i will like this, trying to work on multiple toons and queues keep failing has been taking me forever to get my toons where i want them...Looking forward to the changes
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Nyx, leaving the elites as is gives the DPSers their private sandbox. As long as no one goes into Advanced or Normal level queues and deliberately triggers AFK penalties on newer/undergeared players, it sounds like everyone finally gets what they want.
Elite that only requires high DPS and no engagement of the brain, is still not worthy of the title of "Elite".
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I no longer do any Bug Hunting work for Cryptic. I may resume if a serious attempt to fix the game is made.
Here is a suggestion for players from the thread in General that I want to reiterate here. Right now, Cryptic is going to rely on metrics from this "open beta" to determine if other queues will be adjusted this way. PLEASE consider the following:
1) Give it at least one shot--as a pug--if you have a level 50-60 toon (except for the highest DPS leaguers who are already at Elite level).
2) If you like it, or at least feel confident trying, pug the HECK out of it all week. If it's delivered as promised, I want to see those queues HOPPING!!!
This way, if all goes as described, the signal of our approval will be impossible for Cryptic to miss.
Are you completely unfamiliar with the map and need to train? Help your fellow newbies and get Normal moving so that at least some queues are firing for people who need to learn the map for the first (or second or third) time. Those who try to follow the proper steps to train for higher level STFs will thank you.
Are you a high DPSer who is unhappy with losing the failoptionals? Start going for Elite and get YOUR queue hopping too!
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It will still be possible to fail a queue. These failure conditions will be limited to checks that players are actually attempting to complete the queue or that they are not getting stuck in a situation where they cannot win. A the moment, we expect these failure conditions to take the form of timers for completing the entire queue (with this time requirement not meant to be a serious challenge to achieve) or for queues that cannot take longer than a fixed amount of time, a check to make sure a minimal amount of progress has been made (again, this requirement is not meant to be a challenge to achieve).
Please don't introduce this. All the best memories I have of playing this game have been epic STF queue experiences where one or two players have been stuck in a scenario that was barely winnable and took a ridiculously long time to complete, but eventually won.
I once soloed a Khitomer Vortex STF after the rest of the team never showed up and it was one of the most fun things that happened to me in the game. It took an eternity, but I still won it in my dinky Science Ship with only one escapee Borg ship to spare
While a bit too small and tentative for my tastes, this is still most definitely a step in the right direction. Players have been asking for this for a long time, and while it's unfortunate it took this long, it's good that Cryptic is finally listening...or at least realized themselves that the current way of doing Advanced STFs simply was not working for the majority of the playerbase.
I also really like the idea of a series of increasingly rewarding optionals that will still reward good play in Advanced missions. That really should have been how things were from the start. Instead of simply smacking down those players already struggling to complete Advanced missions, there should have been an incentive (more rewards, however small) to play better. This benefits both upcoming players who are slowly getting better, as well as veterans who can ace the optionals no problem.
Between this news, and learning that future STFs will stick to having three different difficulties (as opposed to all Elite, all the time like Korfez) I'm feeling much better about the future of STO as a whole.
If I still had one small, negative thing to say, it would be nice if there were fewer mandatory objectives, even in Elite, that relied on having huge amounts of dps to complete, like the timed mandatory objective at the end of the upcoming Gateway to Grethor STF. Again, not just for the sake of up and coming Elite players, but for the DPS Wizards as well, many of whom, I have seen, would like a genuine challenge. Maybe a bit more focus on designing Elites and Elite objectives that are challenging from a mechanics standpoint, and not simply because all the enemies have high amounts of HP, and you have to kill them in a short amount of time.
If you guys can somehow work that out, then between this and that, I think you'll make a significant amount of your playerbase all the happier. ^_^
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Wow, I'm amazed the response is so positive to this. It really does not sound like a great thing to me. Challenge and penalty blocks for not paying attention and not having at least half-decent gear are what STO has needed for a long time, and I was happy it was finally gaining some. Then the queues died because it gained some. I guess people prefer mindless iWin buttons over accomplishing something cool. :^
The real problem with advanced and elite queues is not that they are too difficult, but that players that are not ready to play at that level will frequently que for them. The proposed changes makes this situation worse by encouraging under-geared and inexperienced players to roll the dice to get a good team. Under the proposed new system, they will be practically guaranteed a reward that is too far out of proportion with their contribution. At least with the current system, unprepared players gain a pittance from almost certainly losing. Granted, the current system is still not fair to the players who came prepared to advanced queues populated by too many noobs. But failure discourages the under-performers from trying the que again until they can do better.
What we need is some kind of gear check or trials that deny access to those who are under-geared or too inexperienced to substantially contribute to advanced or elite queues. The proposed changes do nothing like this.
Whoa hold up. Releasing a single mission as a test bed and then waiting for player feedback before making tweaks and then ultimately rolling out the changes on a wider scale? Who are you people and what have you done with Cryptic?
Jokes aside, this is a very good thing. You should do more things like this.
Haha, loled at this. Sadly though, it's true.
But yeah, back to the topic, this seems like a very positive change. My only concern is about the base rewards. Hopefully they'll be set at a reasonable rate, since they'll be the same over all difficulties.
Wow, I'm amazed the response is so positive to this. It really does not sound like a great thing to me. Challenge and penalty blocks for not paying attention and not having at least half-decent gear are what STO has needed for a long time, and I was happy it was finally gaining some. Then the queues died because it gained some. I guess people prefer mindless iWin buttons over accomplishing something cool. :^
I am in favor of this. I do not want an I win button. I do want to be rewarded for playng the game. I do not want some other player ruining my fun and make sure I can't get the rewards during my time in game. My time is precious and limited.
As the Advanced queues are now, 1 player can fail the mission and set on the 30 minute cooldown before you can try again. With my time limits, that is an significant chunk of my time to lose to another player for TRIBBLE up.
