Which gets into a game like Witcher 3...and calling it art. It's a commissioned product. There was all sorts of feedback involved in its creation. It wasn't created in a vacuum. There was a target audience...and...the game was created for them. Done right, and those folks might fall over themselves about how awesome it is...and possibly even consider it art. Others...not so much.
Again. Opinions can't make Earth a cube. Not a commissioned product like COD or BF are for example.
Witcher 3 is a self-published game, and yes it's art by any definition, and far more important it's a great game in every aspect.
Developer and artist talent, vision, effort and skill is visible on every step. Just like in GTAV, MGS, Half-Life etc.
And you are wrong that it's made based on some kind of imagined feedback, only in technical area where very, very small number of technical bugs are eliminated on the spot.(read: same week)
It must not be a game for you, but it's a great game. It ticks every box and it makes money for developers. Whereas-
Which gets back to STO...it's a commissioned product with a target audience. Folks that aren't part of that target audience...aren't going to enjoy it as much as that group. Which is where in wanting Cryptic to apply development resources elsewhere...well, it's going to be a case of needing that feedback (just like any other game) as well as funding it in some way.
Yes, STO is a commissioned product and it isn't a good game by any valid standard.
Trying to equalize STO with TW3 or whatnot is so wrong that it is absurd.
Reviews would read 1/10 - 4/10 max for STO.
Ask any developer, better yet, ask STO developers would they rather be known as makers of TW3, GTAV, Bloodborne,(to name new games) or STO?
Technically STO is:
- Outdated yet demanding.
- Video, Audio, UI, gameplay Bugs everywhere
- servers unstable, lagging and crashing
Sounds like some pre-Alpha game, right?
Story content?:
- inconsistent with franchise it's based upon
- low effort buggy missions without story substance and any real gameplay
Mechanics:
- Auto-aim in ground and space- no precision flying/moving and no real positioning needed
- Cooldown and crit-hit/crit-chance/crit-power RNG mechanics that should simulate build strategy, precision(timing) and positioning tactics are actively broken by developers by selling items that circumvent any skill or effort requirement.
Imagine Battlefield or CS where you can buy a gun for real money that fires around corners and hits even unseen, non targeted enemies(FAW/Spread/FBP/TBR), through walls(penetration proc, Thalaron/FBP/TBR),
Bullets that shoot 3x damage received back to seen/unseen attacker when you're shot and through shields (FBP).
Or where you can upgrade your character for $ to be faster then everyone not paying, to use 3x more powerful bullets etc. etc. etc.
-Shield protects Hull mechanics that are completely invalidated by expensive items
-DOFF mechanics that make your auto-aiming, shield-penetrating, all-seeing, 360x360 degrees all-hitting repulsor beam, a beam that will do all that but hold the target in place as well.
- Ship Trait mechanics that make your one-shot 50cal sniper a rapid-fire 50 cal sniper without loss of precision
List of what's wrong in STO is a 1000 page long book.
So to the core problem:
What is gameplay in STO? What is gaming content, component?
Space PvE? Ground PvE? PvP? "Exploration"? Timed events? Filling reputations? Fleet project grinding? Grinding R&D system? Dilithium Grinding? Gear grindng? Specialization grinding? Lobi grinding? EC grinding? Limited events gear grinding? Reputation grinding?
All that amounts to what goal? To play better? nah.
There is no gaming challenge in STO unless you handicap yourself to simulate challenge.
Only challenge is if you are willing to spend money/time or both to get advantage over NPC or a player or game mechanics with one simple goal. To grind faster.
Bottom line:
10-200hr exciting, beautiful, challenging, technically and artistically polished game for $50 or a ship for $50 that will be outdated next week, month, year.
What a dilemma right there.
So, "How can we(players) monetize PvP(to make Cryptic devs consider making it slightly playable and in turn to attract new and old players to PvP again and in turn to make Cryptic more money by players doing the thinking and testing?" is the stupidest question ever in a book of Very Stupid Questions.
so a complete newbie who gets stomped will end up deprived of dilithium or discouraged from doing PvP, or both.
That'll happen with or without rewards, but at there should be an incentive for trying* and improving.
*And by trying, I don't mean just sitting AFK at spawn, rushing in with no shields, or getting yourself killed once and refusing to respawn.
We'd need to devise a system or method to ensure that only people who are actively participating get the rewards.
It's one thing to only get 10kdamage/20k healing because you're not experienced, but it's another thing to get 10k damage/20k healing from your warp core explosion/Fleet Support and proc heals from the one time you rushed in and then sat the rest out.
That'll happen with or without rewards, but at there should be an incentive for trying* and improving.
*And by trying, I don't mean just sitting AFK at spawn, rushing in with no shields, or getting yourself killed once and refusing to respawn.
We'd need to devise a system or method to ensure that only people who are actively participating get the rewards.
It's one thing to only get 10kdamage/20k healing because you're not experienced, but it's another thing to get 10k damage/20k healing from your warp core explosion/Fleet Support and proc heals from the one time you rushed in and then sat the rest out.
AFK penalty is the answer, they have the code for it already, it needs adaptation. Consider healing, consider damage dealt and exclude the one dealt by warp/singularity core explosions. If none of them are enough to justify participation you get no rewards.
Also, including ship movement in that would be helpful. If the player's ship is idle for a long time, again no rewards.
You can't think in PvE terms of rewarding a kill. There are also healers which won't kill anyone but are essential for any good team. Shouldn't they get rewarded too? At best you reward participation, much like Voth Battlezone does right now.
At last, you can't think as well of deprivate a player, even of a small fraction, of their money, aka dilithium. You just don't, it's theirs and as a golden rule shall not decrease, unless it's spent.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
AFK penalty is the answer, they have the code for it already, it needs adaptation. Consider healing, consider damage dealt and exclude the one dealt by warp/singularity core explosions. If none of them are enough to justify participation you get no rewards.
Also, including ship movement in that would be helpful. If the player's ship is idle for a long time, again no rewards.
You can't think in PvE terms of rewarding a kill. There are also healers which won't kill anyone but are essential for any good team. Shouldn't they get rewarded too? At best you reward participation, much like Voth Battlezone does right now.
At last, you can't think as well of deprivate a player, even of a small fraction, of their money, aka dilithium. You just don't, it's theirs and as a golden rule shall not decrease, unless it's spent.
What about simply using time in combat? Spend at least 80% of the time that you are alive in combat, to allow for time to run back to the action after respawning?
I definitely don't think people should lose anything by PvP'ing, but a reduction in reward would provide incentive to actually do something.
I definitely don't think people should lose anything by PvP'ing, but a reduction in reward would provide incentive to actually do something.
that's what I've been trying to say all along lol.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
Again. Opinions can't make Earth a cube. Not a commissioned product like COD or BF are for example.
Witcher 3 is a self-published game, and yes it's art by any definition, and far more important it's a great game in every aspect.
Developer and artist talent, vision, effort and skill is visible on every step. Just like in GTAV, MGS, Half-Life etc.
And you are wrong that it's made based on some kind of imagined feedback, only in technical area where very, very small number of technical bugs are eliminated on the spot.(read: same week)
It must not be a game for you, but it's a great game. It ticks every box and it makes money for developers. Whereas-
Yes, STO is a commissioned product and it isn't a good game by any valid standard.
Trying to equalize STO with TW3 or whatnot is so wrong that it is absurd.
Reviews would read 1/10 - 4/10 max for STO.
Ask any developer, better yet, ask STO developers would they rather be known as makers of TW3, GTAV, Bloodborne,(to name new games) or STO?
See, here's the thing....again. All you've expressed there is an opinion. It doesn't read as if you understand that. Further, much of your reaction kind of comes off like a kid being told that Santa Claus isn't real - you're not ready to accept reality.
Also, you're incorrect about it being a self-published game. You're coming off like a rabid fanboi about it. It's like reading some of the reviews where it gets a perfect score...how are they giving it a perfect score after having talked about so many problems with it?
