly the Vesta, I earned dilithium and posted it on the d-Zen exchange and purchased the ship bundle. And I'm not the only one who plays.
The assumption that "devs don't actually play the game" is decidedly incorrect.
We do play the game -- some of us a little, some of us a lot.
OK...I think I just found another dev who is not showing properly on the dev tracker...we really need to get a full list together of who's missing.
Sorry for my roundabout way of getting at this, but I have to ask you Vesta pilot to Vesta pilot, have you seen just how severely the pet nerf has hit us? And sadly with the costs on upgrades being so incredibly high, there is absolutely nothing I can feasibly do without making the game into second job or paying money I need to see better evidence will go to good use, to change ships. That and I genuinely love the Vesta and it burns to see it crippled this way.
JHeinig, this is a prime example what I mean when I refer to the need to look at all systems and how *everything* affects everything else, before imposing costs or nerfing things. It took both seemingly thoughtless nerfs (an NPC nerf that gutted carrier pilots without a buff or AI improvement to repair what was taken from us) AND exorbitant gear costs AND EC and dilithium nerfs to get here. Any one of these has consequences. Put together, it's a perfect storm.
I think some of the frustration comes about because of what seems to be lack of consideration of the consequences and the combination of consequences from throwing all of these changes at us. Can you see why this is frustrating?
For more discussion of DR as a comprehensive whole and more thoughts on how each thing affects the other and how it all degrades the player experience when brought together (oh...and what's good and what I would love to see salvaged or not buried under the painful parts of the game), please look at my DR review in my sig, and many other great feedback threads in this forum. We DO pull off detailed discussions without flames and personal insults.
Just be careful to start a new thread if you plan to answer the review. You DON'T want Smirk to ban you for a necro.
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.
One elite mark (BNP, APC, etc.) per 20 hr day on the normal queues would be sufficient for me. That or as has been suggested, add them into the appropriate battlezones: Defera, Kobali.
The lack of being able to get those from BZ or normal STF content was a terrible change from the DR.
"After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true. Except for a T5 Connie. That would be f*%#ing awesome." - Mr. Spock
With respect to PvE queues; the solution is not to nerf the rewards of the ones still actively played, then throw a fail timer on them.
If you want others to play more of the other PvE queues, you need to make their rewards justify the time spent completing them. XP/Spec gains is one part, but not enough alone.
Let the longer-duration queues that require some actual team effort reward far more for the average time spent on them; whether it's one guaranteed Elite Mark (Voth Cybernetic Implant) in Storming the Spire Normal AND marks scaled to how successful the capture is (and a bonus for sinking the dreadnought and number of escaping ships downed), to Undine Assault rewarding a lot of Undine marks and XP/Spec XP for as many portals, ships, and Planet Killers sealed/sunk/destroyed (and leaving Isomorphic Injections to the BZ).
As it is, no one wants to spend the better part of their time having to cover for both the team and their own objectives and not get rewarded fairly because the queue took awhile. Sure, one could just not PUG, but where would that leaves the fresh level 50s with little to no clue what to do in the first place?
A set reward plus bonuses for individual and team contribution would go a long way in the more teamwork-heavy queues.
I've mentioned before in a few podcasts, I play STO every day with a character that has no special "dev hacks." I've worked up tier 5 in all of the reputations, earned starship mastery traits on multiple ships, and I'm still earning specialization points. I have multiple alts as well, across all the different factions and careers. When I decided that I wanted to fly the Vesta, I earned dilithium and posted it on the d-Zen exchange and purchased the ship bundle. And I'm not the only one who plays.
The assumption that "devs don't actually play the game" is decidedly incorrect.
We do play the game -- some of us a little, some of us a lot.
*Raises Hand*
Yo Devboss, a question.
Do you have any ideas or opinions about why there seems to be such a massive disconnect between the way we, not all players, but the specific people in this thread have with how changes like these will work out, and you guys the developers who came up with them?
And I'll reiterate my earlier opinion that failure timers are bad business. They're arbitrary. They seem like they would be specific limitations that the person who sets up a private queue would implement to challenge his team of DPS monsters.
But for the regular rank and file like myself, finishing Cure Found Elite in minutes is not possible, unless I in an act of pure luck end up in a queue with those monsters or some extremely coordinated team from a fleet and I ended up as their fifth man.
A failure condition should be directly related to the actual core mission objective. Mission failure should only result from being no longer able to complete the primary mission. The Kang is destroyed, the entire Borg invasion force makes it to the past, a Borg fleet overruns your position and you can't make it to the Starbase to find out what happened. Borg Disconnected, the failure should be that you don't save any drones whatsoever.
Optionals shoudl always equal Bonus not Penalty.
And cooldown timers, ESPECIALLY on failures for the missions discourage learning. Trial and Error is not represented in that.
"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"
I've mentioned before in a few podcasts, I play STO every day with a character that has no special "dev hacks." I've worked up tier 5 in all of the reputations, earned starship mastery traits on multiple ships, and I'm still earning specialization points. I have multiple alts as well, across all the different factions and careers. When I decided that I wanted to fly the Vesta, I earned dilithium and posted it on the d-Zen exchange and purchased the ship bundle. And I'm not the only one who plays.
The assumption that "devs don't actually play the game" is decidedly incorrect.
We do play the game -- some of us a little, some of us a lot.
And I don't doubt it for a second. Where I have to o.O is when some representatives make public comments that don't jive with our experience.
We do play the game - a lot. Many of us pay a fair bit of coin for the pleasure of enjoying your fine efforts.
I don't expect the EP or the CM to openly admit they don't understand every working concept in the game or for that matter play 3 hours a day. What I do expect is to be able to trust what they say.
It's a nice assumption to think the devs don't play the game enough to see first hand what they have wrought. Unfortunately I don't believe this for a second. They know full well exactly what they're doing. They know full well they are bald-faced lying to us. They have a plan and an agenda, and monetization is king. They'll never admit it. They'll make all sorts of promises about future plans in an attempt to placate us and hope we forget when they never happen.
