Post #3246 was the first post after Oct 14th, on page #325.
There are a total of 3526 posts in that thread, up to page 353.
The claim is pretty obvious...there were issues, most of them the same exact issues, before Delta Rising came out. That thread started March 22nd, 2012.
In other words, in ~2.5 years the thread gets 3246 posts. In the last 8 months it has had less than 300. It is certainly on track to be the quietest year by far, post DR. I can't see how you can possibly make that logical leap to claim that DR didn't have a significant part in that decrease, because queues certainly haven't improved since DR.
That issues existed before DR isn't even debated. The fact, however, is that much more people were doing queues before DR than after, something supported by that very thread.
Right when DR launched? When DR launched, the Advanced had DPS requirements around twice of what they would have a month later. Cryptic was crazy with what they dropped out there initially with the Advanced queues. But they'd nerfed it into the ground within a month, so that it only required 1-2k more DPS for Advanced than it had for Elite prior to Delta Rising. And that was still at around 20% of the potential in the game.
People had threatened beforehand that they were going to troll the Advanced and cause failures, and sure enough - folks did. At the same time, more and more folks were off to the DPS channels because of how easy it was to get 10k...more folks were off to other channels, etc, etc, etc to avoid the trolling.
Whether folks were TRIBBLE things up intentionally or unintentionally, shouldn't the resolution for the problem of one person being able to tank a run involved addressing that itself? Shouldn't it have been changing the objectives so somebody couldn't do that while still providing a modicum of challenge at the Advanced level compared to Normal?
You're saying the DPS channel teams present a challenge in STFs while letting you avoid the trolls? Everyone else seems to claim they are a sure thing because you weed out the random chance of bad PUG teams and trolls. With that gone, what is left to actually challenge? A premade group with a preselected quality isn't challenged by the content, they simply go through the motions. How often do channel teams actually fail? If they aren't failing, obviously the content isn't actually challenging at all to them. And if they aren't failing, removal of fail conditions does a whole lot of nothing to actually affect the challenge, doesn't it?
As for fixing the trollability, gee, that can't possibly have been something already suggested in other threads and shouted down.
In other words, in ~2.5 years the thread gets 3246 posts. In the last 8 months it has had less than 300. It is certainly on track to be the quietest year by far, post DR. I can't see how you can possibly make that logical leap to claim that DR didn't have a significant part in that decrease, because queues certainly haven't improved since DR.
After the toast pops, you notice it is raining outside. Obviously the toaster made it rain. Er...no.
Correlation is not causation nor evidence of depth of contribution.
You take your hypothesis, right? Then you look at if there are other factors involved, eh? Do those support or contradict your hypothesis? When there are a truckload of factors that do no support it...the logical thing would be to scrap the hypothesis instead of repeating it over and over as if doing so would make it a fact.
That issues existed before DR isn't even debated. The fact, however, is that much more people were doing queues before DR than after, something supported by that very thread.
Only Cryptic could give us metrics on what folks are doing with queues. And even with those numbers in hand, one cannot put forth their reasoning for any changes without supporting it.
Let's take a quick look again, yeah? Numbered, but not in any significant order:
1) More queues? Players spread thinner and thinner, yeah? Likelihood of players queuing for what a particular player might be looking to do as players are doing other content, pretty good?
2) More private/channel runs? The "reporting error" - the queue window only showing those players partaking in the public queues and not those running privates. Cryptic told folks this. Many folks didn't comprehend what was being said and made a joke out of it instead.
3) Specialization? Like I said, these are in no significant order. Rather than having nothing to do and having 20+ alts, there's something to do on those individual characters, yeah? The possibility of folks working on that rather than running all their characters through the queues?
4) Reduced need to run them? Elite Marks easy to get elsewhere. Dilithium easy to get elsewhere. VR drops not having the value they did before S9.5 with the R&D system introduced. Drop in prices of the VR mats (all the mats, couldn't pay folks to take some of the stuff off your hand). Daily Mark boxes available from all sorts of quicker solo missions. Also going back to #1, there would be the new queues with new things. Heck, the influence of the DPS folks linking builds where there was little in the way of Rep Gear requiring Elite Marks. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
5) Not fun/no longer fun? Player A might be completely enthralled with Context X. For some reason, they cannot fathom why Player B might not want to run it or why Player B that might have enjoyed it at one point no longer does.
6) Events? It's not like the queues don't have competition out there for player time.
The list goes on and on and on and on...and on.
Pointing at one item to say that it's the major contributing factor...well...it's kind of silly.
You're saying the DPS channel teams present a challenge in STFs while letting you avoid the trolls? Everyone else seems to claim they are a sure thing because you weed out the random chance of bad PUG teams and trolls. With that gone, what is left to actually challenge? A premade group with a preselected quality isn't challenged by the content, they simply go through the motions. How often do channel teams actually fail? If they aren't failing, obviously the content isn't actually challenging at all to them. And if they aren't failing, removal of fail conditions does a whole lot of nothing to actually affect the challenge, doesn't it?
So uh...you quoted me there...here, I'll quote it again:
"Right when DR launched? When DR launched, the Advanced had DPS requirements around twice of what they would have a month later. Cryptic was crazy with what they dropped out there initially with the Advanced queues. But they'd nerfed it into the ground within a month, so that it only required 1-2k more DPS for Advanced than it had for Elite prior to Delta Rising. And that was still at around 20% of the potential in the game.
People had threatened beforehand that they were going to troll the Advanced and cause failures, and sure enough - folks did. At the same time, more and more folks were off to the DPS channels because of how easy it was to get 10k...more folks were off to other channels, etc, etc, etc to avoid the trolling.