This new Advanced queue set up will allow us to complete the mission, but a single player can still TRIBBLE us on the bonus rewards by making mistakes. But as long as they made an effort to play, then we don't fail. I still get the 30 minute cooldown, butr now I can at least say that the timer is not barring me from reaching my goal, just forcing me to slow down or take another route.
All in all, this is a good balancing of giving us the reasonable expectations of completing PUGed Advanced queues with out making us fail due to one persons lack of ability, gear, knowledge or traits.
losing the fail is step in the right direction. I will do advanced now.
But the real issue isn't the failing per se.
Its that its so easy to fail the optionals. Many of the missions have a slim margin for error or have to be done in a very specific way. I can usually tell in the first 10 secs of a mission whether its gonna fail.
The there are some missions where if you aren't very familiar with them the objectives aren't clear. New people just don't know what to do or not to do.
And there are a few that I haven't bothered with on normal for years. I seriously cant imagine what they would be like now on adv or elite.
Wow, I'm amazed the response is so positive to this. It really does not sound like a great thing to me. Challenge and penalty blocks for not paying attention and not having at least half-decent gear are what STO has needed for a long time, and I was happy it was finally gaining some. Then the queues died because it gained some. I guess people prefer mindless iWin buttons over accomplishing something cool. :^
Did the queues die because of DR? Weren't the queues dying before DR? Weren't some queues basically DOA?
Consider some previous complaints about having to run queues to get the various Elite Marks, right? Well, okay, they were complaints about having to run Borg STFs to get BNPs...cause neither New Rom nor Nukara Rep required any Elite Marks.
So what did they do with the Dyson queues? Well, they provided the Elite Marks far easier outside of the queues. So what happened to those Dyson queues, eh? If somebody wanted to run them for something other than the E-Marks...well, look how long those queues took by comparison, eh? Basically queues that were DOA.
So what did they do with the Undine queues? /cough Ahem, yeah.
Heck, they even went ahead and did the same thing for BNPs finally as well as APCs. APCs are the slow one. It takes two weeks to get every APC you'd need with only being able to get 2 a day. Yeah, slow...two weeks...an eternity, right?
Let's ignore the Marks, Dil, and so forth for a moment - anything else that might have been killing queues off? Well, have to ignore the maybe folks just didn't want to play some of them - didn't like the amount of time, rewards...that's all lumped in there.
Anything else? Anything that might have driven folks to go to channel runs, fleet runs, friend runs, and avoid the public queues?
Don't know about anybody else...so I'll ask...how many queues did folks get dropped in where one or more optionals had already been failed? Dropped into those queues because folks had decided they'd rather eat the leaver penalty than stay with that particular group. Perhaps they were with that group so long that the leaver penalty didn't even apply.
So yeah, maybe those folks went off to the private queues too - or - even public channel queues doing private runs to get away from that, eh?
So in Cryptic's infinite wisdom and history of listening to feedback that drives such decisions, they're going to be bringing that mess back...
...only better!
Cause now, with the change to rewards...at the end of that Advanced run with the failed Optionals...you'll have earned the same rewards as if you'd failed the Optionals in a Normal run.
And well, you're going to have to stick around longer in that Advanced run to get those Normal rewards on top of that. Where if it had been the rare failure, you could have just gone and done something else instead of being held hostage.
Cryptic could have tweaked the queues so they followed the simple...
...where there wouldn't have been a case of needing to learn anything (and to be honest, I'm having a hard time understanding just where it's not like that and folks had to learn anything) - would have been a case of where Normal Optionals were getting hit all the time and it was pretty easy, well it's time to move on to Advanced - already being familiar with what was required and it just being a case of needing to be at a little higher threshold to move on to Advanced from where they were to get that first Objective done as a Mandatory Objective instead of an Optional one. The same would happen as they played Advanced and were to move on to Elite. Nothing new - just better at it - playing it at a higher level.
Too many folks not quite hitting the timer for those Mandatory timers? Make them longer. That's it...done, yeah?
Too many folks not quite getting a target destroyed before something else happens (Transformers in ISA before the Nanites get there?)...reduce the health of the object.
Some proactive tweaks that allow for a progression of Normal -> Advanced -> Elite if the jump from Normal to Advanced was too much...
...not this mess that they're doing.
Folks are going to leave their channel (public and private) runs to come back to something like this?
Folks are going to stop earning rewards in the countless ways they can faster and easier...to risk getting held hostage in content?
As this drives away the folks that were still doing public Advanced runs and only those folks that might need help on Normal are hitting up the Advanced queues - even they're going to take a look around and realize they might as well do Normal or do something else.
Hell, they could have even introduced a reduced cooldown for failed missions so folks hit by trolls could have another go without making it a haven for trolls just to fail them over and over for folks.
There are all sorts of things they could have done.
This is the most mind-boggling idiotic decision I've seen Cryptic make in over a decade.
The real problem with advanced and elite queues is not that they are too difficult, but that players that are not ready to play at that level will frequently que for them. The proposed changes makes this situation worse by encouraging under-geared and inexperienced players to roll the dice to get a good team. Under the proposed new system, they will be practically guaranteed a reward that is too far out of proportion with their contribution. At least with the current system, unprepared players gain a pittance from almost certainly losing. Granted, the current system is still not fair to the players who came prepared to advanced queues populated by too many noobs. But failure discourages the under-performers from trying the que again until they can do better.
What we need is some kind of gear check or trials that deny access to those who are under-geared or too inexperienced to substantially contribute to advanced or elite queues. The proposed changes do nothing like this.
The real problem is the removal of elite marks like Borg Neural Processors from the Normal queues. You complain about undergeared people running advanced, but one of the only ways to get better gear is via the rep system, and that requires elite marks you can only get by playing advanced or elite. So if you can't get the elite marks, you can't get better gear, and you're stuck in a catch-22 with no way out.