Once you have even a passing understanding of the psychology of game addiction then everything they're doing becomes very clear and makes a lot of sense. It's literally right out of the "how to TRIBBLE over your playerbase and get them to keep paying you for the privilege" handbook.
The sad part is that there is enough player churn that it won't really matter. Old timers like us will leave, new people will come to replace us that don't know how things used to be and life will go on, while the dedicate hardcore players will simply adapt and keep paying Cryptic no matter what they do.
Do you know why I don't grind Argala? Because i need mats to craft or sell on the exchange so I can upgrade my ship's gear to 14.
Now, you are making the only queue i utilize for consistent mats harder, thus making it likely I get frustrated and not upgrade?
Why would you do that? I hate ground, so I do not do Bug Hunt unless absolutely necessary.
If CCA becomes difficult to complete, I won't be able to upgrade, and I'll go back to playing something else. I have games left over from the last steam sale that I haven't played. I might just start playing them instead.
I've mentioned before in a few podcasts, I play STO every day with a character that has no special "dev hacks." I've worked up tier 5 in all of the reputations, earned starship mastery traits on multiple ships, and I'm still earning specialization points. I have multiple alts as well, across all the different factions and careers. When I decided that I wanted to fly the Vesta, I earned dilithium and posted it on the d-Zen exchange and purchased the ship bundle. And I'm not the only one who plays.
The assumption that "devs don't actually play the game" is decidedly incorrect.
We do play the game -- some of us a little, some of us a lot.
All well and good. So, just for a moment, take off your dev hat and put on your player hat and try to look at these changes from our point of view.
You guys are taking some of the end-game queues that are still seeing traffic, some of the few in case you haven't tried PUGing them lately, and making them more difficult whilst and at the same time making them less rewarding. Taken together would you still want to spend time on them? Possibly a lot of time on them? Do the post-DR STFs still seem worthwhile to you? Earning less for more difficulty? Can you see how some, many if one is to judge by the STF queues, of your fellow players are seeming to have less and less fun in this game?
Take some notes, talk to people, take some more notes.
Then put your dev hat back on and see what you can do with that list you just created. Don't look at the metrics. Look at the feedback from a player.
I've tried to do the math for game value for time spent.
What I found is that true subscription games tend to award between 300% and 1200% the value in terms of game impact for time investment that I see in STO. This obviously isn't a simple thing to calculate and required cross comparison with how other games monetize power and progression.
I recognize your concern for people trivializing or blowing through content. I'm not trying to angle for a way to completely do that.
What STO needs IMHO is something on the order of rested XP.
Simply logging in to DOff or setup crafting assignments isn't super-engaging even though it's a very high reward for the time investment. Meanwhile, trying to get specialization points playing aspects of the game I enjoy feels like going in for dental work.
IMHO, the best balanced reward structure in the game are the rep marks with their large daily bonus.
I think what STO needs is a large initial reward for active gameplay on a daily or weekly basis. I think the first specialization point each week really needs to come from playing under an hour without touching patrols and that an additional specialization point should be available for participating in some kind of directed event, for people who want to catch up.
More than that and I'm comfortable with the grind more or less in place.
But my feeling is that 4-5 mission replays or 4-5 queue events should generate a skillpoint per week for the FIRST skillpoint that week and that weekend events should be similarly enticing for a single skillpoint. That's just two easy ones a week. It would take a very casual player six months to max out on that in time for the next (likely) specialization.
All I'm really asking for is something akin to rested XP and you'll see no complaint from me if you just made that a gold feature.
I have to agree with most other posters that this is not an improvement as the PvE Queues doesn't reward enough as it is. Not even the ones YOU think reward too much. Thus the impossibility to use the queues as no one plays them any more. Well not no one but waiting over an hour for a queue to launch that is way too long. You need to set the rewards up so that it won't take more then 5-10 minutes for a queue to pop. That means you have to make the rewards good enough for people to actually want to play them. And that includes skill points, xp, dilithium, items, marks et.c.
As for putting in dilithium rewards in to missions as we level up, fine. But you have to raise or remove the 8000/day cap. That is the huge problem as you have made us pay Dilithium for almost everything worth having in the game now. Which means that even though you might make it so we can get 60000 dilithium a day we still can't use it due to the stupid cap. Then as you implement all these dilithium rewards to the levelling up missions you should make it possible for those that have already done all of them, before this change, to claim the bundled dilithium from a NPC, once. Based on what level the toon is.
If you don't listen to this you will alienate even more players then you already have.
I can't hope to speak for everyone, but I can sure speak for myself...
There seem to be many nay-sayers here who sound like they're upset about the very notion of dilithium, reputation marks and elite reputation marks being awarded from single-player content. I can understand that to a degree, because those goodies have only been available in the queues/STFs, save for a few special places elsewhere.
When newer players get to end-game and want to play queued, teamed content, they may attempt to do so, but are likely woefully under-equipped to be able to hold their own, and in turn bring down the entire team, thus causing a significant amount of irritation on the part of the team for failing the mission...
Therefore, I feel I have to ask you, which would you rather prefer? Players reaching end-game and playing queues/STFs while being severely under-equipped, thus losing all the time and bringing down a team that can't hold their own otherwise, while hanging onto what may be a rather elitist, entitled, arrogantly prideful attitude for grinding through that same queue content to get your 'shiny' MACO/KHG/Omega gear? Or, would you rather see that same player being able to equip high-end gear by time they hit 50 and be able to run said missions and be far less likely to bring the team down, and hold their own?
Personally, I'd prefer the latter, especially as I have some lower level alts that are in that predicament of being woefully under-equipped to do queued content justice.