The worst part is, to this point, you still don't see how you're comparing apples to oranges there. You can't see that not everybody is like you, and you can't get that perhaps simply STO was designed/isn't developed with somebody like you as the intended audience.
Nobody's saying STO is anywhere near perfect. But somebody that wants a burger isn't going to go into a pizza joint, right? Ask Stephen, ask Al, ask anybody on the STO team...is STO competing with Witcher? Is that the intended audience for the game? Is STO targeting random gamers and competing with random games for their money? Or is STO a casual game where they're trying to offer the Star Trek fan out there a chance to experience a bit of Star Trek fun in a game?
You're not the first random gamer to stumble into a MMO forum to tell them they're doing everything wrong....
- Cooldown and crit-hit/crit-chance/crit-power RNG mechanics that should simulate build strategy, precision(timing) and positioning tactics are actively broken by developers by selling items that circumvent any skill or effort requirement.
Imagine Battlefield or CS where you can buy a gun for real money that fires around corners and hits even unseen, non targeted enemies(FAW/Spread/FBP/TBR), through walls(penetration proc, Thalaron/FBP/TBR),
Bullets that shoot 3x damage received back to seen/unseen attacker when you're shot and through shields (FBP).
Or where you can upgrade your character for $ to be faster then everyone not paying, to use 3x more powerful bullets etc. etc. etc.
-Shield protects Hull mechanics that are completely invalidated by expensive items
What expensive items? Don't get me wrong, all the bleed through stuff - imho - stands out like a sore thumb as having one overboard...but expensive items?
-DOFF mechanics that make your auto-aiming, shield-penetrating, all-seeing, 360x360 degrees all-hitting repulsor beam, a beam that will do all that but hold the target in place as well.
So to the core problem:
What is gameplay in STO? What is gaming content, component?
Space PvE? Ground PvE? PvP? "Exploration"? Timed events? Filling reputations? Fleet project grinding? Grinding R&D system? Dilithium Grinding? Gear grindng? Specialization grinding? Lobi grinding? EC grinding? Limited events gear grinding? Reputation grinding?
All that amounts to what goal? To play better? nah.
There is no gaming challenge in STO unless you handicap yourself to simulate challenge.
Right, so what you're saying is this game might not be for you.
Only challenge is if you are willing to spend money/time or both to get advantage over NPC or a player or game mechanics with one simple goal. To grind faster.
While I do not consider that much of a challenge - imho - there's little doubt that I've stood there in some threads with folks with a wtf look on my face asking them why they're so concerned with running that treadmill to nowhere faster.
Bottom line:
10-200hr exciting, beautiful, challenging, technically and artistically polished game for $50 or a ship for $50 that will be outdated next week, month, year.
What a dilemma right there.
And again...that's all preference, all opinion, yadda - yadda - yadda.
I spent $5 in 2012. I spent $5 in 2013. I spent $0 in 2014. I've spent $0 so far in 2015.
I've got two level 60 toons right now. I did another of the delete/reroll things just before Delta Rising. I usually do it once a year.
[System] Willard the Rat has been on active duty for 46 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes, 35 seconds.
Willard was rolled just before Delta Rising. That's over 1113 hours on him there.
[System] Meena has been on active duty for 9 days, 17 hours, 7 minutes, 59 seconds.
Meena was created as a Delta Recruit. That's over 233 hours on her there.
Almost 1400 hours of gameplay there...that cost me...$0.
The last non-MMO game that I bought for over $5 was in Feb 2009. With them sitting next to the MMOs I was also playing, it was no contest for me where my money was going to go.
I went from gamer to MMO gamer.
But like I said earlier, you're not the first person to come crying into MMO forums that a MMO wasn't some other type of game.
Guess what? There are all sorts of different types of games for different things folks are looking for...
...you don't go in the Pizza Hut and complain they're not Applebees when there's an Applebees right next door. You want Applebees...you go there. You want Pizza Hut...you go there.
It's a simple thing that most folks get. It's only the few...
So, "How can we(players) monetize PvP(to make Cryptic devs consider making it slightly playable and in turn to attract new and old players to PvP again and in turn to make Cryptic more money by players doing the thinking and testing?" is the stupidest question ever in a book of Very Stupid Questions.
With regard to participation...meh, perhaps I'm jaded from what other games have tried doing and how it's just not worked.
You create participation requirements. Damage, healing, activating abilities, moving...etc...and...somebody drops their cat on the keyboard while watching TV.
There is little incentive to try if there is any reward for not trying. There is little incentive to try if it is possible to be rewarded for faking it.
People suck.
Hit up the forums for a bunch of different MMOs out there - take a look at PvP - look for AFKing - see how those games have tried to deal with it - see how it hasn't really addressed things.
People suck.
It's turned PvP into pee wee soccer...yay, I got a trophy cause I had perfect attendance while sitting on the bench and cheering on my team...gooooooo, me! /facepalm
Where are folks going to try? When they've got something to lose...but that kind of PvP in this game? Heh, just can't see it...
making it money-gated is a baaaaad idea, and you should feel baaaaad... Is that what you meant right? lol
No really, to make it more appealing right now you need to adjust the mechanics, not selling it. It would be another way to discourage players from playing it.
The money will come from people investing resources to buy good ships, stuff, doffs and traits in order to mix and match their builds, just like it was pre-DR. The upgrade system, overpowered things and sheer imbalance between new and old players are what killed it.
"good ships and stuff" is part of the whole problem that hurts PvP!
If Cryptic can make money by selling stuff that's better than what was there before, they have a strong incentive to make it a pay-to-win game, or at least to simply make overpowered stuff, knowing that it will motivate people to buy the newest stuff.
PvP without balance means less variety, as the underpowered stuff will be seen as useless, and everyone jumps on the next OP stuff. Wonderful invitation for Cryptic to never balance too hard.
What you might actually want is a system where OP stuff can be deliberately banned by players.
A basic system could be something like that both sides get to nominate n things they don't want the other side to use, and it's banned for all players involved. Each side makes their own picks, so in the end, the most OP TRIBBLE will likely be banned in any matches.
Of course, that works better in games like Leaguee of Legends, where there are only specific "heroes" that come with a more or less fixed list of abilities. In STO with its many, many ships and gear elements it's less easy.
But as a template perhaps:
Each team nominates 2 ships that can't be used.
Each team can pick to ban one item from the following list:
Universal Consoles
Devices
Specializations
Battle Cloak
Duty Officers
---
Okay, but that's not a monetization scheme yet, of course, just a prerequisite so that any monetization scheme ends not to be abusive.
There is one element however that already lends itself to "monetization": Loadouts
PVP players will want plenty of them, so they can adjust their ship to the possible "disallowed" ship types, and switch from a forbidden ship to an allowed one.
----
Other thing I would say is:
PvP matches can be ranked or unranked. (Seperate Queues)
Ranked matches come with leaderboards and all that stuff. Ranked Matches also reward Dilithium and lots of Energy Credits, more for the winner than for the loser, of course.
Ranked matches are the type of matches where the team can choose to ban certain items, as described above.
You get about 5 ranked matches per month as a F2P players. You get 15 matches as subscriber.
Additional ranked matches are available for either Zen or Dilithium.
If for Dilithium, the payout for winning a single ranked match should just be enough to play another ranked match. So someone that always wins can PvP for free, but if you're not that good (which most won't be), you may need to grind Dilithium in another matter or spend Zen.
Win/Loss Ratio but also number of ranked matches played affect the scoring for a special "Seasonal PvP Rewards" system that would be awarded every 6 months or so.
Say, a system consisting of "League" and Win/Loss based rankings.
Bronze League (1 to 50 ranked matches): Basic Reward
Silver League (50 to 150 ranked matches): Basic Reward x 2
Gold League (151+ ranked matches): Basic Reward x 4
The upper 20 % and the upper 50 % of the league earn rewards at the end of the season, then the rankings are reset.
