I like the binding concept STO uses. Things got crazy in D2 when every item could be resold no matter how often you used it.
Nobody says there can't be fine tuning. There could be some sort of degradation of stats taking place if you trade an item after you used it - it's still good but not as good as if you'd found it yourself. But if we only go with absolutes I'd prefer a D2 free-tradeable-loot system to an overrestrictive binding of items. I'd be okay with adding a "used" status/mod to items like I suggested before but it doesn't really need that. Over time the market will change, more and more items will appear but Cryptic would also have to supply more items in the first place.
The main difference is Diablo II has a loot system generating literally infinite amounts of loot. Items have a drop rarity which influences the number of boni they carry. All of these boni have a range and then there's a lot of base items in the first place. You can find a blue ("uncommon"/magic) short sword or pair of boots with one or two modifiers in a range, like "x% faster attack speed, +x% damage against enemy y" or "x% faster running, x% chance to find magic items". With only those two boni and the range you can get a large number of items already. Now add a level of rarity, more mods that literally influence every aspect of your character from hitpoints, hitchance, minimum damage, maximum damage, health regeneration, faster caste rate, walking speed over life and mana leech or unique abilities not inherent to your class and a lot more and you have a huge amount of loot with only those two types of items. And now look at how many boots and short swords there are in addition to all the other weapon and item types.
STO on the other hoof is literally like playing with Duplos in comparison. Items only come with set modifiers, rarity influences how many mods but never more than four. [acc] always adds the same amount and we have rather limited item variety in the first place and it'll become even less since they want to merge consoles under the new skill system. Of course ou cannot translate loot systems 1:1 like this, but STO is severly lacking.
(...)
Buying gear for a glorified store brings absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever.
This. Of course it is nice once youcan affort the stuff and you have your build finalized, but afterwards you're done. With a D2-esque loot system you always fine tune and make the best out of what you get and maybe at one point you complete your dream set, but the next run maybe gives you another item that'll even improve certain spects further.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
There's a big difference between how D2 does boss loot and the old STFs. In D2 any loot you got from killing a boss was freely tradable. But in the old STF system you had to get lucky to get the drops you needed yourself.
This is true, however, and I don't want to debate about that. There really shouldn't be any item binding in the first place, maybe aside from quest items but STO doesn't have those in the grand scheme of things. Being unable to sell and trade items is one of the biggest flaws STO has.
I like the binding concept STO uses. Things got crazy in D2 when every item could be resold no matter how often you used it.
Ehh, one could make any hypothetical new 'Tech' tradable, kind of like ship or pet boxes before you open them up.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I have another solution. Introduce new unique epic quality space and ground sets that have a very small probability to drop from a certain set of queues. For example:
epic mk xiv deflector
-> 0,1% chance to drop from any normal Borg space queue
-> 1% chance to drop from any advanced Borg space queue
-> 1,5% chance to drop from any elite Borg space queue
epic mk xiv impulse engine
-> Undine space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
epic mk xiv warp/singularity core
-> Vaadwaur space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
epic mk xiv shield
-> Terran space queues (same chances for normal/advanced/elite as above)
The same could be applied to ground queues. I guarantee you. With a random drop reward system like this the queues would be full again.
I agree. Make it like the old STFs pre-rep, adapted to the new situation.
Rep gear at mk xii space and ground is available the current way. Mk XIII or Mk XIV elite or "veteran" gear with buffed up stats should be available from playing the queues only, and each one of them. Veteran Omega ground gear available from Borg ground, weapon, armour and shield, same for space. Veteran dyson gear (would need a ground queue), Iconian and so on.
And yes, you may not get it running hundreds of those, some get it at their third run - that's a game. RNG, item drops. Deal with it. It's fun to try to get it and if it isn't the game isn't fun to you, take a break.
TRIBBLE that. That original system was total garbage and when Cryptic did away with it, I was happy. There was literally nothing good with that old drop system.
Someone understands! I guess I'm not the only person who wasn't stupidly lucky with salvage back in the day.
I wasn't either, it took me 4 months to get my first completed ground set and costume unlock.
But the euphoria when I got that final drop was well worth the wait.
Buying gear for a glorified store brings absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever.
Brings me plenty.
"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."
This. Of course it is nice once youcan affort the stuff and you have your build finalized, but afterwards you're done. With a D2-esque loot system you always fine tune and make the best out of what you get and maybe at one point you complete your dream set, but the next run maybe gives you another item that'll even improve certain spects further.
Yes so you're done, and free to experiment with other gear sets or work on other gear sets. Liberation. Freedom to choose.
Not everyone enjoys mindless grind constantly, some of us like to find time to occasionally hang out with friends or RP.
That's why the rep systems guaranteed mark rewards and time gating is absolutely brilliant and by far the best system I have seen in any mmo to date.
"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."
please read the 1st paragraph again, and then explain to me how you managed to get "i want set roles in the encounters" from it. to save you some time, a quick word from the author.. "that isn't what i was saying" my point was - end game encounters are just up-scaled missions, and because there is no role requirements, there is no sensible reason why they shouldn't allow us to queue up for it with less than 5 players if we wish. and that i cant understand why players would argue against that idea.
1. If you reduce the number requirement from 5 to 3 (or 2), then people will complain it's still too high.
2. If you make the queues so that only 1 person is needed to start them and they can all be done solo due to scaling, there is not much point to making STO an MMO anymore. Mind as well make each player have their own instance of the entire game.
1. people still complain when they are giving out free things.. so by your logic, should they stop doing that?
2. sto IS an mmo, even if no one grouped up that would not change. social maps are still social maps, and the queues are not the be all, and end all.
your reasoning does not appear to be logic based, i would suggest it is personal bias colouring your opinion? if you are saying that everyone would opt to run solo, you are also saying that the majority don't really want to run grouped. by that logic alone, would it not make more sense to provide such options that would enrich the game for the majority of players, without actually taking anything away from the game itself?
There's a big difference between how D2 does boss loot and the old STFs. In D2 any loot you got from killing a boss was freely tradable. But in the old STF system you had to get lucky to get the drops you needed yourself.
This is true, however, and I don't want to debate about that. There really shouldn't be any item binding in the first place, maybe aside from quest items but STO doesn't have those in the grand scheme of things. Being unable to sell and trade items is one of the biggest flaws STO has.
I like the binding concept STO uses. Things got crazy in D2 when every item could be resold no matter how often you used it.
