The game should just scale the missions for one player.
Haven't we been around long enough to outgrow that tired old MMO Trope of needing four other people to do anything.
I mostly agree with this, but I do enjoy my team content too, and in Star Trek most of these missions are done by an away team instead of one ultra badass rambo commando.
"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."
On console at least, we have many players willing to play the PVE queues. When all's said and done it's not all that hard getting a queue going if you're patient, but our biggest problem is people not pressing "Ready" to start the mission. That happens 9 out of 10 attempts and makes the queues seem deader than they are.
Sure people will occasionally have good reasons for not accepting: they could have gone for a toilet break ten seconds before or something, or simply forgot they were queued up when they warped off to do a DSE or something.
But from speaking to a number of players on this, there's a growing suspicion that a small number of "trolls" are doing this on purpose, deriving enjoyment from driving everyone crazy and stopping people getting games going. I don't know how true that is, but as we're unable to see who's queued, who pressed and who didn't anyone choosing to "troll" in this way has the anonymity to brazenly know they'll get away with it without consequence.
I propose that not only should the queues be publically viewable by people in the queue somehow, but their accept ratio should also be displayed (ie. two numbers, the number of queues they pressed and the number of queues they did not press) which account-wide over the month figures. That way, if someone with 30 rejects versus 4 accepts joined the queue the leader could boot them, free up the slot and hopefully get a person who wants to play the game in it sooner.
I have to agree you would need to create incentives to bring life into the ques that are not as active, or are actually dead. THings like giving ques unique rewards that you can get from doing them, which had been done in the past actually too. A weekly or bi-weekly rotating list of ques, which would have at least one of each rep's marks represented would be needed. I could also see rep-based missions that you could pick up that give you rewards for doing certain ques, or certain groups of ques, which could be on a daily rotation is another option, but also even giving each rep some new rep-projects that you need que specific drops to complete the project could be fun too. I would say give a combination of all three of these, and the ques woould get abit more populated based on how good the things are you are using as incentive.
Or maybe they should return the queues to what they were when everyone was playing them. You know, like two or three years ago... Or was it four?
When you had to get the technology salvage drop for your Mk XII equipment. So let's have queues drop those again and you can get a mk xiii or mk xiv gold version of your rep gear for those and they contain a very low drop chance. Should repopulate the queues with people trying to find those.
^ 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
Remove the Dilithium rewards from everything and return the Que's to being the primary source of it. Life will return to them. All problems solved in one simple thing.
But this will never happen. because then people would complain that it's to hard to get.
Remove the Dilithium rewards from everything and return the Que's to being the primary source of it. Life will return to them. All problems solved in one simple thing.
But this will never happen. because then people would complain that it's to hard to get.
given how many other things were DESIGNED around being dil sources.... not gonna happen. Even then people would grind whatever is easiest and ignore the rest.
Im all game for it. As it is I wait until special events where I can just grind one mark type out. Rather long and boring... >.> Would welcome a way to get them like that. Good idea OP.
Or maybe they should return the queues to what they were when everyone was playing them. You know, like two or three years ago... Or was it four?
When you had to get the technology salvage drop for your Mk XII equipment. So let's have queues drop those again and you can get a mk xiii or mk xiv gold version of your rep gear for those and they contain a very low drop chance. Should repopulate the queues with people trying to find those.
This would work in a set-up where we could not already upgrade our gear we have. Though i could see maybe having a project that gives you a upgraded version of the rep items, which needed the salvaged tech drops from certain ques to complete them. As an example you would have your experimental romulan plasma beam array for instance, than by getting a salvaged tech drop you could slot both the array an the tech drop to get a improved version of the beam array (not only different stats, but even might have a new proc effect and such).
Well I had a different experience, and had quite a few more times in the que that I would chat with my teammates. Most of all when you got those 2-5 min waits for the time-gate to click over. THough I will say that most of the players dont seem to want to be the one to start up that social element in the stf via actually talking, and just remain quite, but if someone else takes the initiative to start talking they jump in quite readily. Have also found groups created from actually looking for them via the chat system, over just public que'ing up are vastly more talkative an interesting.
