- The new admiralty ship from Into The Breach won't be available for new players.
- The new admiralty ship from Into The Breach won't be available for new characters on accounts that have it on older characters.
- I have to contribute to metrics on each character that needs this new admiralty ship (which is, by design, all of them), meaning doing the same instance every day on seven characters for two weeks.
- I got disconnected during an attempt at Into The Breach, quickly logged back in, and zoned back into the instance after a total of maybe 20-30 seconds away.
- I was immediately kicked from the instance and had to start it from the beginning.
Why is this new metrics grab so punishing in almost every way? The only thing I can think of that would've made it worse is if I got a leaver penalty and couldn't queue up again.
Comments
Cryptic is not obliged to offer you anything at all - so the breach admiralty ship is a nice thing to have whilst it's on offer, perhaps be grateful they are giving it away, even for a short time?
Enough Said, Complete truth right here.
And crybaby threads should be treated like crybaby threads.
But your complaint is based upon an irrational belief. You believe you are being 'forced' to do this event multiple times on multiple characters over a 2 week period.
But the reality of the situation is that this is an optional extra that you can choose to undertake or leave as you wish.
In essence, you are punishing yourself by choosing to undertake an optional activity that you do not enjoy doing.
How about this, then: "I'm trying to participate in this event, but am experiencing roadblocks that severely magnify minor technical difficulties." I never said the event itself is punishment - I said I was disconnected for a brief period, but the game's response to this is to totally discard my progress. When it happens during a regular episode, I can continue where I left off. I don't think a 30-second absence justifies complete removal from the instance; do you?
I don't think my post merited the immediate and aggressive troll responses it got. I was expecting an explanation of an old exploit related to disconnects that necessitated the current setup, or something.
Would you like me to edit it to focus on the disconnection and subsequent removal from the instance? I can do that if it'll stop the troll flood. Troll bait wasn't my intent.
I do not think I, or anyone else has been aggressive towards you, if that impression was given, then I apologise. I do tend to illustrate points with a bit of humour (after all its just a game nobody is dying here, agreed?)
As for the road blocks being put in front of you - I agree that I would prefer not to have to run the breach multiple times (I would prefer not to have to do it more than once as I dislike the event very much) but it is still my choice to decide whether or not I spend my leisure time participating more than I would like, or to use that time doing something I enjoy more, and that is your choice too.
Yes, a few of the responses seemed pretty rude to me. However, I accept your apology and apologize in return for misreading your intent.
The fact that the event is per character rather than per account (as the Anniversary, Summer, and Winter events are) makes me grumble, but I don't think I would have made a thread about that alone. At the end of the day, I am still choosing to run the event, however many times it takes. What bothers me is that the programmed response to a very brief absence (caused by a technical hiccup rather than deliberate AFKing, which I have seen a few times in The Breach already, and which the system does not punish) is so harsh. I'm running that place quite enough without having to discard a run for such a minor infraction.
That is a bug that has been in the game since the beginning.
If you manage to log back in fast enough, you should be good to go, as long as the game doesn't notice you have been gone and kept your ship on the team.
If you are gone too long, you can load back into the instance, but the game will boot you if you are not part of the active team.
Back in the old days in the old STFs this happened, too, but the team could reinvite and save you within the few seconds you were still on the map.
This only works with manual teaming.
Since auto teaming with the queues happened this is no longer an option.
I was probably out for 20-30 seconds at most, and I don't think I could've gotten it any shorter (load times, etc.). Oh well. Thanks for the tips.
The fact that the reward is bound to a specific character and is not an account unlock is the de facto standard. This is not a new type of metric Cryptic came up with recently. It is the same one used in all other "mini-event" such as the Zefram Cochrane Shotgun from the Oct 2014 Mirror Invasion Event. Based on your profile, you joined the forum back in July 2012 which was before I started playing STO and joined the forum in January 2014. Therefore, I do not understand why you are referring to this as a "new metric".
However, it would be a nice QoL change if Cryptic implemented the account unlock system for these "mini-events" just like they did with the events that awarded starships which Cryptic implemented back in Summer 2015.
As other stated above, you are mixing up the definitions of need and want. Need is a necessity where as want is a desire. You need to drink water if you want to survive, but perhaps you want to have a beer instead. The reward for the event is an Admiralty Card which is used in the Admiralty System. The Admiralty System is an optional part of the game similar to the Crafting System. You don't have to put in time and effort in those systems, but if you do then you get rewarded for doing so.
