Maybe becuase pugs can be so bad people simply elect not to pug and play the queues with friends?
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Maybe becuase pugs can be so bad people simply elect not to pug and play the queues with friends?
Hehe those people are funny. I encountered someone in ISN (yes, that's right. Normal ) yesterday. He was very proud that he did 34k DPS in a normal mission where you get downscaled - his real DPS on advanced was likely a lot higher. Basically told us that we shouldn't follow him to the right side, cause if you did you'd be totally useless according to him.
Dude was pretending like it's difficult to solo one side on normal. I told him that I'd have taken his advice if we had been playing advanced, and then he told me that he wasn't 'stupid enough to PUG advanced'.
Of course I didn't take him too serious anymore anyway after he basically told me that I wasn't 'good' just because he had some higher parse results... I mean, who even needs that amount of DPS in a normal mission? He may have been more powerful, he clearly wasn't able to judge things himself beside interpreting some parse results. That, and the fact that was too scared to pug an advanced mission makes it even cuter
The guy was basically patting himself on the back, considering himself to be the king of the game or something but immediately admitted that he'd rather not face some unexpected situations on a higher difficulty xD
It's kind of interesting. I only pug and I think most of the reason is hoping for a 'bad' group. Trying to support the 'bad' group is my fun in the game.
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."
The OP's assertion is right but for the wrong reason. The reason queues aren't popping as often with the exception of about 4 popular ones (infected space, Kitomer space, CE, and counterpoint) because there are less people playing the game.
He was very proud that he did 34k DPS in a normal mission where you get downscaled - his real DPS on advanced was likely a lot higher.
Not likely. Based on my observations, I'm pretty sure the damage output of a ship is reduced by very little, if anything, by level scaling. Couldn't be more than a 20% reduction, and it was probably less.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Other reasons are the more experience players don't want to play with a bunch of "n00bs" because they don't want their perfect guaranteed runs to be imperfect and less than guaranteed. They have slammed the door to anyone who wants to embrace challenge and made the others pay for missing even one optional. When on a "failed" run (so much as missing one optional) suicide is demanded by the DPSorGTFO crowd, I can no longer have any respect for them at all.
And of course another reason is that they must have been successful in driving out those who want to try out builds, embrace challenge, expand themselves etc, and yes of course the occaisional person who doesn't know what s/he is doing.
The queues can only suffer because too many people want to be complete a$$#oles.
there is many que that are heavy scripted, so bad that many "PUGs" failed, even it was very simple.
i dont mind pugging at any times, there are some reps are still in progress and some were already maxed, but need more marks for tier 5 elite items that cost 750 marks.
i could agreed it need some updates.
add in random specail daily prize.
1 upgrade tech token
1 upgrade ship tech token
1 pack of crew (4 members) with chance of rare duty officer.
1 bonus mark pack, your choice of mark beside standard marks on specific ques.
1 extra resource bundle
and few others that devs can think something to add on a daily prize, we can add few more on the list if you got something to add.
Wanna see how petty the players are? Host an event that lasts for a week where all players will get 100m EC 300k dil ore and 2000 marks of their choice if all queues are completed 500 times in a week (all players contribute to this pool) 100% chance this will not happen
What killed the queues are the troll points and the fail conditions that can kill/fail/stop the mission. I can point to several points that cause people to move to the private instances.
What killed public queues
1.) Fail conditions that ended the mission.
These were bad ideas from the start, in this game with the varied build/player skill not every team was able to keep the fail from happening. I know the answer is/was do the normals until you have the skill but they didn't reward enough and you could not use them to get the elite mark for the gear to get the build to be competitive, So you did advanced/elite and hoped other could carry you.
2.) Troll points.
These are basically a point where one person can kill the mission, the door way in Infected, the questioning during Undine Infiltration, the probes in ISA and KA. Once people figured they could force fail and waste peoples time, people went to the private instances where they knew they could finish.
3.) Reward vs time.