Whether folks were TRIBBLE things up intentionally or unintentionally, shouldn't the resolution for the problem of one person being able to tank a run involved addressing that itself? Shouldn't it have been changing the objectives so somebody couldn't do that while still providing a modicum of challenge at the Advanced level compared to Normal? "
And this is what you said in reply?
"You're saying the DPS channel teams present a challenge in STFs while letting you avoid the trolls?"
So uh...where did I say anything about the DPS channel teams presenting a challenge? Avoid trolls? Yep. Present challenge? That's your imagination...er...or something.
So changes Cryptic makes cannot address the problem...guess what some folks have been saying, eh?
* * * * *
1) Improve education of players in Normal. Sure, lots of folks get it without an issue - but some players just aren't getting it. So invest a little in helping them get it...everybody will benefit, no? Not just those particular players but everybody that might fly with them, yeah? Good for the game, right? Folks have tried to do what they can on various forums, the wiki, over on YouTube, in blogs, etc, etc, etc...but that's obviously not working for folks that aren't going to be looking at any of that. It's something that Cryptic needs to step up and do, imho.
2) Hell, that's just the queues, eh? There are the various Academies, no? What are they teaching players? Not much? How about if Cryptic improved the general education of players via missions at the Academies, yeah? If they discussed various things which some folks consider to be cryptic knowledge only known to a few amongst the masses, wouldn't that potentially improve gameplay for one and all? If they discussed things like falloff, power settings, etc, etc, etc? Clear up those tooltips and things like that? Good stuff, imho...something Cryptic should be working on. It's not about turning everybody into min/maxers with encyclopedic knowledge of the game...just getting some of the fundamentals out there.
3) Remove the trollable objectives. No matter what else is done, as long as they remain, they will potentially undermine any fun factor a group might otherwise be having. It's kind of the gist of the various times that I've brought up that Worst thread. Many of those (most?) did not involve any sort of failure of the instance since there were few instances with failure conditions. It was about various objectives...optional objectives...and those things that players could do to reduce the rewards for something or extend the duration of the run. That's something that's needed improvement long before DR...long before LoR...imho.
4) Reduce the number of visible queues in the public queue system. Geko said there were too many - it's splitting the playerbase - making it harder for folks to find runs for something they may want to run for something. Yet after having said that...how many more queues have they added? If the public queues were set by type of Mark with a random Space or random Ground (yeah, I make the distinction of keeping them separate where others have combined them)...then folks that are mainly interested in getting a type of reward, can get that type of a reward. Those that just want to run something specific, the random queue wouldn't affect private runs...which is something many players are having to do anyway to run certain content that's simply not popular on the whole, yeah?
So boom, end of the run, the choose reward window comes up and the player can pick whichever Marks box is available for that particular instance - including the one they joined that queue group in the first place. What about the Advanced R&D boxes? It wouldn't be the first time Cryptic put a box inside a box. Players would get an Advanced box...upon opening it, they could select any of the particular Advanced boxes available to various instances in that queue group.
It avoids the issue of least resistance and underplayed queues from making everything available everywhere while making everything available to the particular queue group.
5) With improved Normals and the Academy stuff for educational purposes, it presents the ability to provide Certificate of Competency accolades that could be used to gate the Advanced content. With Advanced content looking to require a mixture of Advanced knowledge, piloting, and build - this could provide for two of the three at an account unlock level. The player would know a bit about flying the ship, a bit about the content, and that's often the difference between somebody doing 1-2-5k/etc and somebody doing 20-30-50-100k+ while flying the same build.
6) This is a tough one, since folks campaigned for so long and Cryptic listened over and over...and over...but shouldn't the queues be the best source of rewards? Other things should provide options for folks that don't want to do queues, but it shouldn't be a case that the queues are optional things for folks that want to put in more effort and time for a smaller reward. So it would be a case of improving the overall rewards for the queues...having gone through to do what can be done to improve the experience, it would be about offering the incentive to partake in that experience.
To me...that would be taking steps toward trying to improve gameplay for the queues.
After the toast pops, you notice it is raining outside. Obviously the toaster made it rain. Er...no.
Correlation is not causation nor evidence of depth of contribution.
You take your hypothesis, right? Then you look at if there are other factors involved, eh? Do those support or contradict your hypothesis? When there are a truckload of factors that do no support it...the logical thing would be to scrap the hypothesis instead of repeating it over and over as if doing so would make it a fact.
Seems like you need to take your own advice, rather than continuously bringing up that thread.
Only Cryptic could give us metrics on what folks are doing with queues. And even with those numbers in hand, one cannot put forth their reasoning for any changes without supporting it.
And what is Cryptic doing? Right, removing the fails.
Right when DR launched? When DR launched, the Advanced had DPS requirements around twice of what they would have a month later. Cryptic was crazy with what they dropped out there initially with the Advanced queues. But they'd nerfed it into the ground within a month, so that it only required 1-2k more DPS for Advanced than it had for Elite prior to Delta Rising. And that was still at around 20% of the potential in the game.
People had threatened beforehand that they were going to troll the Advanced and cause failures, and sure enough - folks did. At the same time, more and more folks were off to the DPS channels because of how easy it was to get 10k...more folks were off to other channels, etc, etc, etc to avoid the trolling.
Whether folks were TRIBBLE things up intentionally or unintentionally, shouldn't the resolution for the problem of one person being able to tank a run involved addressing that itself? Shouldn't it have been changing the objectives so somebody couldn't do that while still providing a modicum of challenge at the Advanced level compared to Normal?
