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Would putting an 'entry bar' on Advanced/Elite STF help?
forcemajeure
Member Posts: 212 Arc User
I don't STF much myself since the changes, although pre-DR I was fine in Elites. Just doing other stuff lately.
However I see that many of the complaints are not "the Advanced or Elite is impossible", but that "they fail in under 5 minutes with PUGs so only private queues work".
Hence, empty PUG queues.
If an accolade was implemented, where you had to complete Normal 5 times with all optionals completed, BEFORE you could enter Advanced; then the same for Advanced->Elite.
That would at least keep "just can't hack it/don't know what to do" types out of the Elite/Advanced queues, and maybe give PUG runs a better chance of succeeding.
Anyone think this would help? Would it help *enough*?
However I see that many of the complaints are not "the Advanced or Elite is impossible", but that "they fail in under 5 minutes with PUGs so only private queues work".
Hence, empty PUG queues.
If an accolade was implemented, where you had to complete Normal 5 times with all optionals completed, BEFORE you could enter Advanced; then the same for Advanced->Elite.
That would at least keep "just can't hack it/don't know what to do" types out of the Elite/Advanced queues, and maybe give PUG runs a better chance of succeeding.
Anyone think this would help? Would it help *enough*?
Post edited by forcemajeure on
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If it was combined with increased rewards, yes. If not, then there's no point. An entry bar can't magically increase player numbers.
Free Tibet!
I see them boasting about how successful the game is. I find it hard to believe since there are so few PVE games going. It makes me think the audience is far smaller than they are leading us to believe.
OTOH public queues should be a reliable indicator of the game's popularity with the majority of players. The ones who don't compete on leader boards.
It might be the constant fails due to people in the PUG queue not being able to complete the Advanced/Elite version, so it fails.
If it didn't fail, you would complete it, hence get more rewards more consistently. If you got more rewards, you would likely PUG it more often.
That would be the point, not 'magically making more players appear".
As you said yourself, you haven't been playing STFs much. As I said though, increased rewards = more people playing, even at the risk of failing.
Free Tibet!
It does seem like this has more to do with reporting higher numbers to management as the report card on the latest work. I take on good faith on the devs really have thought these things through and they are responding to other drivers. Cognitive dissonance in the corporate workplace is a real problem: whenever I see someone acting strangely I initially chalk it up to that they are being held to conflicting drivers. That's usually the case.
Anyway the facts are on the ground. It will be interesting to hear from the devs as they learn more watching the new numbers.
No. Then people would complain about leechers in Normal queues.
I've said it before, it should be a single player only mission, with 4 NPC teammates. Only way to ensure people weren't playing the system.
There is also the issue of "normal" not being the same as the others. So if you have done Normal and know how it works, you can go into Advanced, do the exact same things you did in normal and cause a fail.
The private queues maybe have more playing than public queues. The way pve is set up now is and can be very easy to fail on some of them. The timer on some pve is way to short to complete. Take BDN yeah you can save all the borg no problem for the first 3 stages but when it comes to getting bonus for taking out dreadnoughts you can fail most of the time lol. That is with 4 ships doing 10k dps and above in normal lol. So your idea sounds nice but won't work. Look at Cure advance space kang is going to have his shield and hull halfed. But are the enemy hull and shields going to be half I don't thinks so. So now cure will be added to the empty queues soon.
So a test would have been a good idea if it were included from the beginning, especially if it came with actual advice on how to play. But now it may be too late.
That said, buffing rewards, as the devs are doing for some queues and some people here advocate, is a bad idea IMO. Take ANRA, for example. It's not that hard; 5 ships properly fitted with decent mk 12 gear from the exchange could finish it just fine. But because the rewards are really high (argonite gas = 330,000 ec) and the normal version is far too easy (pew pew! press F! I saved the galaxy!), it attracts a lot of people who should not be playing advanced content.
Just yesterday I took one of my mid-range DPS alts in there and freed a Dhelan in 2 minutes by myself. 1 of the puggers was still hanging out at the spawn point and the other 3 were all at the same station still trying to free a T'Liss. They did not free it in three minutes (I estimate that a ship that gets 8K dps can free a T'Liss in 3 minutes by itself, so they were probably in the 2K-3K range). But I saw one of those three ships in ANRA again 30 minutes later, trying to get that Argonite gas again.
you want to do the STF... que up and select the ship type you want to use (escort, cruiser or sci... numbers are limited). Unless all ships filled stf does not start. So if the stf is designed around 2 escorts, 2 cruisers and 1 sci... all 5 ships must be selected and in que before the stf will start.
they can balance everything around premade ship builds... well your traits and trait abilities could be based on the player. but the stf would be based around premade groups.
sort of like those missions where instead of you using your own ship... you use some premade ship the game forces you to use.
That may be the worst idea. Not only do you have to use what they would deem "effective," but people would be flying new ships with completely different loadouts they didn't even choose, let alone get used to.
it's called balance... no more going in with an OP ship and steam rolling everything.
it'll take skill and you can still mix it up with your various rep and traits that you can customize.
and with the new BO skill selections... you can set all of those on the fly... just once everyone zones in you have 1 min to set up your bo skills before the STF starts... sort of like how there is a count down timer before events start... now instead of twiddling your thumbs you can select your skills and maybe you can save it as a load out. so in future you can just click a button and all your BO load out is done.
and yeah the ships may not have all cannons or beam arrays... devs can mix it up with torps in front and mine launcher in back... beam arrays with single cannons or whatever they want...
however the entire STF would be balanced around those ships and builds they make you use...