I had some talking in Grethor last night and let me tell you it was one encouraging experience, not!
I set up to close multiple Rad portals like I usually do and some idiot hovered over the spawning portal at the beginning and kept complaining to me that I should actually do something and he kept trying to ninja me closing the portals So eventually I just ended up chasing other ships around because "I wasn't doing anything."
There are only four Rad portal spawning areas in Grethor so at the very least this que should be reduced to 4 people as a fifth person has "nothing to do."
Remove the Dilithium rewards from everything and return the Que's to being the primary source of it. Life will return to them. All problems solved in one simple thing.
But this will never happen. because then people would complain that it's to hard to get.
given how many other things were DESIGNED around being dil sources.... not gonna happen. Even then people would grind whatever is easiest and ignore the rest.
That's what I'm saying. Dilithium is entirely to easy to get. Marks, you run out of a need for. So with the fact you can generally get marks and dil from other sources. This leaves the STFs in the, its not needed position. Other than marks and dil, there is nothing to keep a player wanting to do them. So while my idea would work to breath life back in to them. It would be a temporary thing that would change back to what we have. You know, "WAHHHH!! Dil is to hard to get now. WAHHHHHH!!!" would be all over the forums.
Perhaps adding Omega Traces as part of the Reward. With a chance for Slivers/Shards to drop. Maybe even the extremely rare Omega Particle. With a limit of 1 each per STF.
These would also best as a Chance to get item. That way, the market isn't affected to much on them and players have a chance at getting them, just by playing STFs.
With 1 Chance drop at an Omega Sliver/Shard and 1 Chance drop for and Omega Particle. Granted these two are not a guarantee, they might just happen to drop.
Lets say:
STF Reward Pack: 20% chance to get an Omega Trace.
Then in the STF, you have:
1 Omega Sliver: 10% Chance to Drop
1 Omega Shard: 5% chance to Drop
1 Omega Particle: 1%(or lower) Chance to Drop.
And just to go ahead and cut if off. No this would never be added to the battlezones. This is Queue only.
Or maybe they should return the queues to what they were when everyone was playing them. You know, like two or three years ago... Or was it four?
When you had to get the technology salvage drop for your Mk XII equipment. So let's have queues drop those again and you can get a mk xiii or mk xiv gold version of your rep gear for those and they contain a very low drop chance. Should repopulate the queues with people trying to find those.
This would work in a set-up where we could not already upgrade our gear we have. Though i could see maybe having a project that gives you a upgraded version of the rep items, which needed the salvaged tech drops from certain ques to complete them. As an example you would have your experimental romulan plasma beam array for instance, than by getting a salvaged tech drop you could slot both the array an the tech drop to get a improved version of the beam array (not only different stats, but even might have a new proc effect and such).
Ok... but how is that different than the current elite marks?
Or maybe they should return the queues to what they were when everyone was playing them. You know, like two or three years ago... Or was it four?
When you had to get the technology salvage drop for your Mk XII equipment. So let's have queues drop those again and you can get a mk xiii or mk xiv gold version of your rep gear for those and they contain a very low drop chance. Should repopulate the queues with people trying to find those.
This would work in a set-up where we could not already upgrade our gear we have. Though i could see maybe having a project that gives you a upgraded version of the rep items, which needed the salvaged tech drops from certain ques to complete them. As an example you would have your experimental romulan plasma beam array for instance, than by getting a salvaged tech drop you could slot both the array an the tech drop to get a improved version of the beam array (not only different stats, but even might have a new proc effect and such).
Ok... but how is that different than the current elite marks?
Well for one elite marks are just a higher tier of mark that is gotten from any advanced or higher stf or battlezone you do, where as a salvaged tech could be specific to certain stfs making it that to complete some projects it would take doing those specific stfs. Second it would not be a guaranteed drop, but a possible drop or reward from those specific stfs. THe normal an elite marks have the issue that they are guarantied rewards from any stf that is linked with a specific rep,which leads to players doing the quickest/highest payout stfs to farm them, where as a stf-specific salvaged tech type reward would push players to do specific stf to get the Salvaged tech they needed for that project.
