Yes they did make them spawn all the time. I guess we should be careful what we wish for with this crew.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
@ rattler2
The OP asked for opinions and suggestions. Mine are as valid as any others seen here.
- I suggested dropping the Normals because it appears no one plays them. "Meatgrinder" isn't a term I would use to describe Advanced STFs. There are plenty of howtos available here, on Reddit, and on YouTube to show how to get the job done. However did we succeed in Advanced or Elite STFs during the Old Days? When top end gear was Mk XII Purple?
- Was leaving the Caps Lock on the only way to make your point about what I posted about 2pc Bonuses? If the basis of your disagreement with my point relies solely on volume to persuade the reader, how valid can it really be?
- Everything got nerfed first during DR. I can remember when the Advanced STFs paid out 1,440 Dilithium. Sure, they 'spread out' the dil to other things. But Cryptic did not do us any favors. It was a way to increase their all important metrics. Which is Cryptic's primary concern. The HP sponges the Borg got turned into were not a challenge whatsoever. They were an abundance of frustration. The S13 'balance pass' did not do anything positive for a casual player such as myself. Like most people, if I am dil or Mark farming, I want a minimal time investment for best results.
My play time for STO is limited enough as it is. If I now have to spend more of this time to earn less reward, the ROI on my time is no longer as viable. I cannot legitimately expect to turn into a one click wonder. Nor do I want to. But in my RL line of work, pay for time is paramount. Companies which do not offer the best wages lose good drivers faster than you can whistle Dixie. And they have zero chance of attracting good replacements either. As a result of this, these companies quickly either leave the trucking industry or they are purchased for their customer base or freight lanes. The end result is the same in either case: They are gone like the cool breeze.
I'd really rather not see such a thing happen to STO. Which overall, I like playing. A lot.
- Timegates are an annoyance. Regardless of whether or not the team outperforms the Queue. Fixing the Mirror Invasion Event is a one shot deal which does nothing at all for the rest of the Queues. I'd like to see timegates gone forever. Or, as an alternative, make everything a once a day deal. You want me to play this game every day, fine. But if you are the game company which owns it, you really need to remember the longer you lock me out of the content which I do play, the more likely it is I will find something else to do with my limited free time. This isn't the only way to get my daily Star Trek or MMO fix. It is one of many options. Admittedly, it is my preferred option. But I can learn to do without it if I have to. How quickly can someone become disgusted or distracted and leave STO permanently? Isn't hard at all to find the answer is it?
But ulimately this discussion is a waste of time. Neither Perfect World not Cryptic truly care what we think. They just make it look like they do. If they really cared, new additions to STO would not repeatedly and continuously break things which are already in STO. Which then seem to take months to correct. Perfect World has more than enough resources to turn STO into the best Star Trek MMO ever created. They have deliberately chosen to leave it at a bare subsistence level because the bottom line remains unaffected with things as they are right now. Until this game shows a loss instead of a profit, Perfect World and Cryptic have zero incentive to change anything at all in it.
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
- I suggested dropping the Normals because it appears no one plays them. "Meatgrinder" isn't a term I would use to describe Advanced STFs. There are plenty of howtos available here, on Reddit, and on YouTube to show how to get the job done. However did we succeed in Advanced or Elite STFs during the Old Days? When top end gear was Mk XII Purple?
The question here is, why isn't anyone playing Nromal now? Back when I first started playing at the start of DR, I played the Normal queues until I was sure I was ready for Advanced. So what changed?
It's most likely due to rewards. You won't get the Elite marks you need for your reps doing Normal queues. For a lot of players (and I can't blame them for this), they just go straight to Advanced hoping someone would carry them through. The problem is after S13, not a lot of players can carry PUGs through Advanced content, so now running Advanced queues are becoming a frustrating ordeal for both low-end and mid-tier players (which is the majority of the playerbase).
As a self-confessed chronic-PUGger, I can see a huge dip in player performance past S13, and a large increase of runs with failed optionals. I am also seeing an increase of frustrated chat messages from other players. Many of these frustrated messages (read: angry messages) actually come from the low-performers. My guess is that they are starting to run strings of failed runs and are therefore unable to make the most out of their gameplay.