Made a serious attempt to try the Ques post DR. Quickly realized I wasn't prepared enough. Not "geared". "Prepared". As in learning how to play Infected Space all over again. Not really a problem. I've been playing STO long enough I have all the Honor Guard, MACO, and Omega stuff. I was very disappointed in how much time I had to spend to earn less from the same event than I did before Dilithium Rampage. So I stopped playing all of the Ques. Every. Single. One. I am also actively discouraging people from playing them as well. The time takes too long and the latest nerf(One More Time!) to the rewards makes them even less appealing. My free time is just like everyone else's. There is never enough of it and I am miserly with it to a ridiculous extent.
New lvl 50 chars do not face the same uphill I did. It is a cliff. Which is ridiculously high and nearly vertical. And with the recent changes announced in yet another reduction in rewards for the only Ques being played at all, this cliff has gone past vertical. Y'all said you did all these things with the changes since DR launched so new lvl fiftys would not have a disadvantage or be second class as regards older ones.
Y'all's actions and the changes implemented since DR launched say something very very different.
Used to play AD&D back in the Seventies. We had one fellow who had all the books and he became the Dungeon Master. He got angry quickly whenever the players came up with an outside the box solution to the challenges he created in the game. As we got more adept at the game, his anger just grew and grew. He used to sit there simmering and wouldn't say a word to us about how he envisaged the game being played or ask us what we wanted to do. He began to take it very personally whenever we stepped outside the parameters of his carefully choreographed encounters. It turned into him doing his best to make things more and more complicated and harder. Not as in challenging harder. As in, "I'll show you guys this time!" harder. More monsters. More HP per monster. Tasks deliberately intended for the players to fail and look very foolish while doing so. And so on.
Why do I suddenly have a strong sense of deja vu? Ain't that odd?
Mr. Gray, you posted here you want us to talk to you about what is wrong with STO. I think you do. I also think this thread will be trashed about five minutes after you're done and none of you at cryptic will even remember any of the posts. I am trying to have a positive outlook on this thread.
I am absolutely positive the people at cryptic will do as they damn well please with this game and will continue in the pattern which has been established already. Namely, ignoring player's complaints and issues until the precious metrics drop and then rushing in here with honeyed words and fine phrases to calm the waters. Then blissfully ignoring what they learn here and going back to being actively disengaged and shielded from their customers.
I'd like to be wrong. But I'm not. At 53 years old I am a fair judge of character. I seldom get it wrong any more.
I fully expect to be correct this time as well.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
I think I'll chime in before too much vitriol is tossed.
First thing I have to say on looking at the original post is this: It's about time!
The second thing I have to say is a friendly suggestion to the devs. Instead of relying so much on the metrics, talk with certain players that have gone through things about what works, what doesn't, and so on. I'd gladly volunteer to be one such consultant. ^_^
Metrics can only tell you the data, but not exactly the reason behind that data. For that, you need personal experience. I don't doubt that there's plenty to be had among the devs, but constantly referring to the metrics makes people suspicious and wary.
The biggest help to the queues you could possibly do though? either return the previously optional but now mandatory objectives to optional on advanced, and reserve failures for truly epic TRIBBLE-ups, or remove the failure prizes and cooldowns on failure. I can tell you that having both of these things is having a hugely negative effect on Pugs. I should know, I'm one of the sufferers. I used to do probably a dozen ques each day between several toons. Now? I only do two or three on one character if I'm feeling active.
Rewards are the other half of the problem, in that the skill point and dilithium payouts are too low for the amount of effort we are required to put into such missions. A good baseline for xp payouts would be to set them up along the lines of argala. It makes no sense that I should get close to ten times more xp per ship killed on normal in argala than the amount gained by killing a horde of spheres in a run through the conduit queue on advanced.
The dilithium payout reduction is something I truly do not understand, but I'd be willing to listen to the reasoning behind it. All I'd request is that it make sense. XD
As difficulty is increased, the rewards should increase as well, and the same goes with dilithium. Seeing as you popped up difficulty, I think it would make sense for queues to pay out 500 for normal, 1000 for advanced, and 1500 for elite. I rather like that you increased the payouts on the gorn minefield and the other gear/dil queues. Those are an example of the step you should go in with the dilithium rewards.
On a final note, the other thing I would suggest is fixing two key aspects of khitomer vortex and the cure space queues. Drop the damage resistances and health of the borg probes and borg birds of prey. We have both of them laughing off shots that would vaporize their much larger counterparts, and frankly, it doesn't make much sense to me. They should have more hitpoints than they do on normal, but not to the point that they put cubes on the conduit to complete and utter shame. ^_^
Anyways, there is my constructive criticism. I hope you will take it for what it is: friendly advice from an avid player that was dragged kicking and screaming into this game by a friend, and wound up loving almost every second that I played.
These announced changes look like a step in the right direction, and if they are, then it'll be a move towards what delta rising should have felt like in the first place. I was loving it right up until I tried an advanced queue with a toon that had had little trouble on them before the expansion, only to find out his weapons now had as much stopping power as soggy toilet paper. This was followed up by the queue failing and the lot of us being given a 10-mark consolation prize, which was not very consoling, and an hour-long cooldown as if we had succeeded. Once that happened, my queue participation more or less dropped like a brick. Why? because I was scared of having my time wasted by either incompetant or just plain mean people. It used to be that the presence of one or two screwups didn't threaten the chances of the mission. Now? Advanced is like russian roulette now. You don't know if the group will have an incompetant, an undergeared fresh fifty, or a griefer, and let me tell you, that has done more to make me avoid most STFs like the plague. The rewards being slashed didn't help matters either. But anyways, I digress.
Ultimately, only another human can tell you the "why" of a situation, and it is there that one must turn, instead of to the metrics, which will only give you the numbers. I hope you find this post useful, and I hope some of my suggestions make it to the game proper.
Now, I say farewell for the time being. Work diligently, work well, and most importantly, have fun.
EDIT- Wow, I just noticed that I've basically made small essays with each post so far.
Increased dill cost = grind longer to get 68 000 dil for 1 upgrade.
