STO forum term definitions for newbies:Piloting Skill: That thing you do where you fly around and avoid big scary green plasma balls of death. Pressing F and spacebar may also relate to skill.Taco: A very sacred thing. Do not speak I'll of the Taco or things will happen. Terrible things! Humor: Something not found here. Don't bring it. This forum is serious business.Fun: Something illegal. Don't have it and don't bring it
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.
But not everyone has access to fleet gear and it takes a ridiculous amount of time and resources to craft superior gear. The PvE queues are by far the most efficient way of getting significantly better gear than is provided via drops, even if it's not the very best gear.
Some elite marks can be earned via battlezones (but not all), but what if you really really hate the battlezones? Earning elite marks there are time cosuming, boring, and tiresome -- a lot of time and energy for something you can get in a queue in under 15 mins. Personally I can't stand the battlezones and avoid them at all costs. Definitely not something I find enjoyable at all. I much prefer the ability to log in, join a queue, and in 15 mins get around 100 rep marks and an elite mark and be done with it till tomorrow. No muss, no fuss.
Does this alter the caps on the number of Marks rewarded for rescuing ships?
Do the changes affect the spawns? It's rare, but I've run queues that were almost entirely T'Varos. In addition to the overall rewards, this could also affect the Optionals.
Have you considered scaling the rewards so that a timed mission, with a mandatory minimum duration, is as rewarding as a decently skilled team doing some of the other queues? By which I do not mean nerf the other queues; that doesn't actually make anything feel more rewarding...
Overall, though, it's nice to see some effort being put into making gameplay feel more rewarding. Thanks for the update, and keep up the good work.
With each passing day I wonder if I stepped into an alternate reality. The Cubs win the world series. Donald Trump is President. Britain leaves the EU. STO gets a dedicated PvP season. Engineers are "out of control" in STO.
Interesting, except the comment about "appropriate gear". Apparently the devs think that fully equipped 30-40k dps boats are handed out to everyone as soon as they hit level 50. Given who they are listening to over on the test server I can see why they would think that, but why are they only listening to that miniscule portion of the player base? Shameful really.
Here's the plain English: Normal queues are absolutely worthless in every regard, people who should not be in adv queues yet are forced into them to try and eek out some rep gear. Except adv queues are ridiculously imbalanced for even above average players. Make normal queues worth running, first and foremost. Give out an APC or whatever rep item is necessary for rep gear for a perfect run. Let's face it, rep gear is lvl 50 gear at best, 90% of which is not worth upgrading given upgrade cost.
Open up all Normal queues at lvl 40, have optionals,
Open up all Advance queues at lvl 50, and require that all optionals must be completed x amount of times in normal to qualify to play advanced. This will give people the time they need in normal mode to get the knowledge/practice and gear they need to be effective in advanced. So it's very important that the normal queues be worth the time and effort.
Elites at 60 and require optional completion on adv...you get the picture.
Point is give the new player an arc to follow to learn the mechanics and get the gear they need to progress to the next tier. One of the best things STO had going for it was that people could jump in, queue up, and actually get a little done without waiting around for hours for just the right people to show up. Every person that I know that plays, or increasingly played, STO listed that aspect of the game (the STF's) as a major draw, it's what set STO apart from other MMO's and it's been broken for a while. If I wanted a tedious waste of time I would go and try to have a rational conversation with my wife.
I really liked STO, I didn't have to min/max everything or wait around forever for a group. I could just have fun. Sure most of the STFs were too easy, but they were fun. But that's gone now, as is most of the people that I used to play with. The STF difficulty shake up was a good idea done really, really badly. If there was ever a time for overcompensating for a bad decision I'm thinking now would be that time with the STFs.
...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.
These mission objectives will remain optional for Advanced difficulty and as mentioned in the paragraph above will become a greater source of rewards (to correspond to their increased difficulty to achieve with the increase in enemy level and difficulty scale). This means that even if the optionals are in need of tuning because they are too hard to achieve (which we still pledge to do) that players are not blocked from advancing in their reputations and crafting schools.
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). We dont expect that many players will experience these failure conditions during the normal course of play. In some cases those failure conditions will also be applied to Normal difficulty...