I certainly have no desire to run advanced if I don't have to, but since I need the elite marks I don't have a choice. I'd happily stick to normal if I could earn elite marks, but sadly that is no longer an option.
people with min max builds who think stfs are farms are happy in the elite channels to do STFs in what 2 minutes..I salute them this change wont impact them one bit
people who like decent builds but want a good fight found that the STFs failed very often and they couldn't complete them likie infected because of the fail conditition of stopping the nanite spheres because a generator was poped too fast
Science players loved this because they could hold off the nanites spheres and save the day allowing the STF to be a success...but the problem was
Every STF that did not have a science ship there with 2 grav wells and TBR almost every pug without that science ship was a failure
personally I don't like playing science ships
I loaded up my old vesta and proved this over and over to myself doing 4 man pugs win win win , switched over to my escort or cruiser and fail after fail without that science ship in the group
The reward for doing a advanced STF is still poor it was cut in 1/2 but that's not why a lot quit playing them it was the stupid fail conditition
Charles Grey did the right thing removing this fail conditition once it hit holodeck the numbers of people in the infected Q will take off again where you can get in on a game most any time you want too
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
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WOWS, just WOW, are you playing the ignorant card or just in complete denial.
The reason why lower tier queues are non-existent is because of pure GREED, SELFISHNESS, and plain old LAZYNESS.
They do not want to waste their time in joining a queue that will reward them less than the upper tier ones and it wont matter how sweet you make the pot in the lower tiers because as long as the higher tier has the best payout then they will keep ignoring the lower tier queues.
It has NOTHING to do with difficulty or gear. How do I know this? Well by all the player skipping the lower tier queues and jumping right into the hardest queue thats available.
The dead giveaway is 1st; they say they have NEVER run this mission before. (And yet they queued for the most difficult one)
Another giveaway is that they keep dying every 2-3 min (And poor gear has something to do with it, but its mostly because they have never done the mission before and end up agroing more than they can handle)
The 3rd giveaway is they finally admit that they did it for the better reward and really didnt care if their lack of knowing of the mission caused the mission to fail; they figure that eventually they would get lucky and get PUGed with enough Elite players that they really dont have to do much of anything.
I would suggest that each tier of difficulty be gated by level
For example:
Level 40 or 45 would unlock Normal difficulty queues
Level 50 or 55 would unlock advanced queues
Level 60 Elite.
At least this way by the time they hit Elite level they will have a better understanding of the mission.
I know this is only a minor fix but a fix in the right direction.
Another would be a mission requirement to run the normal queue successfully to unlock the advanced and run advanced to unlock elite.
I wonder what is going to happen to no win when it returns? I'm guessing the same thing because we have to make sure that everyone can get the title and not be locked out of content.
Charles Grey did the right thing removing this fail conditition once it hit holodeck the numbers of people in the infected Q will take off again where you can get in on a game most any time you want too
Yeah, cause ISA having an average wait time of 30-60 seconds is the obvious sign of a dead queue. Even ISN's only about 10s longer a wait. :rolleyes:
It's like that because it's the most mind-numbingly easy queue next to Crystalline.
If it were a problem...it would show as a problem...kind of like Viscous, Breach, Storming which folks just don't touch. Difficulty? Who knows...but a bunch of folks know they can nail an easy ISA faster than they can go through the drag of those others. It was the same before DR.
So your solution is to get weaker, less geared players to queue for Advanced more and therefore drag the team down to a level where optional objectives are not feasible, and nerf normal rewards while buffing the optional objectives that won't be doable?
Yep, you've got no idea what you're doing. None at all. No foresight for even the smallest things.
All you are doing is encouraging players that previously would not queue for advanced (due to not being good enough) to now queue for it, thereby polluting the queue for people that are good enough, and thus nerfing mark rewards for people that otherwise would have been able to finish advanced easily enough without the weaker players dragging them down.
Less strict failure conditions (read: no failure conditions at all. Seriously who can't rescue *one* ship in 15 minutes?)=worse players queue up for "greater potential rewards."
Weaker players queueing=average team strength goes down.
Average team strength goes down=optionals are harder to complete.
Optionals are harder to complete=less overall rewards.
But you're taking it a step further, and nerfing normal rewards while buffing the (now more difficult to obtain) optional rewards. So you're making it reward less on average, probably *much* less. Making marks harder to get, again. Why? Why are you this dense?
You're not helping. You're making things worse. Again. How does none of this cross your mind? What the hell do you talk about in meetings?
While this has not affected me all that much, as a ground-focused & not seeing failure unless the team was reaaaally clueless, I'm glad they're seeing to this.. means my friend will run space STFs with me again, once these changes reach them as well; for a little variety in the content I play. Kudos.
[10:20] Your Lunge deals 4798 (2580) Physical Damage(Critical) to Tosk of Borg.
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Perhaps the next step will be intelligently match teams via server-side AI.
Absolutely sucks being thrown into an all-sci ship PUG that tries to DPS it's way through Conduit. You tell them to use crowd-control or 10% rule no dice. DPS TRIBBLE. 3 beam salute!
IF there is a big enough pool waiting and IF you have the option selected, the AI assembles teams by ship-type, by loadout and by character class. No more stumbling into an all-escort DPS run that is over before you close the dialog box. No more being forced into losing an all-cruiser NooBfest... or a science-ship fail-convention.
PUGs could be a lot of fun if they'd put some thought into matching players like this rather than the current system of pure-random. That's a huge frustrating part of why I dislike PUGging, but then again I'm not really social enough to build a reliable team that is on when I want to play.
virusdancer - I'm guessing you're opposed to these potential changes?
Well, I'll be graceful... I think back to ISE of 2+ years ago. I was about equally annoyed when optionals failed then as I am when the mission fails now. I will still try my hardest to complete optional objectives. The challenge remains the same - maybe even will be harder in Azure's case.
I've been saying for nearly 6 months now - these failqueues need to go. They were killing the game. You can't have a game be one way for almost 5 years - marketed to Trek fans who want to fly and relax then turn it into some sort of elite dungeon raid with headsets. Way too many players were cut out. The game has been bleeding.
I'm still shocked they are doing this and won't fully believe it until it is applied to more missions. But conditions must be such that it is necessary.