The solution in this case IMO isn't to remove normals, but to increase their rewards (Advanced and Elite too) so that players won't find the need to jump to Advanced and Elites without being prepared.
Like most people, if I am dil or Mark farming, I want a minimal time investment for best results.
This I can understand. However, I think this is another problem on the game right now. The fact that there are over-rewarding aspects of the game that require hardly any effort (hence my thread on Admiralty) and under-rewarding aspects of the game that require a lot of effort (like the queues). Ideally, there would be a good spread of rewards where time and effort are equally rewarded.
My play time for STO is limited enough as it is. If I now have to spend more of this time to earn less reward, the ROI on my time is no longer as viable.
When people start thinking of "ROI" for time spent in the game, I think that's going to be another issue. One should be playing because it's fun, not to make the most out of resource-gathering. Once players play for that aspect, it becomes closer to a job than a game.
- Timegates are an annoyance. Regardless of whether or not the team outperforms the Queue. Fixing the Mirror Invasion Event is a one shot deal which does nothing at all for the rest of the Queues. I'd like to see timegates gone forever.
Agreed. The timegates do not add anything positive to the game.
But ulimately this discussion is a waste of time. Neither Perfect World not Cryptic truly care what we think.
I doubt that is the case. The devs do listen. It's just that not everything we want can be put into the game either due to practicality, gameplay mechanics/coding or it does not meet their long-term intentions. Another thing that threads like this do is raise awareness and opens player dialog (see the number of responses so far). The more players clamor for changes, the better the chances of changes actually happening.
- Was leaving the Caps Lock on the only way to make your point about what I posted about 2pc Bonuses? If the basis of your disagreement with my point relies solely on volume to persuade the reader, how valid can it really be?
Volume was not the reason for the caps. It was to highlight certain parts. Your suggestion would not just affect Rep sets, but ALL sets, thus locking out almost everyone except people with money to throw at the game. Removing the incrimental set bonuses, which has been a part of set bonuses since the first RPG that introduced item sets, and forcing people to equip the ENTIRE set to recieve a bonus is not going to work because some sets actually cost upwards of $110 minimum. I speak of both the Faction Flagship set and the Vesta set. Both have been expanded to a grand total of 6, count them 6, consoles. And if they accepted your idea... anyone who doesn't have both the T5 AND T6 ships... are not going to get ANY benefit from having any less than all 6 consoles, which is pretty much taking up half the available console slots.
And then we come to lockbox/lobi ship sets. Players would have to obtain all pieces of those sets to get any benefit whatsoever, which means, for example the Kelvin set, a player Fed side would have to get not only the two cross faction consoles, but BOTH the Kelvin Connie AND Vengeance.
And then there's the non rep sets like the Brayden and Kobali sets. They come with pieces that had 3 available from an Episode and 1 from an Anniversary ship (Lukari Science Ship and Kobali Samsar respectively). So your idea would nulify those sets entirely because unless you get EXTREMELY lucky or throw a lot of money at the game, you cannot benefit from the set bonuses because the sets are incomplete. ALSO, the Samsar came with a console that is part of the Command Battlecruiser set, which is C-Store attached to the Command Battlecruisers. Guess what? You just nulified that set too.
You're punishing players for not having money and/or time to do Anniversary or Seasonal events. Not reviving queues.
THAT is the reason for the objection. Not yelling. If I was yelling... every single word would be in caps. Maybe if you actually read the counterargument rather than see caps and assume that my only reason to object was to yell you'd notice I have a very valid and thought out argument.
With regards to sets, I agree with @rattler2. Requiring all items of a set to be equipped/owned would be a fast way to neuter a lot of builds, and would limit build diversity in addition to escalating the costs involved (both in-game and real-world currency) in benefiting from them.
An idea that is interesting to me in how to make set-item a bit more competitive an appealing to use compared to non-set items would be as fallows. Slotting two parts that are in a item-set would not merely unlock the 2-piece bonus in this version, but would unlock the entire set-bonus all levels, but additional parts of the set would improve the effect/stats/abilities gained from the set's bonuses. Now some of the set bonuses would need to be adjusted an looked at, but this could make using sets abit more appealing, and make having item's from a set on a ship from a event a little less of a pain (completing the set would only give a small boost to strength not additional onuses).