Basic Rewards:
20 %: 1 Choice Of Mark Boxes with 100 Marks, 40.000 Dilithium, 1 R&D Box, 1 Master Key; Special Seasonal PvP Item; Title/Accolade (Top 20 %er, by PvP League)
Top 20-50 %: 1 Choice Of Mark Boxes with 25 Marks, 16.000 Dilithium, 1 R&D Box. 1 Master Key
Top 50 %: Special Combade (by Season and League), Special Fireworks Device (Like Fireworks, plus Season/League hologram); Special Ship Logo (by Season/League)
Everyone: Accolade "Participant" (By League); Very Rare (Bronze), Ultra-Rare (Silver) or Epic (Gold) seasonal Duty Officer or console.
So there are rewards even for people that can't play that much or afford to get many ranked matches. PvP hardcore players will likely find themselves in the Gold League and have the potential for hefty rewards.
Even weak PvP players have a reason to try to go for Gold, so they can earn certain accolades, titles, badges and DOFFs.
The cost for getting into the upper leagues will be what drives money into Cryptic's coffers.
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
"good ships and stuff" is part of the whole problem that hurts PvP!
If Cryptic can make money by selling stuff that's better than what was there before, they have a strong incentive to make it a pay-to-win game, or at least to simply make overpowered stuff, knowing that it will motivate people to buy the newest stuff.
PvP without balance means less variety, as the underpowered stuff will be seen as useless, and everyone jumps on the next OP stuff. Wonderful invitation for Cryptic to never balance too hard.
What you might actually want is a system where OP stuff can be deliberately banned by players.
A basic system could be something like that both sides get to nominate n things they don't want the other side to use, and it's banned for all players involved. Each side makes their own picks, so in the end, the most OP TRIBBLE will likely be banned in any matches.
Of course, that works better in games like Leaguee of Legends, where there are only specific "heroes" that come with a more or less fixed list of abilities. In STO with its many, many ships and gear elements it's less easy.
But as a template perhaps:
Each team nominates 2 ships that can't be used.
Each team can pick to ban one item from the following list:
Universal Consoles
Devices
Specializations
Battle Cloak
Duty Officers
---
Okay, but that's not a monetization scheme yet, of course, just a prerequisite so that any monetization scheme ends not to be abusive.
There is one element however that already lends itself to "monetization": Loadouts
PVP players will want plenty of them, so they can adjust their ship to the possible "disallowed" ship types, and switch from a forbidden ship to an allowed one.
----
Other thing I would say is:
PvP matches can be ranked or unranked. (Seperate Queues)
Ranked matches come with leaderboards and all that stuff. Ranked Matches also reward Dilithium and lots of Energy Credits, more for the winner than for the loser, of course.
Ranked matches are the type of matches where the team can choose to ban certain items, as described above.
You get about 5 ranked matches per month as a F2P players. You get 15 matches as subscriber.
Additional ranked matches are available for either Zen or Dilithium.
If for Dilithium, the payout for winning a single ranked match should just be enough to play another ranked match. So someone that always wins can PvP for free, but if you're not that good (which most won't be), you may need to grind Dilithium in another matter or spend Zen.
Win/Loss Ratio but also number of ranked matches played affect the scoring for a special "Seasonal PvP Rewards" system that would be awarded every 6 months or so.
Say, a system consisting of "League" and Win/Loss based rankings.
[*]Bronze League (1 to 50 ranked matches): Basic Reward
[*]Silver League (50 to 150 ranked matches): Basic Reward x 2
[*]Gold League (151+ ranked matches): Basic Reward x 4
[/LIST]
The upper 20 % and the upper 50 % of the league earn rewards at the end of the season, then the rankings are reset.
Basic Rewards:
20 %: 1 Choice Of Mark Boxes with 100 Marks, 40.000 Dilithium, 1 R&D Box, 1 Master Key; Special Seasonal PvP Item; Title/Accolade (Top 20 %er, by PvP League)
Top 20-50 %: 1 Choice Of Mark Boxes with 25 Marks, 16.000 Dilithium, 1 R&D Box. 1 Master Key
Top 50 %: Special Combade (by Season and League), Special Fireworks Device (Like Fireworks, plus Season/League hologram); Special Ship Logo (by Season/League)
Everyone: Accolade "Participant" (By League); Very Rare (Bronze), Ultra-Rare (Silver) or Epic (Gold) seasonal Duty Officer or console.
So there are rewards even for people that can't play that much or afford to get many ranked matches. PvP hardcore players will likely find themselves in the Gold League and have the potential for hefty rewards.
Even weak PvP players have a reason to try to go for Gold, so they can earn certain accolades, titles, badges and DOFFs.
The cost for getting into the upper leagues will be what drives money into Cryptic's coffers.
Going to need to grab some more caffeine to digest that all...but it looks like you're going for a comprehensive approach to the matter, taking into account some of what needs to be done before hand, what can be done during and how to provide options for players of different desires there without hitting them all up with it. Hrmm, yeah, going to grab some caffeine...
* * * * *
The banning bit...that could be rough for some folks, cause some folks want to ban all sorts of things, eh? Would expect to see some "hate" on that angle. But perhaps like the old Naz PvP Concerns threads, it could get into a healthy discussion about items...the reasonableness of the various counters, the lack of counters, and the like. It wouldn't be any sort of magic wand thing, but perhaps it could provide for a test case of things for Cryptic to take a look at some additional PvP/PvE separation (cause they have done things, X vs. NPCs and Y vs. Players).
Cause banning...having folks arguing about that stuff...is bad press, yeah? Gets into fights...not just amongst PvPers but between PvPers and the rest of the players over things. (Heh, doesn't mean that balance for PvE gets thrown out the window - just that PvP might require a more delicate touch.) And with that sort of thing, you maintain a certain higher level of build diversity while also not adversely affecting public opinion on items. Positive press sort stuff, yeah?
And...it would be a thing where once folks were back in doing PvP...just like events, they might end up spending money on other things, eh?
The ranked stuff gets a little rough, cause it reads like you're going to be mixing pugs and premades there...it being more about individuals than about teams. Which is going to lead to folks being outclassed and likely not wishing to participate, eh? I mean, I know you tied it into the banning stuff at the start of the match based on what the teams wanted, but is it premade teams or pug teams?
It's something that could potentially be split into individual and team sorts of challenges/rewards, eh?
But the idea of "Cryptic sponsored" tournaments...seasonal things (perhaps 3 months rather than 6, tying more into the 3 month cycles Cryptic does)...with the possibility of rewards there (as long as some of the balance concerns are addressed), one might get into the buy in sort of thing for better rewards, eh?
Could get into the thing if possible, where the matches for a season ending tournament could even have the 11th man in it - the spectator thing, eh? Cause that would get into the potential for some Twitch action and the like...getting spectators in...giveaways...building some excitement about PvP in the game.
And with that excitement...well, you might just get butts in seats with the potential for some revenue from those players, yeah?
Monetization of PvP from getting folks in the game...TRIBBLE in chair...and so forth. Working it like they work the various events...getting folks in the game in the hopes that they spend while they're there, right?
So take some steps to make PvP more balanced/attractive in that regard, create events of various durations, create bigger events...make the game more attractive...make more money.
Course, there would likely be all sorts of "PvE advertising" that would take place as well...cause this is primarily a PvE game.
One could even get into some Competitive PvE there as well...as an indirect form of PvP, but a type of PvP some might enjoy more or along with direct PvP.
And of course they'd have to find a way to also point out to folks that STO's not some hardcore MMO, lol...so that there's plenty of stuff for all sorts of folks to do. But it gets into that kind of proactive marketing to widen the playerbase instead of how it's kind of focused on a certain group in the past few years.
Never mind: I'm too tired right now, will come up with something better another time.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
How can we monetize PvP? By balancing the game and bringing the thousands of PvPers who left, back into the fold.