People are lazy. There is no way anyone can argue this point. People find the easiest way to get what they want and that is what they do until they get what they want then they move on and never look back unless they are bored or ask. ISA quick borg rep marks, Kobali ground quick iconian/delta marks, CCA quick fleet marks.
Now what are the possible fixes?
1.) Changing the fails to optionals. Which was done for advanced but should be for all. Why do I suggest this because then you get the base reward no matter what. Then the missions don't feel like a waste of time if failed. Then give bonuses for optionals maybe a small package or drop of some sort but nothing that is a must have that will cause people to leave if failed.
2.)Make it harder/impossible for a single person troll. Remove single player activations or small openings or needing to 100% complete tasks. Example fixes: UI the questioning make it a 90% task, add more openings to the final area. Infected make multiple player interact with consoles to close the door. ISA and KA I have no ideas.
3.) Make everything timed. I know OH GOD now it's like "Mirror Incursion", but it's the only way to make it so there is no easy way and make all the queues take the "same" amount of time. Example: fight borg probes for 10 mins while a "ground team" sets demo charges to destroy a gateway, actually the could work for trolling ISA and KA.
Now the question becomes, "What about my Epic MK XIVs I worked so hard to get?" For this I would propose something from another game I play. Their answer to this "Time Attacks". These would be "Breech" style point A to B missions where the point is to kill everything and/or complete tasks as fast as possible. These missions would have decreasing rewards for time taken, the longer it takes the less you get.
Anyone ever notice how many useless letter are in the word queue?
Thing with accolades is they are fine for the Pokemon collector type players who must have everything but most people don't even know where to find the list of them or even what they gain from them.
I'd certainly not go chasing after accolades unless their was some sort of reward for doing so. They should be the sort of thing you just acquire through regular gameplay.
You really want to fix dead queues, you need proper incentives to play them. That means something like the old hourly events to encourage players to run them. Minor improvements to rewards for the event run would entice people into alternatives to the usual CCA & ISA.
Or actually revamp the queues to be"fun" and not a grind of the same stuff you can do blindfold. Stuff like the fleet alerts are good as they have random enemies, that keeps it interesting.
Exactly. If the accolade doesn't give me some sort of buff or passive something that can help gameplay, IDGAF.
However, the OP used Colon Invasion as an example. Like you said, perhaps an update to the rewards and to the queue itself would help? I would love to see the Borg or Cardassians or Mirror Fed or Vaadwar as possible mobs. Same thing for Fleet Alterts - time to add more possible enemy mobs. How hard is that? How hard can it be?
In the end, people will play ques for best ROI. However, why not mix them up? Why not have "bonus X of the week" be applied to a random queue every week? There's so many things that can be done with assets *ALREADY IN-GAME*....
A lot of things killed the public q's. The first was the removal of the hourly bonuses. The second was the release of DR. Content was made even harder and the casual players, who already had trouble performing in advanced difficulty q's, were made even less effective. Casual players don't play enough to be able to upgrade their gear and they won't pay for it either. So they will either give up, or continue being ineffective. The third are they private channels for q's. The left over players got sick of getting stuck with the casual players, who after dr were even less effective then before, and started only paying in pre-mades.
Wanna see how petty the players are? Host an event that lasts for a week where all players will get 100m EC 300k dil ore and 2000 marks of their choice if all queues are completed 500 times in a week (all players contribute to this pool) 100% chance this will not happen
Ore, pah. Pass. (Besides, the event would murder the economy.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
What I don't get is that rewards for all queues were reduced because they didn't want us to level too fast, and then they released a system which allows people to collect multiple spec points a day without even playing a single mission.
I'm certainly guilty of min/maxing my queue time... but mainly because I need my time DOffing etc to pay for the good gear in the first place. However, post-DR, what has changed is that I won't grind out the marks for a set out of curiosity, because I don't then want to have to spend again on upgrading it.
In terms of solutions, I think the best idea proposed in this thread is some sort of event-based bonus. It seems to be working well on The Breach, which was nearly dead on its removal. Perhaps have a "mission of the week" where some sort of repeated replay (maybe 4-5 times over the week?) awards a modest bonus, like a tech upgrade or spec point. Maybe even a unique DOff or item (but on the level of mission rewards).