Ehh, one could make any hypothetical new 'Tech' tradable, kind of like ship or pet boxes before you open them up.
I think that would have made the old STF system much better. It'd have balanced out the luck aspect.
I like the binding concept STO uses. Things got crazy in D2 when every item could be resold no matter how often you used it.
Nobody says there can't be fine tuning. There could be some sort of degradation of stats taking place if you trade an item after you used it - it's still good but not as good as if you'd found it yourself. But if we only go with absolutes I'd prefer a D2 free-tradeable-loot system to an overrestrictive binding of items. I'd be okay with adding a "used" status/mod to items like I suggested before but it doesn't really need that. Over time the market will change, more and more items will appear but Cryptic would also have to supply more items in the first place.
The main difference is Diablo II has a loot system generating literally infinite amounts of loot. Items have a drop rarity which influences the number of boni they carry. All of these boni have a range and then there's a lot of base items in the first place. You can find a blue ("uncommon"/magic) short sword or pair of boots with one or two modifiers in a range, like "x% faster attack speed, +x% damage against enemy y" or "x% faster running, x% chance to find magic items". With only those two boni and the range you can get a large number of items already. Now add a level of rarity, more mods that literally influence every aspect of your character from hitpoints, hitchance, minimum damage, maximum damage, health regeneration, faster caste rate, walking speed over life and mana leech or unique abilities not inherent to your class and a lot more and you have a huge amount of loot with only those two types of items. And now look at how many boots and short swords there are in addition to all the other weapon and item types.
STO on the other hoof is literally like playing with Duplos in comparison. Items only come with set modifiers, rarity influences how many mods but never more than four. [acc] always adds the same amount and we have rather limited item variety in the first place and it'll become even less since they want to merge consoles under the new skill system. Of course ou cannot translate loot systems 1:1 like this, but STO is severly lacking.
I hated that about D2. WHOOO!! I found a level 50 rare item! *uses scroll of identify* wait.... it only has +5% damage, and +2-10 fire damage... the high level mod is + light radius!!!
Um yeah, randomized mod quality in D2 made for mountains of junk items. Do NOT WANT! Nothing sucks harder than collecting mats to craft an item only to find out that your level 45 character crafted a level 15 item.
Um yeah, randomized mod quality in D2 made for mountains of junk items. Do NOT WANT! Nothing sucks harder than collecting mats to craft an item only to find out that your level 45 character crafted a level 15 item.
this is why we must worship the D3 smart loot 2.0 system...for it is the holiest of all loot systems
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch." "We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
Passion and Serenity are one.
I gain power by understanding both.
In the chaos of their battle, I bring order.
I am a shadow, darkness born from light.
The Force is united within me.
I don't believe that many people would choose to run queues solo to be honest, just a select anti-social few.
I have been one of the people who has been advocating that stfs should be able to start with less than the max number of players in a private match. I even have a post up on Reddit about this topic right now. Just wanted to say that this wish is in no way about being anti-social, just a way to allow people more freedom and a greater challenge.
For the most part, if this change were to happen, I would end up pugging just as much as I do now. I would just end up spending more time in game playing and less time being a forum warrior. Queues should always be a full team as that is what everyone who does them is signing up for.
I like the queues. I used to enjoy playing them. But these days it's impossible to get anything to Pop that isn't an event, Crystalline, or ISA. I use the DPS channels with some success. But even the DPS channels are 99% ISA and whatever event is going on. Here's a list of things that I believe have killed the queues and possible solutions to those problems.
PROBLEM 1:We're coming up on 2 years since the R&D revamp. A glorious system that vastly improved the game. However (like many things since then) the revamp had a negative effect on the queues being filled. Before the R&D revamp, [Pen] didn't exist. Because of this, rep weapons were on par with lockbox weapons and drops. However, since the R&D revamp, crafted weapons have the clear advantage over lockbox and rep weapons. So players aren't being told to "grind their rep" for those weapons, but this is only a minor issue. At the same time, cryptic added R&D drops to the queues. This should have helped keep the queues full right? People want to build those sweet craftable weapons. Except that these mats are easily acquired from admiralty/doffing and the damage is still being felt from the fixed delta recruit exploit. Today we have a system in which the best energy weapons are acquired without ever entering a single queue.
PROBLEM 2:Ok so the "best" energy weapons don't require you to enter the queues right? What about torpedoes, shields, deflector, impulse engines? If you want the Neutronic Torp, Romulan Hyper-Plasma Torp, Undine Rep Torp, Borg Rep Torps, you still have to do some queues right? Wrong. All torps/shields/deflectors/impulse/warp cores etc. etc. etc. don't require any queues to be played. We have today the battlezones and the patrols. Any and all marks plus ELITE marks can be had by not entering a single queue. You want that sweet Iconian shield? Just go to Kobali Prime and do the 2 missions for easy marks including ELITE marks. Lots of players do this to avoid playing the queues. Don't get me wrong, I love the battlezones. They're REALLY fun but they are also part of the problem with the queues.
PROBLEM 3: Events, like the current "The Breach" event are really fun. But I've been against them rewarding "any marks" for a long time now. I don't know about you, but lots of my characters need Terran Marks. Ok so let's check the regular Terran queues. Oh no, they're have ZERO players on standby. Ok let's go to the battlezone. Really? There's just ONE instance with ONLY 10 people in it. This is dreadfully slow. Oh well let's play "The Breach." Without including a daily reward, any and all toons get 140 Terran marks on normal difficulty. What? Really? Why on Earth would I ever play any queue or battlezone for my alts knowing that these events come around? I imagine that most players just put their alts into dry dock and wait for Crystalline/Mirror/The Breach to come around. Bonus marks weekend isn't really a problem or a solution since people just play the things that are already being played more.
PROBLEM 4 Let's say that I've finished all of my reps. 100% maxed out with all rep gear unlocked. So here I am with all of my sweet gear. What's the point of me playing these reps again? This isn't a new problem that I'm bringing up. We've all talked about this for years. The Borg STF's have (had actually) a solution for this. There is an accolade for completing all of the space queues 100 times. There is also the accolade for completing all of the queues on Elite difficulty with all optionals. Back when we had "No Win Scenario," there were accolades for completing various waves. Lots of people are happy that we don't have to play STF's 6,000 times to get lucky drops to get gear anymore. But perhaps there should be more incentives like the aforementioned accolades to keep people interested?