Also even if you made these salvaged tech drops universal between all of the stfs that are linked with that rep, than you could make it that the higher difficulty an other stfs have a higher chance of it popping up. As an example lets use the Omega rep an have there being three salvaged tech drops that you can get, which are Salvaged borg-probe tech/salvaged borg-sphere tech/salvaged borg-cube tech. Now You could have the first one be a possible reward in Infected space, the second in Cure found, and the last in Khitomer Vortex, this causes each stf to have value as you can get something out of it that the others you can't. Also making it that you can have the different salvaged tech items needed for specific projects to improve that existing piece of gear. Also as said itf it was made general than make it that the harder stfs have a much higher chance to get them as a reward to entice people into running the other stfs.
And how would you extend that to non-Borg STFs? For example.... Tholians.
Well if you are putting that into the idea of the Nukara well you could have it be salvaged/isolated crystals from the crystalline entity stf, maybe salvaged dimensional tech for the Azure Nebula stf, maybe prototype tholian tech they were going to use on the mirror universe ship in self destruct. The hard one would be New romulan as only really one specific que would count for them an that is also Azure nebula.
Really I could see it working for almost all of the reps, as you can make/name the salvaged item what ever you wished, what is important is to have it rare enough that going to harder stfs or higher difficulties is appealing for the higher chance to have it pop. Hell I could se the Undine rep using planet killer samples as their salvage tech drop an even salvaged attack plans even as something the rep would want an would give you a upgrade in payment.
I was using borg stfs as a example since it is the most well known, and so quite abit easier to understand. Basically the salvaged tech would be a higher tier of elite marks kinda though with less of a chance to get them an being specific to certain ques (maybe instead of locking them to a que, make certain ques have a highrr chance to drop certain salvaged tech.).
Changing the cooldown timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours will do more for driving highly active and well geared players into other ques that any adjustment of the rewards or difficulty... If you want to farm, farm. ...But do it on a wider patch of content...
Changing the cooldown timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours will do more for driving highly active and well geared players into other ques that any adjustment of the rewards or difficulty... If you want to farm, farm. ...But do it on a wider patch of content...
If people don't want to do certain queues they won't. Merely preventing them running their favorites as often only drives them away from queues completely. You'd have to remove all other content for this to work, but then people would just go elsewhere and play Neverwinter for 6 hours while their queues cool down. How does that help anyone?
Letting people do what they want isn't some kind of universal cure all. The entire concept of progression is built on drawing out the path as much as the player will tolerate, and fact is while there would be some outcry, many MANY players would run something else over logging out. Frankly the play environment benefits from people logging out over running their 28th ISA of the day cycling 7 toons...
Any extra rewards given have to be something you can't get elsewhere (so no elite marks, or dilithium etc) so players are "forced" into joining queues if they want them. They also need to be something that players want to keep acquiring and have a constant/recurring need for, so something like tech upgrades or omega slivers etc., would be the general idea. Maybe even create a new tech upgrade that is specifically for pve queues that does extra compared to the superior ones, with a very small chance to drop an omega upgrade.
And how would you extend that to non-Borg STFs? For example.... Tholians.
Well if you are putting that into the idea of the Nukara well you could have it be salvaged/isolated crystals from the crystalline entity stf, maybe salvaged dimensional tech for the Azure Nebula stf, maybe prototype tholian tech they were going to use on the mirror universe ship in self destruct. The hard one would be New romulan as only really one specific que would count for them an that is also Azure nebula.
Really I could see it working for almost all of the reps, as you can make/name the salvaged item what ever you wished, what is important is to have it rare enough that going to harder stfs or higher difficulties is appealing for the higher chance to have it pop. Hell I could se the Undine rep using planet killer samples as their salvage tech drop an even salvaged attack plans even as something the rep would want an would give you a upgrade in payment.