This could be rotated around the queues, and would give casual players both an incentive and an opportunity to try (or re-try) a mission which otherwise sits forgotten.
What I don't get is that rewards for all queues were reduced because they didn't want us to level too fast, and then they released a system which allows people to collect multiple spec points a day without even playing a single mission.
A system which heavily incentivizes spending money on buying more ships.
And needs an XP week to achieve the abovementioned spec point rate, I think.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Same sort of player-driven policies that ruin everything else: the mentality that insists on treating it as "chores for rewards," and people who judge everything by how well it fits into their stacked DPS vanity runs.
You know, instead of approaching it as a game you play for fun.
i think,like other games i play..the Fleet Leaders and Community Leaders should be promoting the various pVE Q's in the game.
Usually , I see newer players very slow to acclimate to grouping,without a good fleet w /pve action to get em into it.
I was sad to see a very large fleet I was in, berate players ..rather than help them..mega big fleets can be old and soddered,with little to add to pves other than the eliteist b s ./ bank tribblez 4 u^
The events seem to take away from fleet/armada pve ,as many players scramble 4 dailies-I see the events themselves the biggest problem for grouping diff marks.
The Rep weapons stink now in space- revamp them to decent crit bonus'...then we see players runnin 4 marks more.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,119Community Moderator
Other reasons are the more experience players don't want to play with a bunch of "n00bs" because they don't want their perfect guaranteed runs to be imperfect and less than guaranteed. They have slammed the door to anyone who wants to embrace challenge and made the others pay for missing even one optional. When on a "failed" run (so much as missing one optional) suicide is demanded by the DPSorGTFO crowd, I can no longer have any respect for them at all.
And of course another reason is that they must have been successful in driving out those who want to try out builds, embrace challenge, expand themselves etc, and yes of course the occaisional person who doesn't know what s/he is doing.
The queues can only suffer because too many people want to be complete a$$#oles.
I actually enjoy the unpredictable PUGs. While I don't like it when the group just happens to be terrible and even I can out DPS everyone with at least 10k, I don't back out unless I have no other choice, such as the rest of the team abandoning the mission. I'll see it through to the end, maybe even try to coordinate to make up for the lower damage output.
Also... no cookie cutter DPS Chaser is going to drive me away from my fun builds. I still wanna make the USS Gaseous Anomaly with all the gas venting abilities like Warp Plasma and Theta, BECAUSE I CAN and FOR THE LULZ! Because its fun and my friends would get a good laugh out of it.
And the "DPSorGTFO" crowd can kiss my nacelles. I may not be top tier able to own any queue singlehandedly person, but I don't want to be either. I play by my own rules while maintaining an ability to contribute in some way or another. Lower DPS sci ship? Crowd Control. Lower DPS Cruiser? BFAW + AP Beta for EVERYONE! I view my builds a lot like the Sydney Sleeper in Team Fortress 2. I may not be able to headshot with it, but the Jarate granting mini crits still supports the team. Also... I am willing to give advice to the best of my knowledge to help others to improve their skills.
I've been playing since just before F2P, and I will never forget that I was a "n00b" at one time. Everyone starts somewhere, and if we experienced players aren't willing to help new players to grow and try new things... then what does that say about us?
It's kind of interesting. I only pug and I think most of the reason is hoping for a 'bad' group. Trying to support the 'bad' group is my fun in the game.
it is fun to help rally a group of 2-3 through what they prob feel ,was impossible challenge...we make newbs outa noobs like that
Same sort of player-driven policies that ruin everything else: the mentality that insists on treating it as "chores for rewards," and people who judge everything by how well it fits into their stacked DPS vanity runs.