Though i will say i like the idea of giving ships a set of slots that you can slot item's that are associated with set's linked to that ship, which would free up console spaces, and if you made it that items slotted into these slots did not give the bonus of the console only counted towards the set-bonus it might be abit more balanced.
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,597Community Moderator
An idea that is interesting to me in how to make set-item a bit more competitive an appealing to use compared to non-set items would be as fallows. Slotting two parts that are in a item-set would not merely unlock the 2-piece bonus in this version, but would unlock the entire set-bonus all levels, but additional parts of the set would improve the effect/stats/abilities gained from the set's bonuses. Now some of the set bonuses would need to be adjusted an looked at, but this could make using sets abit more appealing, and make having item's from a set on a ship from a event a little less of a pain (completing the set would only give a small boost to strength not additional onuses).
Though i will say i like the idea of giving ships a set of slots that you can slot item's that are associated with set's linked to that ship, which would free up console spaces, and if you made it that items slotted into these slots did not give the bonus of the console only counted towards the set-bonus it might be abit more balanced.
Sounds interesting, however again I do have to point out the sheer number of slots you might need. The Flagship and Vesta sets have a total of 6 consoles each.
Still an interesting idea.
Sounds interesting, however again I do have to point out the sheer number of slots you might need. The Flagship and Vesta sets have a total of 6 consoles each.
Still an interesting idea.
It might not be too fair as well, as it would favor ships with more multiple console clickies too.
When people start thinking of "ROI" for time spent in the game, I think that's going to be another issue. One should be playing because it's fun, not to make the most out of resource-gathering. Once players play for that aspect, it becomes closer to a job than a game.
I think this point right here is one of the biggest issues right now.
A lot of people seem to look upon STO as some sort of job, or investment that must be worked to get a rate of return acceptable to them. Whereas in reality it is simply a computer game.
Perhaps if people just ignored rewards or just accepted what they got and played content that was fun regardless of the result then maybe we'd be in a better situation. We're in a situation now where people will actually AFK to get rewards, rather than play content. If you're doing all that then why are you actually playing? Why gather resources by doing 30 second queues or AFK'ing MI to get a better build to do the exact same thing?
Some of this is on the game itself, it's become such a massive grind really in recent years with every month having some new 14 day long grind or similar to get a rare event.
But the obsession with get a "good rate of return" seems a bizarre thought process for a game, the playing the content and having fun should be the return you look for.
When people start thinking of "ROI" for time spent in the game, I think that's going to be another issue. One should be playing because it's fun, not to make the most out of resource-gathering. Once players play for that aspect, it becomes closer to a job than a game.
I think this point right here is one of the biggest issues right now.
A lot of people seem to look upon STO as some sort of job, or investment that must be worked to get a rate of return acceptable to them. Whereas in reality it is simply a computer game.
Perhaps if people just ignored rewards or just accepted what they got and played content that was fun regardless of the result then maybe we'd be in a better situation. We're in a situation now where people will actually AFK to get rewards, rather than play content. If you're doing all that then why are you actually playing? Why gather resources by doing 30 second queues or AFK'ing MI to get a better build to do the exact same thing?
Some of this is on the game itself, it's become such a massive grind really in recent years with every month having some new 14 day long grind or similar to get a rare event.
But the obsession with get a "good rate of return" seems a bizarre thought process for a game, the playing the content and having fun should be the return you look for.
How many toons do you have Steve hm? I think you play only one. As a matter of fact I see few more peeps in this thread that I always seem to encounter on the same 1-2 toons in game.
Things look very differently when you have multiple alts. While the word fun is a highly subjective term there is another aspect that - objectively - binds every mmopg player together. That would be the “urge to progress our toons”. That’s the single thing we all do in STO even though we each may do it differently. It's the main goal, the universal "fun".
When players with a huge toon gang look at certain aspects of the game they view it entirely different than those with have only a few. Nevertheless there is no right or wrong here. Especially not when an old game like STO has seen quite a few changes in core rules by now and peeps had to adapt their play style accordingly. When peeps bring in economic aspects of play or begin to resort to terms like “job” the game makes it difficult to adjust the playstyle to uphold a reasonable progression on the toon set.