Lower the xp = grind longer to get to max level.
Nerf everything in a way that makes you work longer, for less . (Anyone here know of the slave mentality. Work harder, pay the worker less.
There mentality is if they can force people to do something over a longer period, then they can milk you longer over that period for you real life cash= makes sense doesn't it.
Heres the kicker.
Once the people realize that they are being screwed like this . They leave.
Point to your metrics. You sure as heck have been dropping people faster than new people are coming.
Delta rising was fun.
Do i play it now that 1 of my chars are 60. Nope . Been months since i was last there.
Delta rising is that bad aftertaste you have after someone screwed you over.
So you solution to this.
Nerf stuff further . TRIBBLE over the ones that are here, cuase they will make up for the loss of the
people leaving.
And before you say its ok, people can leave . I have a few words for you. Word of mouth.
Twitter, facebook. one person tells ten people about the bad things happening, even linking to the forums and those ten people tells other people.
So here what you take back to your Chinese parent company.
Where is the honor in treating people this way? What worth do you receive in face value when you treat people like this.
Do know this, i love this game and spend money on it cause i love star trek. I just fear that you guys are not LISTENING to us.
Whether you think you are right or wrong, either way you are RIGHT.
The difference between what's talked about by the devs, and what is actually delivered.
Well, as Worf says "even the best laid plans seldom survive contact with the enemy".
And what I mean is, take absolutely everything Cryptic communicates with a grain of salt since it is all liable to change. New requests/orders from CBS or PW could tumble down the pipeline that throws a wrench into current plans, or people get replaced and so on. There is usually lots of time in between talk and delivery, and anything can happen.
Forced play or grind = repetative action. Listen to your favorite song for weeks? Eating your favorite meal 10 days in a row?
Actually doing Chrystaline advanced over and over again sucks, but what sucks even more is doing that on normal or with a 30% failrate over and over again - the lesser evil so to speak.
Now, if the other stfs were in line with cca that could change. The borg queues are close, but some others feel unrewarding or are too hard, even if they offer different gameplay.
Maybe add a spotlight mission reward that changes things up. Give as reason to switch it up, similar to the alarm weekends - I like those.
Remember, geko said they want players are buying Zen for dilithium.
These changes are made we are required to. I can buy zen for a ship, a good ship but not for other things.
No gameplay, no stop nerfing, no opening my wallet.
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.
[
Forgive if I'm being dumb here, but the rewards were already present before DR and no one had an issue with them. Then you guys saw fit to go hacking through the rewards. They were fine to begin with. You wouldn't have to constantly readjust them or try and justify this round of changes if you'd have just left well enough alone.
All the anger and such that has kicked off over this, Cryptic has brought down on themselves I'm sorry to say. The increase to the Bug hunt mission only serves to herd players into a mission that is already a push over, if players are competent at ground combat. With a pre made fleet team, we can cut through BH faster than we can Infected/Cure/Khitomer ground missions, yet these are getting their rewards nerf'd yet again.
Why are you so intent on messing up your own game? is it because you dont have idea of how the game works or is the guys above you that are so disconnected from customers/players.
I can't hope to speak for everyone, but I can sure speak for myself...
There seem to be many nay-sayers here who sound like they're upset about the very notion of dilithium, reputation marks and elite reputation marks being awarded from single-player content. I can understand that to a degree, because those goodies have only been available in the queues/STFs, save for a few special places elsewhere.
When newer players get to end-game and want to play queued, teamed content, they may attempt to do so, but are likely woefully under-equipped to be able to hold their own, and in turn bring down the entire team, thus causing a significant amount of irritation on the part of the team for failing the mission...
Therefore, I feel I have to ask you, which would you rather prefer? Players reaching end-game and playing queues/STFs while being severely under-equipped, thus losing all the time and bringing down a team that can't hold their own otherwise, while hanging onto what may be a rather elitist, entitled, arrogantly prideful attitude for grinding through that same queue content to get your 'shiny' MACO/KHG/Omega gear? Or, would you rather see that same player being able to equip high-end gear by time they hit 50 and be able to run said missions and be far less likely to bring the team down, and hold their own?
Personally, I'd prefer the latter, especially as I have some lower level alts that are in that predicament of being woefully under-equipped to do queued content justice.
I'm honestly not sure. It definitely depends on the player. For the pre-DR STFs I had almost a complex about NOT being that guy. So I tried everything, to try and get my build as solid as possible. I read the wiki, I crafted. So my purple and blue MkXI geared assault cruiser was actually pretty solidly equipped when my fleet leader and his friends nursed me through them.
MkXI Purple might be enough to get through the post DR STFs for someone that knows what they're doing...on the other hand a green rookie who has been doing reps could have some good MKXII gear by the time they make it to the STFs and other queues.
All the gear in the world won't save them if they don't know what their doing.
I would prefer an official training mission.
Before I tried to tackle Infected Ground, I found a Foundry mission that gives you a walk through and shows where the lines that trigger the next assimilation are. It was useful for giving me a general idea of how it was played. Now of course it wasn't perfect, which is why an official version would be better. An official version would have holographic highlights and sweeping camera pans things that make it easier to see the important parts.
Even if it was just an extended interactive cut scene.
That said, I also understand the illogic of having to run missions to get the gear to run the mission. Perhaps a series of single player raid missions that aren't heavy boss fights but instead strikes against the Borg (or whichever relevant enemy) that are more like gauntlet missions with no big boss fight. Perhaps defending the cooperative or Octanti from a Borg attack, or taking down a lightly defended Borg facility. These would give maybe 15 marks, but a BNP would be earned as well. Nothing anywhere near as coordinated or difficult as an STF but more like a Heavy Patrol available in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block.