You know, instead of approaching it as a game you play for fun.
to me it seems as though they only create content with a view to making money, rather than creating content with a view to improve the playability of the game. they are clearly happy to spend money on expensive bait, and they are great at making the tank look pretty, but they seem totally unconcerned, or unequipped, to deal with any equipment that doesn't work as it should. cryptics answer to this always seems to be, paint the dying flora green, add some flashing lights to distract, and hope that people can ignore the reality long enough the spend money.
sorry for the aquarium metaphor btw, but it was this or 'jazz hands'
All cryptic needs to do to fix their queues is take a look at STO's predecessor, which has healthy queues despite having a mere fraction of STO's population.
Meet Champions Online.
CO's queues usually pop in less than a minute, and you really only have something of a wait during the late hours. There's a daily quest for completing 3 simple queues, which rotate in fairly often, and another daily quest for completing a more elaborate queued event which rotates once per week.
A daily incentive would be nice, but since STO's queues don't rotate like COs (nor should they) you'd just have more people in ISA, CC, and then one other easy/quick queue to get the daily quota in.
So!
Why not also take a page out of WoW's playbook and add a "random queue" option--one for normal and one for advanced? The daily quest should require the player to run 3 queues selected via the random option. To further incentivize the use of random over ISA cheese, completing random queues shouldn't put the STF in question on cooldown and should award a choice-of-marks package and possibly a bonus crafting mats package in addition to the standard rewards.
Thus, if I'm after Iconian marks, I could chain-queue randoms and, no matter which ones I ended up in, I could get what I needed.
To summarize:
Standard queuing:
- Dilithium
- Queue-specific marks or fleet marks
- R&D materials package
- 30-minute cooldown between specific runs (what we have now)
Random queuing:
- All of the above rewards
- Choice-of-marks package
- R&D materials bonus package
- No cooldown invoked
- Existing cooldown ignored if applicable
- Credit toward daily STF quest
* The daily reward package would normally contain something basic, like a choice-of-marks package, extra dilithium, random blue or purple gear (most likely vendor trash), etc. However, to feed the gambling addicts, it should also have a very small chance of containing better things: purple tech upgrades, 1-2 lobi, rich dilithium claim, or perhaps something completely unique to this reward package--special bridge officer, special duty officer(s), basic T1-T4 ship requisition for filling out admiralty, etc.
What killed the queues ? simple Delta Rising killed the queues and although they scaled back the cluster bomb of a brick wall it was when it 1st hit, the number of players we lost and it turned away from queuing has never seen a recovery.
I'm a member of several STF channels The DPS channels up to 75k, Elitestf channel, STOMasters, and SpartanEliteSTF (Pre-DR this was a very active ground channel) I left a few others as they were dead.
DPS channels tend to run ISA, NTTE, Undine Assault Battle of Korfez with the odd Gates of Grethor, Counterpoint, CSA and KSA. and to a lesser extent BUG Hunt, although its usually one guy who makes the call for this map, (they killed interest in that map when they changed Johnny Rico at the final stage)change it back and i can see that map becoming popular again, Brotherhood of the Sword and Hive Space Elite. You may see calls for Herald Spire or Rh'lhho station but not often.
Back in the 2000's, there was a Writer's Guild strike. I was too young to understand much of it, but I remember it meant "no new TV shows for a while." The Fox Network weathered the "crisis" better than its rivals with lost viewers and such. I remember one of its head honchos - probably the network president - was interviewed afterwards and asked why he thought Fox had fared so much better than ABC, CBS, and the various cable channels.
His answer was that he didn't think of viewers as loyal fans waiting for content, but as addicts looking for an excuse to break their addiction. The longer they go between hits (new shows), the more likely they are to break their addiction and never come back.
That always stuck with me, and I believe is a big reason that the queues never really came back to life after DR. The fail conditions and massive HP/damage changes, combined with the extreme length of time to course correct, broke the addiction many players had. Once they left, they never wanted to get hooked again.
That creates a snowball effect, where new players never even get started because there's not enough population to try.
Of course, my real answer to "how to make [game option] active" is make it fun. For me, doing the same thing for 20 minutes many times over is not particularly fun.
What killed the queues ? simple Delta Rising killed the queues and although they scaled back the cluster bomb of a brick wall it was when it 1st hit, the number of players we lost and it turned away from queuing has never seen a recovery.
