Already missing the bonus XP...

imruined

Though I can't say I really went out of my way this past week to grind XP, I am definitely missing the bonus all the same...

The rate of XP gain, I felt anyway, wasn't too over the top, yet at the same time felt far more like, I guess for lack of a better term, the rate at which it should be normally...

I could just cruise around casually doing my own thing, and gain a level every few hours, or I could knuckle down and hit up a circuit of patrols and STF's and gain a level in about an hour...

Steps in the right direction have indeed been made recently, but last weeks' bonus XP event made pretty clear to me - and no doubt many others - just how much further attention is indeed needed on the rate at which players gain Spec Points, on a normal basis...

cpc2011a

Totally agree. I was actually enjoying myself again. I only really ran my recruit last week instead of grinding alts. Now that the bonus is gone it's back to a slow crawl to the next spec point, and rapid boredom.

bobtheskull99

meh, tbo i'm annoyed I was able to get my DR to 60 so quickly.....hitting what is essentially the level cap in less than 2 weeks is way too fast

if season 10 wasn't right around the corner I would be worried about getting bored

seaofsorrows

Leveling felt ridiculously slow to begin with..

Now after a week of bonus XP it feels even slower. I actually wish I did more grinding last week.

drakethewhite

As normal, leveling under 50 went extremely fast. This is as should be in an MMO this age, it's rather common.

After that grinding Spec Points was slow even with the doubling. Now, I don't even try and will get them by Doffing whose primary goal is feeding the Starbase. Likely one per week.

That will be fine if they don't dump more on us soon.

lucho80

During event. Took me two and a half hours of "I want to take out my eyes" painful grinding for a single specialization point.

Now, I just can't bring myself to do it. They think the dilithium prize after you fill everything is something great so they should control it. It isn't. You make way, way more by playing Turok Dinosaur Hunter in the ground battlezone.

voivodje

Ditto, it would be nice they bring it back.
Still have 2 DR's to do.

I cleansed all, to make nothing but DR's, lol.

chandlerashari

I second the ops feeling.

Xp should be 2x now all the time

questerius

For my main Fed engineer i've had the specialization tree filled for some time now, but the bonus was very nice on my newer and less developed klingon and romulan characters.

Would not mind one bit if the regular XP rewarded was doubled.

stofsk

I didn't really take advantage of the bonus XP week and now I am filled with shame and regret.

warpangel

Getting to level 10 before finishing the tutorial, level 20 before picking an ally (as a Romulan) and level 50 in the 4th story arc (rated L21, and taking place in a zone that scales you down to L26 if you're over), is is so far over the top its a hazard to air traffic, and nowhere near "the rate at which it should be normally."

1-50 is too fast even without bonus XP, 50-60 is about right, and spec point grinding is a fool's errand.

theroyalfamily

stofsk wrote: »

I didn't really take advantage of the bonus XP week and now I am filled with shame and regret.

I couldn't really last week, and now I'm filled with anger and frustration. It certainly doesn't help that I hit 50 right when the Cardassian arc starts, and for some reason the missions only reward half the xp, even though they are as long as any of the newer missions.

voivodje

warpangel wrote: »

Getting to level 10 before finishing the tutorial, level 20 before picking an ally (as a Romulan) and level 50 in the 4th story arc (rated L21, and taking place in a zone that scales you down to L26 if you're over), is is so far over the top its a hazard to air traffic, and nowhere near "the rate at which it should be normally."

That's OK though: in space there's plenty of room.
Ships crashing into one another in space is virtually impossible.

p4hajuju

Nope not missing it at all. Didn't actually even play so much during the week. Some Advanced queues, few Elite, public queues. Even queued for pvp to blow up a few times, but there was no pvp to be played.

My alts might have either Pilot or Commando filled so far, main has Intel, Pilot and Commando. Didn't start Command, because the Pilot tree will change so I'll do that in a slow pace when it comes out.

There's what 90 spec points at the moment? 15 more comes with the pilot tree expansion, so not really much leveling in that way.

In another game there's a similar system with a high xp requirement and 3600 points, if I understood correctly. 90 or 105 isn't really much and as I perform in a ok level with all my chars I don't need to finish the "grind" fast.

Fleet Phantom is Nigh!

voivodje

I hope they reconsider and bring the Exp event back, for the rest of the duration of the DR event, this was what I actually expected that would happen...

Dear Devs, throw us an Exp. boon, pwease...

neomodious

theroyalfamily wrote: »

I couldn't really last week, and now I'm filled with anger and frustration. It certainly doesn't help that I hit 50 right when the Cardassian arc starts, and for some reason the missions only reward half the xp, even though they are as long as any of the newer missions.

I'm pretty sure that's just an element they put in that rescales XP past 50...

leviathan99

I still think they could make this work so much better if they:

1. Had around 100% bonus that could be earned for a week. Heck, even if it just triggered off some kind of playtime metric. Ie. Complete 10 queued events and the bonus kicks in. Great! A reason to play for awhile.

2. Had a paid 100% bonus that is calendar based and not this X% bonus until Y total. Like a 100% bonus for gold. Great reason to stay gold.

3. Finally, in addition to a reason to pay and a reason to play, a reason to login. One free spec point for completing, say, a mission replay. Only available once per week.

These bonuses stack.

I think a good rule of thumb is that you need:

1. A reason to login. (First step. You're not getting the other two without this.)

2. A reason to play. (Playing makes everything else more valuable and better and should not feel futile.)

3. A reason to pay. (Absolutely. This is a business with expenses. The trick is that paying shouldn't feel coercive... but it also shouldn't feel futile. You may not want P2W perceived but you also don't want people who paid to feel or look as though they lost out for paying. If buyers look like suckers, there's an image problem. You want players who pay when they can and who want or aspire to pay when they can't, without feeling cheated.)

Any promotion (or policy or mechanic) that doesn't have three separate value offerings for each of these steps is, I think, going to be far more spotty and erratic in terms of Cryptic's results.

I know it rankles the achiever mentality to have participation awards and that a disproportionate number of developers have a heavily developed sense of fairness (it draws people into gaming if they like rules, order, structure, consequences) BUT getting people to just login is a completely different but prerequisite thing to enticing them to play. And certain methods of enticing people to play may turn them away from logging in.

You need to have both an appeal to login and an appeal to play. They're separate things.

I THINK people get the idea of play vs. pay better because it's a developed theoretical construct in F2P design that lots of people talk about and you get into discussions about P2W.

But login vs. play is another set of opposing ideas.

- Reward someone too much for logging in relative to the rewards of actively playing and playing seems futile, which makes people stop logging in.

- Reward someone too little for just logging in relative to the rewards of actively playing and logging in seems futile (because you're jumping into a daunting process that you aren't missing anything if you put off playing; it will be no less of a grind tomorrow) and then people stop playing which makes logging in worthless.

Playing actively vs. logging in have conflicting value needs. Emphasizing one without ALSO making an appeal to the other causes problems. Maybe not immediately but I imagine it's like having a tire with a slow leak that you're always having to put air back into. The way you patch the tire is by treating logging in vs. playing as competing ideas that need to be balanced to one another just like paying vs. playing are.

cpc2011a

I was thinking about how the xp week went, and the speed at which everyone was able to level. I came to this conclusion. Leveling from one to fifty should stay the way it is, and leveling from 50 and beyond would feel much better if the gains were at the same rate as they were during the XP week. I think a lot of people felt comfortable with that rate, as it wasn't too over the top for rewards, and it wasn't causing extreme grind boredom. They keep saying they are looking for balance or whatever, and personally I think that would be a good balance.