PROBLEM 5: This is more of a fix for generic fleet queues. In the old days, old school fleet queues like "Colony Invasion" would pop fairly quickly. Now it's 100% dead every day. How do we give some love to these queues to keep people interested? The R&D boxes don't help since people only want advanced and elite R&D boxes. These queues already have dilithium rewards so it can't be that. I think that the answer is closer to the above problem than buffing any rewards. Perhaps a slight change in marks rewards would help though.
Well there you have it. Feel free to agree with me or crucify me. Or add your own ideas. Personally, I miss the days in which I could just run any queue, because the vast majority of them would pop within 2-3 minutes.
I'm sure some players are kinda in the same situation as myself on this topic.
Here is some you missed on the list. And my biggest reasons why I don't do STFs.
1 - Time
I do this out of the respect for other players. When I'm on, its either very short. Or have to be called away at a moment's notice. I don't want to get started into one, then have to leave. Leaving the group short handed, finding another to join, or have a lower chance to complete the STF. I been through this on many occasions when I had time to be in group missions. But this was another time and game. So out of respect I don't want others to deal with this. Yes some may say oh it will be only 30 mins, etc. Too many variables that will make it go past that. This can't be fixed by anyone, this is a personal issue depending on the person.
2 - Story Progression
I have noticed doing the regular story Arcs, there is no mission sending you into one. Some games have a story arc building up to the final confrontation to a group effort mission. This creates a reason to go in there, and helps the player have the feeling of completion of the story. For myself, I love this as it help the story arc. Since there is no story progression what so ever binding the STF to it. Why bother doing it. I see nothing really to gain. Simple fix here, give the players a reason to go other than play with friends and loot. Create mini arcs for it, telling how you get in there, and other objectives to help take down the big boss.
3 - Community Attitude
This is another big one. I saw this many times over. Other players giving others a hard time, from bashing to down right threatening harassment. Many forget that they too was doing it for the first time. And through their attitude they turn hateful. From this this is another reason I rather solo content. From a person who saw it done to others and also being involved as well. A game is supposed to be enjoying and relaxing fun. Not a place for a beating over a 2 year old having tantrums because the can get away with it. As they are hiding behind computer screens. Truth, there is nothing can be done on this other than report. But with so many players on the game, you can't police them all the time. So this will always happen. Due to this I rather solo and stay away from it.
Between 1 & 3, this is why I don't go in there.
Now for your thoughts you mentioned.
1 - I can see R&D being an issue for the ones wanting epic weapons. To me that should be part of the STF reward. Crafting has hurt this in a degree. So this can be adjusted to help get others back to STFs for loot. This is one main reason to do it. Bad part is I been on the receiving end of "Ninjas". So this ends up making you repeat it over and over. After a while you get tired of it. Or at the mercy of the "Roll of Dice". Once again you doing it repeatedly. I'm a little different, I don't usually care for the higher gear. I mostly use crafting to get decent gear I can use that I can't find elsewhere. And upgrade them to better levels. This is where R&D helped me. As if not, I will be stuck with crappy gear as Mission rewards many times don't offer good ones. Most of those rewards I send to the vendor.
2 - Rep gear is good as it goes with the Rep its for. As it has a reason being there. Even on WoW you have Rep gear to help raid on there. As you get better gear to help you raid. But the raid also had even better gear. So at least you had good gear to get you started. This is where STO fails. To me this could be the same. Rep gear as a good starter set. Or to complement the STF. So this can go either way. Good as solo players have access to good gear as well. Bad as it took away the loot of the STF. There needs to be a happy middle ground on this.
3 - Event Marks, I don't do events, so I can care less. Plus I don't usually need tons of marks. As I usually only get a few pieces of the Rep gear. Most I spent time on, was to get my Romulan full Rep gear on the ship and several ground weapons. Other than that, I'm usually after ground weapons if of interest, and occasional other pieces of gear.
4 - To me I can care less. I don't care for "Titles" for doing something 1,000s of times over. That gets old and boring.
5 - There is always an issue on older STFs. Even on WoW they face that issue. That is why they did the higher level versions to get players back in there. Perhaps upping the loot, creating something new for it, or make a story to go with it. That could help to spark some interest. There is a a lot of variables on this to get people to go back.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
my biggest reason is very simple: why bother? If I don't need more omega marks then why do Borg STFs? Simple huh? Well changing whether the missions are single player or Queue will not affect my desire to play them.
Then there was the old version of Assimilation. It was balanced under the assumption that multiple players would be there at once. I think the revamp changed that. Now using a full team of 5 players is like swatting flies. Hehe, I still remember my first run of the old Assimilation. It took a long time.... But the assimilated console was worth it. Yeah the rep stores sell those now... relatively cheap too.
I hated that about D2. WHOOO!! I found a level 50 rare item! *uses scroll of identify* wait.... it only has +5% damage, and +2-10 fire damage... the high level mod is + light radius!!!
Um yeah, randomized mod quality in D2 made for mountains of junk items. Do NOT WANT! Nothing sucks harder than collecting mats to craft an item only to find out that your level 45 character crafted a level 15 item.
Of course this is ultimately a question of preference and taste. I get why this is frustrating or disappointing, but ultimately exactly this is what the system is about. If you can't use the item, and have no characters that can use it or nobody willing to trade it, you go on. Collecting gear is literally what keeps the game alive and has for the past 16 years. Blizzards other MMO is roughly working the same (I guess, I haven't played that since 2006 I think) but there's also a constant flow of new unique and desireable sets being added to the game (which on the higher levels unfortunately looked stupid but that's something STO knows as well).
Next to playing actual new maps and stories this is what keeps the game running. This is of course not for everyone and that is totally fine. Grinding for a shop though is simply a change for the worse in my opinion as I don't 'invest' time in games to get 'paid' but to have fun which is of course entirely subjective.
^ Memory Alpha.org is not canon. It's a open wiki with arbitrary rules. Only what can be cited from an episode is. ^
"No. Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects... and claw at you." -Worf, son of Mogh
"A filthy, mangy beast, but in its bony breast beat the heart of a warrior" - "faithful" (...) "but ever-ready to follow the call of the wild." - Martok, about a Targ
"That pig smelled horrid. A sweet-sour, extremely pungent odor. I showered and showered, and it took me a week to get rid of it!" - Robert Justman, appreciating Emmy-Lou
I suspect that this question to the dead queue topic underlines the attitude of close to 90% of the thousands of players which manage to do fine in STO each day far away from the queues.