It really is that simple.
PvP died because of cryptic and only cryptic can revive it and make the PvPers come back. But, of course, they don't want to stop the money generating stuff to work on PvP. In fact, they don't want to spend or waste a dime if they don't have to.
They have some real mizers in their upper ranks. When you have a company that is run by people who can make change and can sit on a dollar, create 100 pennies, and only give you back 1 penny, then you are left with basically nothing but what they say you'll get.
Anyway...
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
Sharx, please just let it go and leave. All you've done here is embodying the epitome of hypocrisy having denounced all the old-guard players that left the game but who did still post on the forums, while you are doing the exact same thing.
You want the game to get better by inducing some armageddon scenario and start of with a clean slate? Guess what, that's not on the table. So either get going or deliver some constructive feedback.
There need to be an incentive for players to join pvp before a reconstruction can happen. I know this is counter-intuitive, but it's what needs to happen. Most probably a crux of the F2P model.
Right now you seem to be at stage 3 of "The 7 Stages of Grief". Anger. Maybe it will take a little while until you've transitioned over to stage 7 and you can be a member of this community again ...
One thing that they could look at to start with, would be a large combination of things that have been said and suggested countless times here, while combining it with their love for reps/slottable/etc etc etc.
Step 1: Start with whatever ship you have. Escorts generally run only one of a few builds. CRF/Omega being prolly the longest standing. Sci ships have healer or cc builds. Cryptic can easily obtain the majority of these builds looking at their side of things, or simply ask for input on it from the community.
Step 2: Create a clone version of the ship you are piloting. This is the "PvP Ship" or "White gear ship" that keeps getting tossed around in numerous threads. Take the builds you have from step 1 and create say, three options. Escorts could chose from a historic CRF+Omega build, a more aggressive Beam overload style build, or a vaper-ish setup. Sci ships would have say two healing setups and 1 particle craziness setup to chose from. All gear on these items will be white and unleveled, no mods at all.
Step 3: Normalize defense. One thing that blows my mind is that a sci ship is so easily pushed to 160% constant bonus defense as of Delta Rising. This should be zoom zoom escort territory. Resists as well should scale off "what you are". Engineers should have the highest base hull res. Sci should have the highest base shield res. Escorts should be on the weak side. This essentially will "roll back" pvp to about s2-4.
Step 4: Create a PvP Reputation system. The tiers should give moderate rewards per level for both ground and space pvp. +2.5% All res. +2.5% Bonus damage while under the effects of an attack pattern. Nothing crazy. Small boosts here and there to improve your ship. The dil store should take the now going away [Pvp-Dmg] and [Pvp-res] mods and apply them as SINGLE modded white items in the store(and actually make them work). Rep items being slightly more powerful, but nothing to the point that we got with Neutronic torp spreads please.
Step 5: Create a daily system based on the class you are entering PvP with. This shouldn't be hard to do assuming Steps 1 and 2 are followed, the game will know what daily it "Should" give you. Escorts will wind up with a # of kill or # of damage daily. Sci ships should wind up with a heals GIVEN (not recieved so someone can idle epts at the spawn all day) or a damage output if theyre in PM form. Engineers should uh, damage received? Sorry drawing a blank there haha. Tie this into the same reward system mark wise as say doing a daily patrol, and reward dil on completion of the daily only.
This took me about 20 minutes to think up, and it was mostly done by reading input from other people on the forums in various posts, maybe 5% of that is my own thoughts/opinions. You create a dil sink (rep items) specifically for pvp, so there is your "monetization" so to speak.
However, even after typing all this, I know theres people that WANT to play with their shineys. That want to have X advantage over Y% of the playerbase because of invested time or money, etc etc etc. The problem cryptic faces is you can't please everyone at the same time, even in a community as small as the pvp community.
Step 5: Create a daily system based on the class you are entering PvP with. This shouldn't be hard to do assuming Steps 1 and 2 are followed, the game will know what daily it "Should" give you. Escorts will wind up with a # of kill or # of damage daily. Sci ships should wind up with a heals GIVEN (not recieved so someone can idle epts at the spawn all day) or a damage output if theyre in PM form. Engineers should uh, damage received? Sorry drawing a blank there haha. Tie this into the same reward system mark wise as say doing a daily patrol, and reward dil on completion of the daily only.
Heh, didn't mean to snip that in a rude fashion - not to ignore the rest - but yeah, when you got to Engineers and the blank, that's the rough thing about the game and the way it's set up to provide so much freedom with things, yeah? Trying to get into a "fair" way of tackling folks for scoring.
The table is generated by using weighted numbers for damage, healing, style, utility and kills. Damage that actually led to a kill is scored higher than simple overall damage output and crosshealing is rated higher than self-healing. Only players with 2 or more matches of sufficient game balance in the selected time frame can show up in the list.
Utility points are granted for using abilities that have a comparatively small damage/healing footprint, but which can have a big impact for the team. These are things like extends, chroniton weapons and many sci abilities like tractor beam, shockwave, gravity well, tyken's rift. (Unfortunately things like SS/VM/CPB/TachBeam don't show up in the log file at all, so they cannot be used fro the rating.)
Style points have a rather small impact on the final result. There are minor bonus poins for extends, psw and ramming speed. Currently the rest are style penalties for using certain pets (runabouts, drone ships, interceptors) and consoles (e.g. elachi console, temporal backstep). The effect on the final result is small because some of the really annoying things like TIF are not in the combat log.
Can't remember how much was tweaked after that. And yeah, it just points to some of the problems in scoring things - since certain things just aren't going to be there to be scored.
Heh, didn't mean to snip that in a rude fashion - not to ignore the rest - but yeah(
Its fine I'll just snip yours back! :eek:
Perhaps a better way to go about this as I confused some language in there typing kinda fast, rather than Tac/Sci/Eng to determine the dailies, it would be the type of ship you choose to pilot. Escort / Sci / Cruiser. All captains should logically have access to all, otherwise the fundamental game changes.
The problem is, what is it that cruisers do that is unique to cruisers. AoE commands? It'd be hard to score them, so perhaps they'd be a 50/50 style. Half the dps of an escorts daily + half the heals of a sci ships daily?
I'm sure just between the people that are left here we could brainstorm a workable system. Hell even Hilberts system is better than what we have in game even if it misses some things. The ideas that could power this system are pretty much endless, remove all power creep and yet still add a profit for cryptic that otherwise wouldn't happen. I'd reinstall in a heartbeat if this was actually a possibility though
I'm sure just between the people that are left here we could brainstorm a workable system. Hell even Hilberts system is better than what we have in game even if it misses some things. The ideas that could power this system are pretty much endless, remove all power creep and yet still add a profit for cryptic that otherwise wouldn't happen. I'd reinstall in a heartbeat if this was actually a possibility though
And that's kind of the thing...Monetization of PvP...could be just something done to get folks back in seats. Just like the various PvE Events can been as Monetization of PvE.
A deli offers a free coffee...person goes in, something smells good, and they end up grabbing a sandwich or something else too.
It's an TRIBBLE in chair problem...they need to get folks sitting at the game by offering them something that enough consider fun. Then just any other player, not every player is going to break out the wallet over everything - but with just like any other player, there might be that something they want...something smells good, grab a sandwich.
* * * * *
Something else, again just imho, gets into kind of what STO PvP lost. The premade action. Yeah, I've had my differences over the years with some of the premade groups out there - but there were also what I felt were the health premade groups, and it was a case of fighting for both pugs and premades in the game. Cause it provides something there...some folks might be fine just bouncing around pugging and having fun that way - but healthy premade action leads to an area for folks that might want to move up to do so...but without the healthy pugging action too, there just won't be the folks to feed that premade action. It's kind of two step thing...where, imho, Cryptic dropped the ball on both and whammo, the interaction between the two has led to where we are, eh? Heh, getting into a bit of the chicken and the egg...where it's actually some country fried chicken steak and eggs for breakfast.