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Yeah, cause ISA having an average wait time of 30-60 seconds is the obvious sign of a dead queue. Even ISN's only about 10s longer a wait. :rolleyes:
It's like that because it's the most mind-numbingly easy queue next to Crystalline.
If it were a problem...it would show as a problem...kind of like Viscous, Breach, Storming which folks just don't touch. Difficulty? Who knows...but a bunch of folks know they can nail an easy ISA faster than they can go through the drag of those others. It was the same before DR.
Isnt infected advanced the same Q you had your epic 14:57 second battle in ? Isnt this the STF you spotlighted over and over again?
So your saying that 1 fail condititon made infected Cool and great and removing it now makes it mind numbing easy ?
Vicious breech and storming didn't seem much fun to me before DR and only a few people I know even tried them at all they simply wernt fun to play
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
The real problem is the removal of elite marks like Borg Neural Processors from the Normal queues. You complain about undergeared people running advanced, but one of the only ways to get better gear is via the rep system, and that requires elite marks you can only get by playing advanced or elite.
Some of the best gear isn't rep-based. It's Fleet, or just plain stuff with great mods like [CrtD]x3. Crafted gear is darn near the kingmaker at this point.
You can also get elite marks from most of the battlezones now.
They do not want to waste their time in joining a queue that will reward them less than the upper tier ones and it wont matter how sweet you make the pot in the lower tiers because as long as the higher tier has the best payout then they will keep ignoring the lower tier queues.
It has NOTHING to do with difficulty or gear. How do I know this? Well by all the player skipping the lower tier queues and jumping right into the hardest queue thats available.
The dead giveaway is 1st; they say they have NEVER run this mission before. (And yet they queued for the most difficult one)
...
I would suggest that each tier of difficulty be gated by level
Agreed. Players do need to understand that the PvEs are tiered not just for rewards, but for understanding. You need to prove your worth in Normal before moving up.
Level-gating is already in place, though. Level 50 grants access to Normal and Adv, and 60 is Elite. But it's easy to blast through the story and get up to level 60 without properly gearing for the end-game, so that hasn't been an effective bar.
If it were a problem...it would show as a problem...kind of like Viscous, Breach, Storming which folks just don't touch. Difficulty? Who knows...but a bunch of folks know they can nail an easy ISA faster than they can go through the drag of those others. It was the same before DR.
Very true. There was an initial drop in queue plays once DR launched, but that was probably because everyone was playing the new content and getting up to lvl60.
I think the queues that are dead now were already gasping for air before DR came into the picture. Might be time to retire some more queues, especially now that there are new DR and season 10 PvEs around the corner. Also, some queues date back to the Fed-KDF War and either need to be updated or retired.
So there's work to be done. I'm glad that changes are being made, and adjusting the balance on fail conditions and rewards is a great step in the right direction.
"This brings us to our final major planned change and perhaps the most important Advanced difficulty PvE queues will no longer fail for not completing the mission objectives that had previously been optional on Normal difficulty."
This will take us back to the good old days of doing the end-game with fun and still have excitement. I am looking forward to getting back to my Rep grind for my toons. It was a long drought, but finally we will see some rain and I will pour destruction onto the enemies in the end game.
virusdancer - I'm guessing you're opposed to these potential changes?
Well, I'll be graceful... I think back to ISE of 2+ years ago. I was about equally annoyed when optionals failed then as I am when the mission fails now. I will still try my hardest to complete optional objectives. The challenge remains the same - maybe even will be harder in Azure's case.
I've been saying for nearly 6 months now - these failqueues need to go. They were killing the game. You can't have a game be one way for almost 5 years - marketed to Trek fans who want to fly and relax then turn it into some sort of elite dungeon raid with headsets. Way too many players were cut out. The game has been bleeding.
I'm still shocked they are doing this and won't fully believe it until it is applied to more missions. But conditions must be such that it is necessary.
Here's the really crazy thing that will make some people's cookie crumble, most of the ISE (old) I was in nailed the optionals, even though they didn't have a hard fail.
Sure, it could have been just random luck, each and every time, or perhaps, just maybe, an instant fail condition wasn't necessary for people to learn.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
virusdancer - I'm guessing you're opposed to these potential changes?
To these changes? Yes, I am.
I wanted better education for players going into Normal, going into Advanced, and going into Elite. I wanted Cryptic to provide at least some of the basics so folks that might shy away from forums, guides, videos, and all the rest could at least get some basic feedback in the game on what's going on - what they may or may not be ready to tackle.
I wanted a better variety of ways to tackle things, so folks didn't feel that DPS was the only solution. A fail timer is a DPS solution...I'm not a fan of that. Hell, I'm not a fan of straight timers at all. Even as an Optional, they're going to make it about DPS, yeah?
Imagine ISA for a moment, eh?
Transformer <
> Gateway
Those Nanites come through the Gateway and they're headed for the Transformer. If nothing is done to try to slow them down, that's basically a timer, right?
They could have had...after you drop a Generator...you have X time to get the Transformer down. But they didn't do that, right? They provided folks options. You can frag the Transformer, you can hit them with GW, you can grab them with R-TBR drag them away, drop EWP, etc, etc, etc - all sorts of things to slow them down. Hell, depending on the ship you can just park in front of the first one and they'll get stuck there cause they can't figure out how to go around. Timer is still ticking, but you've bought the group more time, right?
I think back to playing Sonic (first game that came to mind, but I guess a bunch of racing type games have something like that too) - you've got a timer, but you can get more time.
So something like ANRA...freed that ship? How about repairing it to add some extra time? Other folks head off to free the next one, somebody bought the group time by repairing.
Tada, it's not all just about DPS.
This change? It's still just about DPS.
Still about DPS, nerfed rewards, longer runs...and...yeah, no - I don't see this actually making things better. It's a cheap band-aid. Hell, it's a cheap band-aid that gets stuck on your fingers as you're trying to put it on. And even worse, it's raining.