That's what killed the queues! A comfortable and easy game surrounding making it completely unnecessary to face the only half way engaging team contend this game has.
Looking for a fun PvE fleet? Join us at Omega Combat Division today.
This. Of course it is nice once youcan affort the stuff and you have your build finalized, but afterwards you're done. With a D2-esque loot system you always fine tune and make the best out of what you get and maybe at one point you complete your dream set, but the next run maybe gives you another item that'll even improve certain spects further.
Yes so you're done, and free to experiment with other gear sets or work on other gear sets. Liberation. Freedom to choose.
Not everyone enjoys mindless grind constantly, some of us like to find time to occasionally hang out with friends or RP.
That's why the rep systems guaranteed mark rewards and time gating is absolutely brilliant and by far the best system I have seen in any mmo to date.
That's more of an argument for 'don't remove reputation rewards' than 'restore tech drops', though. I don't see why we couldn't have both, especially with tradable techs.
(What the hell? I posted this last night!)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Exactly, having Elite Queues drop Mk XIV Ultra Rare or Epic versions of reputation set pieces and store equipment would be the perfect solution, as it would give people a very good incentive to run those missions, while not excluding those people who really don't want to.
Casual players can buy their rep gear and play the dilithium upgrade lottery as they do now.
And more hardcore players can save a lot on dilithium and materials and spend their "time" to try to get Epic pieces that way.
Win-Win for everyone.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
I hated that about D2. WHOOO!! I found a level 50 rare item! *uses scroll of identify* wait.... it only has +5% damage, and +2-10 fire damage... the high level mod is + light radius!!!
Um yeah, randomized mod quality in D2 made for mountains of junk items. Do NOT WANT! Nothing sucks harder than collecting mats to craft an item only to find out that your level 45 character crafted a level 15 item.
Of course this is ultimately a question of preference and taste. I get why this is frustrating or disappointing, but ultimately exactly this is what the system is about. If you can't use the item, and have no characters that can use it or nobody willing to trade it, you go on. Collecting gear is literally what keeps the game alive and has for the past 16 years. Blizzards other MMO is roughly working the same (I guess, I haven't played that since 2006 I think) but there's also a constant flow of new unique and desireable sets being added to the game (which on the higher levels unfortunately looked stupid but that's something STO knows as well).
Next to playing actual new maps and stories this is what keeps the game running. This is of course not for everyone and that is totally fine. Grinding for a shop though is simply a change for the worse in my opinion as I don't 'invest' time in games to get 'paid' but to have fun which is of course entirely subjective.
Well, this is why the Cube was so popular in D2. It gave players a way to get gear that was at least semi-guaranteed. I personally loved using things like diamond shields. And I used Runewords rather often too. Why? guaranteed results! Sure it takes loads of grinding to find the components, but once I have them? Also, I could acquire the parts a few pieces at a time, I didn't need to count on getting lucky enough to get all of it at once. Of course trading kinda works that way. You collect many things then exchange them for what you want. But finding people to trade with wasn't as easy in D2 as STO.
I suspect that this question to the dead queue topic underlines the attitude of close to 90% of the thousands of players which manage to do fine in STO each day far away from the queues.
That's what killed the queues! A comfortable and easy game surrounding making it completely unnecessary to face the only half way engaging team contend this game has.
Having enough marks is not one of my problems, and probably never will be. Time and opportunity, as usual, are the main issues. Since I can't do much more about time than I do right now, I focus on increasing opportunity which helps everybody. Giving people reasons to queue for specific missions drives an increase in opportunity.
I did originally respond to the OP but couldn't muster the effort it deserved. In a nutshell the problems listed weren't in my opinion the real problems and the solutions wouldn't fix them or at best, delay the inevitable.
I've described my relationship with STO since S11 as being on life support; As the content came out, I did what required progress like admiralty then stopped and found one day I didn't need to log in and just as importantly, didn't care. I've since ended up logging on only to do the new stuff on at most 4 characters I consider main then log off. In essence I don't PVE, public or private though I did but only on a few queues and I'd rotate characters to get around the cooldown.
So why did I stick to this kind of PVE (and why not do it at all now)?
Biggest reason of all - it's all grinding for grinding's sake. Marks, elite marks, dil...it's all for the grind whether it be gear, c store, the exchange. I finally learned to accept that the game is a grindfest and it wasn't worth the time and effort I was putting in. The gear I have is sufficient to do elites (at least the ones I want to do) so 'any' grind for equipment isn't worth doing. So I could upgrade my gear to epic....why? To do the same content I can do now? It's been one grind system after another and I just didn't see a reason to keep doing it once I completed the objective (i.e. doing breach 14 times). The game stopped being fun because it's felt like the entire game is one grind system after another.
With lockbox after lockbox I learned long ago it's not worth opening with keys but to then buy items off the exchange was also unfeasible, it was hyperinflating the economy as players could rack up ever increasing amounts of dil and ec. I was grnding for ships like the annorax and never use them I still have most box and lobi ships in their boxes because I never got arond to decidign which character I wanted to use them (so character specific ships was a contributing factor). Now that Cryptic seems to think it's profitable to stick accolades in boxes too (and crit them as well) even accolades are becoming a random lottery mechanic instead of anything that would be called an 'achievement'. Since I won't open boxes and PVE doesnt offer a viable ec income, I have no incentive to play the queues and with events being an exception though this one I was close to saying to myself 14 breaches for an admiralty ship?....urgh pass - it's a reward to grind a system I don't grind. The only reason I did was it wasn't as bad as I thought it was and it kept me touching base (if I stopped doing events I'd be on step closer to leaving the game entirely).
With the grind-centric nature of the game it's no surprise that people focus on the new content then get fatigued and move on and when no new content exists, the easiest/most noob friendly most rewarding queues with respect to time then come next. Players will migrate towards Elite naturally but it's amazing the number of players that don't know what to do and I don't mean 'my way or no way' I mean not bringing ev suits to nukara when it seems only sensible to do at the very least normal difficulty. Then you have those who alt/tab to avoid participating but also avoid the afk penalty - another issue I reported to Cryptic countless times but they're listening right? Having 3 levels of difficulty has made it worse and not sure it's ever something people wanted but Cryptic gave it us anyway.