Did dwindling premade action deter players from hitting up pugs in the hopes of moving on up to that kind of organized PvP?
Did dwindling pug action not provide the flow of fresh faces for premade action to help with natural turnover?
They likely fed each other more and more...until...we've got what we got, yeah?
Meh, for years I've been arguing about the need for that healthy PvP ecosystem of the two...and that without one, the other would fail, and with both failing, it would fail that much faster...meh.
The PvE guys are kind of lucky...heh, they're not having to deal with the stuff being used on them. So you've got the DPS League providing that something to strive for...you've got the guys that just don't care muddling around and still having fun in their own way. As messed up as PvE is, imho, it still has that bit of a healthy ecosystem going for it.
And yeah, I'm going to sound like a broken record going back to LoR and the KDF thing...but Cryptic tends to drop the ball on things, again imho, when it comes to stuff like that. KDF early changes...awesome...TRIBBLE in chair. Lack of KDF ships at endgame? Nowhere to go and no reason to keep the TRIBBLE in chair. Not so awesome.
Make pugging fun. Works to get asses in the chair and to keep them there. Also gives somebody the chance to hit up something more casual and relaxed.
Make premades fun. Works to get asses in the chair and to keep them there. Also gives somebody somewhere to go where they want to get more into it.
Asses in chairs...opportunity for money. Smaller scale, perhaps, but basically the essence of the F2P model. Offer the coffee so folks might buy a sandwich.
I figure what I wrote can just be a starting point for a possible direction.
THere are certainly some flaws in it. For example - if the bottom 50 % of a league get (almost) nothing, people might intentionally not want to buy themselves up into the gold league, so that is something that would need to be looked at with some clever math.
Just as the Zen and Dilithium pricing must be carefully chosen so that there is some scenario where players can definitely get ahead and spend less than then they get. But some of the "side" rewards like exclusive DOFFs, consoles and titles can make players interested in participating at any given league or success rate
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PUGs vs Premade can be a problem in my system, too. For one, there is always the "fairness" angle. Maybe that needs to be looked into, too. Ideally however, the game would also have some kind of match-making system (that might not necessarily be the same as the leaderboard rankings, and may or may not be public.) that considers team composition (similar to Star Craft's ranking system).
But having PUGs in a ranked match where item bans must be decided on and you need to configure your ship can also be very problematic. Agreeing on the banned items and adjusting builds might lead to lots of delays, and you end up spending more time in a pre-game lobby then in the game itself.
So maybe the item/ship ban system would not be on a per match basis, but on a weekly or even seasonal basis. Imagine what it would mean if for several weeks, lockbox ships or universal consoles were banned from the game since players tend to think they are imbalanced and unfun!
The reason why we might want a ban system is basically that in previous tournaments, there were always attempt to put up some restrictions to avoid abusive builds.
The specific idea of teams banning stuff is what I basically stole from League of Legends (DIsclaimer: I never played the game, just watch a documentation on STEAM mentioning it) If a community thinks that a certain archetype is too strong or unfun, they can just disallow it.
For premades, it can be more specific - for example, if Sad Pandas are deemed unbeatable witheir Star Cruiser / JHSS team setup, but HOBOs are unbeatable in the Tier 6 Pilot BOP, then in a Sad Panda vs Hobos fight, all bets would be off if they ban each other favorites. (THis is an argument to have the banning be match-specific).
It could prove how quick on their feet the top Premade groups are - can they adapt to their standard repertoire being taken away. (At least in the past, I suspect the top usually could.)
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
sharx, we know your done and your not happy about it, you have been very clear about that now for awhile-
but because your done doesn't mean everyone else has to be done with you..
gotta drop this idea that your going to lead a march of people out the door and just gracefully leave on your own time
Well. all is true except for me trying to take everyone with me. Not even close.
And I'm not angry, so not on 3rd stage. I just one day didn't wish to double click the STO icon.
And it's not really 100posts. more like 5-6 posts in this thread in last 2 months and i was just responding to crazy idea that players should somehow incentivize the devs to in turn make incentive for more PvPlayers.
So yeah, @Virus you are also right, except for TW3 part(yes it's self published, physical and digital distribution and printing along with marketing is all done by studio itself).
And about apples and oranges. TW3 example was about effort, talent, value, gaming experience.
Yes, i loved to play this game and then i could close both eyes on all the things that i hated in STO. well..
I was about to leave again when they started fixing ionic turbulence and neutronic torps, but all that was just so they can push AP torp and to avoid QQ from Iconian PvErs like Husanak PMd me they will do. and that Bounty hunter set easy mode for 600lobi.
That's where i was done.
GG everyone. maybe they will someday fix the game(if they think it's broken).
I am hesitant to post this, but after playing GTAV, they have one thing that STO has, but STO doesn't do..
STO does not allow people to create their own pvp maps.
They could even first require either a sub or c-store unlock. Then they could add those previously mentioned pvppacks only they might unlock special features for the ability to create your own pvp maps.
Just a thought off my head, if you wanted to make an Escort Only map, you'd need to get it from a pack drop/c-store unlock.
To further expand on the idea, imagine if we could have a ground shoot out on ESD. Maybe a protect Sulu scenario, where one team is the aggressor, trying to kill him, the other defending him.
Or a reinactment of the Federation vs. Dominion war. Both sides fighting over DS9.
And for fleets it could even give a way to simulate fleet vs. fleet starbase defense.
Want a "Borg" reinactment? Needs an unlock. Want to be able to actually fly Dominion ships in that DS9 reinactment? Needs a "Dominion" map pack.
You think that your beta test was bad?
Think about this: American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
I mean TRIBBLE t'varos and bops. As soon as I get my hands on the Defiant you're all as good as DEAD.
I need to get to him. I can't just leave him out there alone. - Sometimes you've got to makes sacrifices, Lara. You can't save everyone. - I know about sacrifices. - No, you know about loss. Sacrifice is a choice you make. Loss is a choice made for you. - I can't choose to let him die, Roth.
Comments
Witcher 3 is a self-published game, and yes it's art by any definition, and far more important it's a great game in every aspect.
Developer and artist talent, vision, effort and skill is visible on every step. Just like in GTAV, MGS, Half-Life etc.
And you are wrong that it's made based on some kind of imagined feedback, only in technical area where very, very small number of technical bugs are eliminated on the spot.(read: same week)
It must not be a game for you, but it's a great game. It ticks every box and it makes money for developers. Whereas-
Yes, STO is a commissioned product and it isn't a good game by any valid standard.
Trying to equalize STO with TW3 or whatnot is so wrong that it is absurd.
Reviews would read 1/10 - 4/10 max for STO.
Ask any developer, better yet, ask STO developers would they rather be known as makers of TW3, GTAV, Bloodborne,(to name new games) or STO?
Technically STO is:
- Outdated yet demanding.
- Video, Audio, UI, gameplay Bugs everywhere
- servers unstable, lagging and crashing
Sounds like some pre-Alpha game, right?
Story content?:
- inconsistent with franchise it's based upon
- low effort buggy missions without story substance and any real gameplay
Mechanics:
- Auto-aim in ground and space- no precision flying/moving and no real positioning needed
- Cooldown and crit-hit/crit-chance/crit-power RNG mechanics that should simulate build strategy, precision(timing) and positioning tactics are actively broken by developers by selling items that circumvent any skill or effort requirement.
Imagine Battlefield or CS where you can buy a gun for real money that fires around corners and hits even unseen, non targeted enemies(FAW/Spread/FBP/TBR), through walls(penetration proc, Thalaron/FBP/TBR),
Bullets that shoot 3x damage received back to seen/unseen attacker when you're shot and through shields (FBP).
Or where you can upgrade your character for $ to be faster then everyone not paying, to use 3x more powerful bullets etc. etc. etc.