There are all sorts of things they could do to help out newer players, extremely casual players, and so forth...
What's this doing? Advanced NPCs w/ Normal Rewards. How is that supposed to be a good thing?
Isnt infected advanced the same Q you had your epic 14:57 second battle in ? Isnt this the STF you spotlighted over and over again?
So your saying that 1 fail condititon made infected Cool and great and removing it now makes it mind numbing easy ?
Vicious breech and storming didn't seem much fun to me before DR and only a few people I know even tried them at all they simply wernt fun to play
Oh man, it was over 16 minutes long and we missed the Optional by around 3 seconds. It was epic.
I wasn't saying that the proposed change (there hasn't been anything mentioned for ISA) makes ISA mind-numbingly easy; I'm saying it's already mind-numbingly easy.
Advanced queue with a 15 minute Optional that starts after the initial engagement completes.
That suggests only the Advanced of the Advanced will be completing that 15 minute Optional, no? That the average group might have a successful run, but only the best of the Advanced players hitting up that queue will get the Optional.
Advanced players may succeed.
Advanced-Advanced players may get the Optional.
Have had two successful ISA runs where the Optional was not met, I believe. Would have to go look through them all.
But it was kind of the problem back with ISE. Folks doing those 5-7 minute runs (total) with that 15 minute Optional there? So folks weren't just Elite...they were STO Gods...average folks...forget the DPS folks doing it in a minute. That's just...just...insane, right? Personally, when I ended up in a group that did it in under 6-8 minutes, I hated it. I was the low guy on some 4-5 minute runs, and meh - if I was running it for rewards, it might have been nifty - wham, bam, done - the thing the DPS League folks do...but for me, it hadn't even gotten started and it was done. It wasn't satiating, if that term can be applied. Wham, bam, DPS just isn't my thing.
I didn't tune in week to week watching Star Trek to see them go bullying their way across the galaxy. Meh, that's more like some Axis or former Soviet Union thing they might have shown kids. Nah, I watched the heroes facing challenges and overcoming them...I want to be a hero in Star Trek Online like the heroes I watched.
So yeah, my most epic memory this year and for some time was that group where that counter was counting down and we were trying to give it all we could. Sure, we missed that Optional...but it was an epic try in my book.
* * * * *
About those other queues, I think that's just something some folks out there overlook...and...I wish they'd either brought the other queues in line with them or brought them in line with the other queues. Cryptic always talks about us pesky players finding the path of least resistance...and they leave a huge gap like that? Meh...
Here's the really crazy thing that will make some people's cookie crumble, most of the ISE (old) I was in nailed the optionals, even though they didn't have a hard fail.
Sure, it could have been just random luck, each and every time, or perhaps, just maybe, an instant fail condition wasn't necessary for people to learn.
Honestly, I saw the Mandatory Objectives as a means of putting hostages out of their misery...so folks wouldn't be trapped there, have a sour experience, and could go do something else. Course, imho, they needed to reduce the cooldown after a failed run. Had to be a CD there to prevent trolls from just failing things over and over, but having somebody wait the full 30 before they could run it again...nah, not so hot.
Something isn't right here. There must be some evil, sinister, dark plan behind all of this! :eek:
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an instant fail condition wasn't necessary for people to learn.
The fail condition was not about teaching players. If was about giving them a reason to learn.
What use to happen when you failed the optionals. You lose what? 10 marks? Ten marks is how much Cryptic and players think effort and teamwork is worth.
Also, people like to talk about how Advanced queues are only for the DPS monsters. This change now pushes the "DPS meta" even more. What is the point of trying to stay alive when death means next to nothing in the mission? We are going to see people killing aux power in order to get their weapon power to 150. We are going to see the return of fresh faced level 50s getting carried through content and thinking they are the best thing ever.
Yes the optionals was somewhat broken but this change is jumping from one far point to another.
Comments
Elite that only requires high DPS and no engagement of the brain, is still not worthy of the title of "Elite".
1) Give it at least one shot--as a pug--if you have a level 50-60 toon (except for the highest DPS leaguers who are already at Elite level).
2) If you like it, or at least feel confident trying, pug the HECK out of it all week. If it's delivered as promised, I want to see those queues HOPPING!!!
This way, if all goes as described, the signal of our approval will be impossible for Cryptic to miss.
Are you completely unfamiliar with the map and need to train? Help your fellow newbies and get Normal moving so that at least some queues are firing for people who need to learn the map for the first (or second or third) time. Those who try to follow the proper steps to train for higher level STFs will thank you.
Are you a high DPSer who is unhappy with losing the failoptionals? Start going for Elite and get YOUR queue hopping too!
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Please don't introduce this. All the best memories I have of playing this game have been epic STF queue experiences where one or two players have been stuck in a scenario that was barely winnable and took a ridiculously long time to complete, but eventually won.
I once soloed a Khitomer Vortex STF after the rest of the team never showed up and it was one of the most fun things that happened to me in the game. It took an eternity, but I still won it in my dinky Science Ship with only one escapee Borg ship to spare
If you add time limits this will be lost!
I also really like the idea of a series of increasingly rewarding optionals that will still reward good play in Advanced missions. That really should have been how things were from the start. Instead of simply smacking down those players already struggling to complete Advanced missions, there should have been an incentive (more rewards, however small) to play better. This benefits both upcoming players who are slowly getting better, as well as veterans who can ace the optionals no problem.
Between this news, and learning that future STFs will stick to having three different difficulties (as opposed to all Elite, all the time like Korfez) I'm feeling much better about the future of STO as a whole.
If I still had one small, negative thing to say, it would be nice if there were fewer mandatory objectives, even in Elite, that relied on having huge amounts of dps to complete, like the timed mandatory objective at the end of the upcoming Gateway to Grethor STF. Again, not just for the sake of up and coming Elite players, but for the DPS Wizards as well, many of whom, I have seen, would like a genuine challenge. Maybe a bit more focus on designing Elites and Elite objectives that are challenging from a mechanics standpoint, and not simply because all the enemies have high amounts of HP, and you have to kill them in a short amount of time.