I just want to say THANK YOU, and I'm looking forward to seeing these updates brought to ground STFs asap.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
But not everyone has access to fleet gear and it takes a ridiculous amount of time and resources to craft superior gear. The PvE queues are by far the most efficient way of getting significantly better gear than is provided via drops, even if it's not the very best gear.
Some elite marks can be earned via battlezones (but not all), but what if you really really hate the battlezones? Earning elite marks there are time cosuming, boring, and tiresome -- a lot of time and energy for something you can get in a queue in under 15 mins. Personally I can't stand the battlezones and avoid them at all costs. Definitely not something I find enjoyable at all. I much prefer the ability to log in, join a queue, and in 15 mins get around 100 rep marks and an elite mark and be done with it till tomorrow. No muss, no fuss.
Ok, so your argument then is based on players not wanting to take their time and properly gear for the end-game? That it's somehow perfectly acceptable for undergeared / unprepared players to be carried through Adv PvEs, causing either a failed optional or a total fail?
All you're saying in your two posts is that you want the rewards the quickest way possible, with the least amount of work. That isn't Cryptic's fault, and it's not the result of any reward decision Cryptic made. In fact, they've made it far easier to get rep gear now. All elite marks are available in battlezones as of the last reward revamp:
- Isomorphic Injections = Solanae Space Battlezone
- Ancient Power Cells = Kobali Prime
- Cybernetic Implants = Solanae Ground Battlezone
- Neural Processors = Defera Invasion Zone
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.
There are other ways of getting better geared, and there are other ways of getting elite marks for the rep gear. You're just choosing one way over the others, while complaining that somehow you "don't have a choice" and "need" to play above your toon's skill level (just want to emphasize toon, and not the player here. A player may be a long-time vet, but a fresh lvl50 toon is still a rookie).
Players cannot complain about being forced into content, or being forced to do something, when there are completely accessible alternatives. Cryptic is not to blame, and the other players complaining about poorly-geared players in Adv PvE aren't to blame either. The only ones making it harder for themselves are the players who are taking shortcuts to the end-game.
STO is an MMO, and it's not a pay-to-win MMO so gearing up for the end-game takes time and effort.
I play ANR frequently, and I am glad to see you're making rewards link better to the number of ships rescued. Plus I'll start queuing advanced again once optional failure is removed; that was so frustrating given the roll of the dice when pugging. Thanks!
Well I will say this these changes were intentional first off based on community outrage of these ppl who just make accounts and sit and afk/leech for stuff which makes no sense because this game isn't a grind fest *sarcasm*.
On other hand it wouldn't seem like such a grindfest though if you guys at cryptic would do something more creative like make multiple maps for these missions where something different is happening or even can adjust it to where based on how story developes different stuff is happening so ppl doing normal would always get the bare bones of whats needed/expected for reps but advanced could be the queue for getting away from the same ole grind.
The only other thing is I haven't played these new ones for season 10 yet but it just seems like its a cross faction version of klingon only stuff feds haven't played yet but will be new to them but not new to them. Just with the klingon looking stuff like starbase defenses from the description of these blogs.
On other hand it wouldn't seem like such a grindfest though if you guys at cryptic would do something more creative like make multiple maps for these missions where something different is happening or even can adjust it to where based on how story developes different stuff is happening so ppl doing normal would always get the bare bones of whats needed/expected for reps but advanced could be the queue for getting away from the same ole grind.
They've been working on almost exactly that, which is nice to see. The Delta patrols have some elements of randomness to them, which is a first crack at making patrols less grindy. And Battle of Korfez's 2nd and 3rd stages are varied from within a few possible situations. The Crystaline Entity queue also has a handful of obstacles to choose from, during the event run.
Adding more of that unexpected / randomized content is great. That introduces a bit of a challenge, or at least some uncertainty at not being exactly sure what's coming next.
I feel it's like kindergarten where every kids get rewards just being present in the classroom. Where is the element of challenge if we hand candies to everyone walking in an instance? I guess I was spoiled with WoW dungeons where a certain level of gear and skills were required to pass 'difficult' level...
I still wish there was loot tables fit for the difficulty level of the queue... some RNG in the mix can be fun (frustrating, but fun).