And a suggestion for a new Borg STF. Take down a Borg Transwarp Hub. You could use the new visuals from the Step Between Stars mission to show the effect of being close to the star. That mission would have a logical timer as the shields wouldn't be able to withstand being so close to the star....mitigated if you're flying a Dyson's ship. Put a fifteen minute timer on it, but the last two minutes or so have shield bleedthrough increased so there's a sense of danger, after that point rather than it just being a timeout, it's more, our ships can't take anymore and everyone automatically warps out or blows up.
"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"
I've mentioned before in a few podcasts, I play STO every day with a character that has no special "dev hacks." I've worked up tier 5 in all of the reputations, earned starship mastery traits on multiple ships, and I'm still earning specialization points. I have multiple alts as well, across all the different factions and careers. When I decided that I wanted to fly the Vesta, I earned dilithium and posted it on the d-Zen exchange and purchased the ship bundle. And I'm not the only one who plays.
The assumption that "devs don't actually play the game" is decidedly incorrect.
We do play the game -- some of us a little, some of us a lot.
that might be true that you are playing the game
question here is if you have influence on the decision
or if the guys which make these terribible decisions actually play the game
I would like to see Cryptic's statistics and an explanation of your methodology, because some of your conclusions seem counter to player experience. It seems strange to me that you would change Cure Space, but not Infected Space and Khitomer Accord Space. I would say that Cure Space is harder than the other two, at least on Advanced difficulty. Other people have claimed that Bug Hunt is easy. I have not played Bug Hunt, so I will have to take their word for it, but Cryptic's decision to increase rewards for Bug Hunt seems counter to their experience. Of course, each person's experience is subjective. That's why you should collect statistics. But if your conclusions seem wrong to players prima facie, then it's worth scrutinizing your analysis for errors.
Some questions that come to mind:
1. Did you separate private matches from PUGs? Not separating the two groups could lead to spurious conclusions. For example, suppose Cure Space Advanced has a high failure rate in PUGs, but a low failure rate in private matches. Bad experiences may lead to fewer PUG matches, so the distribution becomes more heavily weighted toward private matches. The overall success rate would then increase, but the high success rate does not imply low difficulty.
2. Over what period of time did you collect your data? In another thread, virusdancer pointed out that there have been several balance patches since the launch of Delta Rising. If you lumped together data across patches, then your data would not reflect the present state. Other considerations are
(a) For the first few weeks after the launch of Delta Rising, the data would be heavily weighted towards new content.
(b) During the winter event, there is a drop in all activity not related to the winter event.
3. How did you deal with missions that are hardly played at all? Do you have a large enough sample?
Note that low participation has other causes besides high difficulty and low rewards. Sometimes, the required number of players is too high. I think Klingon Scout Force and The Big Dig both fall into this category. Before Delta Rising, I remember seeing the number of players queued hover below the threshold for long periods of time---increasing and decreasing without the mission ever starting. Occasionally, the confirmation window with the "Engage" button would pop up, but it would time out because not enough players had accepted the mission. After Delta Rising, hardly anyone queues for these two missions anymore, even during the dailies. I suspect that many people have decided to stop queuing for them, because they never start.
4. How did you measure player participation? The number of times a mission was played during a fixed period of time is not necessarily the best measure of participation. You should also count the number of distinct players for each mission. Each account should be counted only once, even if the mission was played multiple times on the same account during the time period. Certain missions may be played over and over by a small group of players. Your statistics may say more about that group than the mission itself.
This is my primary concern--especially point #1. I get the feeling that Cryptic's data collection and analysis tools are not as robust as they like to think they are, and they constantly misinterpret the "why" of the "what."
Nitpicking is a time-honored tradition of science fiction. Asking your readers not to worry about the "little things" is like asking a dog not to sniff at people's crotches. If there's something that appears to violate natural laws, then you can expect someone's going to point it out. That's just the way things are.
The problem I'm seeing is that it's hard to progress in this game if you have a limited amount of time to play. From what I understand, we are supposed to grind for these "Spec Points", but the amount of points required VS the amount we earn is far too low outside of PvE Queues.
My suggestion is that with the XP Boosts given to Advanced and Elite Queues, should also apply to regular PvE content on Advanced and Elite as well.
Comments
OK...I think I just found another dev who is not showing properly on the dev tracker...we really need to get a full list together of who's missing.
Sorry for my roundabout way of getting at this, but I have to ask you Vesta pilot to Vesta pilot, have you seen just how severely the pet nerf has hit us?
JHeinig, this is a prime example what I mean when I refer to the need to look at all systems and how *everything* affects everything else, before imposing costs or nerfing things. It took both seemingly thoughtless nerfs (an NPC nerf that gutted carrier pilots without a buff or AI improvement to repair what was taken from us) AND exorbitant gear costs AND EC and dilithium nerfs to get here. Any one of these has consequences. Put together, it's a perfect storm.
I think some of the frustration comes about because of what seems to be lack of consideration of the consequences and the combination of consequences from throwing all of these changes at us. Can you see why this is frustrating?
For more discussion of DR as a comprehensive whole and more thoughts on how each thing affects the other and how it all degrades the player experience when brought together (oh...and what's good and what I would love to see salvaged or not buried under the painful parts of the game), please look at my DR review in my sig, and many other great feedback threads in this forum. We DO pull off detailed discussions without flames and personal insults.
Just be careful to start a new thread if you plan to answer the review. You DON'T want Smirk to ban you for a necro.
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 lack of being able to get those from BZ or normal STF content was a terrible change from the DR.
If you want others to play more of the other PvE queues, you need to make their rewards justify the time spent completing them. XP/Spec gains is one part, but not enough alone.
Let the longer-duration queues that require some actual team effort reward far more for the average time spent on them; whether it's one guaranteed Elite Mark (Voth Cybernetic Implant) in Storming the Spire Normal AND marks scaled to how successful the capture is (and a bonus for sinking the dreadnought and number of escaping ships downed), to Undine Assault rewarding a lot of Undine marks and XP/Spec XP for as many portals, ships, and Planet Killers sealed/sunk/destroyed (and leaving Isomorphic Injections to the BZ).