If you guys can somehow work that out, then between this and that, I think you'll make a significant amount of your playerbase all the happier. ^_^
That right there is what im talking about thank you cryptic for listening
What we need is some kind of gear check or trials that deny access to those who are under-geared or too inexperienced to substantially contribute to advanced or elite queues. The proposed changes do nothing like this.
Haha, loled at this. Sadly though, it's true.
But yeah, back to the topic, this seems like a very positive change. My only concern is about the base rewards. Hopefully they'll be set at a reasonable rate, since they'll be the same over all difficulties.
I am in favor of this. I do not want an I win button. I do want to be rewarded for playng the game. I do not want some other player ruining my fun and make sure I can't get the rewards during my time in game. My time is precious and limited.
As the Advanced queues are now, 1 player can fail the mission and set on the 30 minute cooldown before you can try again. With my time limits, that is an significant chunk of my time to lose to another player for TRIBBLE up.
This new Advanced queue set up will allow us to complete the mission, but a single player can still TRIBBLE us on the bonus rewards by making mistakes. But as long as they made an effort to play, then we don't fail. I still get the 30 minute cooldown, butr now I can at least say that the timer is not barring me from reaching my goal, just forcing me to slow down or take another route.
All in all, this is a good balancing of giving us the reasonable expectations of completing PUGed Advanced queues with out making us fail due to one persons lack of ability, gear, knowledge or traits.
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But the real issue isn't the failing per se.
Its that its so easy to fail the optionals. Many of the missions have a slim margin for error or have to be done in a very specific way. I can usually tell in the first 10 secs of a mission whether its gonna fail.
The there are some missions where if you aren't very familiar with them the objectives aren't clear. New people just don't know what to do or not to do.
And there are a few that I haven't bothered with on normal for years. I seriously cant imagine what they would be like now on adv or elite.
Did the queues die because of DR? Weren't the queues dying before DR? Weren't some queues basically DOA?
Consider some previous complaints about having to run queues to get the various Elite Marks, right? Well, okay, they were complaints about having to run Borg STFs to get BNPs...cause neither New Rom nor Nukara Rep required any Elite Marks.
So what did they do with the Dyson queues? Well, they provided the Elite Marks far easier outside of the queues. So what happened to those Dyson queues, eh? If somebody wanted to run them for something other than the E-Marks...well, look how long those queues took by comparison, eh? Basically queues that were DOA.
So what did they do with the Undine queues? /cough Ahem, yeah.
Heck, they even went ahead and did the same thing for BNPs finally as well as APCs. APCs are the slow one. It takes two weeks to get every APC you'd need with only being able to get 2 a day. Yeah, slow...two weeks...an eternity, right?
Let's ignore the Marks, Dil, and so forth for a moment - anything else that might have been killing queues off? Well, have to ignore the maybe folks just didn't want to play some of them - didn't like the amount of time, rewards...that's all lumped in there.
Anything else? Anything that might have driven folks to go to channel runs, fleet runs, friend runs, and avoid the public queues?
Don't know about anybody else...so I'll ask...how many queues did folks get dropped in where one or more optionals had already been failed? Dropped into those queues because folks had decided they'd rather eat the leaver penalty than stay with that particular group. Perhaps they were with that group so long that the leaver penalty didn't even apply.
So yeah, maybe those folks went off to the private queues too - or - even public channel queues doing private runs to get away from that, eh?
So in Cryptic's infinite wisdom and history of listening to feedback that drives such decisions, they're going to be bringing that mess back...
...only better!
Cause now, with the change to rewards...at the end of that Advanced run with the failed Optionals...you'll have earned the same rewards as if you'd failed the Optionals in a Normal run.
And well, you're going to have to stick around longer in that Advanced run to get those Normal rewards on top of that. Where if it had been the rare failure, you could have just gone and done something else instead of being held hostage.
Cryptic could have tweaked the queues so they followed the simple...
Normal: Optional, Optional, Optional
Advanced: Mandatory, Optional, Optional
Elite: Mandatory, Mandatory, Optional
...where there wouldn't have been a case of needing to learn anything (and to be honest, I'm having a hard time understanding just where it's not like that and folks had to learn anything) - would have been a case of where Normal Optionals were getting hit all the time and it was pretty easy, well it's time to move on to Advanced - already being familiar with what was required and it just being a case of needing to be at a little higher threshold to move on to Advanced from where they were to get that first Objective done as a Mandatory Objective instead of an Optional one. The same would happen as they played Advanced and were to move on to Elite. Nothing new - just better at it - playing it at a higher level.
Too many folks not quite hitting the timer for those Mandatory timers? Make them longer. That's it...done, yeah?
Too many folks not quite getting a target destroyed before something else happens (Transformers in ISA before the Nanites get there?)...reduce the health of the object.
Some proactive tweaks that allow for a progression of Normal -> Advanced -> Elite if the jump from Normal to Advanced was too much...
...not this mess that they're doing.
Folks are going to leave their channel (public and private) runs to come back to something like this?
Folks are going to stop earning rewards in the countless ways they can faster and easier...to risk getting held hostage in content?
As this drives away the folks that were still doing public Advanced runs and only those folks that might need help on Normal are hitting up the Advanced queues - even they're going to take a look around and realize they might as well do Normal or do something else.
Hell, they could have even introduced a reduced cooldown for failed missions so folks hit by trolls could have another go without making it a haven for trolls just to fail them over and over for folks.
There are all sorts of things they could have done.
This is the most mind-boggling idiotic decision I've seen Cryptic make in over a decade.
The real problem is the removal of elite marks like Borg Neural Processors from the Normal queues. You complain about undergeared people running advanced, but one of the only ways to get better gear is via the rep system, and that requires elite marks you can only get by playing advanced or elite. So if you can't get the elite marks, you can't get better gear, and you're stuck in a catch-22 with no way out.