There's more I could say but it's not all directly relevant to PVE and I'm not really the right person now to offer solutions because Cryptic made it clear to me they don't listen. More lock boxes, grind mechanics and c store ships and a distant additional content which is making me facepalm over the messy path it's going in. All I can do is say how I feel about the game and why. After 6 years of playing STO I've seen it get better then worse and it doesn't look like it's going to get better and the best I can do is tread water and keep pace with new content until things change, the game dies or I decide to give up altogether.
I've always felt they should do something WoW used to do, and that is to have one daily quest that rewards you for completing a single queue chosen at random (or one space quest and one ground quest). Essentially each day would be it's own self contained, random event, on top of any regularly scheduled events.
What killed the Q's, boredom, doing the same thing over and over and over and over again get real boring. Also there is hardly any challenge for advance (when its not bugged) and it doesn't pay enough to do Elite in most cases, dumb IA too much predictable.
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I've always felt they should do something WoW used to do, and that is to have one daily quest that rewards you for completing a single queue chosen at random (or one space quest and one ground quest). Essentially each day would be it's own self contained, random event, on top of any regularly scheduled events.
That sounds kinda fun. I suppose it'd be advertised via some method? Maybe pop-up dialog?
I spent the 1st year post Delta Rising wondering when they would 'fix' the queues. The 2nd year, I realized if they could fix the queues, they would have already. The sudden change in difficulty at DR release for the dead queues. It was that fast, just one day and boom .... dead. Can it be repaired in the same sudden manner?
As for fixing themm Its not my job or headache. All these years, I only played the stfs because they were fun, then because I may have needed marks. Those days are long gone and you cannot expect people to play the same old ancient maps to death. This car has too many miles on it to go on much further (in a relevant sense, it could go on like a dead log for years). Either devote resources to the stf or just let them wither and die to sell more boxes/ships etc. They made their decision and as a player I made mine months ago. I am very part time player with no interest in the events or offerings anymore.
Well if you look at which queues are busy it gives you the answer to why others are dead. ISA, CSA and the current breach. Sometimes with CSA thrown in too. One of those is a current event map, the other two can be completed in mere minutes with reasonable rewards.
That tells you that the general concensus of the players is to gravitate towards the queues that have that sweet spot of balance between time/effort/reward/difficulty.
All the other queues are either: a)timegated (too long), b)poorly rewarded (not worth the effort), c)too hard (pugs have no chance), d)require too much planning for optimal teams (require more than just spam spacebar).
So the only way to improve any of the queues that are not ISA, CCA etc. is to change one of those four factors I listed.
No I'd rather not see queues dumbed down as I think this game is doing that too much. And I don't think they need their difficulties nerfed or anything either. The best way to attract players to them is to have good attractive reward. Put decent enough rewards in and you'll start to draw players in to play them. And it can't just be more dilithium for every queue as that just makes certain ones more attractive again. What's needed I feel is specific increases to specific queues in a rotating basis, like the old hourly events. Have a random rotation of increased rewards for queues so that if you log on at different times there's always something special on offer, something to make me stop and think "hmmm maybe I'll go and play Undine Assualt instead of my usual ISA run, the rewards are x-times better after all".
Well if you look at which queues are busy it gives you the answer to why others are dead.
ISA, CSA and the current breach. Sometimes with CSA thrown in too.
One of those is a current event map, the other two can be completed in mere minutes with reasonable rewards.
That tells you that the general concensus of the players is to gravitate towards the queues that have that sweet spot of balance between time/effort/reward/difficulty.
All the other queues are either:
a)timegated (too long),
b)poorly rewarded (not worth the effort),
c)too hard (pugs have no chance), d)require too much planning for optimal teams (require more than just spam spacebar).
So the only way to improve any of the queues that are not ISA, CCA etc. is to change one of those four factors I listed.
No I'd rather not see queues dumbed down as I think this game is doing that too much. And I don't think they need their difficulties nerfed or anything either.
The best way to attract players to them is to have good attractive reward. Put decent enough rewards in and you'll start to draw players in to play them.
And it can't just be more dilithium for every queue as that just makes certain ones more attractive again. What's needed I feel is specific increases to specific queues in a rotating basis, like the old hourly events. Have a random rotation of increased rewards for queues so that if you log on at different times there's always something special on offer, something to make me stop and think "hmmm maybe I'll go and play Undine Assualt instead of my usual ISA run, the rewards are x-times better after all".
I agree and your post captures the whole situation very well.
Peeps better not forget that the game is quite different from what it was 3 or 4 years ago when I started. Endgame was reached with half the effort and the striving for optimum involved like 10% of what it does today.
Cryptic and PWE step by step adjusted the game for what it is today and those adjustments are responsible for the current queue situation.
If it is in their interest to do something about it I think they have countless options to do so which realy brings me to the question @gameleech suggests:
Are they interested or is the whole situation cool for them as it is?
It’s not as if they ever seemed to care much about PvP so what makes us think they even bother with queues as in teamed PvE with so few peeps playing it?
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Also if you're looking at reward:effort (time) ratios you gotta look at the numbers possible right now.
ISA, a good average run takes what....3-5 mins, lets say 5 mins and go with a conservative estimate. On advanced you get 780 dil, so that's 156 dil/min.
Now the current Breach on advanced takes maybe 10-15 mins if you have a good team, probably a lot longer for pug runs. So by the standards of ISA's rewards you should be getting around 2300 dil in total for a run. But we're getting nowhere near that, hence why people can't be bothered with the thing even if there's an end reward for the 14 days.
And all of this is before you take into account marks rewards and elite marks like BNPs etc.
Sadly this is how most players measure content these days, the game has become such a grind that you have to measure your possibly limited playtime in terms of how rewarding it is if you want to advance your gear, ships, boffs etc.
Exactly, having Elite Queues drop Mk XIV Ultra Rare or Epic versions of reputation set pieces and store equipment would be the perfect solution, as it would give people a very good incentive to run those missions, while not excluding those people who really don't want to.
It was similarly done before with STFs prior to F2P (juicy purple random drops) and did not work since most complained about that system. Good idea in theory but in practice won't happened since Cryptic will not revert back to pre F2P reward systems.
Exactly, having Elite Queues drop Mk XIV Ultra Rare or Epic versions of reputation set pieces and store equipment would be the perfect solution, as it would give people a very good incentive to run those missions, while not excluding those people who really don't want to.