I'm a member of several STF channels The DPS channels up to 75k, Elitestf channel, STOMasters, and SpartanEliteSTF (Pre-DR this was a very active ground channel) I left a few others as they were dead.
DPS channels tend to run ISA, NTTE, Undine Assault Battle of Korfez with the odd Gates of Grethor, Counterpoint, CSA and KSA. and to a lesser extent BUG Hunt, although its usually one guy who makes the call for this map, (they killed interest in that map when they changed Johnny Rico at the final stage)change it back and i can see that map becoming popular again, Brotherhood of the Sword and Hive Space Elite. You may see calls for Herald Spire or Rh'lhho station but not often.
The other channels i mentioned are dead.
Delta Rising was a disaster. But it's well behind us in terms of how difficult stuff is. Once you're done upgrading and filling spec trees, the game is easier than ever before and very rewarding. Even if you play something else than ISA.
Upgrading stuff has become much easier, as well as filling spec trees. If only they could communicate this to the players that left.
As for Bug Hunt: Lt. Derp only needs to survive at Elite difficulty. Which is fairly easy with one dedicated healer or a powerful team that can just kill the spawnmother before he gets in trouble. Elite isn't meant to be easy PUGable anyway.
The fact that interest was lost in that map because there's some other requirements besides 'pew pew' shows once again that the playerbase, in general, wants everything to be easy, fast, predictable and soloable.
Actually the solution to this problem is to have the missions in Soloable Ques as well.
The point all MMOs miss is that most people play games to get away from their worldly problems. These problems all come from having to compete and share with other people.
Why would anyone want to do that in a game? Especially if you are paying for it?
All cryptic needs to do to fix their queues is take a look at STO's predecessor, which has healthy queues despite having a mere fraction of STO's population.
Meet Champions Online.
CO's queues usually pop in less than a minute, and you really only have something of a wait during the late hours. There's a daily quest for completing 3 simple queues, which rotate in fairly often, and another daily quest for completing a more elaborate queued event which rotates once per week.
A daily incentive would be nice, but since STO's queues don't rotate like COs (nor should they) you'd just have more people in ISA, CC, and then one other easy/quick queue to get the daily quota in.
So!
Why not also take a page out of WoW's playbook and add a "random queue" option--one for normal and one for advanced? The daily quest should require the player to run 3 queues selected via the random option. To further incentivize the use of random over ISA cheese, completing random queues shouldn't put the STF in question on cooldown and should award a choice-of-marks package and possibly a bonus crafting mats package in addition to the standard rewards.
Thus, if I'm after Iconian marks, I could chain-queue randoms and, no matter which ones I ended up in, I could get what I needed.
To summarize:
Standard queuing:
- Dilithium
- Queue-specific marks or fleet marks
- R&D materials package
- 30-minute cooldown between specific runs (what we have now)
Random queuing:
- All of the above rewards
- Choice-of-marks package
- R&D materials bonus package
- No cooldown invoked
- Existing cooldown ignored if applicable
- Credit toward daily STF quest
* The daily reward package would normally contain something basic, like a choice-of-marks package, extra dilithium, random blue or purple gear (most likely vendor trash), etc. However, to feed the gambling addicts, it should also have a very small chance of containing better things: purple tech upgrades, 1-2 lobi, rich dilithium claim, or perhaps something completely unique to this reward package--special bridge officer, special duty officer(s), basic T1-T4 ship requisition for filling out admiralty, etc.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
An interesting idea to make PUGing more rewarding (except for the lobi, don't expect that too happen). But it shouldn't be necessary.
I think one part of the problem is that there's so much difference between difficulties. Normal is way too easy even for casual players because even the presence of one above-average player will leave nothing for them to shoot at. Advanced is more interesting in terms of difficulty, but of course some players aren't ready for that yet. And then there's the few players who still PUG advanced but who either don't want to carry an entire team or simply are good enough to contribute for themselves, but not compensate for the worse performance of their team mates.