-Shield protects Hull mechanics that are completely invalidated by expensive items
-DOFF mechanics that make your auto-aiming, shield-penetrating, all-seeing, 360x360 degrees all-hitting repulsor beam, a beam that will do all that but hold the target in place as well.
- Ship Trait mechanics that make your one-shot 50cal sniper a rapid-fire 50 cal sniper without loss of precision
List of what's wrong in STO is a 1000 page long book.
So to the core problem:
What is gameplay in STO? What is gaming content, component?
Space PvE? Ground PvE? PvP? "Exploration"? Timed events? Filling reputations? Fleet project grinding? Grinding R&D system? Dilithium Grinding? Gear grindng? Specialization grinding? Lobi grinding? EC grinding? Limited events gear grinding? Reputation grinding?
All that amounts to what goal? To play better? nah.
There is no gaming challenge in STO unless you handicap yourself to simulate challenge.
Only challenge is if you are willing to spend money/time or both to get advantage over NPC or a player or game mechanics with one simple goal. To grind faster.
Bottom line:
10-200hr exciting, beautiful, challenging, technically and artistically polished game for $50 or a ship for $50 that will be outdated next week, month, year.
What a dilemma right there.
So, "How can we(players) monetize PvP(to make Cryptic devs consider making it slightly playable and in turn to attract new and old players to PvP again and in turn to make Cryptic more money by players doing the thinking and testing?" is the stupidest question ever in a book of Very Stupid Questions.
P.S. Bobs. Yeah, I meant something like that.
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
That'll happen with or without rewards, but at there should be an incentive for trying* and improving.
*And by trying, I don't mean just sitting AFK at spawn, rushing in with no shields, or getting yourself killed once and refusing to respawn.
We'd need to devise a system or method to ensure that only people who are actively participating get the rewards.
It's one thing to only get 10kdamage/20k healing because you're not experienced, but it's another thing to get 10k damage/20k healing from your warp core explosion/Fleet Support and proc heals from the one time you rushed in and then sat the rest out.
AFK penalty is the answer, they have the code for it already, it needs adaptation. Consider healing, consider damage dealt and exclude the one dealt by warp/singularity core explosions. If none of them are enough to justify participation you get no rewards.
Also, including ship movement in that would be helpful. If the player's ship is idle for a long time, again no rewards.
You can't think in PvE terms of rewarding a kill. There are also healers which won't kill anyone but are essential for any good team. Shouldn't they get rewarded too? At best you reward participation, much like Voth Battlezone does right now.
At last, you can't think as well of deprivate a player, even of a small fraction, of their money, aka dilithium. You just don't, it's theirs and as a golden rule shall not decrease, unless it's spent.
What about simply using time in combat? Spend at least 80% of the time that you are alive in combat, to allow for time to run back to the action after respawning?
I definitely don't think people should lose anything by PvP'ing, but a reduction in reward would provide incentive to actually do something.
that's what I've been trying to say all along lol.
See, here's the thing....again. All you've expressed there is an opinion. It doesn't read as if you understand that. Further, much of your reaction kind of comes off like a kid being told that Santa Claus isn't real - you're not ready to accept reality.
Also, you're incorrect about it being a self-published game. You're coming off like a rabid fanboi about it. It's like reading some of the reviews where it gets a perfect score...how are they giving it a perfect score after having talked about so many problems with it?
The worst part is, to this point, you still don't see how you're comparing apples to oranges there. You can't see that not everybody is like you, and you can't get that perhaps simply STO was designed/isn't developed with somebody like you as the intended audience.
Nobody's saying STO is anywhere near perfect. But somebody that wants a burger isn't going to go into a pizza joint, right? Ask Stephen, ask Al, ask anybody on the STO team...is STO competing with Witcher? Is that the intended audience for the game? Is STO targeting random gamers and competing with random games for their money? Or is STO a casual game where they're trying to offer the Star Trek fan out there a chance to experience a bit of Star Trek fun in a game?
You're not the first random gamer to stumble into a MMO forum to tell them they're doing everything wrong....
Sounds like a short staffed MMO with ludicrous production schedules.
Sounds like a mix of opinion and part of the previous.
Sounds like a preference.
Sounds like a preference.
STO isn't a FPS.
What expensive items? Don't get me wrong, all the bleed through stuff - imho - stands out like a sore thumb as having one overboard...but expensive items?
Sounds like a preference.
Sounds like a preference.
What's wrong...for you.
Right, so what you're saying is this game might not be for you.
While I do not consider that much of a challenge - imho - there's little doubt that I've stood there in some threads with folks with a wtf look on my face asking them why they're so concerned with running that treadmill to nowhere faster.
And again...that's all preference, all opinion, yadda - yadda - yadda.
I spent $5 in 2012. I spent $5 in 2013. I spent $0 in 2014. I've spent $0 so far in 2015.
I've got two level 60 toons right now. I did another of the delete/reroll things just before Delta Rising. I usually do it once a year.
[System] Willard the Rat has been on active duty for 46 days, 9 hours, 43 minutes, 35 seconds.
Willard was rolled just before Delta Rising. That's over 1113 hours on him there.
[System] Meena has been on active duty for 9 days, 17 hours, 7 minutes, 59 seconds.
Meena was created as a Delta Recruit. That's over 233 hours on her there.
Almost 1400 hours of gameplay there...that cost me...$0.
The last non-MMO game that I bought for over $5 was in Feb 2009. With them sitting next to the MMOs I was also playing, it was no contest for me where my money was going to go.
I went from gamer to MMO gamer.
But like I said earlier, you're not the first person to come crying into MMO forums that a MMO wasn't some other type of game.
Guess what? There are all sorts of different types of games for different things folks are looking for...
...you don't go in the Pizza Hut and complain they're not Applebees when there's an Applebees right next door. You want Applebees...you go there. You want Pizza Hut...you go there.
It's a simple thing that most folks get. It's only the few...
...that don't get it.
You create participation requirements. Damage, healing, activating abilities, moving...etc...and...somebody drops their cat on the keyboard while watching TV.
There is little incentive to try if there is any reward for not trying. There is little incentive to try if it is possible to be rewarded for faking it.
People suck.
Hit up the forums for a bunch of different MMOs out there - take a look at PvP - look for AFKing - see how those games have tried to deal with it - see how it hasn't really addressed things.
People suck.
It's turned PvP into pee wee soccer...yay, I got a trophy cause I had perfect attendance while sitting on the bench and cheering on my team...gooooooo, me! /facepalm
Where are folks going to try? When they've got something to lose...but that kind of PvP in this game? Heh, just can't see it...
"good ships and stuff" is part of the whole problem that hurts PvP!
If Cryptic can make money by selling stuff that's better than what was there before, they have a strong incentive to make it a pay-to-win game, or at least to simply make overpowered stuff, knowing that it will motivate people to buy the newest stuff.
PvP without balance means less variety, as the underpowered stuff will be seen as useless, and everyone jumps on the next OP stuff. Wonderful invitation for Cryptic to never balance too hard.
What you might actually want is a system where OP stuff can be deliberately banned by players.
A basic system could be something like that both sides get to nominate n things they don't want the other side to use, and it's banned for all players involved. Each side makes their own picks, so in the end, the most OP TRIBBLE will likely be banned in any matches.
Of course, that works better in games like Leaguee of Legends, where there are only specific "heroes" that come with a more or less fixed list of abilities. In STO with its many, many ships and gear elements it's less easy.
But as a template perhaps:
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Okay, but that's not a monetization scheme yet, of course, just a prerequisite so that any monetization scheme ends not to be abusive.
There is one element however that already lends itself to "monetization": Loadouts
PVP players will want plenty of them, so they can adjust their ship to the possible "disallowed" ship types, and switch from a forbidden ship to an allowed one.