As it is, no one wants to spend the better part of their time having to cover for both the team and their own objectives and not get rewarded fairly because the queue took awhile. Sure, one could just not PUG, but where would that leaves the fresh level 50s with little to no clue what to do in the first place?
A set reward plus bonuses for individual and team contribution would go a long way in the more teamwork-heavy queues.
*Raises Hand*
Yo Devboss, a question.
Do you have any ideas or opinions about why there seems to be such a massive disconnect between the way we, not all players, but the specific people in this thread have with how changes like these will work out, and you guys the developers who came up with them?
And I'll reiterate my earlier opinion that failure timers are bad business. They're arbitrary. They seem like they would be specific limitations that the person who sets up a private queue would implement to challenge his team of DPS monsters.
But for the regular rank and file like myself, finishing Cure Found Elite in minutes is not possible, unless I in an act of pure luck end up in a queue with those monsters or some extremely coordinated team from a fleet and I ended up as their fifth man.
A failure condition should be directly related to the actual core mission objective. Mission failure should only result from being no longer able to complete the primary mission. The Kang is destroyed, the entire Borg invasion force makes it to the past, a Borg fleet overruns your position and you can't make it to the Starbase to find out what happened. Borg Disconnected, the failure should be that you don't save any drones whatsoever.
Optionals shoudl always equal Bonus not Penalty.
And cooldown timers, ESPECIALLY on failures for the missions discourage learning. Trial and Error is not represented in that.
And I don't doubt it for a second. Where I have to o.O is when some representatives make public comments that don't jive with our experience.
We do play the game - a lot. Many of us pay a fair bit of coin for the pleasure of enjoying your fine efforts.
I don't expect the EP or the CM to openly admit they don't understand every working concept in the game or for that matter play 3 hours a day. What I do expect is to be able to trust what they say.
My Two Bits
Admiral Thrax
Once you have even a passing understanding of the psychology of game addiction then everything they're doing becomes very clear and makes a lot of sense. It's literally right out of the "how to TRIBBLE over your playerbase and get them to keep paying you for the privilege" handbook.
The sad part is that there is enough player churn that it won't really matter. Old timers like us will leave, new people will come to replace us that don't know how things used to be and life will go on, while the dedicate hardcore players will simply adapt and keep paying Cryptic no matter what they do.
Now, you are making the only queue i utilize for consistent mats harder, thus making it likely I get frustrated and not upgrade?
Why would you do that? I hate ground, so I do not do Bug Hunt unless absolutely necessary.
If CCA becomes difficult to complete, I won't be able to upgrade, and I'll go back to playing something else. I have games left over from the last steam sale that I haven't played. I might just start playing them instead.
All well and good. So, just for a moment, take off your dev hat and put on your player hat and try to look at these changes from our point of view.
You guys are taking some of the end-game queues that are still seeing traffic, some of the few in case you haven't tried PUGing them lately, and making them more difficult whilst and at the same time making them less rewarding. Taken together would you still want to spend time on them? Possibly a lot of time on them? Do the post-DR STFs still seem worthwhile to you? Earning less for more difficulty? Can you see how some, many if one is to judge by the STF queues, of your fellow players are seeming to have less and less fun in this game?
Take some notes, talk to people, take some more notes.
Then put your dev hat back on and see what you can do with that list you just created. Don't look at the metrics. Look at the feedback from a player.
I've tried to do the math for game value for time spent.
What I found is that true subscription games tend to award between 300% and 1200% the value in terms of game impact for time investment that I see in STO. This obviously isn't a simple thing to calculate and required cross comparison with how other games monetize power and progression.
I recognize your concern for people trivializing or blowing through content. I'm not trying to angle for a way to completely do that.
What STO needs IMHO is something on the order of rested XP.
Simply logging in to DOff or setup crafting assignments isn't super-engaging even though it's a very high reward for the time investment. Meanwhile, trying to get specialization points playing aspects of the game I enjoy feels like going in for dental work.
IMHO, the best balanced reward structure in the game are the rep marks with their large daily bonus.
I think what STO needs is a large initial reward for active gameplay on a daily or weekly basis. I think the first specialization point each week really needs to come from playing under an hour without touching patrols and that an additional specialization point should be available for participating in some kind of directed event, for people who want to catch up.
More than that and I'm comfortable with the grind more or less in place.
But my feeling is that 4-5 mission replays or 4-5 queue events should generate a skillpoint per week for the FIRST skillpoint that week and that weekend events should be similarly enticing for a single skillpoint. That's just two easy ones a week. It would take a very casual player six months to max out on that in time for the next (likely) specialization.
All I'm really asking for is something akin to rested XP and you'll see no complaint from me if you just made that a gold feature.
Do that and we're cool. Really!
i think you already know the answer to that.
free jkname
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I think we ALL know the answer to that.
As for putting in dilithium rewards in to missions as we level up, fine. But you have to raise or remove the 8000/day cap. That is the huge problem as you have made us pay Dilithium for almost everything worth having in the game now. Which means that even though you might make it so we can get 60000 dilithium a day we still can't use it due to the stupid cap. Then as you implement all these dilithium rewards to the levelling up missions you should make it possible for those that have already done all of them, before this change, to claim the bundled dilithium from a NPC, once. Based on what level the toon is.
If you don't listen to this you will alienate even more players then you already have.
Recruitment: Neverwinter Online (spotlight)(wiki) - Star Trek Online Federation - Star Trek Online Klingon - Star Trek Online Romulan - Champions Online
Guild FAQs: Neverwinter FAQ - Star Trek FAQ - Champions FAQ ..........Facebook: Mattachine Guild
There seem to be many nay-sayers here who sound like they're upset about the very notion of dilithium, reputation marks and elite reputation marks being awarded from single-player content. I can understand that to a degree, because those goodies have only been available in the queues/STFs, save for a few special places elsewhere.