It was similarly done before with STFs prior to F2P (juicy purple random drops) and did not work since most complained about that system. Good idea in theory but in practice won't happened since Cryptic will not revert back to pre F2P reward systems.
By most you mean the subset of Self-Entitled whiners that were unwilling to put in the time and effort for the shiny and just wanted it served up to them gift-wrapped on a silver platter?
It was a good system and did what it was supposed to do, the only thing that could have been improved was a small tweak to the drop rates, but other than that it did get people to play the missions and required that they played ALL the content and not just farm the easiest one.
God forbid players should ever be asked to leave their comfort zone.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid." - Q
Exactly, having Elite Queues drop Mk XIV Ultra Rare or Epic versions of reputation set pieces and store equipment would be the perfect solution, as it would give people a very good incentive to run those missions, while not excluding those people who really don't want to.
It was similarly done before with STFs prior to F2P (juicy purple random drops) and did not work since most complained about that system. Good idea in theory but in practice won't happened since Cryptic will not revert back to pre F2P reward systems.
By most you mean the subset of Self-Entitled whiners that were unwilling to put in the time and effort for the shiny and just wanted it served up to them gift-wrapped on a silver platter?
It was a good system and did what it was supposed to do, the only thing that could have been improved was a small tweak to the drop rates, but other than that it did get people to play the missions and required that they played ALL the content and not just farm the easiest one.
God forbid players should ever be asked to leave their comfort zone.
But what happens once someone has all the shiny toys on offer? They go and stop playing those queues so eventually you end up in the same situation as we are now.
The better option is to have some sort of perpetual reward system where players will keep coming back to run a queue when said reward is available. Something like the old hourly events where set queues offer better rewards but not anything that people will stop chasing ones the catch 'em all.
Perhaps UR/epic level gear would work, but let it be able to be sold on the exchange so that it develops a market for the stuff. Better chance of epic from elite content, then those putting in the effort get better rewards or can sell it to others less good at the queues.
By most you mean the subset of Self-Entitled whiners that were unwilling to put in the time and effort for the shiny and just wanted it served up to them gift-wrapped on a silver platter?
To expect a correlation between reward and effort, rather than praying for the RNG god to take pity on you once in awhile, is NOT being a "self-entitled whiner" expecting anything to be "served up on a silver platter."
If the effort is guaranteed, the reward should be guaranteed as well. There's nothing unreasonable about that whatsoever.
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Nobody says there can't be fine tuning. There could be some sort of degradation of stats taking place if you trade an item after you used it - it's still good but not as good as if you'd found it yourself. But if we only go with absolutes I'd prefer a D2 free-tradeable-loot system to an overrestrictive binding of items. I'd be okay with adding a "used" status/mod to items like I suggested before but it doesn't really need that. Over time the market will change, more and more items will appear but Cryptic would also have to supply more items in the first place.
The main difference is Diablo II has a loot system generating literally infinite amounts of loot. Items have a drop rarity which influences the number of boni they carry. All of these boni have a range and then there's a lot of base items in the first place. You can find a blue ("uncommon"/magic) short sword or pair of boots with one or two modifiers in a range, like "x% faster attack speed, +x% damage against enemy y" or "x% faster running, x% chance to find magic items". With only those two boni and the range you can get a large number of items already. Now add a level of rarity, more mods that literally influence every aspect of your character from hitpoints, hitchance, minimum damage, maximum damage, health regeneration, faster caste rate, walking speed over life and mana leech or unique abilities not inherent to your class and a lot more and you have a huge amount of loot with only those two types of items. And now look at how many boots and short swords there are in addition to all the other weapon and item types.
STO on the other hoof is literally like playing with Duplos in comparison. Items only come with set modifiers, rarity influences how many mods but never more than four. [acc] always adds the same amount and we have rather limited item variety in the first place and it'll become even less since they want to merge consoles under the new skill system. Of course ou cannot translate loot systems 1:1 like this, but STO is severly lacking.
This. Of course it is nice once youcan affort the stuff and you have your build finalized, but afterwards you're done. With a D2-esque loot system you always fine tune and make the best out of what you get and maybe at one point you complete your dream set, but the next run maybe gives you another item that'll even improve certain spects further.
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Ehh, one could make any hypothetical new 'Tech' tradable, kind of like ship or pet boxes before you open them up.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Brings me plenty.
"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."
Yes so you're done, and free to experiment with other gear sets or work on other gear sets. Liberation. Freedom to choose.
Not everyone enjoys mindless grind constantly, some of us like to find time to occasionally hang out with friends or RP.
That's why the rep systems guaranteed mark rewards and time gating is absolutely brilliant and by far the best system I have seen in any mmo to date.
"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."
1. people still complain when they are giving out free things.. so by your logic, should they stop doing that?
2. sto IS an mmo, even if no one grouped up that would not change. social maps are still social maps, and the queues are not the be all, and end all.
your reasoning does not appear to be logic based, i would suggest it is personal bias colouring your opinion? if you are saying that everyone would opt to run solo, you are also saying that the majority don't really want to run grouped. by that logic alone, would it not make more sense to provide such options that would enrich the game for the majority of players, without actually taking anything away from the game itself?
Um yeah, randomized mod quality in D2 made for mountains of junk items. Do NOT WANT! Nothing sucks harder than collecting mats to craft an item only to find out that your level 45 character crafted a level 15 item.
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this is why we must worship the D3 smart loot 2.0 system...for it is the holiest of all loot systems
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An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
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I have been one of the people who has been advocating that stfs should be able to start with less than the max number of players in a private match. I even have a post up on Reddit about this topic right now. Just wanted to say that this wish is in no way about being anti-social, just a way to allow people more freedom and a greater challenge.
For the most part, if this change were to happen, I would end up pugging just as much as I do now. I would just end up spending more time in game playing and less time being a forum warrior. Queues should always be a full team as that is what everyone who does them is signing up for.
I'm sure some players are kinda in the same situation as myself on this topic.
Here is some you missed on the list. And my biggest reasons why I don't do STFs.
1 - Time
I do this out of the respect for other players. When I'm on, its either very short. Or have to be called away at a moment's notice. I don't want to get started into one, then have to leave. Leaving the group short handed, finding another to join, or have a lower chance to complete the STF. I been through this on many occasions when I had time to be in group missions. But this was another time and game. So out of respect I don't want others to deal with this. Yes some may say oh it will be only 30 mins, etc. Too many variables that will make it go past that. This can't be fixed by anyone, this is a personal issue depending on the person.