----
Other thing I would say is:
PvP matches can be ranked or unranked. (Seperate Queues)
Ranked matches come with leaderboards and all that stuff. Ranked Matches also reward Dilithium and lots of Energy Credits, more for the winner than for the loser, of course.
Ranked matches are the type of matches where the team can choose to ban certain items, as described above.
You get about 5 ranked matches per month as a F2P players. You get 15 matches as subscriber.
Additional ranked matches are available for either Zen or Dilithium.
If for Dilithium, the payout for winning a single ranked match should just be enough to play another ranked match. So someone that always wins can PvP for free, but if you're not that good (which most won't be), you may need to grind Dilithium in another matter or spend Zen.
Win/Loss Ratio but also number of ranked matches played affect the scoring for a special "Seasonal PvP Rewards" system that would be awarded every 6 months or so.
Say, a system consisting of "League" and Win/Loss based rankings.
The upper 20 % and the upper 50 % of the league earn rewards at the end of the season, then the rankings are reset.
Basic Rewards:
So there are rewards even for people that can't play that much or afford to get many ranked matches. PvP hardcore players will likely find themselves in the Gold League and have the potential for hefty rewards.
Even weak PvP players have a reason to try to go for Gold, so they can earn certain accolades, titles, badges and DOFFs.
The cost for getting into the upper leagues will be what drives money into Cryptic's coffers.
Going to need to grab some more caffeine to digest that all...but it looks like you're going for a comprehensive approach to the matter, taking into account some of what needs to be done before hand, what can be done during and how to provide options for players of different desires there without hitting them all up with it. Hrmm, yeah, going to grab some caffeine...
* * * * *
The banning bit...that could be rough for some folks, cause some folks want to ban all sorts of things, eh? Would expect to see some "hate" on that angle. But perhaps like the old Naz PvP Concerns threads, it could get into a healthy discussion about items...the reasonableness of the various counters, the lack of counters, and the like. It wouldn't be any sort of magic wand thing, but perhaps it could provide for a test case of things for Cryptic to take a look at some additional PvP/PvE separation (cause they have done things, X vs. NPCs and Y vs. Players).
Cause banning...having folks arguing about that stuff...is bad press, yeah? Gets into fights...not just amongst PvPers but between PvPers and the rest of the players over things. (Heh, doesn't mean that balance for PvE gets thrown out the window - just that PvP might require a more delicate touch.) And with that sort of thing, you maintain a certain higher level of build diversity while also not adversely affecting public opinion on items. Positive press sort stuff, yeah?
And...it would be a thing where once folks were back in doing PvP...just like events, they might end up spending money on other things, eh?
The ranked stuff gets a little rough, cause it reads like you're going to be mixing pugs and premades there...it being more about individuals than about teams. Which is going to lead to folks being outclassed and likely not wishing to participate, eh? I mean, I know you tied it into the banning stuff at the start of the match based on what the teams wanted, but is it premade teams or pug teams?
It's something that could potentially be split into individual and team sorts of challenges/rewards, eh?
But the idea of "Cryptic sponsored" tournaments...seasonal things (perhaps 3 months rather than 6, tying more into the 3 month cycles Cryptic does)...with the possibility of rewards there (as long as some of the balance concerns are addressed), one might get into the buy in sort of thing for better rewards, eh?
Could get into the thing if possible, where the matches for a season ending tournament could even have the 11th man in it - the spectator thing, eh? Cause that would get into the potential for some Twitch action and the like...getting spectators in...giveaways...building some excitement about PvP in the game.
And with that excitement...well, you might just get butts in seats with the potential for some revenue from those players, yeah?
Monetization of PvP from getting folks in the game...TRIBBLE in chair...and so forth. Working it like they work the various events...getting folks in the game in the hopes that they spend while they're there, right?
So take some steps to make PvP more balanced/attractive in that regard, create events of various durations, create bigger events...make the game more attractive...make more money.
Course, there would likely be all sorts of "PvE advertising" that would take place as well...cause this is primarily a PvE game.
One could even get into some Competitive PvE there as well...as an indirect form of PvP, but a type of PvP some might enjoy more or along with direct PvP.
And of course they'd have to find a way to also point out to folks that STO's not some hardcore MMO, lol...so that there's plenty of stuff for all sorts of folks to do. But it gets into that kind of proactive marketing to widen the playerbase instead of how it's kind of focused on a certain group in the past few years.
It really is that simple.
PvP died because of cryptic and only cryptic can revive it and make the PvPers come back. But, of course, they don't want to stop the money generating stuff to work on PvP. In fact, they don't want to spend or waste a dime if they don't have to.
They have some real mizers in their upper ranks. When you have a company that is run by people who can make change and can sit on a dollar, create 100 pennies, and only give you back 1 penny, then you are left with basically nothing but what they say you'll get.
Anyway...
I AM NOT A FAN OF PWE!!!!
MEMBER SINCE JANUARY 2010
You want the game to get better by inducing some armageddon scenario and start of with a clean slate? Guess what, that's not on the table. So either get going or deliver some constructive feedback.
There need to be an incentive for players to join pvp before a reconstruction can happen. I know this is counter-intuitive, but it's what needs to happen. Most probably a crux of the F2P model.
Right now you seem to be at stage 3 of "The 7 Stages of Grief". Anger. Maybe it will take a little while until you've transitioned over to stage 7 and you can be a member of this community again ...
Step 1: Start with whatever ship you have. Escorts generally run only one of a few builds. CRF/Omega being prolly the longest standing. Sci ships have healer or cc builds. Cryptic can easily obtain the majority of these builds looking at their side of things, or simply ask for input on it from the community.
Step 2: Create a clone version of the ship you are piloting. This is the "PvP Ship" or "White gear ship" that keeps getting tossed around in numerous threads. Take the builds you have from step 1 and create say, three options. Escorts could chose from a historic CRF+Omega build, a more aggressive Beam overload style build, or a vaper-ish setup. Sci ships would have say two healing setups and 1 particle craziness setup to chose from. All gear on these items will be white and unleveled, no mods at all.
Step 3: Normalize defense. One thing that blows my mind is that a sci ship is so easily pushed to 160% constant bonus defense as of Delta Rising. This should be zoom zoom escort territory. Resists as well should scale off "what you are". Engineers should have the highest base hull res. Sci should have the highest base shield res. Escorts should be on the weak side. This essentially will "roll back" pvp to about s2-4.
Step 4: Create a PvP Reputation system. The tiers should give moderate rewards per level for both ground and space pvp. +2.5% All res. +2.5% Bonus damage while under the effects of an attack pattern. Nothing crazy. Small boosts here and there to improve your ship. The dil store should take the now going away [Pvp-Dmg] and [Pvp-res] mods and apply them as SINGLE modded white items in the store(and actually make them work). Rep items being slightly more powerful, but nothing to the point that we got with Neutronic torp spreads please.
Step 5: Create a daily system based on the class you are entering PvP with. This shouldn't be hard to do assuming Steps 1 and 2 are followed, the game will know what daily it "Should" give you. Escorts will wind up with a # of kill or # of damage daily. Sci ships should wind up with a heals GIVEN (not recieved so someone can idle epts at the spawn all day) or a damage output if theyre in PM form. Engineers should uh, damage received? Sorry drawing a blank there haha. Tie this into the same reward system mark wise as say doing a daily patrol, and reward dil on completion of the daily only.
This took me about 20 minutes to think up, and it was mostly done by reading input from other people on the forums in various posts, maybe 5% of that is my own thoughts/opinions. You create a dil sink (rep items) specifically for pvp, so there is your "monetization" so to speak.
However, even after typing all this, I know theres people that WANT to play with their shineys. That want to have X advantage over Y% of the playerbase because of invested time or money, etc etc etc. The problem cryptic faces is you can't please everyone at the same time, even in a community as small as the pvp community.
Heh, didn't mean to snip that in a rude fashion - not to ignore the rest - but yeah, when you got to Engineers and the blank, that's the rough thing about the game and the way it's set up to provide so much freedom with things, yeah? Trying to get into a "fair" way of tackling folks for scoring.