I was using borg stfs as a example since it is the most well known, and so quite abit easier to understand. Basically the salvaged tech would be a higher tier of elite marks kinda though with less of a chance to get them an being specific to certain ques (maybe instead of locking them to a que, make certain ques have a highrr chance to drop certain salvaged tech.).
I think the devs dropped the idea not JUST because random drops suck, but because..... what sort of tech drop would you get from Disco? O_o'
Another way to drive rotation kicking and screaming into existence is to have ques randomly phase out. Sorry, no crisis this week.
Every Tuesday around reset time, each que makes a check. There's a 20% chance it will be unavailable for 1 week. No more than 50% of the ques can ever be benched (stop rolling if you get to one-half). Check them in the order from most to least played from the previous week. No que can be benched 2 weeks in a row. Poof - constantly shuffling list of choices. If your favorite is up this week (and 80% of the time it will be) play the heck out of it. Knock yourself out just like now. But if it's a down week, find something else to do. Including possibly not play this week if you're such a complete wuss that its 'my singular most easily cheesed encounter or nothing at all'.
Another way to drive rotation kicking and screaming into existence is to have ques randomly phase out. Sorry, no crisis this week.
Every Tuesday around reset time, each que makes a check. There's a 20% chance it will be unavailable for 1 week. No more than 50% of the ques can ever be benched (stop rolling if you get to one-half). Check them in the order from most to least played from the previous week. No que can be benched 2 weeks in a row. Poof - constantly shuffling list of choices. If your favorite is up this week (and 80% of the time it will be) play the heck out of it. Knock yourself out just like now. But if it's a down week, find something else to do. Including possibly not play this week if you're such a complete wuss that its 'my singular most easily cheesed encounter or nothing at all'.
That's what i've always though would be a decent way to do it. Or even have a similar system but for picking which queues get double rewards or something.
Each week the game does some funky maths wizardry and selects X number of queues to double the rewards on. There would be rules though, that would affect how it calculates the queues it picks:
The top 3 most played queues from the previous week get a penalty against them, so they are the least likely to get extra rewards.
Each mark type must be represented at least once.
Each difficulty must be represented at least once.
There should be an equal number of ground and space maps (or maybe a 60/40 split as we are in a space game after all?)
The 3 least played queues of last week get a bonus chance of being picked, as they need more people playing them.
Because of how the game calculates the new list it ensures everyone can access any mark type and all difficulties are covered. Also it gives people a share of ground and space content so that everyone's tastes are covered. Additionally if it becomes apparent than certain queues are getting farmed too much or are popping up too often it can easily be adjusted to suit.
I'm sure they could do all this. They have the metrics, they have the code for the game. They want people to play the content they designed.
Changing the cooldown timer from 30 minutes to 6 hours will do more for driving highly active and well geared players into other ques that any adjustment of the rewards or difficulty... If you want to farm, farm. ...But do it on a wider patch of content...
Yes, at least that would stop people hitting their dil quota on just ISA and CCA.
But only way to get all of the queues active is to actually add something unique to each of them so there is a reason to play them all.
Any extra rewards given have to be something you can't get elsewhere (so no elite marks, or dilithium etc) so players are "forced" into joining queues if they want them. They also need to be something that players want to keep acquiring and have a constant/recurring need for, so something like tech upgrades or omega slivers etc., would be the general idea. Maybe even create a new tech upgrade that is specifically for pve queues that does extra compared to the superior ones, with a very small chance to drop an omega upgrade.
Meh, upgrades are of rather low trade value and the game is full of "enhanced" upgrade kits from everything.
I would personally go with some kind of rare random drops in the style of the old STF equipments. Best part is, there are so many different kind of equipment it would be easy to come up with unique reward for each queue.
Continued demand can be added by making them tradeable, having random mods so you could still hope for a better one even if you have one already and/or making the items upgradeable by combining multiple copies of the same item instead of regular upgrade kits.