I certainly have no desire to run advanced if I don't have to, but since I need the elite marks I don't have a choice. I'd happily stick to normal if I could earn elite marks, but sadly that is no longer an option.
I can't wait to see how it plays out.
And kudos to Cryptic for their transparency on this issue. Confidence instilled.
people who like decent builds but want a good fight found that the STFs failed very often and they couldn't complete them likie infected because of the fail conditition of stopping the nanite spheres because a generator was poped too fast
Science players loved this because they could hold off the nanites spheres and save the day allowing the STF to be a success...but the problem was
Every STF that did not have a science ship there with 2 grav wells and TBR almost every pug without that science ship was a failure
personally I don't like playing science ships
I loaded up my old vesta and proved this over and over to myself doing 4 man pugs win win win , switched over to my escort or cruiser and fail after fail without that science ship in the group
The reward for doing a advanced STF is still poor it was cut in 1/2 but that's not why a lot quit playing them it was the stupid fail conditition
Charles Grey did the right thing removing this fail conditition once it hit holodeck the numbers of people in the infected Q will take off again where you can get in on a game most any time you want too
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The reason why lower tier queues are non-existent is because of pure GREED, SELFISHNESS, and plain old LAZYNESS.
They do not want to waste their time in joining a queue that will reward them less than the upper tier ones and it wont matter how sweet you make the pot in the lower tiers because as long as the higher tier has the best payout then they will keep ignoring the lower tier queues.
It has NOTHING to do with difficulty or gear. How do I know this? Well by all the player skipping the lower tier queues and jumping right into the hardest queue thats available.
The dead giveaway is 1st; they say they have NEVER run this mission before. (And yet they queued for the most difficult one)
Another giveaway is that they keep dying every 2-3 min (And poor gear has something to do with it, but its mostly because they have never done the mission before and end up agroing more than they can handle)
The 3rd giveaway is they finally admit that they did it for the better reward and really didnt care if their lack of knowing of the mission caused the mission to fail; they figure that eventually they would get lucky and get PUGed with enough Elite players that they really dont have to do much of anything.
I would suggest that each tier of difficulty be gated by level
For example:
Level 40 or 45 would unlock Normal difficulty queues
Level 50 or 55 would unlock advanced queues
Level 60 Elite.
At least this way by the time they hit Elite level they will have a better understanding of the mission.
I know this is only a minor fix but a fix in the right direction.
Another would be a mission requirement to run the normal queue successfully to unlock the advanced and run advanced to unlock elite.
Yeah, cause ISA having an average wait time of 30-60 seconds is the obvious sign of a dead queue. Even ISN's only about 10s longer a wait. :rolleyes:
It's like that because it's the most mind-numbingly easy queue next to Crystalline.
If it were a problem...it would show as a problem...kind of like Viscous, Breach, Storming which folks just don't touch. Difficulty? Who knows...but a bunch of folks know they can nail an easy ISA faster than they can go through the drag of those others. It was the same before DR.
Yep, you've got no idea what you're doing. None at all. No foresight for even the smallest things.
All you are doing is encouraging players that previously would not queue for advanced (due to not being good enough) to now queue for it, thereby polluting the queue for people that are good enough, and thus nerfing mark rewards for people that otherwise would have been able to finish advanced easily enough without the weaker players dragging them down.
Less strict failure conditions (read: no failure conditions at all. Seriously who can't rescue *one* ship in 15 minutes?)=worse players queue up for "greater potential rewards."
Weaker players queueing=average team strength goes down.
Average team strength goes down=optionals are harder to complete.
Optionals are harder to complete=less overall rewards.
But you're taking it a step further, and nerfing normal rewards while buffing the (now more difficult to obtain) optional rewards. So you're making it reward less on average, probably *much* less. Making marks harder to get, again. Why? Why are you this dense?
You're not helping. You're making things worse. Again. How does none of this cross your mind? What the hell do you talk about in meetings?
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Absolutely sucks being thrown into an all-sci ship PUG that tries to DPS it's way through Conduit. You tell them to use crowd-control or 10% rule no dice. DPS TRIBBLE. 3 beam salute!
IF there is a big enough pool waiting and IF you have the option selected, the AI assembles teams by ship-type, by loadout and by character class. No more stumbling into an all-escort DPS run that is over before you close the dialog box. No more being forced into losing an all-cruiser NooBfest... or a science-ship fail-convention.
PUGs could be a lot of fun if they'd put some thought into matching players like this rather than the current system of pure-random. That's a huge frustrating part of why I dislike PUGging, but then again I'm not really social enough to build a reliable team that is on when I want to play.
Well, I'll be graceful... I think back to ISE of 2+ years ago. I was about equally annoyed when optionals failed then as I am when the mission fails now. I will still try my hardest to complete optional objectives. The challenge remains the same - maybe even will be harder in Azure's case.
I've been saying for nearly 6 months now - these failqueues need to go. They were killing the game. You can't have a game be one way for almost 5 years - marketed to Trek fans who want to fly and relax then turn it into some sort of elite dungeon raid with headsets. Way too many players were cut out. The game has been bleeding.
I'm still shocked they are doing this and won't fully believe it until it is applied to more missions. But conditions must be such that it is necessary.
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Isnt infected advanced the same Q you had your epic 14:57 second battle in ? Isnt this the STF you spotlighted over and over again?
So your saying that 1 fail condititon made infected Cool and great and removing it now makes it mind numbing easy ?
Vicious breech and storming didn't seem much fun to me before DR and only a few people I know even tried them at all they simply wernt fun to play
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Some of the best gear isn't rep-based. It's Fleet, or just plain stuff with great mods like [CrtD]x3. Crafted gear is darn near the kingmaker at this point.
You can also get elite marks from most of the battlezones now.
Agreed. Players do need to understand that the PvEs are tiered not just for rewards, but for understanding. You need to prove your worth in Normal before moving up.
Level-gating is already in place, though. Level 50 grants access to Normal and Adv, and 60 is Elite. But it's easy to blast through the story and get up to level 60 without properly gearing for the end-game, so that hasn't been an effective bar.