Regarding disconnects... unfortunately it happen to players in MMO games. It's not the player's fault that it happens. But it is an inherent pitfall when it comes to online games. I got disconnected once while playing the Breach (1 out of 36 sessions) and it happened at the worst possible moment which was after escaping the fortress ship, but before the reward was given out. I quickly logged back in and was able to claim my reward for the mission.
For the moment I am running the Breach on all 9 of my captains. Not sure if I can keep up that pace though. If I want all my captains to have get the reward that means I will need to run through the mission 90 times which works out to around 3 hours per day for the next 10 days. If I start getting sick of the event, then I begin to stop doing the event on my mostly recently created captain (a Delta Recruit) and work backwards from there... ultimately to the 1st captain I created; if necessary.
My character Tsin'xing
That last part does happen to quite often btw. Unfortunately, people get kicked, log back in as soon as they can, then get auto-failed and removed, and as an added bonus they get the leaver penalty to boot.
Huh? I have gotten the red "serverve not responding xx" message and was kicked in breach, I came back, the team was gone and it removed me back to ESD, but I was able to rejoin the pveQ right away and joined a new time in 10 seconds, I did not have a leaver penalty or on any stf I played that I was ever disconnected from but I only have played 2 or 3 specific ones like crystal entity and borg khitomer space so I don't know about all of them
My character Tsin'xing
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
This is, unfortunately, the sad truth with events like this. And this is coming from someone with more characters than you @farranor, I have 12 characters and I'm quite honestly sick of events making me choose between burning out and not getting a shiny trinket on all my characters.
In case you're curious, an Admirality card isn't sufficient enough to make me choose burning out, I'm doing the event on ONE (1) character, and am hoping (though I expect to be disappointed) that these kind of rewards will eventually be made into account unlocks.
I generally agree with you, but it depends on how far into the mission it happens. The length of the mission varies depending on the overall DPS of the team, but let's just say it takes 20 minutes to complete for argument sake.
If I get disconnected within 5 minutes into the mission and I cannot rejoin my team I would simply chalk it up as bad luck and just queue up the mission again. On the other hand, if I get disconnected 15 minutes into the mission and I cannot rejoin the team I was with then, yeah, I would be a little pissed.
if you get disconnected, the game engine is just now set to "kick the player to make room for a new one" so the actual remaining team has reinforcement asap.
the problem? the char (you) is kicked, but the spot still remains blocked. this not only hinderes a new player to join, but also yourself.
as soon as you reenter, the kickmechanic proceedes with what it had to do when you dropped, with yourself. pretty bugged mess.
now to the solution:
dont rejoin immediately. try to anticipate when the team will be finished, and try to reenter at the compeltition of the map - rather a bit later, than to early. i think the map stays open for 2minutes, so thats the best guess to "rescue" your efford and still get loot.
but you are right, this is a very nagging thing that got introduced with DR. DC means kick from team, as soon as you reenter. (if you dont reenter, you are still counted for reward, so enter after the loot is reached)
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
Sorry, I meant "new metric" as in "new event for metrics."
Need vs want is based on the intended goal. As you say, "you need to drink water if you want to survive." If someone doesn't have a goal of survival, they don't need to drink water. Similarly, you need to run for president if you want to be president, you need to put batteries in a remote if you want to control a TV remotely, and you need to get good admiralty cards if you want to use the admiralty system properly.
Other games don't have such strict systems for disconnects. Even in STO itself, disconnecting during an episode will remove you from the system you were at but retain your progress.
Yeah, but after being in there for perhaps 20 minutes, getting disconnected at the final core fight...
I'm sorry you feel that way, but every other online game I've played has a more forgiving system for disconnects. After all, the goal is to let players complete content. WoW and Rift show a grayed-out portrait for disconnected players, and they are only removed if the team gets tired of waiting and votes to kick - if they come back before that happens, they can quickly rejoin their group. LoL automatically moves the character of a disconnected player back to the base, and when they return they are simply part of the team again. This continues as a common theme: online games want disconnects to produce the least disruption possible.
Except for STO, in STFs, where disconnected players are permanently removed from that run and their former teammates have to finish without them.
That's an interesting idea - I'll keep it in mind if I get disconnected near the end. Thanks!
Its annoying how they handle DC for folks with flakey connections for sure. You can't win on that.. either they let people drop out constantly to grief their team, or they put a throttle on that behavior. If they throttle it, a few people get burned unjustly. If they don't, a lot of people get burned constantly.
People already grief like that by dying and not respawning. Griefing through disconnection would be redundant.