Ok, so your argument then is based on players not wanting to take their time and properly gear for the end-game? That it's somehow perfectly acceptable for undergeared / unprepared players to be carried through Adv PvEs, causing either a failed optional or a total fail?
All you're saying in your two posts is that you want the rewards the quickest way possible, with the least amount of work. That isn't Cryptic's fault, and it's not the result of any reward decision Cryptic made. In fact, they've made it far easier to get rep gear now. All elite marks are available in battlezones as of the last reward revamp:
- Isomorphic Injections = Solanae Space Battlezone
- Ancient Power Cells = Kobali Prime
- Cybernetic Implants = Solanae Ground Battlezone
- Neural Processors = Defera Invasion Zone
In your previous post, you said...
There are other ways of getting better geared, and there are other ways of getting elite marks for the rep gear. You're just choosing one way over the others, while complaining that somehow you "don't have a choice" and "need" to play above your toon's skill level (just want to emphasize toon, and not the player here. A player may be a long-time vet, but a fresh lvl50 toon is still a rookie).
Players cannot complain about being forced into content, or being forced to do something, when there are completely accessible alternatives. Cryptic is not to blame, and the other players complaining about poorly-geared players in Adv PvE aren't to blame either. The only ones making it harder for themselves are the players who are taking shortcuts to the end-game.
STO is an MMO, and it's not a pay-to-win MMO so gearing up for the end-game takes time and effort.
And what exactly is an "undergeared" player supposed to do while they are grinding away at crafting and dilithium and contributing to fleet projects for the hope of getting better gear that could otherwise be obtained in less than a week via the advanced queues? Are they just supposed to sit around and twiddle their thumbs? Replay the same "skill-level appropriate content" over and over and over again for months while they grind their crafting rep and try to save up millions of EC needed to buy the DOFFs required to actually craft something once you've spent 40 days getting a school to level 15?
And yes, like every other human being on the planet, I want the most reward for the least amount of effort. STO is a game, after all, not a job. I already have one of those. I don't want to come home and start another one for "fun".
So if you don't like the Battlezones? Well tough **** for you, do them anyway, cause that's where you'll find those elite marks you need? So what if they make you work 10x harder, and take 10x longer than what it takes to get an elite mark in an advanced queue. You're inferior! You must WORK for it! I'm sorry, but that's bull****. It's a game. It's supposed to be fun, not a chore. If it's not fun I'm not going to play. I don't find Battlefields to be fun. And I'm not a big fan of ground combat. So all the alternatives you listed are not viable to me, and I'm betting many others since all of those zones are designed for advanced players to begin with. So again, you're telling people with crappy gear who want better gear that they shouldn't be going into the only places where they can get the materials they need for better gear. Uh-huh.
And yet you still don't see the problem. Almost as if you don't really want the unwashed masses obtaining better gear because then they have the chance of being as good if not better than you. And we can't have F2P players do that! They need to know their place! Like flying a T4 ship using Mk X white gear! And to Hell with them if they want better. Grind, you cheapskate! GRIND!!!
This is a good change Trendy. I could imagine this to be in favour of the majority of players in game I know, including me.
Gaming industry seems to be a tough business. If too many customers run off to other products where they are being granted a satisfactory game experience in their free time peeps on the other side of the table may start loosing jobs.
I hope such a thing never happens to STO and measurements like these ensure that best in my opinion.
I hope you dont expect any thanks over it though Trendy. You just reinstate your game more to a state under witch it ran successful for years.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
These are some of the best changes that I've read about since the release of DR. I am very pleased with this new direction, and hope that the queues starts filling up again. Thank you Cryptic.
I can agree with these changes to only 1 or 2 instances of pves. For me, advanced is still easy.
I say this because most of the time whenever I ran into the game, I only find people who brag about their pve skills but when I queue them on advanced or elite, they said they don't know how to do it because they always do "Standard".
My only problem with Azure Nebula is that it gives too little marks, I prefer Mine Trap but it seems everybody in this game are too scared to play it. I don't understand why there's a complaint about failing optionals, if the players don't equip their ships right, it's not your fault, cryptic. I don't have any problems with the optionals. If you can't complete them, stick to normals or learn how to play, end of story.