Comments
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
I believe you may have found one of my few berserk buttons...
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Hehe those people are funny. I encountered someone in ISN (yes, that's right. Normal
Dude was pretending like it's difficult to solo one side on normal. I told him that I'd have taken his advice if we had been playing advanced, and then he told me that he wasn't 'stupid enough to PUG advanced'.
Of course I didn't take him too serious anymore anyway after he basically told me that I wasn't 'good' just because he had some higher parse results... I mean, who even needs that amount of DPS in a normal mission?
The guy was basically patting himself on the back, considering himself to be the king of the game or something but immediately admitted that he'd rather not face some unexpected situations on a higher difficulty xD
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Not likely. Based on my observations, I'm pretty sure the damage output of a ship is reduced by very little, if anything, by level scaling. Couldn't be more than a 20% reduction, and it was probably less.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
And of course another reason is that they must have been successful in driving out those who want to try out builds, embrace challenge, expand themselves etc, and yes of course the occaisional person who doesn't know what s/he is doing.
The queues can only suffer because too many people want to be complete a$$#oles.
i dont mind pugging at any times, there are some reps are still in progress and some were already maxed, but need more marks for tier 5 elite items that cost 750 marks.
i could agreed it need some updates.
add in random specail daily prize.
1 upgrade tech token
1 upgrade ship tech token
1 pack of crew (4 members) with chance of rare duty officer.
1 bonus mark pack, your choice of mark beside standard marks on specific ques.
1 extra resource bundle
and few others that devs can think something to add on a daily prize, we can add few more on the list if you got something to add.
What killed public queues
1.) Fail conditions that ended the mission.
These were bad ideas from the start, in this game with the varied build/player skill not every team was able to keep the fail from happening. I know the answer is/was do the normals until you have the skill but they didn't reward enough and you could not use them to get the elite mark for the gear to get the build to be competitive, So you did advanced/elite and hoped other could carry you.
2.) Troll points.
These are basically a point where one person can kill the mission, the door way in Infected, the questioning during Undine Infiltration, the probes in ISA and KA. Once people figured they could force fail and waste peoples time, people went to the private instances where they knew they could finish.
3.) Reward vs time.
People are lazy. There is no way anyone can argue this point. People find the easiest way to get what they want and that is what they do until they get what they want then they move on and never look back unless they are bored or ask. ISA quick borg rep marks, Kobali ground quick iconian/delta marks, CCA quick fleet marks.
Now what are the possible fixes?
1.) Changing the fails to optionals. Which was done for advanced but should be for all. Why do I suggest this because then you get the base reward no matter what. Then the missions don't feel like a waste of time if failed. Then give bonuses for optionals maybe a small package or drop of some sort but nothing that is a must have that will cause people to leave if failed.
2.)Make it harder/impossible for a single person troll. Remove single player activations or small openings or needing to 100% complete tasks. Example fixes: UI the questioning make it a 90% task, add more openings to the final area. Infected make multiple player interact with consoles to close the door. ISA and KA I have no ideas.
3.) Make everything timed. I know OH GOD now it's like "Mirror Incursion", but it's the only way to make it so there is no easy way and make all the queues take the "same" amount of time. Example: fight borg probes for 10 mins while a "ground team" sets demo charges to destroy a gateway, actually the could work for trolling ISA and KA.
Now the question becomes, "What about my Epic MK XIVs I worked so hard to get?" For this I would propose something from another game I play. Their answer to this "Time Attacks". These would be "Breech" style point A to B missions where the point is to kill everything and/or complete tasks as fast as possible. These missions would have decreasing rewards for time taken, the longer it takes the less you get.
Anyone ever notice how many useless letter are in the word queue?
Exactly. If the accolade doesn't give me some sort of buff or passive something that can help gameplay, IDGAF.
However, the OP used Colon Invasion as an example. Like you said, perhaps an update to the rewards and to the queue itself would help? I would love to see the Borg or Cardassians or Mirror Fed or Vaadwar as possible mobs. Same thing for Fleet Alterts - time to add more possible enemy mobs. How hard is that? How hard can it be?