When newer players get to end-game and want to play queued, teamed content, they may attempt to do so, but are likely woefully under-equipped to be able to hold their own, and in turn bring down the entire team, thus causing a significant amount of irritation on the part of the team for failing the mission...
Therefore, I feel I have to ask you, which would you rather prefer? Players reaching end-game and playing queues/STFs while being severely under-equipped, thus losing all the time and bringing down a team that can't hold their own otherwise, while hanging onto what may be a rather elitist, entitled, arrogantly prideful attitude for grinding through that same queue content to get your 'shiny' MACO/KHG/Omega gear? Or, would you rather see that same player being able to equip high-end gear by time they hit 50 and be able to run said missions and be far less likely to bring the team down, and hold their own?
Personally, I'd prefer the latter, especially as I have some lower level alts that are in that predicament of being woefully under-equipped to do queued content justice.
Yes ... , yes it is !!!
... sorry , I couldn't resist ...
New lvl 50 chars do not face the same uphill I did. It is a cliff. Which is ridiculously high and nearly vertical. And with the recent changes announced in yet another reduction in rewards for the only Ques being played at all, this cliff has gone past vertical. Y'all said you did all these things with the changes since DR launched so new lvl fiftys would not have a disadvantage or be second class as regards older ones.
Y'all's actions and the changes implemented since DR launched say something very very different.
Used to play AD&D back in the Seventies. We had one fellow who had all the books and he became the Dungeon Master. He got angry quickly whenever the players came up with an outside the box solution to the challenges he created in the game. As we got more adept at the game, his anger just grew and grew. He used to sit there simmering and wouldn't say a word to us about how he envisaged the game being played or ask us what we wanted to do. He began to take it very personally whenever we stepped outside the parameters of his carefully choreographed encounters. It turned into him doing his best to make things more and more complicated and harder. Not as in challenging harder. As in, "I'll show you guys this time!" harder. More monsters. More HP per monster. Tasks deliberately intended for the players to fail and look very foolish while doing so. And so on.
Why do I suddenly have a strong sense of deja vu? Ain't that odd?
Mr. Gray, you posted here you want us to talk to you about what is wrong with STO. I think you do. I also think this thread will be trashed about five minutes after you're done and none of you at cryptic will even remember any of the posts. I am trying to have a positive outlook on this thread.
I am absolutely positive the people at cryptic will do as they damn well please with this game and will continue in the pattern which has been established already. Namely, ignoring player's complaints and issues until the precious metrics drop and then rushing in here with honeyed words and fine phrases to calm the waters. Then blissfully ignoring what they learn here and going back to being actively disengaged and shielded from their customers.
I'd like to be wrong. But I'm not. At 53 years old I am a fair judge of character. I seldom get it wrong any more.
I fully expect to be correct this time as well.
First thing I have to say on looking at the original post is this: It's about time!
The second thing I have to say is a friendly suggestion to the devs. Instead of relying so much on the metrics, talk with certain players that have gone through things about what works, what doesn't, and so on. I'd gladly volunteer to be one such consultant. ^_^
Metrics can only tell you the data, but not exactly the reason behind that data. For that, you need personal experience. I don't doubt that there's plenty to be had among the devs, but constantly referring to the metrics makes people suspicious and wary.
The biggest help to the queues you could possibly do though? either return the previously optional but now mandatory objectives to optional on advanced, and reserve failures for truly epic TRIBBLE-ups, or remove the failure prizes and cooldowns on failure. I can tell you that having both of these things is having a hugely negative effect on Pugs. I should know, I'm one of the sufferers. I used to do probably a dozen ques each day between several toons. Now? I only do two or three on one character if I'm feeling active.
Rewards are the other half of the problem, in that the skill point and dilithium payouts are too low for the amount of effort we are required to put into such missions. A good baseline for xp payouts would be to set them up along the lines of argala. It makes no sense that I should get close to ten times more xp per ship killed on normal in argala than the amount gained by killing a horde of spheres in a run through the conduit queue on advanced.
The dilithium payout reduction is something I truly do not understand, but I'd be willing to listen to the reasoning behind it. All I'd request is that it make sense. XD
As difficulty is increased, the rewards should increase as well, and the same goes with dilithium. Seeing as you popped up difficulty, I think it would make sense for queues to pay out 500 for normal, 1000 for advanced, and 1500 for elite. I rather like that you increased the payouts on the gorn minefield and the other gear/dil queues. Those are an example of the step you should go in with the dilithium rewards.
On a final note, the other thing I would suggest is fixing two key aspects of khitomer vortex and the cure space queues. Drop the damage resistances and health of the borg probes and borg birds of prey. We have both of them laughing off shots that would vaporize their much larger counterparts, and frankly, it doesn't make much sense to me. They should have more hitpoints than they do on normal, but not to the point that they put cubes on the conduit to complete and utter shame. ^_^
Anyways, there is my constructive criticism. I hope you will take it for what it is: friendly advice from an avid player that was dragged kicking and screaming into this game by a friend, and wound up loving almost every second that I played.
These announced changes look like a step in the right direction, and if they are, then it'll be a move towards what delta rising should have felt like in the first place. I was loving it right up until I tried an advanced queue with a toon that had had little trouble on them before the expansion, only to find out his weapons now had as much stopping power as soggy toilet paper. This was followed up by the queue failing and the lot of us being given a 10-mark consolation prize, which was not very consoling, and an hour-long cooldown as if we had succeeded. Once that happened, my queue participation more or less dropped like a brick. Why? because I was scared of having my time wasted by either incompetant or just plain mean people. It used to be that the presence of one or two screwups didn't threaten the chances of the mission. Now? Advanced is like russian roulette now. You don't know if the group will have an incompetant, an undergeared fresh fifty, or a griefer, and let me tell you, that has done more to make me avoid most STFs like the plague. The rewards being slashed didn't help matters either. But anyways, I digress.