Comments
I mostly agree with this, but I do enjoy my team content too, and in Star Trek most of these missions are done by an away team instead of one ultra badass rambo commando.
"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."
Sure people will occasionally have good reasons for not accepting: they could have gone for a toilet break ten seconds before or something, or simply forgot they were queued up when they warped off to do a DSE or something.
But from speaking to a number of players on this, there's a growing suspicion that a small number of "trolls" are doing this on purpose, deriving enjoyment from driving everyone crazy and stopping people getting games going. I don't know how true that is, but as we're unable to see who's queued, who pressed and who didn't anyone choosing to "troll" in this way has the anonymity to brazenly know they'll get away with it without consequence.
I propose that not only should the queues be publically viewable by people in the queue somehow, but their accept ratio should also be displayed (ie. two numbers, the number of queues they pressed and the number of queues they did not press) which account-wide over the month figures. That way, if someone with 30 rejects versus 4 accepts joined the queue the leader could boot them, free up the slot and hopefully get a person who wants to play the game in it sooner.
When you had to get the technology salvage drop for your Mk XII equipment. So let's have queues drop those again and you can get a mk xiii or mk xiv gold version of your rep gear for those and they contain a very low drop chance. Should repopulate the queues with people trying to find those.
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My character Tsin'xing
But this will never happen. because then people would complain that it's to hard to get.
My character Tsin'xing
This would work in a set-up where we could not already upgrade our gear we have. Though i could see maybe having a project that gives you a upgraded version of the rep items, which needed the salvaged tech drops from certain ques to complete them. As an example you would have your experimental romulan plasma beam array for instance, than by getting a salvaged tech drop you could slot both the array an the tech drop to get a improved version of the beam array (not only different stats, but even might have a new proc effect and such).
I set up to close multiple Rad portals like I usually do and some idiot hovered over the spawning portal at the beginning and kept complaining to me that I should actually do something and he kept trying to ninja me closing the portals So eventually I just ended up chasing other ships around because "I wasn't doing anything."
There are only four Rad portal spawning areas in Grethor so at the very least this que should be reduced to 4 people as a fifth person has "nothing to do."
Less of this kind of experience would be better.
Don't worry, I won't get lonely.
That's what I'm saying. Dilithium is entirely to easy to get. Marks, you run out of a need for. So with the fact you can generally get marks and dil from other sources. This leaves the STFs in the, its not needed position. Other than marks and dil, there is nothing to keep a player wanting to do them. So while my idea would work to breath life back in to them. It would be a temporary thing that would change back to what we have. You know, "WAHHHH!! Dil is to hard to get now. WAHHHHHH!!!" would be all over the forums.
Perhaps adding Omega Traces as part of the Reward. With a chance for Slivers/Shards to drop. Maybe even the extremely rare Omega Particle. With a limit of 1 each per STF.
Lets set this up like this.
Omega Task Force, 1 Red Omega Trace.
Terran Task Force, 1 Blue Omega Trace
Nukara task Force, 1 Yellow Omega Trace.
These would also best as a Chance to get item. That way, the market isn't affected to much on them and players have a chance at getting them, just by playing STFs.
With 1 Chance drop at an Omega Sliver/Shard and 1 Chance drop for and Omega Particle. Granted these two are not a guarantee, they might just happen to drop.
Lets say:
STF Reward Pack: 20% chance to get an Omega Trace.
Then in the STF, you have:
1 Omega Sliver: 10% Chance to Drop
1 Omega Shard: 5% chance to Drop
1 Omega Particle: 1%(or lower) Chance to Drop.
And just to go ahead and cut if off. No this would never be added to the battlezones. This is Queue only.