2 - Story Progression
I have noticed doing the regular story Arcs, there is no mission sending you into one. Some games have a story arc building up to the final confrontation to a group effort mission. This creates a reason to go in there, and helps the player have the feeling of completion of the story. For myself, I love this as it help the story arc. Since there is no story progression what so ever binding the STF to it. Why bother doing it. I see nothing really to gain. Simple fix here, give the players a reason to go other than play with friends and loot. Create mini arcs for it, telling how you get in there, and other objectives to help take down the big boss.
3 - Community Attitude
This is another big one. I saw this many times over. Other players giving others a hard time, from bashing to down right threatening harassment. Many forget that they too was doing it for the first time. And through their attitude they turn hateful. From this this is another reason I rather solo content. From a person who saw it done to others and also being involved as well. A game is supposed to be enjoying and relaxing fun. Not a place for a beating over a 2 year old having tantrums because the can get away with it. As they are hiding behind computer screens. Truth, there is nothing can be done on this other than report. But with so many players on the game, you can't police them all the time. So this will always happen. Due to this I rather solo and stay away from it.
Between 1 & 3, this is why I don't go in there.
Now for your thoughts you mentioned.
1 - I can see R&D being an issue for the ones wanting epic weapons. To me that should be part of the STF reward. Crafting has hurt this in a degree. So this can be adjusted to help get others back to STFs for loot. This is one main reason to do it. Bad part is I been on the receiving end of "Ninjas". So this ends up making you repeat it over and over. After a while you get tired of it. Or at the mercy of the "Roll of Dice". Once again you doing it repeatedly. I'm a little different, I don't usually care for the higher gear. I mostly use crafting to get decent gear I can use that I can't find elsewhere. And upgrade them to better levels. This is where R&D helped me. As if not, I will be stuck with crappy gear as Mission rewards many times don't offer good ones. Most of those rewards I send to the vendor.
2 - Rep gear is good as it goes with the Rep its for. As it has a reason being there. Even on WoW you have Rep gear to help raid on there. As you get better gear to help you raid. But the raid also had even better gear. So at least you had good gear to get you started. This is where STO fails. To me this could be the same. Rep gear as a good starter set. Or to complement the STF. So this can go either way. Good as solo players have access to good gear as well. Bad as it took away the loot of the STF. There needs to be a happy middle ground on this.
3 - Event Marks, I don't do events, so I can care less. Plus I don't usually need tons of marks. As I usually only get a few pieces of the Rep gear. Most I spent time on, was to get my Romulan full Rep gear on the ship and several ground weapons. Other than that, I'm usually after ground weapons if of interest, and occasional other pieces of gear.
4 - To me I can care less. I don't care for "Titles" for doing something 1,000s of times over. That gets old and boring.
5 - There is always an issue on older STFs. Even on WoW they face that issue. That is why they did the higher level versions to get players back in there. Perhaps upping the loot, creating something new for it, or make a story to go with it. That could help to spark some interest. There is a a lot of variables on this to get people to go back.
USS Casinghead NCC 92047 launched 2350
Fleet Admiral Stowe - Dominion War Vet.
Then there was the old version of Assimilation. It was balanced under the assumption that multiple players would be there at once. I think the revamp changed that. Now using a full team of 5 players is like swatting flies. Hehe, I still remember my first run of the old Assimilation. It took a long time.... But the assimilated console was worth it.
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Of course this is ultimately a question of preference and taste. I get why this is frustrating or disappointing, but ultimately exactly this is what the system is about. If you can't use the item, and have no characters that can use it or nobody willing to trade it, you go on. Collecting gear is literally what keeps the game alive and has for the past 16 years. Blizzards other MMO is roughly working the same (I guess, I haven't played that since 2006 I think) but there's also a constant flow of new unique and desireable sets being added to the game (which on the higher levels unfortunately looked stupid but that's something STO knows as well).
Next to playing actual new maps and stories this is what keeps the game running. This is of course not for everyone and that is totally fine. Grinding for a shop though is simply a change for the worse in my opinion as I don't 'invest' time in games to get 'paid' but to have fun which is of course entirely subjective.
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I suspect that this question to the dead queue topic underlines the attitude of close to 90% of the thousands of players which manage to do fine in STO each day far away from the queues.
That's what killed the queues! A comfortable and easy game surrounding making it completely unnecessary to face the only half way engaging team contend this game has.
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That's more of an argument for 'don't remove reputation rewards' than 'restore tech drops', though. I don't see why we couldn't have both, especially with tradable techs.
(What the hell? I posted this last night!)
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
Casual players can buy their rep gear and play the dilithium upgrade lottery as they do now.
And more hardcore players can save a lot on dilithium and materials and spend their "time" to try to get Epic pieces that way.
Win-Win for everyone.
My character Tsin'xing
Having enough marks is not one of my problems, and probably never will be. Time and opportunity, as usual, are the main issues. Since I can't do much more about time than I do right now, I focus on increasing opportunity which helps everybody. Giving people reasons to queue for specific missions drives an increase in opportunity.
I've described my relationship with STO since S11 as being on life support; As the content came out, I did what required progress like admiralty then stopped and found one day I didn't need to log in and just as importantly, didn't care. I've since ended up logging on only to do the new stuff on at most 4 characters I consider main then log off. In essence I don't PVE, public or private though I did but only on a few queues and I'd rotate characters to get around the cooldown.
So why did I stick to this kind of PVE (and why not do it at all now)?
Biggest reason of all - it's all grinding for grinding's sake. Marks, elite marks, dil...it's all for the grind whether it be gear, c store, the exchange. I finally learned to accept that the game is a grindfest and it wasn't worth the time and effort I was putting in. The gear I have is sufficient to do elites (at least the ones I want to do) so 'any' grind for equipment isn't worth doing. So I could upgrade my gear to epic....why? To do the same content I can do now? It's been one grind system after another and I just didn't see a reason to keep doing it once I completed the objective (i.e. doing breach 14 times). The game stopped being fun because it's felt like the entire game is one grind system after another.