Saying stuff like cut back on alts, relax and play slowly or don’t care about rewards that much is a bit short sighted and would be the same as to ask you to delete parts of the gear on your single toon or forbidding you to do the next reput system.
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--snip
But if you are the game company which owns it, you really need to remember the longer you lock me out of the content which I do play, the more likely it is I will find something else to do with my limited free time. This isn't the only way to get my daily Star Trek or MMO fix. It is one of many options. Admittedly, it is my preferred option. But I can learn to do without it if I have to. How quickly can someone become disgusted or distracted and leave STO permanently?
Yeah... I think you make a strong point. The time gates are detrimental to queue activity. I'm sure they had good intentions for implementing them. But I just don't see any advantage player side.
And I've experienced this before on many occasions;
-Log in
-Doff/Contraband turn ins (10mins)
-Run Red Alerts: Borg/Tholian (10mins)
-Run a parse on ISA if I want to test something (5mins)... Usually I want to make adjustments after the round, and then want to re-test/parse again right away to see how the changes go...
-But no, I can't re-run ISA right away because I'm locked out for another 20+mins...
-Get discouraged because I don't feel like waiting around, nor have the time to do so..
-Log Out
Time gate lockouts have caused me to log off "early" more often then it's kept me engaged in other content.
I just go play something else which doesn't have time gates on my favorite content... Or call it a night.
It becomes a lose-lose situation for all parties; PWE/Cryptic, and Myself.
They don't get my full playtime, and I leave feeling I couldn't accomplish what I wanted. (And not because I didn't have the time, but because I was forced to wait around needlessly.)
- I suggested dropping the Normals because it appears no one plays them. "Meatgrinder" isn't a term I would use to describe Advanced STFs. There are plenty of howtos available here, on Reddit, and on YouTube to show how to get the job done. However did we succeed in Advanced or Elite STFs during the Old Days? When top end gear was Mk XII Purple?
The question here is, why isn't anyone playing Nromal now? Back when I first started playing at the start of DR, I played the Normal queues until I was sure I was ready for Advanced. So what changed?
They removed fail conditions from Advanced, meaning Advanced is now just as autowin as Normal but gives more reward. Normal+ we called it.
It's most likely due to rewards. You won't get the Elite marks you need for your reps doing Normal queues. For a lot of players (and I can't blame them for this), they just go straight to Advanced hoping someone would carry them through. The problem is after S13, not a lot of players can carry PUGs through Advanced content, so now running Advanced queues are becoming a frustrating ordeal for both low-end and mid-tier players (which is the majority of the playerbase).
Advanced (Normal+) queues generally don't need much carrying, since they removed fail conditions. I suppose if NOBODY in the team can pull half-decent DPS then bosses might be a problem in some space queues, but nothing I'd be concerned about.
As a self-confessed chronic-PUGger, I can see a huge dip in player performance past S13, and a large increase of runs with failed optionals. I am also seeing an increase of frustrated chat messages from other players. Many of these frustrated messages (read: angry messages) actually come from the low-performers. My guess is that they are starting to run strings of failed runs and are therefore unable to make the most out of their gameplay.
Logically, I'd expect players "starting to run strings of failed runs" would consider it's maybe their own fault (because it is), but people are rarely that logical. Inexperienced players are rarely qualified to assess their own performance, especially as part of a team, and the game certainly does nothing to assist them.
Having a good end-of-mission debrief screen with consistent and well-explained performance feedback, both for the team and for individual players would go a long way in helping new players find the level of difficulty they're proficient at, as well as improve their performance. The first step to improving performance is realizing your performance needs improvement. Random players typing obscenities at eachother is not useful feedback.
The solution in this case IMO isn't to remove normals, but to increase their rewards (Advanced and Elite too) so that players won't find the need to jump to Advanced and Elites without being prepared.
Fiddling with the rewards isn't going to stop ignorant players from queueing for content they can't handle, then complaining because the rest of the team was doing the same and they ended up with nobody who could actually win it.
Like most people, if I am dil or Mark farming, I want a minimal time investment for best results.