I just want to get to 60 so I can play on elite again. People keep telling me how scary the elite difficulty is. So obviously, I don't believe them! No, it took me too long to get to 60 because I'm bored with how easy the game is, I just log in to do my dailies & log off to play something fun & challenging.
Cryptic, you know it's not your fault when players run & gun to their own deaths, right? Stop rewarding this attitude, this attitude is why I don't pug. Yes, I like to help people, just tell me if you need help. But I can't help them if they just want to kill themselves & pissed off the rest of the team members.
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.
Happened to see this as I skimmed the thread and saw it sugested at least by one or two. The problem with this is it's already in place (elite unlocks at 60) and yet we still have players who don't know what to do or how to equip ev suits. Powerlevel to 60 then the problem continues.
We'll just have to see if this works, it's a positive step though I'm reluctant to shower Cryptic with praise just yet they have a nasty habit of punishing me for it. Sometimes though the community is it's own worst enemy and Cryptic can try try try to make difficulty work but as someone pointed out players will go for the best reward regardless of how good they are and unless Cryptic makes players play normal>advance>elite then players will often bypass the loess rewarding stuff.
Okay, I haven't logged very much lately, only because the entire game has become about DPS only. The PvE queues on normal are NOT supposed to have any type of fail criteria. Advanced are supposed to be a little harder with optionals that do NOT fail the mission if you don't complete them.
This, I feel, is only a small step in the right direction. But I have this feeling that PWE/Cryptic is only doing this because they are noticing that the number of players that are playing are dwindling. Last time I tried to queue up for an Advanced PvE, I had to wait for almost 30 minutes.
Also, didn't Cryptic say that Advanced was the OLD ELITE? It's starting to look like it's getting that way.
Now, let's see how far this change is going to go. It'll go one of 2 ways. 1. The changes are for the better and people start playing more again, or 2. Cryptic sees that they aren't making any money and they'll put it back.
Also, didn't Cryptic say that Advanced was the OLD ELITE? It's starting to look like it's getting that way.
Yea it does indeed. But ONLY if someone is willing to invest hundred of thousands of Dil for gear upgrades, multiple hours for SP tree grind and perhaps even ship mastery traits. Then you are granted the same experience in this game u already had before Delta rising in old elite mode.
Im curious if people like to play to regain something they already had or if they rather play to progress. One can trigger that feeling only with higher rewards but they still seem lower for advanced now than they have been in old elite.
Adding 1 salvage tech to advanced and 3 to new elite would probably do the trick a bit better and more players would go for cryptics recourse sinks and more importantly play the game.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
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). We dont expect that many players will experience these failure conditions during the normal course of play. In some cases those failure conditions will also be applied to Normal difficulty.
It looks like the Dino Campers et.al. will no longer be able to watch other people earn their rewards for them...those lazy, heinous, and outright blights to the game...isn't this Wonderful!
Thanks Cryptic. REALLY no sarcasm here just a plain old THANK YOU.
Surgical Strikes:
Resolved an issue that was causing some Disruptor Cannons to benefit less from this power than intended.
Plasma, Phaser, and Disruptor Quad Cannons now use correct FX and Icons when using this ability.
Accuracy and Critical Hit bonuses reduced:
Rank 1 = unchanged 20%
Rank 2 = reduced from +30% to +26%
Rank 3 = reduced from +40% to +32%
Damage multipliers reduced:
Rank 1 = base multiplier reduced by ~10%
Rank 2 = base multiplier reduced by ~16.8%
Rank 3 = base multiplier reduced by ~21.5%
Viral Torpedo: The Disable caused by this effect is now subject to Resistances, which will reduce the duration of the Disable effect.
This effect will also respect any Disable Immunity the target may have.
What? PvP Nerf Herders Strike Back. Thanks a lot PvP crowd. Your weaksauce ships were melting because you couldn't keep up with the elite among your group. And for that, you screamed bloody murder. And now all of us have to suffer with your weakest link sorry TRIBBLE$e$!!!!!
in other words, a queue with an "optional" objective should NEVER fail if it is not completed.
However, some of the awards can/should be attached to these "optional" objectives being completed...