With lockbox after lockbox I learned long ago it's not worth opening with keys but to then buy items off the exchange was also unfeasible, it was hyperinflating the economy as players could rack up ever increasing amounts of dil and ec. I was grnding for ships like the annorax and never use them I still have most box and lobi ships in their boxes because I never got arond to decidign which character I wanted to use them (so character specific ships was a contributing factor). Now that Cryptic seems to think it's profitable to stick accolades in boxes too (and crit them as well) even accolades are becoming a random lottery mechanic instead of anything that would be called an 'achievement'. Since I won't open boxes and PVE doesnt offer a viable ec income, I have no incentive to play the queues and with events being an exception though this one I was close to saying to myself 14 breaches for an admiralty ship?....urgh pass - it's a reward to grind a system I don't grind. The only reason I did was it wasn't as bad as I thought it was and it kept me touching base (if I stopped doing events I'd be on step closer to leaving the game entirely).
With the grind-centric nature of the game it's no surprise that people focus on the new content then get fatigued and move on and when no new content exists, the easiest/most noob friendly most rewarding queues with respect to time then come next. Players will migrate towards Elite naturally but it's amazing the number of players that don't know what to do and I don't mean 'my way or no way' I mean not bringing ev suits to nukara when it seems only sensible to do at the very least normal difficulty. Then you have those who alt/tab to avoid participating but also avoid the afk penalty - another issue I reported to Cryptic countless times but they're listening right? Having 3 levels of difficulty has made it worse and not sure it's ever something people wanted but Cryptic gave it us anyway.
There's more I could say but it's not all directly relevant to PVE and I'm not really the right person now to offer solutions because Cryptic made it clear to me they don't listen. More lock boxes, grind mechanics and c store ships and a distant additional content which is making me facepalm over the messy path it's going in. All I can do is say how I feel about the game and why. After 6 years of playing STO I've seen it get better then worse and it doesn't look like it's going to get better and the best I can do is tread water and keep pace with new content until things change, the game dies or I decide to give up altogether.
E'Mc2 : Science Reman torp T'Varo, deadly annoyance :P
Kunmal: Tactical fed Klingon, ground specialist, USS Kanewaga
Ka -tet Tier 5 fleet fully completed Starbase and fleet property
My character Tsin'xing
As for fixing themm Its not my job or headache. All these years, I only played the stfs because they were fun, then because I may have needed marks. Those days are long gone and you cannot expect people to play the same old ancient maps to death. This car has too many miles on it to go on much further (in a relevant sense, it could go on like a dead log for years). Either devote resources to the stf or just let them wither and die to sell more boxes/ships etc. They made their decision and as a player I made mine months ago. I am very part time player with no interest in the events or offerings anymore.
Most of the queues were a ghost town before then. It's part of why the unique crafting mat rewards were added.
My character Tsin'xing
ISA, CSA and the current breach. Sometimes with CSA thrown in too.
One of those is a current event map, the other two can be completed in mere minutes with reasonable rewards.
That tells you that the general concensus of the players is to gravitate towards the queues that have that sweet spot of balance between time/effort/reward/difficulty.
All the other queues are either:
a)timegated (too long),
b)poorly rewarded (not worth the effort),
c)too hard (pugs have no chance), d)require too much planning for optimal teams (require more than just spam spacebar).
So the only way to improve any of the queues that are not ISA, CCA etc. is to change one of those four factors I listed.
No I'd rather not see queues dumbed down as I think this game is doing that too much. And I don't think they need their difficulties nerfed or anything either.
The best way to attract players to them is to have good attractive reward. Put decent enough rewards in and you'll start to draw players in to play them.
And it can't just be more dilithium for every queue as that just makes certain ones more attractive again. What's needed I feel is specific increases to specific queues in a rotating basis, like the old hourly events. Have a random rotation of increased rewards for queues so that if you log on at different times there's always something special on offer, something to make me stop and think "hmmm maybe I'll go and play Undine Assualt instead of my usual ISA run, the rewards are x-times better after all".
I agree and your post captures the whole situation very well.
Peeps better not forget that the game is quite different from what it was 3 or 4 years ago when I started. Endgame was reached with half the effort and the striving for optimum involved like 10% of what it does today.
Cryptic and PWE step by step adjusted the game for what it is today and those adjustments are responsible for the current queue situation.
If it is in their interest to do something about it I think they have countless options to do so which realy brings me to the question @gameleech suggests:
Are they interested or is the whole situation cool for them as it is?
It’s not as if they ever seemed to care much about PvP so what makes us think they even bother with queues as in teamed PvE with so few peeps playing it?
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ISA, a good average run takes what....3-5 mins, lets say 5 mins and go with a conservative estimate. On advanced you get 780 dil, so that's 156 dil/min.
Now the current Breach on advanced takes maybe 10-15 mins if you have a good team, probably a lot longer for pug runs. So by the standards of ISA's rewards you should be getting around 2300 dil in total for a run. But we're getting nowhere near that, hence why people can't be bothered with the thing even if there's an end reward for the 14 days.
And all of this is before you take into account marks rewards and elite marks like BNPs etc.
Sadly this is how most players measure content these days, the game has become such a grind that you have to measure your possibly limited playtime in terms of how rewarding it is if you want to advance your gear, ships, boffs etc.
It was similarly done before with STFs prior to F2P (juicy purple random drops) and did not work since most complained about that system. Good idea in theory but in practice won't happened since Cryptic will not revert back to pre F2P reward systems.
By most you mean the subset of Self-Entitled whiners that were unwilling to put in the time and effort for the shiny and just wanted it served up to them gift-wrapped on a silver platter?
It was a good system and did what it was supposed to do, the only thing that could have been improved was a small tweak to the drop rates, but other than that it did get people to play the missions and required that they played ALL the content and not just farm the easiest one.
God forbid players should ever be asked to leave their comfort zone.
But what happens once someone has all the shiny toys on offer? They go and stop playing those queues so eventually you end up in the same situation as we are now.
The better option is to have some sort of perpetual reward system where players will keep coming back to run a queue when said reward is available. Something like the old hourly events where set queues offer better rewards but not anything that people will stop chasing ones the catch 'em all.
Perhaps UR/epic level gear would work, but let it be able to be sold on the exchange so that it develops a market for the stuff. Better chance of epic from elite content, then those putting in the effort get better rewards or can sell it to others less good at the queues.
To expect a correlation between reward and effort, rather than praying for the RNG god to take pity on you once in awhile, is NOT being a "self-entitled whiner" expecting anything to be "served up on a silver platter."
If the effort is guaranteed, the reward should be guaranteed as well. There's nothing unreasonable about that whatsoever.