So uh...where did I say anything about the DPS channel teams presenting a challenge? Avoid trolls? Yep. Present challenge? That's your imagination...er...or something.
The fail potential presents a challenge. That is apparently what this whole "debate" is about isn't it, the removal of fail conditions? The channels don't fail, or at least fail less, and that is why people go there. But that must mean the channels don't offer challenge.
It is very disingenuous to claim you want challenge when the challenge as it is now is actually based on the team you get, and then want to improve the players in those teams. A good team has no particular challenge. They know what to do and go do it, a nice smooth run with no trouble. A bad team is where the only actual challenge lies.
Oddly enough, by the folks that have displayed a desire to troll or leech, eh? Quirky, yeah?
False.
So changes Cryptic makes cannot address the problem...guess what some folks have been saying, eh?
...
If players were the only problem you'd be right, but they aren't. Badly designed, poorly thought out objectives plague the STFs. Look at the newer timed optionals to see that, especially ANRA. Or how about the red herrings in phase 1 of GtG?
I'm all for educating the players, but I remember a time when there was zero information on ships in game. Nothing at all, you knew nothing about that ship until you bought it. It took longer still to get the most useful information in game.
Cryptic is the one that still explicitly communicates to the players that you can continue in advanced if the Kang goes below 75%, and that BGA alarm bugs are optional objectives. And these are such basic things, do you really trust them to do anything deeper?
If you want to educate the players, you have to do it yourself. Cryptic isn't likely to do it right, or well, or fix any errors in any timely fashion. There are things they can do to improve the queues, with more visible objectives and better aligning normal and advanced objectives (which they are doing) but having some kind of boot camp or tutorial isn't likely to ever happen.
I was pretty close to being personally won over to the idea of fails until they rolled out the changes to Gateway to Grethor and Brotherhood of the sword. These reminded me of the state of things in September 2014 and before. The loss of these fails did not diminish the missions in any way. If the mission is enjoyable it is. There is still a rush associated with trying to complete all objectives whether or not a failure results or no.
The upside is for trollable missions like undine infiltration. And for missions that the pug playerbase will never manage like borg disconnected. For the majority of missions there is very little change.
The only potential downside is something like ISA where the fail is a blessing if you get a horrendous group. There's maybe 4 or 5 like this.
All in all it will be a benefit to the majority. What it comes down to is that the company feels they have done all they can to force upgrades for the past 8 months. Most who planned to upgrade have done so. They now see a benefit in appealing to a wider audience with these missions. It is the only logical conclusion I can draw from the proposed change back.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
While i understand the need for more people to join pug's, I don't think that these changes are going to make it any better. If a player is a "casual" type, then they should have no reason to join advanced queues. Normal is what it says it is. The only people doing anything above normal should be the ones trying to get VR mats and the special rep items in order to improve their builds.
If you have no desire to do r&d stuff to craft better gear(thus improving your chances at completing the stf) please stay in normal queues. I'm no mega-dps'er but I can complete advanced queues with other competent players. For example, the other day I joined an ISA pug. It was an epic fail for obvious reasons: out of the 5 players, I was the only one that did above 15k dps. The other 4 were at 5k or below. With the increased shield and hull points in the advanced queues, simple math would tell you that you need a certain amount of dps(or some knowleable CC guys) to successfully complete the mission. I certainly did not pull dps away from the others because of a huge amount of damage done by myself alone.
All in all, the queues are what they are named. If you have normal gear,stay in normal queues. If you have upgraded gear but aren't a min/maxer you can do advanced but you still need others that are upgraded also.
I don't want anyone to feel left out of game content in any way but since Cryptic does pretty much nothing to explain effective ship building, it's left up to the players to get the knowledge needed to contribute effectively,whether it's asking for help from fleeties or spending 30 minutes reading on the wiki or doing what I did: spend some time on youtube watching others play the stf's before you jump in blindly and cause the rage that permeates some of the posts that are on here.
Btw, I have a parser and will gladly parse runs for anyone just to give them a general idea of what they're doing or not doing. No shaming or judgement will be meted out and only friendly advice will be given if asked for. I'm ingame @kragg13 and always glad to help out anyone genuinely interested in improving their game experience, which also improves MY game experience too. :-)
This is the thread: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=262305
Post #3246 was the first post after Oct 14th, on page #325.
There are a total of 3526 posts in that thread, up to page 353.
The claim is pretty obvious...there were issues, most of them the same exact issues, before Delta Rising came out. That thread started March 22nd, 2012.
Claim: There were issues both before and after DR, most of them the same.
Result: Everyone agrees this is the case.
In other words, in ~2.5 years the thread gets 3246 posts. In the last 8 months it has had less than 300. It is certainly on track to be the quietest year by far, post DR. I can't see how you can possibly make that logical leap to claim that DR didn't have a significant part in that decrease, because queues certainly haven't improved since DR.
That issues existed before DR isn't even debated. The fact, however, is that much more people were doing queues before DR than after, something supported by that very thread.
Claim: Post count in that this thread proves decreasing activity in the public ques post DR.
Result: False.
Okay first, at least one of you seems to know that post count over the time periods chosen really only indicates one thing, that there were issues.
And that's it. It's really the only thing you can reasonably claim.
We don't know how many unique posters there are in that thread.
We don't know how many posts per event.
There's a bunch we don't know.
We do know the thread was SUPPOSED to be about worst experiences in an STF.