In the end, people will play ques for best ROI. However, why not mix them up? Why not have "bonus X of the week" be applied to a random queue every week? There's so many things that can be done with assets *ALREADY IN-GAME*....
Ore, pah. Pass. (Besides, the event would murder the economy.)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
In terms of solutions, I think the best idea proposed in this thread is some sort of event-based bonus. It seems to be working well on The Breach, which was nearly dead on its removal. Perhaps have a "mission of the week" where some sort of repeated replay (maybe 4-5 times over the week?) awards a modest bonus, like a tech upgrade or spec point. Maybe even a unique DOff or item (but on the level of mission rewards).
This could be rotated around the queues, and would give casual players both an incentive and an opportunity to try (or re-try) a mission which otherwise sits forgotten.
And needs an XP week to achieve the abovementioned spec point rate, I think.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
You know, instead of approaching it as a game you play for fun.
Usually , I see newer players very slow to acclimate to grouping,without a good fleet w /pve action to get em into it.
I was sad to see a very large fleet I was in, berate players ..rather than help them..mega big fleets can be old and soddered,with little to add to pves other than the eliteist b s ./ bank tribblez 4 u^
The events seem to take away from fleet/armada pve ,as many players scramble 4 dailies-I see the events themselves the biggest problem for grouping diff marks.
The Rep weapons stink now in space- revamp them to decent crit bonus'...then we see players runnin 4 marks more.
Someone's already advocating the murder of the Economy because he want's max DL for his Zen.
I actually enjoy the unpredictable PUGs. While I don't like it when the group just happens to be terrible and even I can out DPS everyone with at least 10k, I don't back out unless I have no other choice, such as the rest of the team abandoning the mission. I'll see it through to the end, maybe even try to coordinate to make up for the lower damage output.
Also... no cookie cutter DPS Chaser is going to drive me away from my fun builds. I still wanna make the USS Gaseous Anomaly with all the gas venting abilities like Warp Plasma and Theta, BECAUSE I CAN and FOR THE LULZ! Because its fun and my friends would get a good laugh out of it.
And the "DPSorGTFO" crowd can kiss my nacelles. I may not be top tier able to own any queue singlehandedly person, but I don't want to be either. I play by my own rules while maintaining an ability to contribute in some way or another. Lower DPS sci ship? Crowd Control. Lower DPS Cruiser? BFAW + AP Beta for EVERYONE! I view my builds a lot like the Sydney Sleeper in Team Fortress 2. I may not be able to headshot with it, but the Jarate granting mini crits still supports the team. Also... I am willing to give advice to the best of my knowledge to help others to improve their skills.
I've been playing since just before F2P, and I will never forget that I was a "n00b" at one time. Everyone starts somewhere, and if we experienced players aren't willing to help new players to grow and try new things... then what does that say about us?
it is fun to help rally a group of 2-3 through what they prob feel ,was impossible challenge...we make newbs outa noobs like that
to me it seems as though they only create content with a view to making money, rather than creating content with a view to improve the playability of the game. they are clearly happy to spend money on expensive bait, and they are great at making the tank look pretty, but they seem totally unconcerned, or unequipped, to deal with any equipment that doesn't work as it should. cryptics answer to this always seems to be, paint the dying flora green, add some flashing lights to distract, and hope that people can ignore the reality long enough the spend money.
sorry for the aquarium metaphor btw, but it was this or 'jazz hands'
Meet Champions Online.
CO's queues usually pop in less than a minute, and you really only have something of a wait during the late hours. There's a daily quest for completing 3 simple queues, which rotate in fairly often, and another daily quest for completing a more elaborate queued event which rotates once per week.
A daily incentive would be nice, but since STO's queues don't rotate like COs (nor should they) you'd just have more people in ISA, CC, and then one other easy/quick queue to get the daily quota in.
So!