I love how when they brought out T6/T5-U that they said you didn't need them to play the game. But now, it pretty much you must get them so you can do the STF/get rare trade skill and other important items.
Albeit that the optional (epic) fail is being removed is a great thing. I constantly find myself wondering how people can manage to maintain the 3+ year proud tradition, in ISE/A/whatever it is, of blowing up a generator, even before the cube or other people have worked down the other generators to a fair level. There cant be that many players who still have little experience with that STF to have the frequency of fail that people are complaining about. Same with some of the other ones, but the most pronounced is Infected.
I for one am looking forward to these changes and hope it will work out good. Hopefully it will bring some life back into the queues so we have more options instead of the same 4 or so events that people will only queue for.
Comments
Ha ha you have found us out Komrade! Each queue-event will now cost 8,000 dlit per run! MUAHAHAHAHAHA
So, the PvE queues will get rewards nefered.
1-10 marks?
Can someone explain how this makes sense?
Will we get more at the end?
I am so confused.
Nooo! This cannot be possible! My life is over.
But not everyone has access to fleet gear and it takes a ridiculous amount of time and resources to craft superior gear. The PvE queues are by far the most efficient way of getting significantly better gear than is provided via drops, even if it's not the very best gear.
Some elite marks can be earned via battlezones (but not all), but what if you really really hate the battlezones? Earning elite marks there are time cosuming, boring, and tiresome -- a lot of time and energy for something you can get in a queue in under 15 mins. Personally I can't stand the battlezones and avoid them at all costs. Definitely not something I find enjoyable at all. I much prefer the ability to log in, join a queue, and in 15 mins get around 100 rep marks and an elite mark and be done with it till tomorrow. No muss, no fuss.
Does this alter the caps on the number of Marks rewarded for rescuing ships?
Do the changes affect the spawns? It's rare, but I've run queues that were almost entirely T'Varos. In addition to the overall rewards, this could also affect the Optionals.
Have you considered scaling the rewards so that a timed mission, with a mandatory minimum duration, is as rewarding as a decently skilled team doing some of the other queues? By which I do not mean nerf the other queues; that doesn't actually make anything feel more rewarding...
Overall, though, it's nice to see some effort being put into making gameplay feel more rewarding. Thanks for the update, and keep up the good work.
Here's the plain English: Normal queues are absolutely worthless in every regard, people who should not be in adv queues yet are forced into them to try and eek out some rep gear. Except adv queues are ridiculously imbalanced for even above average players. Make normal queues worth running, first and foremost. Give out an APC or whatever rep item is necessary for rep gear for a perfect run. Let's face it, rep gear is lvl 50 gear at best, 90% of which is not worth upgrading given upgrade cost.
Open up all Normal queues at lvl 40, have optionals,
Open up all Advance queues at lvl 50, and require that all optionals must be completed x amount of times in normal to qualify to play advanced. This will give people the time they need in normal mode to get the knowledge/practice and gear they need to be effective in advanced. So it's very important that the normal queues be worth the time and effort.
Elites at 60 and require optional completion on adv...you get the picture.
Point is give the new player an arc to follow to learn the mechanics and get the gear they need to progress to the next tier. One of the best things STO had going for it was that people could jump in, queue up, and actually get a little done without waiting around for hours for just the right people to show up. Every person that I know that plays, or increasingly played, STO listed that aspect of the game (the STF's) as a major draw, it's what set STO apart from other MMO's and it's been broken for a while. If I wanted a tedious waste of time I would go and try to have a rational conversation with my wife.
I really liked STO, I didn't have to min/max everything or wait around forever for a group. I could just have fun. Sure most of the STFs were too easy, but they were fun. But that's gone now, as is most of the people that I used to play with. The STF difficulty shake up was a good idea done really, really badly. If there was ever a time for overcompensating for a bad decision I'm thinking now would be that time with the STFs.
I just want to say THANK YOU, and I'm looking forward to seeing these updates brought to ground STFs asap.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Ok, so your argument then is based on players not wanting to take their time and properly gear for the end-game? That it's somehow perfectly acceptable for undergeared / unprepared players to be carried through Adv PvEs, causing either a failed optional or a total fail?