This I can understand. However, I think this is another problem on the game right now. The fact that there are over-rewarding aspects of the game that require hardly any effort (hence my thread on Admiralty) and under-rewarding aspects of the game that require a lot of effort (like the queues). Ideally, there would be a good spread of rewards where time and effort are equally rewarded.
My play time for STO is limited enough as it is. If I now have to spend more of this time to earn less reward, the ROI on my time is no longer as viable.
When people start thinking of "ROI" for time spent in the game, I think that's going to be another issue. One should be playing because it's fun, not to make the most out of resource-gathering. Once players play for that aspect, it becomes closer to a job than a game.
Making the most out of resource-gathering IS fun. There are entire game genres centered around resource management.
But with the over-generalized reward structure in STO queues, that means ISA/CCA spamming, which gets old. And naturally, there is a saturation point at which dilithium-equivalent just stops being a reward at all, due to the refining cap. Hence, unique rewards needed.
DID I MISS SOMETHING ABOUT CAPS BEING USED TO EMPHASIZE CERTAIN POINTS IN THIS THREAD?
must we argue about everything. i certainly don't think so.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
But with the over-generalized reward structure in STO queues, that means ISA/CCA spamming, which gets old. And naturally, there is a saturation point at which dilithium-equivalent just stops being a reward at all, due to the refining cap. Hence, unique rewards needed.
IMO, reward schemes aren't the most interesting line of inquiry on this. We've been here before and there's logical fallacies a plenty holding up the view that we're only a dilithium rebalance or new rifle away from having balanced populations in PVE (it's more hope than real possibility). With Admiralty for example the burden of collecting resources through obsessive, single target grinding has been considerably reduced and yet people still play CCA, ISA, and the alerts (including the fleet alert) with problematic intensity.
What if people simply find those fun?
I've never seen that suggested on the forums and I do think it's time for people to start considering alternative hypotheses to a problem which has remained in spite of considerable changes to the dilithium economy and rewards schemes throughout the entire game. Maybe short queues are simply what people prefer to play in the PVE format, with missions and zones satisfying the need for longer content better than longer queues. Rewards simply enable the expression of these preferences to be a viable approach to running STO. Even if longer queues more rewarding, what's there for the short queues will still be enough for players to continue doing what they want to do.
In that case, the question is then what can Cryptic do to make longer queues more interesting in their own right (understanding that players like co-op gameplay like this in short bursts). Perhaps they could look into more queues like Battle at Korfez (which string a number of small vignettes through a full queue) only without the Elite design focus.
Bipedal mammal and senior Foundry author.
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I'm still playing normal missions a lot, especially ground ones. It's fun to do when you just want to relax a bit while playing. Or when there's a mission like Gravity Kills and you're pugging it and you're not sure that you can carry the team in case the rest doesn't know what to do.
Of course I need to hold back a bit to give some others a chance to do something as well, but that's not a problem.
Resources are not my main reason for playing content. Sure, when you need fleet marks or a certain type of mark, this is the main reason for playing a specific queue. But in general I don't care all that much about rewards.
For newer players who still need to build their ships or try out builds that I've abandoned a long time ago, those resources may be more important. I agree with the OP that such rewards should mainly come from played content, rather than clicky systems such as Admiralty.
In the end I guess it comes down to attitude and reasons for playing the game. Some want to reach the highest ranks of the DPS chart, others want to try out as many different builds as possible, again others just want to see their characters flying in their favorite ships and just go to the first queue that pops. And of course some players want to do all these things, depending on their current mood. Depending on this attitude, Admiralty can help some players to more easily build their favorite ship and enjoy the queues more. For others it's a reason not to play.
I don't think there really is an easy solution. It all really depends on the dominant attitude and there's no way for us to know what type of players / attitude is the most numerous. Which makes me wonder if Cryptic actually knows or has information on such things ... I mean, some of the Devs have, not always as friendly as possible, emphasised that the Forum represents just a fraction of the playerbase.
But I wonder if they have cared to do some broader customer research then to figure out important basic information such as this. I know of only one survey and that was entirely related to the lock boxes IIRC (and it's also quite a while ago that it was sent out).
I don;t know. But to be honest i would be very surprised if more than a few dedicated players find doing 30 second CCA or 2 min ISA runs endlessly over all other content fun.