If the post count is going down, we assume, naturally, that there's a lack of interest in the thread. We just don't know why. But, based on the nature of the thread there's only one immediate choice.
People aren't having as many bad experiences in STFs. We don't know why though.
But here's some WAGs.
People quit the game, no longer play, and therefore have very nice days with mum.
People read the thread, got better, and no longer cause issues.
People read the thread, got into channel groups, and no longer cause issues.
People are done with that grind and no longer que, preferring other game play.
Oh the list goes on. The point is, as already clearly pointed out, only Cryptic can know what those players are doing, and where. If it's in game.
Taking the average daily post count by month for that thread you'll see a decline leading up to DR and continuing past DR. Almost as if DR never happened. And therefore I would posit that any change in the ques is unrelated to DR.
A couple of things though. New free ship? New mission gear? New Billion Dollar Ship? New que? Expect some spikes in people making use of of those things. And expect a spike in reports. That's all on that.
I was pretty close to being personally won over to the idea of fails until they rolled out the changes to Gateway to Grethor and Brotherhood of the sword. These reminded me of the state of things in September 2014 and before. The loss of these fails did not diminish the missions in any way. If the mission is enjoyable it is. There is still a rush associated with trying to complete all objectives whether or not a failure results or no.
The upside is for trollable missions like undine infiltration. And for missions that the pug playerbase will never manage like borg disconnected. For the majority of missions there is very little change.
The only potential downside is something like ISA where the fail is a blessing if you get a horrendous group. There's maybe 4 or 5 like this.
All in all it will be a benefit to the majority. What it comes down to is that the company feels they have done all they can to force upgrades for the past 8 months. Most who planned to upgrade have done so. They now see a benefit in appealing to a wider audience with these missions. It is the only logical conclusion I can draw from the proposed change back.
How sure are you that this appeals to wider audience?
Empirical evidence shows PuGs havent population at advanced havent changed at all. Those having 0 are still 0. While those that popular are still popular.
Dead weights and trolls will still ruin the advance queues.
This move is only popular to players who restrict themselves in PuGs STFs but cannot nor refuse to carry advance before. It is a very specific playerbase and shouldnt be tied to more players coming in.
This is the same debate I had with you on other threads, just because you think that how the majority feels doesn't mean it is the majority nor it isn't fun because you are not having fun or you think most people are not having fun. Not unless you are Cryptic employee and you got the metrics, all you have spewed in the forums are propaganda - especially "wider audience".
How sure are you that this appeals to wider audience?
Empirical evidence shows PuGs havent population at advanced havent changed at all. Those having 0 are still 0. While those that popular are still popular.
That's one of the things that confuses me with the blog...
"Earlier this year we made some updates to the Azure Nebula Rescue queue. These changes addressed some concerns we had with how the Queues were rewarding players and how difficult optional objectives on Advanced queues might be blocking player progress. After watching the numbers and listening to feedback, we believe that the STO community has approved of these changes. With this mandate, we will be rolling out similar changes to the rest of our Advanced queues."
...and the wtf/lolwut that arises from reading that. What numbers did they watch? What feedback did they listen to? If the folks at Cryptic worked for Coca-Cola or Pepsi, both companies would have gone out of business by calling New Coke and Crystal Pepsi the best products ever and saying the consumers loved them.
Hell, even the wording of it..."how difficult optional objectives on Advanced queues might be blocking player progress"...optional objectives can't block progress - they're optional. It reads like so much of the nonsense that's been posted in so many threads on the matter.
X says it's optional even though it's mandatory! Um, no, X doesn't say that...insert image showing that it doesn't. X this, X that, X etc...um, no, insert image showing that it doesn't.
It's like they hired one of the folks that don't pay attention in the least to write the blog. It's mind-boggling.
Azure advanced went from being zeroed out before being changed to typically around 2 min wait.
BDA is now finally zeroed out by comparison.
This was a couple weeks ago I haven't looked or played missions in a while.
However, the real test case is the Iconian 3 advanced missions which pug like a dream. Admittedly they are important right now for the marks, but I suspect they will have some lasting appeal.
My main 'evidence' is the overall wait time on average for missions. Of course some never went even before DR, but there were many many others that popped instantly. These same missions now wait 2 to 3 minutes.
Except for about 5 minutes in December last I have only ever pugged missions and I can say with 100% confidence that the number of puggers has been reduced by a factor of at least 4 if not much higher. That is to say if 1000 people were pugging on October 12th. Now there are less than 250.
Need more evidence? The company is now removing these fails. They wouldn't be doing so for no good reason as it de-incentivizes upgrades.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Azure advanced went from being zeroed out before being changed to typically around 2 min wait.
BDA is now finally zeroed out by comparison.
This was a couple weeks ago I haven't looked or played missions in a while.
However, the real test case is the Iconian 3 advanced missions which pug like a dream. Admittedly they are important right now for the marks, but I suspect they will have some lasting appeal.
My main 'evidence' is the overall wait time on average for missions. Of course some never went even before DR, but there were many many others that popped instantly. These same missions now wait 2 to 3 minutes.
Except for about 5 minutes in December last I have only ever pugged missions and I can say with 100% confidence that the number of puggers has been reduced by a factor of at least 4 if not much higher. That is to say if 1000 people were pugging on October 12th. Now there are less than 250.
Need more evidence? The company is now removing these fails. They wouldn't be doing so for no good reason as it de-incentivizes upgrades.
Your evidence based on the same wording as your propaganda.
Look at VD mentioned above. It is literally the same writing as you and some other whinning players have done from "Fail optionals". How can someone fail on optionals shows what type of quality player you are or group you belong. It is the same propaganda when you stated "majority". If you state evidence prove it with numbers rather than propaganda.