My character Tsin'xing
Well for one elite marks are just a higher tier of mark that is gotten from any advanced or higher stf or battlezone you do, where as a salvaged tech could be specific to certain stfs making it that to complete some projects it would take doing those specific stfs. Second it would not be a guaranteed drop, but a possible drop or reward from those specific stfs. THe normal an elite marks have the issue that they are guarantied rewards from any stf that is linked with a specific rep,which leads to players doing the quickest/highest payout stfs to farm them, where as a stf-specific salvaged tech type reward would push players to do specific stf to get the Salvaged tech they needed for that project.
Also even if you made these salvaged tech drops universal between all of the stfs that are linked with that rep, than you could make it that the higher difficulty an other stfs have a higher chance of it popping up. As an example lets use the Omega rep an have there being three salvaged tech drops that you can get, which are Salvaged borg-probe tech/salvaged borg-sphere tech/salvaged borg-cube tech. Now You could have the first one be a possible reward in Infected space, the second in Cure found, and the last in Khitomer Vortex, this causes each stf to have value as you can get something out of it that the others you can't. Also making it that you can have the different salvaged tech items needed for specific projects to improve that existing piece of gear. Also as said itf it was made general than make it that the harder stfs have a much higher chance to get them as a reward to entice people into running the other stfs.
My character Tsin'xing
Well if you are putting that into the idea of the Nukara well you could have it be salvaged/isolated crystals from the crystalline entity stf, maybe salvaged dimensional tech for the Azure Nebula stf, maybe prototype tholian tech they were going to use on the mirror universe ship in self destruct. The hard one would be New romulan as only really one specific que would count for them an that is also Azure nebula.
Really I could see it working for almost all of the reps, as you can make/name the salvaged item what ever you wished, what is important is to have it rare enough that going to harder stfs or higher difficulties is appealing for the higher chance to have it pop. Hell I could se the Undine rep using planet killer samples as their salvage tech drop an even salvaged attack plans even as something the rep would want an would give you a upgrade in payment.
I was using borg stfs as a example since it is the most well known, and so quite abit easier to understand. Basically the salvaged tech would be a higher tier of elite marks kinda though with less of a chance to get them an being specific to certain ques (maybe instead of locking them to a que, make certain ques have a highrr chance to drop certain salvaged tech.).
If people don't want to do certain queues they won't. Merely preventing them running their favorites as often only drives them away from queues completely. You'd have to remove all other content for this to work, but then people would just go elsewhere and play Neverwinter for 6 hours while their queues cool down. How does that help anyone?
My character Tsin'xing
Every Tuesday around reset time, each que makes a check. There's a 20% chance it will be unavailable for 1 week. No more than 50% of the ques can ever be benched (stop rolling if you get to one-half). Check them in the order from most to least played from the previous week. No que can be benched 2 weeks in a row. Poof - constantly shuffling list of choices. If your favorite is up this week (and 80% of the time it will be) play the heck out of it. Knock yourself out just like now. But if it's a down week, find something else to do. Including possibly not play this week if you're such a complete wuss that its 'my singular most easily cheesed encounter or nothing at all'.
That's what i've always though would be a decent way to do it. Or even have a similar system but for picking which queues get double rewards or something.
Each week the game does some funky maths wizardry and selects X number of queues to double the rewards on. There would be rules though, that would affect how it calculates the queues it picks:
Because of how the game calculates the new list it ensures everyone can access any mark type and all difficulties are covered. Also it gives people a share of ground and space content so that everyone's tastes are covered. Additionally if it becomes apparent than certain queues are getting farmed too much or are popping up too often it can easily be adjusted to suit.
I'm sure they could do all this. They have the metrics, they have the code for the game. They want people to play the content they designed.
But only way to get all of the queues active is to actually add something unique to each of them so there is a reason to play them all. Meh, upgrades are of rather low trade value and the game is full of "enhanced" upgrade kits from everything.
I would personally go with some kind of rare random drops in the style of the old STF equipments. Best part is, there are so many different kind of equipment it would be easy to come up with unique reward for each queue.
Continued demand can be added by making them tradeable, having random mods so you could still hope for a better one even if you have one already and/or making the items upgradeable by combining multiple copies of the same item instead of regular upgrade kits.
My character Tsin'xing