I mean everyone wants a cool ship that kills things and looks good but if all you do with that is fight 30 seconds battles then wait for a 30 mins cooldown to try again is that really the best you can get out of STO?
I REALLY don';t think Cryptic should be catering to that crowd to be perfectly honest.
But with the over-generalized reward structure in STO queues, that means ISA/CCA spamming, which gets old. And naturally, there is a saturation point at which dilithium-equivalent just stops being a reward at all, due to the refining cap. Hence, unique rewards needed.
IMO, reward schemes aren't the most interesting line of inquiry on this. We've been here before and there's logical fallacies a plenty holding up the view that we're only a dilithium rebalance or new rifle away from having balanced populations in PVE (it's more hope than real possibility). With Admiralty for example the burden of collecting resources through obsessive, single target grinding has been considerably reduced and yet people still play CCA, ISA, and the alerts (including the fleet alert) with problematic intensity.
What if people simply find those fun?
I've never seen that suggested on the forums and I do think it's time for people to start considering alternative hypotheses to a problem which has remained in spite of considerable changes to the dilithium economy and rewards schemes throughout the entire game. Maybe short queues are simply what people prefer to play in the PVE format, with missions and zones satisfying the need for longer content better than longer queues. Rewards simply enable the expression of these preferences to be a viable approach to running STO. Even if longer queues more rewarding, what's there for the short queues will still be enough for players to continue doing what they want to do.
In that case, the question is then what can Cryptic do to make longer queues more interesting in their own right (understanding that players like co-op gameplay like this in short bursts). Perhaps they could look into more queues like Battle at Korfez (which string a number of small vignettes through a full queue) only without the Elite design focus.
Of course CCA is fun. It's fun to do 1 minute of work (if you can even call it work) and get paid for 15. Laugh all the way to the bank.
Consider if CCA gave a reward proportional to it's 1 minute completion time. If rewards are meant to represent the 15 minutes duration the queue UI advertizes, that's 48 dil and 5 marks for one minute. You think someone would still find it fun?
Fact is the current reward structure doesn't "enable the expression of these preferences." You play a 15-minute Advanced queue you are going to be paid 48 dil per minute. How's that "viable" compared to CCA's 720?
The queues being dead has been an issue from WAY before the admiralty system.
The fix for it back than is the fix for it NOW. Change the reward structure. Make it so that the queues reward is based on average run time of the queues...with the 15 min time gated ones rewarding what they do now and anything that takes less giving proportionately less and those taking more...well more.
I'm not sure basing the rewards on 15-min missions at this point will give us any good. That would push more people into other sources (like Admiralty) for their resource gathering.
An alternative to that would be to keep base queue rewards as is, but scale up the daily bonus box rewards (dil and marks) up based on what you said above. That would mean first play-throughs of longer missions would pay more than first play-throughs of something like CCA and ISA for that day.
The queues being dead has been an issue from WAY before the admiralty system.
The fix for it back than is the fix for it NOW. Change the reward structure. Make it so that the queues reward is based on average run time of the queues...with the 15 min time gated ones rewarding what they do now and anything that takes less giving proportionately less and those taking more...well more.
I'm not sure basing the rewards on 15-min missions at this point will give us any good. That would push more people into other sources (like Admiralty) for their resource gathering.
15 minutes is the time advertized in the queue UI, but yes that would probably make the rewards a bit low. Though, I certainly can't see them picking CCA's 720 dil + 80 marks/minute as the standard, either.
Whatever the going rate would be, balancing it is nonetheless necessary if the long queues are to be worthwhile at all. As long as it's at least roughly proportional. Not as it is now where something like CCA can pay 15-20 times more per minute than long queues.
Of course CCA is fun. It's fun to do 1 minute of work (if you can even call it work) and get paid for 15. Laugh all the way to the bank.
Consider if CCA gave a reward proportional to it's 1 minute completion time. If rewards are meant to represent the 15 minutes duration the queue UI advertizes, that's 48 dil and 5 marks for one minute. You think someone would still find it fun?
Fact is the current reward structure doesn't "enable the expression of these preferences." You play a 15-minute Advanced queue you are going to be paid 48 dil per minute. How's that "viable" compared to CCA's 720?