There has been no changes PuG queues population. It is the same population as it is before.
Your assumption is that once you nerf advance everyone is going to the same queuing habits with the addition to low quality players. The problem with this current solution is that if you are capable of advance before, if you are after farming rewards, you can get more rewards in time doing Normal by doing 2 or more normals instead of 1 advance finished at the same time frame. There is no more reason to do Advance for the quality players if you are after farming not unless it is community driven or was already popular before.
Like I said, nothing has change in pug population queues now. The popular are still popular while unpopular are still 0. I still have to wait the same number of minutes now as in before.
This is simply not true. And you know who knows the hard cold numbers? Cryptic. And what are they doing about it? Changing it. Game, set, match, Cooper.
I should say again that I gave up on these queues in early January. What I mean is that when I saw that they would hold off changing them until after the anniversary which was already after the winter wonderland - when they kept stalling and stalling to force upgrades - I knew that the damage was done. I do not play many queues anymore due to not needing any further resources. When I do play the fails have no effect whatsoever. So I could personally care less if they ever make these changes. Changing it now will have no salubrious effects on the game's health. Like that?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
All Reputation marks need an open space and ground zone, like Dyson. Where one can go and get marks on THEIR time, and not have to wait around for others to get their act together. Battle zones that you can pick up at any time with others or go in solo, but it's always open to others. Make a zone for each rep. that rewards like Dyson, with a daily and hourly mission to grab, but the zone is always open.
I'm so sick and tired of not being able to do the PvEs I want because of some ridiculous 30 min timer, or because no one is even joining the queue, and even IF you finally do get into a queue, there seams to always be that one prick that just blows it in the first 2 mins, and you're screwed for another 30 mins, or an hour on Borg,.. Why an hour? What makes the Borg ones so special from other ones? STO Slow Timers Online.
I like the Dyson ground because I can go there on MY time, and if others want to join up, they just show up, we don't have to coordinate a time to be on, or say "hey give me 5 mins then I can join the queue with you" and they take 10 or just log. Open Space and Ground is the only way I see this continuing for PvE rep grind.
The only other option, and it's a long shot, is to make it so NPCs fill PvE queues when a full team can't be made.
Especially for those PvE queues that don't even have a wait timer, and it just showes " ---- " in the time.
Let me queue it up and fill the other ranks with my Boffs, or copies of my ship for space.
If there is a wait time, then let there be an option to start now or wait for more players option. If there is more then one in the queue, have a prompt show saying, the team wants to begin now, do you want to go or wait.
I really enjoyed Colony, Mine Trap, Braking the Planet, but now those are rarely ran, if at all.
Did anyone notice that the public queues are still dead? Even though Cryptic made adjustments, the reward system, heavy grinding, timegates, long leveling (between 55 and 60), and lack of story missions have made things boring. Adding the mandatory optionals and nerfing the reward system was a major mistake.
Most casual and single players left 'Star Trek: Online'.
Uh, in my case, I just don't feel the need to grind for marks. Especially not with hundreds of marks sitting around that I got by making Risian monkey kebabs
Did anyone notice that the public queues are still dead? Even though Cryptic made adjustments, the reward system, heavy grinding, timegates, long leveling (between 55 and 60), and lack of story missions have made things boring. Adding the mandatory optionals and nerfing the reward system was a major mistake.
Most casual and single players left 'Star Trek: Online'.
Indeed. The changes came 7 months too late. Myself and a number of others argued as strongly as we could in November and December last that these changes needed to happen immediately. However, Cryptic used the winter festival, then the anniversary then some events, then delta recruiting to cover and prop up the login numbers. By February it was already too late. Those that didn't want the failqueues quit by then.
Still, I find an overall improvement since the change. There's 4 or 5 elites than run well. And there's 8-10 advanced that go within 2 minutes. It's plenty for some good variety. I have no complaints.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: "We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again."
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Comments
In other words, in ~2.5 years the thread gets 3246 posts. In the last 8 months it has had less than 300. It is certainly on track to be the quietest year by far, post DR. I can't see how you can possibly make that logical leap to claim that DR didn't have a significant part in that decrease, because queues certainly haven't improved since DR.
That issues existed before DR isn't even debated. The fact, however, is that much more people were doing queues before DR than after, something supported by that very thread.
You're saying the DPS channel teams present a challenge in STFs while letting you avoid the trolls? Everyone else seems to claim they are a sure thing because you weed out the random chance of bad PUG teams and trolls. With that gone, what is left to actually challenge? A premade group with a preselected quality isn't challenged by the content, they simply go through the motions. How often do channel teams actually fail? If they aren't failing, obviously the content isn't actually challenging at all to them. And if they aren't failing, removal of fail conditions does a whole lot of nothing to actually affect the challenge, doesn't it?
As for fixing the trollability, gee, that can't possibly have been something already suggested in other threads and shouted down.
Cryptic can't change them.
After the toast pops, you notice it is raining outside. Obviously the toaster made it rain. Er...no.
Correlation is not causation nor evidence of depth of contribution.
You take your hypothesis, right? Then you look at if there are other factors involved, eh? Do those support or contradict your hypothesis? When there are a truckload of factors that do no support it...the logical thing would be to scrap the hypothesis instead of repeating it over and over as if doing so would make it a fact.
Only Cryptic could give us metrics on what folks are doing with queues. And even with those numbers in hand, one cannot put forth their reasoning for any changes without supporting it.