Like with Hilbert's...
http://hilbertguide.com/leaderboard/
With the explanation for Utility/Style...
Can't remember how much was tweaked after that. And yeah, it just points to some of the problems in scoring things - since certain things just aren't going to be there to be scored.
Its fine I'll just snip yours back! :eek:
Perhaps a better way to go about this as I confused some language in there typing kinda fast, rather than Tac/Sci/Eng to determine the dailies, it would be the type of ship you choose to pilot. Escort / Sci / Cruiser. All captains should logically have access to all, otherwise the fundamental game changes.
The problem is, what is it that cruisers do that is unique to cruisers. AoE commands? It'd be hard to score them, so perhaps they'd be a 50/50 style. Half the dps of an escorts daily + half the heals of a sci ships daily?
I'm sure just between the people that are left here we could brainstorm a workable system. Hell even Hilberts system is better than what we have in game even if it misses some things. The ideas that could power this system are pretty much endless, remove all power creep and yet still add a profit for cryptic that otherwise wouldn't happen. I'd reinstall in a heartbeat if this was actually a possibility though
And that's kind of the thing...Monetization of PvP...could be just something done to get folks back in seats. Just like the various PvE Events can been as Monetization of PvE.
A deli offers a free coffee...person goes in, something smells good, and they end up grabbing a sandwich or something else too.
It's an TRIBBLE in chair problem...they need to get folks sitting at the game by offering them something that enough consider fun. Then just any other player, not every player is going to break out the wallet over everything - but with just like any other player, there might be that something they want...something smells good, grab a sandwich.
* * * * *
Something else, again just imho, gets into kind of what STO PvP lost. The premade action. Yeah, I've had my differences over the years with some of the premade groups out there - but there were also what I felt were the health premade groups, and it was a case of fighting for both pugs and premades in the game. Cause it provides something there...some folks might be fine just bouncing around pugging and having fun that way - but healthy premade action leads to an area for folks that might want to move up to do so...but without the healthy pugging action too, there just won't be the folks to feed that premade action. It's kind of two step thing...where, imho, Cryptic dropped the ball on both and whammo, the interaction between the two has led to where we are, eh? Heh, getting into a bit of the chicken and the egg...where it's actually some country fried chicken steak and eggs for breakfast.
Did dwindling premade action deter players from hitting up pugs in the hopes of moving on up to that kind of organized PvP?
Did dwindling pug action not provide the flow of fresh faces for premade action to help with natural turnover?
They likely fed each other more and more...until...we've got what we got, yeah?
Meh, for years I've been arguing about the need for that healthy PvP ecosystem of the two...and that without one, the other would fail, and with both failing, it would fail that much faster...meh.
The PvE guys are kind of lucky...heh, they're not having to deal with the stuff being used on them. So you've got the DPS League providing that something to strive for...you've got the guys that just don't care muddling around and still having fun in their own way. As messed up as PvE is, imho, it still has that bit of a healthy ecosystem going for it.
And yeah, I'm going to sound like a broken record going back to LoR and the KDF thing...but Cryptic tends to drop the ball on things, again imho, when it comes to stuff like that. KDF early changes...awesome...TRIBBLE in chair. Lack of KDF ships at endgame? Nowhere to go and no reason to keep the TRIBBLE in chair. Not so awesome.
Make pugging fun. Works to get asses in the chair and to keep them there. Also gives somebody the chance to hit up something more casual and relaxed.
Make premades fun. Works to get asses in the chair and to keep them there. Also gives somebody somewhere to go where they want to get more into it.
Asses in chairs...opportunity for money. Smaller scale, perhaps, but basically the essence of the F2P model. Offer the coffee so folks might buy a sandwich.
THere are certainly some flaws in it. For example - if the bottom 50 % of a league get (almost) nothing, people might intentionally not want to buy themselves up into the gold league, so that is something that would need to be looked at with some clever math.
Just as the Zen and Dilithium pricing must be carefully chosen so that there is some scenario where players can definitely get ahead and spend less than then they get. But some of the "side" rewards like exclusive DOFFs, consoles and titles can make players interested in participating at any given league or success rate
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PUGs vs Premade can be a problem in my system, too. For one, there is always the "fairness" angle. Maybe that needs to be looked into, too. Ideally however, the game would also have some kind of match-making system (that might not necessarily be the same as the leaderboard rankings, and may or may not be public.) that considers team composition (similar to Star Craft's ranking system).
But having PUGs in a ranked match where item bans must be decided on and you need to configure your ship can also be very problematic. Agreeing on the banned items and adjusting builds might lead to lots of delays, and you end up spending more time in a pre-game lobby then in the game itself.
So maybe the item/ship ban system would not be on a per match basis, but on a weekly or even seasonal basis. Imagine what it would mean if for several weeks, lockbox ships or universal consoles were banned from the game since players tend to think they are imbalanced and unfun!
The reason why we might want a ban system is basically that in previous tournaments, there were always attempt to put up some restrictions to avoid abusive builds.
The specific idea of teams banning stuff is what I basically stole from League of Legends (DIsclaimer: I never played the game, just watch a documentation on STEAM mentioning it) If a community thinks that a certain archetype is too strong or unfun, they can just disallow it.
For premades, it can be more specific - for example, if Sad Pandas are deemed unbeatable witheir Star Cruiser / JHSS team setup, but HOBOs are unbeatable in the Tier 6 Pilot BOP, then in a Sad Panda vs Hobos fight, all bets would be off if they ban each other favorites. (THis is an argument to have the banning be match-specific).
It could prove how quick on their feet the top Premade groups are - can they adapt to their standard repertoire being taken away. (At least in the past, I suspect the top usually could.)
Well. all is true except for me trying to take everyone with me. Not even close.
And I'm not angry, so not on 3rd stage. I just one day didn't wish to double click the STO icon.
And it's not really 100posts. more like 5-6 posts in this thread in last 2 months and i was just responding to crazy idea that players should somehow incentivize the devs to in turn make incentive for more PvPlayers.
So yeah, @Virus you are also right, except for TW3 part(yes it's self published, physical and digital distribution and printing along with marketing is all done by studio itself).
And about apples and oranges. TW3 example was about effort, talent, value, gaming experience.
Yes, i loved to play this game and then i could close both eyes on all the things that i hated in STO. well..
I was about to leave again when they started fixing ionic turbulence and neutronic torps, but all that was just so they can push AP torp and to avoid QQ from Iconian PvErs like Husanak PMd me they will do. and that Bounty hunter set easy mode for 600lobi.
That's where i was done.
GG everyone. maybe they will someday fix the game(if they think it's broken).
Super SpecialStar Trek Online Review
SpecialTemporal PUG 100K DPS Build
We are Travelers
STO does not allow people to create their own pvp maps.
They could even first require either a sub or c-store unlock. Then they could add those previously mentioned pvppacks only they might unlock special features for the ability to create your own pvp maps.
Just a thought off my head, if you wanted to make an Escort Only map, you'd need to get it from a pack drop/c-store unlock.
To further expand on the idea, imagine if we could have a ground shoot out on ESD. Maybe a protect Sulu scenario, where one team is the aggressor, trying to kill him, the other defending him.
Or a reinactment of the Federation vs. Dominion war. Both sides fighting over DS9.
And for fleets it could even give a way to simulate fleet vs. fleet starbase defense.
Want a "Borg" reinactment? Needs an unlock. Want to be able to actually fly Dominion ships in that DS9 reinactment? Needs a "Dominion" map pack.
Think about this:
American Football has been in open beta for 144 years. ~Kotaku
T6 Defiant INCOMING.
T6 T'varo INCOMING.
T6 B'rel INCOMING.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YMCA.
I mean TRIBBLE t'varos and bops. As soon as I get my hands on the Defiant you're all as good as DEAD.