Ultimately, only another human can tell you the "why" of a situation, and it is there that one must turn, instead of to the metrics, which will only give you the numbers. I hope you find this post useful, and I hope some of my suggestions make it to the game proper.
Now, I say farewell for the time being. Work diligently, work well, and most importantly, have fun.
EDIT- Wow, I just noticed that I've basically made small essays with each post so far.
Forced play.
Increased dill cost = grind longer to get 68 000 dil for 1 upgrade.
Lower the xp = grind longer to get to max level.
Nerf everything in a way that makes you work longer, for less . (Anyone here know of the slave mentality. Work harder, pay the worker less.
There mentality is if they can force people to do something over a longer period, then they can milk you longer over that period for you real life cash= makes sense doesn't it.
Heres the kicker.
Once the people realize that they are being screwed like this . They leave.
Point to your metrics. You sure as heck have been dropping people faster than new people are coming.
Delta rising was fun.
Do i play it now that 1 of my chars are 60. Nope . Been months since i was last there.
Delta rising is that bad aftertaste you have after someone screwed you over.
So you solution to this.
Nerf stuff further . TRIBBLE over the ones that are here, cuase they will make up for the loss of the
people leaving.
And before you say its ok, people can leave . I have a few words for you. Word of mouth.
Twitter, facebook. one person tells ten people about the bad things happening, even linking to the forums and those ten people tells other people.
So here what you take back to your Chinese parent company.
Where is the honor in treating people this way? What worth do you receive in face value when you treat people like this.
Do know this, i love this game and spend money on it cause i love star trek. I just fear that you guys are not LISTENING to us.
Well, as Worf says "even the best laid plans seldom survive contact with the enemy".
And what I mean is, take absolutely everything Cryptic communicates with a grain of salt since it is all liable to change. New requests/orders from CBS or PW could tumble down the pipeline that throws a wrench into current plans, or people get replaced and so on. There is usually lots of time in between talk and delivery, and anything can happen.
Every single season I thought it simply can't get any worse - but cryptic always made it happen
Forced play or grind = repetative action. Listen to your favorite song for weeks? Eating your favorite meal 10 days in a row?
Actually doing Chrystaline advanced over and over again sucks, but what sucks even more is doing that on normal or with a 30% failrate over and over again - the lesser evil so to speak.
Now, if the other stfs were in line with cca that could change. The borg queues are close, but some others feel unrewarding or are too hard, even if they offer different gameplay.
Maybe add a spotlight mission reward that changes things up. Give as reason to switch it up, similar to the alarm weekends - I like those.
These changes are made we are required to. I can buy zen for a ship, a good ship but not for other things.
No gameplay, no stop nerfing, no opening my wallet.
Forgive if I'm being dumb here, but the rewards were already present before DR and no one had an issue with them. Then you guys saw fit to go hacking through the rewards. They were fine to begin with. You wouldn't have to constantly readjust them or try and justify this round of changes if you'd have just left well enough alone.
All the anger and such that has kicked off over this, Cryptic has brought down on themselves I'm sorry to say. The increase to the Bug hunt mission only serves to herd players into a mission that is already a push over, if players are competent at ground combat. With a pre made fleet team, we can cut through BH faster than we can Infected/Cure/Khitomer ground missions, yet these are getting their rewards nerf'd yet again.
Why are you so intent on messing up your own game? is it because you dont have idea of how the game works or is the guys above you that are so disconnected from customers/players.
I'm honestly not sure. It definitely depends on the player. For the pre-DR STFs I had almost a complex about NOT being that guy. So I tried everything, to try and get my build as solid as possible. I read the wiki, I crafted. So my purple and blue MkXI geared assault cruiser was actually pretty solidly equipped when my fleet leader and his friends nursed me through them.
MkXI Purple might be enough to get through the post DR STFs for someone that knows what they're doing...on the other hand a green rookie who has been doing reps could have some good MKXII gear by the time they make it to the STFs and other queues.
All the gear in the world won't save them if they don't know what their doing.
I would prefer an official training mission.
Before I tried to tackle Infected Ground, I found a Foundry mission that gives you a walk through and shows where the lines that trigger the next assimilation are. It was useful for giving me a general idea of how it was played. Now of course it wasn't perfect, which is why an official version would be better. An official version would have holographic highlights and sweeping camera pans things that make it easier to see the important parts.
Even if it was just an extended interactive cut scene.
That said, I also understand the illogic of having to run missions to get the gear to run the mission. Perhaps a series of single player raid missions that aren't heavy boss fights but instead strikes against the Borg (or whichever relevant enemy) that are more like gauntlet missions with no big boss fight. Perhaps defending the cooperative or Octanti from a Borg attack, or taking down a lightly defended Borg facility. These would give maybe 15 marks, but a BNP would be earned as well. Nothing anywhere near as coordinated or difficult as an STF but more like a Heavy Patrol available in the Gamma Orionis Sector Block.
And a suggestion for a new Borg STF. Take down a Borg Transwarp Hub. You could use the new visuals from the Step Between Stars mission to show the effect of being close to the star. That mission would have a logical timer as the shields wouldn't be able to withstand being so close to the star....mitigated if you're flying a Dyson's ship. Put a fifteen minute timer on it, but the last two minutes or so have shield bleedthrough increased so there's a sense of danger, after that point rather than it just being a timeout, it's more, our ships can't take anymore and everyone automatically warps out or blows up.
How about if daily reputation mark boxes also offered a chuck of XP? I made a new thread as I didn't want to derail this one.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=21891361#post21891361
that might be true that you are playing the game
question here is if you have influence on the decision
or if the guys which make these terribible decisions actually play the game
This is my primary concern--especially point #1. I get the feeling that Cryptic's data collection and analysis tools are not as robust as they like to think they are, and they constantly misinterpret the "why" of the "what."
Joined January 2009
My suggestion is that with the XP Boosts given to Advanced and Elite Queues, should also apply to regular PvE content on Advanced and Elite as well.