Let's take a quick look again, yeah? Numbered, but not in any significant order:
1) More queues? Players spread thinner and thinner, yeah? Likelihood of players queuing for what a particular player might be looking to do as players are doing other content, pretty good?
2) More private/channel runs? The "reporting error" - the queue window only showing those players partaking in the public queues and not those running privates. Cryptic told folks this. Many folks didn't comprehend what was being said and made a joke out of it instead.
3) Specialization? Like I said, these are in no significant order. Rather than having nothing to do and having 20+ alts, there's something to do on those individual characters, yeah? The possibility of folks working on that rather than running all their characters through the queues?
4) Reduced need to run them? Elite Marks easy to get elsewhere. Dilithium easy to get elsewhere. VR drops not having the value they did before S9.5 with the R&D system introduced. Drop in prices of the VR mats (all the mats, couldn't pay folks to take some of the stuff off your hand). Daily Mark boxes available from all sorts of quicker solo missions. Also going back to #1, there would be the new queues with new things. Heck, the influence of the DPS folks linking builds where there was little in the way of Rep Gear requiring Elite Marks. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
5) Not fun/no longer fun? Player A might be completely enthralled with Context X. For some reason, they cannot fathom why Player B might not want to run it or why Player B that might have enjoyed it at one point no longer does.
6) Events? It's not like the queues don't have competition out there for player time.
The list goes on and on and on and on...and on.
Pointing at one item to say that it's the major contributing factor...well...it's kind of silly.
So uh...you quoted me there...here, I'll quote it again:
"Right when DR launched? When DR launched, the Advanced had DPS requirements around twice of what they would have a month later. Cryptic was crazy with what they dropped out there initially with the Advanced queues. But they'd nerfed it into the ground within a month, so that it only required 1-2k more DPS for Advanced than it had for Elite prior to Delta Rising. And that was still at around 20% of the potential in the game.
People had threatened beforehand that they were going to troll the Advanced and cause failures, and sure enough - folks did. At the same time, more and more folks were off to the DPS channels because of how easy it was to get 10k...more folks were off to other channels, etc, etc, etc to avoid the trolling.
Whether folks were TRIBBLE things up intentionally or unintentionally, shouldn't the resolution for the problem of one person being able to tank a run involved addressing that itself? Shouldn't it have been changing the objectives so somebody couldn't do that while still providing a modicum of challenge at the Advanced level compared to Normal? "
And this is what you said in reply?
"You're saying the DPS channel teams present a challenge in STFs while letting you avoid the trolls?"
So uh...where did I say anything about the DPS channel teams presenting a challenge? Avoid trolls? Yep. Present challenge? That's your imagination...er...or something.
Oddly enough, by the folks that have displayed a desire to troll or leech, eh? Quirky, yeah?
So changes Cryptic makes cannot address the problem...guess what some folks have been saying, eh?
* * * * *
1) Improve education of players in Normal. Sure, lots of folks get it without an issue - but some players just aren't getting it. So invest a little in helping them get it...everybody will benefit, no? Not just those particular players but everybody that might fly with them, yeah? Good for the game, right? Folks have tried to do what they can on various forums, the wiki, over on YouTube, in blogs, etc, etc, etc...but that's obviously not working for folks that aren't going to be looking at any of that. It's something that Cryptic needs to step up and do, imho.
2) Hell, that's just the queues, eh? There are the various Academies, no? What are they teaching players? Not much? How about if Cryptic improved the general education of players via missions at the Academies, yeah? If they discussed various things which some folks consider to be cryptic knowledge only known to a few amongst the masses, wouldn't that potentially improve gameplay for one and all? If they discussed things like falloff, power settings, etc, etc, etc? Clear up those tooltips and things like that? Good stuff, imho...something Cryptic should be working on. It's not about turning everybody into min/maxers with encyclopedic knowledge of the game...just getting some of the fundamentals out there.
3) Remove the trollable objectives. No matter what else is done, as long as they remain, they will potentially undermine any fun factor a group might otherwise be having. It's kind of the gist of the various times that I've brought up that Worst thread. Many of those (most?) did not involve any sort of failure of the instance since there were few instances with failure conditions. It was about various objectives...optional objectives...and those things that players could do to reduce the rewards for something or extend the duration of the run. That's something that's needed improvement long before DR...long before LoR...imho.
4) Reduce the number of visible queues in the public queue system. Geko said there were too many - it's splitting the playerbase - making it harder for folks to find runs for something they may want to run for something. Yet after having said that...how many more queues have they added? If the public queues were set by type of Mark with a random Space or random Ground (yeah, I make the distinction of keeping them separate where others have combined them)...then folks that are mainly interested in getting a type of reward, can get that type of a reward. Those that just want to run something specific, the random queue wouldn't affect private runs...which is something many players are having to do anyway to run certain content that's simply not popular on the whole, yeah?
So boom, end of the run, the choose reward window comes up and the player can pick whichever Marks box is available for that particular instance - including the one they joined that queue group in the first place. What about the Advanced R&D boxes? It wouldn't be the first time Cryptic put a box inside a box. Players would get an Advanced box...upon opening it, they could select any of the particular Advanced boxes available to various instances in that queue group.
It avoids the issue of least resistance and underplayed queues from making everything available everywhere while making everything available to the particular queue group.
5) With improved Normals and the Academy stuff for educational purposes, it presents the ability to provide Certificate of Competency accolades that could be used to gate the Advanced content. With Advanced content looking to require a mixture of Advanced knowledge, piloting, and build - this could provide for two of the three at an account unlock level. The player would know a bit about flying the ship, a bit about the content, and that's often the difference between somebody doing 1-2-5k/etc and somebody doing 20-30-50-100k+ while flying the same build.