All you're saying in your two posts is that you want the rewards the quickest way possible, with the least amount of work. That isn't Cryptic's fault, and it's not the result of any reward decision Cryptic made. In fact, they've made it far easier to get rep gear now. All elite marks are available in battlezones as of the last reward revamp:
- Isomorphic Injections = Solanae Space Battlezone
- Ancient Power Cells = Kobali Prime
- Cybernetic Implants = Solanae Ground Battlezone
- Neural Processors = Defera Invasion Zone
In your previous post, you said...
There are other ways of getting better geared, and there are other ways of getting elite marks for the rep gear. You're just choosing one way over the others, while complaining that somehow you "don't have a choice" and "need" to play above your toon's skill level (just want to emphasize toon, and not the player here. A player may be a long-time vet, but a fresh lvl50 toon is still a rookie).
Players cannot complain about being forced into content, or being forced to do something, when there are completely accessible alternatives. Cryptic is not to blame, and the other players complaining about poorly-geared players in Adv PvE aren't to blame either. The only ones making it harder for themselves are the players who are taking shortcuts to the end-game.
STO is an MMO, and it's not a pay-to-win MMO so gearing up for the end-game takes time and effort.
On other hand it wouldn't seem like such a grindfest though if you guys at cryptic would do something more creative like make multiple maps for these missions where something different is happening or even can adjust it to where based on how story developes different stuff is happening so ppl doing normal would always get the bare bones of whats needed/expected for reps but advanced could be the queue for getting away from the same ole grind.
The only other thing is I haven't played these new ones for season 10 yet but it just seems like its a cross faction version of klingon only stuff feds haven't played yet but will be new to them but not new to them. Just with the klingon looking stuff like starbase defenses from the description of these blogs.
They've been working on almost exactly that, which is nice to see. The Delta patrols have some elements of randomness to them, which is a first crack at making patrols less grindy. And Battle of Korfez's 2nd and 3rd stages are varied from within a few possible situations. The Crystaline Entity queue also has a handful of obstacles to choose from, during the event run.
Adding more of that unexpected / randomized content is great. That introduces a bit of a challenge, or at least some uncertainty at not being exactly sure what's coming next.
I still wish there was loot tables fit for the difficulty level of the queue... some RNG in the mix can be fun (frustrating, but fun).
And what exactly is an "undergeared" player supposed to do while they are grinding away at crafting and dilithium and contributing to fleet projects for the hope of getting better gear that could otherwise be obtained in less than a week via the advanced queues? Are they just supposed to sit around and twiddle their thumbs? Replay the same "skill-level appropriate content" over and over and over again for months while they grind their crafting rep and try to save up millions of EC needed to buy the DOFFs required to actually craft something once you've spent 40 days getting a school to level 15?
And yes, like every other human being on the planet, I want the most reward for the least amount of effort. STO is a game, after all, not a job. I already have one of those. I don't want to come home and start another one for "fun".
So if you don't like the Battlezones? Well tough **** for you, do them anyway, cause that's where you'll find those elite marks you need? So what if they make you work 10x harder, and take 10x longer than what it takes to get an elite mark in an advanced queue. You're inferior! You must WORK for it! I'm sorry, but that's bull****. It's a game. It's supposed to be fun, not a chore. If it's not fun I'm not going to play. I don't find Battlefields to be fun. And I'm not a big fan of ground combat. So all the alternatives you listed are not viable to me, and I'm betting many others since all of those zones are designed for advanced players to begin with. So again, you're telling people with crappy gear who want better gear that they shouldn't be going into the only places where they can get the materials they need for better gear. Uh-huh.
And yet you still don't see the problem. Almost as if you don't really want the unwashed masses obtaining better gear because then they have the chance of being as good if not better than you. And we can't have F2P players do that! They need to know their place! Like flying a T4 ship using Mk X white gear! And to Hell with them if they want better. Grind, you cheapskate! GRIND!!!
This is a good change Trendy. I could imagine this to be in favour of the majority of players in game I know, including me.
Gaming industry seems to be a tough business. If too many customers run off to other products where they are being granted a satisfactory game experience in their free time peeps on the other side of the table may start loosing jobs.