Why not also take a page out of WoW's playbook and add a "random queue" option--one for normal and one for advanced? The daily quest should require the player to run 3 queues selected via the random option. To further incentivize the use of random over ISA cheese, completing random queues shouldn't put the STF in question on cooldown and should award a choice-of-marks package and possibly a bonus crafting mats package in addition to the standard rewards.
Thus, if I'm after Iconian marks, I could chain-queue randoms and, no matter which ones I ended up in, I could get what I needed.
To summarize:
Standard queuing:
- Dilithium
- Queue-specific marks or fleet marks
- R&D materials package
- 30-minute cooldown between specific runs (what we have now)
Random queuing:
- All of the above rewards
- Choice-of-marks package
- R&D materials bonus package
- No cooldown invoked
- Existing cooldown ignored if applicable
- Credit toward daily STF quest
Daily STF quest:
- Dilithium
- 1-2 "purple" rep tokens of choice (borg neural processors, iconian dataprobes, etc)
- Daily reward package*
* The daily reward package would normally contain something basic, like a choice-of-marks package, extra dilithium, random blue or purple gear (most likely vendor trash), etc. However, to feed the gambling addicts, it should also have a very small chance of containing better things: purple tech upgrades, 1-2 lobi, rich dilithium claim, or perhaps something completely unique to this reward package--special bridge officer, special duty officer(s), basic T1-T4 ship requisition for filling out admiralty, etc.
Just my thoughts, anyway.
I'm a member of several STF channels The DPS channels up to 75k, Elitestf channel, STOMasters, and SpartanEliteSTF (Pre-DR this was a very active ground channel) I left a few others as they were dead.
DPS channels tend to run ISA, NTTE, Undine Assault Battle of Korfez with the odd Gates of Grethor, Counterpoint, CSA and KSA. and to a lesser extent BUG Hunt, although its usually one guy who makes the call for this map, (they killed interest in that map when they changed Johnny Rico at the final stage)change it back and i can see that map becoming popular again, Brotherhood of the Sword and Hive Space Elite. You may see calls for Herald Spire or Rh'lhho station but not often.
The other channels i mentioned are dead.
His answer was that he didn't think of viewers as loyal fans waiting for content, but as addicts looking for an excuse to break their addiction. The longer they go between hits (new shows), the more likely they are to break their addiction and never come back.
That always stuck with me, and I believe is a big reason that the queues never really came back to life after DR. The fail conditions and massive HP/damage changes, combined with the extreme length of time to course correct, broke the addiction many players had. Once they left, they never wanted to get hooked again.
That creates a snowball effect, where new players never even get started because there's not enough population to try.
Of course, my real answer to "how to make [game option] active" is make it fun. For me, doing the same thing for 20 minutes many times over is not particularly fun.
Delta Rising was a disaster. But it's well behind us in terms of how difficult stuff is. Once you're done upgrading and filling spec trees, the game is easier than ever before and very rewarding. Even if you play something else than ISA.
Upgrading stuff has become much easier, as well as filling spec trees. If only they could communicate this to the players that left.
As for Bug Hunt: Lt. Derp only needs to survive at Elite difficulty. Which is fairly easy with one dedicated healer or a powerful team that can just kill the spawnmother before he gets in trouble. Elite isn't meant to be easy PUGable anyway.
The fact that interest was lost in that map because there's some other requirements besides 'pew pew' shows once again that the playerbase, in general, wants everything to be easy, fast, predictable and soloable.
The point all MMOs miss is that most people play games to get away from their worldly problems. These problems all come from having to compete and share with other people.
Why would anyone want to do that in a game? Especially if you are paying for it?
An interesting idea to make PUGing more rewarding (except for the lobi, don't expect that too happen). But it shouldn't be necessary.
I think one part of the problem is that there's so much difference between difficulties. Normal is way too easy even for casual players because even the presence of one above-average player will leave nothing for them to shoot at. Advanced is more interesting in terms of difficulty, but of course some players aren't ready for that yet. And then there's the few players who still PUG advanced but who either don't want to carry an entire team or simply are good enough to contribute for themselves, but not compensate for the worse performance of their team mates.