6) This is a tough one, since folks campaigned for so long and Cryptic listened over and over...and over...but shouldn't the queues be the best source of rewards? Other things should provide options for folks that don't want to do queues, but it shouldn't be a case that the queues are optional things for folks that want to put in more effort and time for a smaller reward. So it would be a case of improving the overall rewards for the queues...having gone through to do what can be done to improve the experience, it would be about offering the incentive to partake in that experience.
To me...that would be taking steps toward trying to improve gameplay for the queues.
Seems like you need to take your own advice, rather than continuously bringing up that thread.
And what is Cryptic doing? Right, removing the fails.
The fail potential presents a challenge. That is apparently what this whole "debate" is about isn't it, the removal of fail conditions? The channels don't fail, or at least fail less, and that is why people go there. But that must mean the channels don't offer challenge.
It is very disingenuous to claim you want challenge when the challenge as it is now is actually based on the team you get, and then want to improve the players in those teams. A good team has no particular challenge. They know what to do and go do it, a nice smooth run with no trouble. A bad team is where the only actual challenge lies.
False.
If players were the only problem you'd be right, but they aren't. Badly designed, poorly thought out objectives plague the STFs. Look at the newer timed optionals to see that, especially ANRA. Or how about the red herrings in phase 1 of GtG?
I'm all for educating the players, but I remember a time when there was zero information on ships in game. Nothing at all, you knew nothing about that ship until you bought it. It took longer still to get the most useful information in game.
Cryptic is the one that still explicitly communicates to the players that you can continue in advanced if the Kang goes below 75%, and that BGA alarm bugs are optional objectives. And these are such basic things, do you really trust them to do anything deeper?
If you want to educate the players, you have to do it yourself. Cryptic isn't likely to do it right, or well, or fix any errors in any timely fashion. There are things they can do to improve the queues, with more visible objectives and better aligning normal and advanced objectives (which they are doing) but having some kind of boot camp or tutorial isn't likely to ever happen.
The upside is for trollable missions like undine infiltration. And for missions that the pug playerbase will never manage like borg disconnected. For the majority of missions there is very little change.
The only potential downside is something like ISA where the fail is a blessing if you get a horrendous group. There's maybe 4 or 5 like this.
All in all it will be a benefit to the majority. What it comes down to is that the company feels they have done all they can to force upgrades for the past 8 months. Most who planned to upgrade have done so. They now see a benefit in appealing to a wider audience with these missions. It is the only logical conclusion I can draw from the proposed change back.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
If you have no desire to do r&d stuff to craft better gear(thus improving your chances at completing the stf) please stay in normal queues. I'm no mega-dps'er but I can complete advanced queues with other competent players. For example, the other day I joined an ISA pug. It was an epic fail for obvious reasons: out of the 5 players, I was the only one that did above 15k dps. The other 4 were at 5k or below. With the increased shield and hull points in the advanced queues, simple math would tell you that you need a certain amount of dps(or some knowleable CC guys) to successfully complete the mission. I certainly did not pull dps away from the others because of a huge amount of damage done by myself alone.
All in all, the queues are what they are named. If you have normal gear,stay in normal queues. If you have upgraded gear but aren't a min/maxer you can do advanced but you still need others that are upgraded also.
I don't want anyone to feel left out of game content in any way but since Cryptic does pretty much nothing to explain effective ship building, it's left up to the players to get the knowledge needed to contribute effectively,whether it's asking for help from fleeties or spending 30 minutes reading on the wiki or doing what I did: spend some time on youtube watching others play the stf's before you jump in blindly and cause the rage that permeates some of the posts that are on here.
Btw, I have a parser and will gladly parse runs for anyone just to give them a general idea of what they're doing or not doing. No shaming or judgement will be meted out and only friendly advice will be given if asked for. I'm ingame @kragg13 and always glad to help out anyone genuinely interested in improving their game experience, which also improves MY game experience too. :-)
Good luck to all.
Claim: There were issues both before and after DR, most of them the same.
Result: Everyone agrees this is the case.
Claim: Post count in that this thread proves decreasing activity in the public ques post DR.
Result: False.
Okay first, at least one of you seems to know that post count over the time periods chosen really only indicates one thing, that there were issues.
And that's it. It's really the only thing you can reasonably claim.
We don't know how many unique posters there are in that thread.
We don't know how many posts per event.
There's a bunch we don't know.
We do know the thread was SUPPOSED to be about worst experiences in an STF.
If the post count is going down, we assume, naturally, that there's a lack of interest in the thread. We just don't know why. But, based on the nature of the thread there's only one immediate choice.
People aren't having as many bad experiences in STFs. We don't know why though.
But here's some WAGs.
People quit the game, no longer play, and therefore have very nice days with mum.
People read the thread, got better, and no longer cause issues.
People read the thread, got into channel groups, and no longer cause issues.
People are done with that grind and no longer que, preferring other game play.
Oh the list goes on. The point is, as already clearly pointed out, only Cryptic can know what those players are doing, and where. If it's in game.
Taking the average daily post count by month for that thread you'll see a decline leading up to DR and continuing past DR. Almost as if DR never happened. And therefore I would posit that any change in the ques is unrelated to DR.
A couple of things though. New free ship? New mission gear? New Billion Dollar Ship? New que? Expect some spikes in people making use of of those things. And expect a spike in reports. That's all on that.
Peace.
How sure are you that this appeals to wider audience?