Very true. There was an initial drop in queue plays once DR launched, but that was probably because everyone was playing the new content and getting up to lvl60.
I think the queues that are dead now were already gasping for air before DR came into the picture. Might be time to retire some more queues, especially now that there are new DR and season 10 PvEs around the corner. Also, some queues date back to the Fed-KDF War and either need to be updated or retired.
So there's work to be done. I'm glad that changes are being made, and adjusting the balance on fail conditions and rewards is a great step in the right direction.
"This brings us to our final major planned change and perhaps the most important Advanced difficulty PvE queues will no longer fail for not completing the mission objectives that had previously been optional on Normal difficulty."
This will take us back to the good old days of doing the end-game with fun and still have excitement. I am looking forward to getting back to my Rep grind for my toons. It was a long drought, but finally we will see some rain and I will pour destruction onto the enemies in the end game.
Here's the really crazy thing that will make some people's cookie crumble, most of the ISE (old) I was in nailed the optionals, even though they didn't have a hard fail.
Sure, it could have been just random luck, each and every time, or perhaps, just maybe, an instant fail condition wasn't necessary for people to learn.
To these changes? Yes, I am.
I wanted better education for players going into Normal, going into Advanced, and going into Elite. I wanted Cryptic to provide at least some of the basics so folks that might shy away from forums, guides, videos, and all the rest could at least get some basic feedback in the game on what's going on - what they may or may not be ready to tackle.
I wanted a better variety of ways to tackle things, so folks didn't feel that DPS was the only solution. A fail timer is a DPS solution...I'm not a fan of that. Hell, I'm not a fan of straight timers at all. Even as an Optional, they're going to make it about DPS, yeah?
Imagine ISA for a moment, eh?
Transformer <
> Gateway
Those Nanites come through the Gateway and they're headed for the Transformer. If nothing is done to try to slow them down, that's basically a timer, right?
They could have had...after you drop a Generator...you have X time to get the Transformer down. But they didn't do that, right? They provided folks options. You can frag the Transformer, you can hit them with GW, you can grab them with R-TBR drag them away, drop EWP, etc, etc, etc - all sorts of things to slow them down. Hell, depending on the ship you can just park in front of the first one and they'll get stuck there cause they can't figure out how to go around. Timer is still ticking, but you've bought the group more time, right?
I think back to playing Sonic (first game that came to mind, but I guess a bunch of racing type games have something like that too) - you've got a timer, but you can get more time.
So something like ANRA...freed that ship? How about repairing it to add some extra time? Other folks head off to free the next one, somebody bought the group time by repairing.
Tada, it's not all just about DPS.
This change? It's still just about DPS.
Still about DPS, nerfed rewards, longer runs...and...yeah, no - I don't see this actually making things better. It's a cheap band-aid. Hell, it's a cheap band-aid that gets stuck on your fingers as you're trying to put it on. And even worse, it's raining.
There are all sorts of things they could do to help out newer players, extremely casual players, and so forth...
What's this doing? Advanced NPCs w/ Normal Rewards. How is that supposed to be a good thing?
Oh man, it was over 16 minutes long and we missed the Optional by around 3 seconds. It was epic.
I wasn't saying that the proposed change (there hasn't been anything mentioned for ISA) makes ISA mind-numbingly easy; I'm saying it's already mind-numbingly easy.
Advanced queue with a 15 minute Optional that starts after the initial engagement completes.
That suggests only the Advanced of the Advanced will be completing that 15 minute Optional, no? That the average group might have a successful run, but only the best of the Advanced players hitting up that queue will get the Optional.
Advanced players may succeed.
Advanced-Advanced players may get the Optional.
Have had two successful ISA runs where the Optional was not met, I believe. Would have to go look through them all.
But it was kind of the problem back with ISE. Folks doing those 5-7 minute runs (total) with that 15 minute Optional there? So folks weren't just Elite...they were STO Gods...average folks...forget the DPS folks doing it in a minute. That's just...just...insane, right? Personally, when I ended up in a group that did it in under 6-8 minutes, I hated it. I was the low guy on some 4-5 minute runs, and meh - if I was running it for rewards, it might have been nifty - wham, bam, done - the thing the DPS League folks do...but for me, it hadn't even gotten started and it was done. It wasn't satiating, if that term can be applied. Wham, bam, DPS just isn't my thing.
I didn't tune in week to week watching Star Trek to see them go bullying their way across the galaxy. Meh, that's more like some Axis or former Soviet Union thing they might have shown kids. Nah, I watched the heroes facing challenges and overcoming them...I want to be a hero in Star Trek Online like the heroes I watched.
So yeah, my most epic memory this year and for some time was that group where that counter was counting down and we were trying to give it all we could. Sure, we missed that Optional...but it was an epic try in my book.
* * * * *
About those other queues, I think that's just something some folks out there overlook...and...I wish they'd either brought the other queues in line with them or brought them in line with the other queues. Cryptic always talks about us pesky players finding the path of least resistance...and they leave a huge gap like that? Meh...
Honestly, I saw the Mandatory Objectives as a means of putting hostages out of their misery...so folks wouldn't be trapped there, have a sour experience, and could go do something else. Course, imho, they needed to reduce the cooldown after a failed run. Had to be a CD there to prevent trolls from just failing things over and over, but having somebody wait the full 30 before they could run it again...nah, not so hot.
The fail condition was not about teaching players. If was about giving them a reason to learn.
What use to happen when you failed the optionals. You lose what? 10 marks? Ten marks is how much Cryptic and players think effort and teamwork is worth.
Also, people like to talk about how Advanced queues are only for the DPS monsters. This change now pushes the "DPS meta" even more. What is the point of trying to stay alive when death means next to nothing in the mission? We are going to see people killing aux power in order to get their weapon power to 150. We are going to see the return of fresh faced level 50s getting carried through content and thinking they are the best thing ever.
Yes the optionals was somewhat broken but this change is jumping from one far point to another.