I hope such a thing never happens to STO and measurements like these ensure that best in my opinion.
I hope you dont expect any thanks over it though Trendy. You just reinstate your game more to a state under witch it ran successful for years.
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What took so long?
Hopefully a lesson learned about listening to "L337135."
It's a game not the Olympics!
I say this because most of the time whenever I ran into the game, I only find people who brag about their pve skills but when I queue them on advanced or elite, they said they don't know how to do it because they always do "Standard".
My only problem with Azure Nebula is that it gives too little marks, I prefer Mine Trap but it seems everybody in this game are too scared to play it. I don't understand why there's a complaint about failing optionals, if the players don't equip their ships right, it's not your fault, cryptic. I don't have any problems with the optionals. If you can't complete them, stick to normals or learn how to play, end of story.
I just want to get to 60 so I can play on elite again. People keep telling me how scary the elite difficulty is. So obviously, I don't believe them! No, it took me too long to get to 60 because I'm bored with how easy the game is, I just log in to do my dailies & log off to play something fun & challenging.
Cryptic, you know it's not your fault when players run & gun to their own deaths, right? Stop rewarding this attitude, this attitude is why I don't pug. Yes, I like to help people, just tell me if you need help. But I can't help them if they just want to kill themselves & pissed off the rest of the team members.
Happened to see this as I skimmed the thread and saw it sugested at least by one or two. The problem with this is it's already in place (elite unlocks at 60) and yet we still have players who don't know what to do or how to equip ev suits. Powerlevel to 60 then the problem continues.
We'll just have to see if this works, it's a positive step though I'm reluctant to shower Cryptic with praise just yet they have a nasty habit of punishing me for it. Sometimes though the community is it's own worst enemy and Cryptic can try try try to make difficulty work but as someone pointed out players will go for the best reward regardless of how good they are and unless Cryptic makes players play normal>advance>elite then players will often bypass the loess rewarding stuff.
This, I feel, is only a small step in the right direction. But I have this feeling that PWE/Cryptic is only doing this because they are noticing that the number of players that are playing are dwindling. Last time I tried to queue up for an Advanced PvE, I had to wait for almost 30 minutes.
Also, didn't Cryptic say that Advanced was the OLD ELITE? It's starting to look like it's getting that way.
Now, let's see how far this change is going to go. It'll go one of 2 ways. 1. The changes are for the better and people start playing more again, or 2. Cryptic sees that they aren't making any money and they'll put it back.
Yea it does indeed. But ONLY if someone is willing to invest hundred of thousands of Dil for gear upgrades, multiple hours for SP tree grind and perhaps even ship mastery traits. Then you are granted the same experience in this game u already had before Delta rising in old elite mode.
Im curious if people like to play to regain something they already had or if they rather play to progress. One can trigger that feeling only with higher rewards but they still seem lower for advanced now than they have been in old elite.
Adding 1 salvage tech to advanced and 3 to new elite would probably do the trick a bit better and more players would go for cryptics recourse sinks and more importantly play the game.
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OH! Wonderful Wonderful!
It looks like the Dino Campers et.al. will no longer be able to watch other people earn their rewards for them...those lazy, heinous, and outright blights to the game...isn't this Wonderful!
Thanks Cryptic. REALLY no sarcasm here just a plain old THANK YOU.
Campers Beware! Your Days Are Numbered!
What? PvP Nerf Herders Strike Back. Thanks a lot PvP crowd. Your weaksauce ships were melting because you couldn't keep up with the elite among your group. And for that, you screamed bloody murder. And now all of us have to suffer with your weakest link sorry TRIBBLE$e$!!!!!
Vice Admiral Volmack ISS Thundermole
Brigadier General Jokag IKS Gorkan
Centurion Kares RRW Tomalak
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
/ˈäpSH(ə)n(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: optional
available to be chosen but not obligatory
in other words, a queue with an "optional" objective should NEVER fail if it is not completed.
However, some of the awards can/should be attached to these "optional" objectives being completed...
Thanks for not keeping up with that line.
I for one am looking forward to these changes and hope it will work out good. Hopefully it will bring some life back into the queues so we have more options instead of the same 4 or so events that people will only queue for.