Empirical evidence shows PuGs havent population at advanced havent changed at all. Those having 0 are still 0. While those that popular are still popular.
Dead weights and trolls will still ruin the advance queues.
This move is only popular to players who restrict themselves in PuGs STFs but cannot nor refuse to carry advance before. It is a very specific playerbase and shouldnt be tied to more players coming in.
This is the same debate I had with you on other threads, just because you think that how the majority feels doesn't mean it is the majority nor it isn't fun because you are not having fun or you think most people are not having fun. Not unless you are Cryptic employee and you got the metrics, all you have spewed in the forums are propaganda - especially "wider audience".
That's one of the things that confuses me with the blog...
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/9358023
"Earlier this year we made some updates to the Azure Nebula Rescue queue. These changes addressed some concerns we had with how the Queues were rewarding players and how difficult optional objectives on Advanced queues might be blocking player progress. After watching the numbers and listening to feedback, we believe that the STO community has approved of these changes. With this mandate, we will be rolling out similar changes to the rest of our Advanced queues."
...and the wtf/lolwut that arises from reading that. What numbers did they watch? What feedback did they listen to? If the folks at Cryptic worked for Coca-Cola or Pepsi, both companies would have gone out of business by calling New Coke and Crystal Pepsi the best products ever and saying the consumers loved them.
Hell, even the wording of it..."how difficult optional objectives on Advanced queues might be blocking player progress"...optional objectives can't block progress - they're optional. It reads like so much of the nonsense that's been posted in so many threads on the matter.
X says it's optional even though it's mandatory! Um, no, X doesn't say that...insert image showing that it doesn't. X this, X that, X etc...um, no, insert image showing that it doesn't.
It's like they hired one of the folks that don't pay attention in the least to write the blog. It's mind-boggling.
BDA is now finally zeroed out by comparison.
This was a couple weeks ago I haven't looked or played missions in a while.
However, the real test case is the Iconian 3 advanced missions which pug like a dream. Admittedly they are important right now for the marks, but I suspect they will have some lasting appeal.
My main 'evidence' is the overall wait time on average for missions. Of course some never went even before DR, but there were many many others that popped instantly. These same missions now wait 2 to 3 minutes.
Except for about 5 minutes in December last I have only ever pugged missions and I can say with 100% confidence that the number of puggers has been reduced by a factor of at least 4 if not much higher. That is to say if 1000 people were pugging on October 12th. Now there are less than 250.
Need more evidence? The company is now removing these fails. They wouldn't be doing so for no good reason as it de-incentivizes upgrades.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Your evidence based on the same wording as your propaganda.
Look at VD mentioned above. It is literally the same writing as you and some other whinning players have done from "Fail optionals". How can someone fail on optionals shows what type of quality player you are or group you belong. It is the same propaganda when you stated "majority". If you state evidence prove it with numbers rather than propaganda.
There has been no changes PuG queues population. It is the same population as it is before.
Your assumption is that once you nerf advance everyone is going to the same queuing habits with the addition to low quality players. The problem with this current solution is that if you are capable of advance before, if you are after farming rewards, you can get more rewards in time doing Normal by doing 2 or more normals instead of 1 advance finished at the same time frame. There is no more reason to do Advance for the quality players if you are after farming not unless it is community driven or was already popular before.
Like I said, nothing has change in pug population queues now. The popular are still popular while unpopular are still 0. I still have to wait the same number of minutes now as in before.
I should say again that I gave up on these queues in early January. What I mean is that when I saw that they would hold off changing them until after the anniversary which was already after the winter wonderland - when they kept stalling and stalling to force upgrades - I knew that the damage was done. I do not play many queues anymore due to not needing any further resources. When I do play the fails have no effect whatsoever. So I could personally care less if they ever make these changes. Changing it now will have no salubrious effects on the game's health. Like that?
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
I'm so sick and tired of not being able to do the PvEs I want because of some ridiculous 30 min timer, or because no one is even joining the queue, and even IF you finally do get into a queue, there seams to always be that one prick that just blows it in the first 2 mins, and you're screwed for another 30 mins, or an hour on Borg,.. Why an hour? What makes the Borg ones so special from other ones? STO Slow Timers Online.
I like the Dyson ground because I can go there on MY time, and if others want to join up, they just show up, we don't have to coordinate a time to be on, or say "hey give me 5 mins then I can join the queue with you" and they take 10 or just log. Open Space and Ground is the only way I see this continuing for PvE rep grind.
The only other option, and it's a long shot, is to make it so NPCs fill PvE queues when a full team can't be made.
Especially for those PvE queues that don't even have a wait timer, and it just showes " ---- " in the time.
Let me queue it up and fill the other ranks with my Boffs, or copies of my ship for space.
If there is a wait time, then let there be an option to start now or wait for more players option. If there is more then one in the queue, have a prompt show saying, the team wants to begin now, do you want to go or wait.
I really enjoyed Colony, Mine Trap, Braking the Planet, but now those are rarely ran, if at all.
Most casual and single players left 'Star Trek: Online'.
My character Tsin'xing
Indeed. The changes came 7 months too late. Myself and a number of others argued as strongly as we could in November and December last that these changes needed to happen immediately. However, Cryptic used the winter festival, then the anniversary then some events, then delta recruiting to cover and prop up the login numbers. By February it was already too late. Those that didn't want the failqueues quit by then.
Still, I find an overall improvement since the change. There's 4 or 5 elites than run well. And there's 8-10 advanced that go within 2 minutes. It's plenty for some good variety. I have no complaints.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."