If a "fact" doesn't does not have consistent explaining power then it should be thrown out as an problematic or an erroneous idea. It's not something to bank real changes on.
STO's economy has been rebalanced many times, and specifically in regard to the queue system (see. adding dil to all queues, scaling back the STF's, R&D, reputation daily bonus's, admiralty, and continued refinements in long queue design). Despite time and the volume of change, no appreciable effect has been observed. Even when there's far less need to maximize income rates through base PVE queue rewards people (as in: the bulk of the PVE population which would be unfair to characterize [looking at common builds] as min-maxing players) still play the short ones intensively. Alternatives have been made increasingly viable (even to the point where one's income rate from base PVE rewards isn't worth considering. Admiralty assignments can offer a lot more and all that takes is a minute of clicking at most and casual log ins) and yet here we are.
If rewards were the problem we should expect (in following the idea constantly and logically, not just however it best suits us) that changing the rewards should, in some respect, change the intensity of CCA/ISA/Alerts (including fleet). Even if a total fix isn't produced, some movement away from exclusive grinding should have been observed (in tinkering with the root of the problem). But that hasn't been the case, in spite of everything short queues still get played almost exclusively. It's time to look to other explanations rather than repeating the same old mantras with greater noise and emphasis (hoping that oh just this next time it'll really work.) It hasn't, it likely won't, so perhaps one should consider the possibly that short queues are a valid gameplay preference held by players at large rather than an error (represented only in dil math, in spite of our saturation) that needs to be corrected.
Then, that might lead to a more productive discussion of what can be done with PVE gameplay design to account for taste on all sides (long and short alike) and precipitate real change in the PVE population distribution (namely, new queues that can hold a population.) This could be in addition to other reward balancing, but my point is that the problem can't be solved with rewards tweaks alone (there's more going on here.)
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rattler2Member, Star Trek Online ModeratorPosts: 58,597Community Moderator
Sounds interesting, however again I do have to point out the sheer number of slots you might need. The Flagship and Vesta sets have a total of 6 consoles each.
Still an interesting idea.
It might not be too fair as well, as it would favor ships with more multiple console clickies too.
True. Luckilly most ship sets come in with only 3-4 consoles. The only ones that would have a SIGNIFICANT advantage would be the Faction Flaghsips and the Fed Vesta with 6. And for some people they don't actually have room to slot a ton of clickies on their power tray.
But like you said... it does give an advantage to ships with associated sets over ships without. The T6 Defiant would have an edge over the T6 Caitian Escort due to having a set.
Also note that the T6 flagship console set is really good from a DPS standpoint. So should they get dedicated slots for those, they'd be pretty OP in PVE.
Comments
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
The OP asked for opinions and suggestions. Mine are as valid as any others seen here.
- I suggested dropping the Normals because it appears no one plays them. "Meatgrinder" isn't a term I would use to describe Advanced STFs. There are plenty of howtos available here, on Reddit, and on YouTube to show how to get the job done. However did we succeed in Advanced or Elite STFs during the Old Days? When top end gear was Mk XII Purple?
- Was leaving the Caps Lock on the only way to make your point about what I posted about 2pc Bonuses? If the basis of your disagreement with my point relies solely on volume to persuade the reader, how valid can it really be?
- Everything got nerfed first during DR. I can remember when the Advanced STFs paid out 1,440 Dilithium. Sure, they 'spread out' the dil to other things. But Cryptic did not do us any favors. It was a way to increase their all important metrics. Which is Cryptic's primary concern. The HP sponges the Borg got turned into were not a challenge whatsoever. They were an abundance of frustration. The S13 'balance pass' did not do anything positive for a casual player such as myself. Like most people, if I am dil or Mark farming, I want a minimal time investment for best results.
My play time for STO is limited enough as it is. If I now have to spend more of this time to earn less reward, the ROI on my time is no longer as viable. I cannot legitimately expect to turn into a one click wonder. Nor do I want to. But in my RL line of work, pay for time is paramount. Companies which do not offer the best wages lose good drivers faster than you can whistle Dixie. And they have zero chance of attracting good replacements either. As a result of this, these companies quickly either leave the trucking industry or they are purchased for their customer base or freight lanes. The end result is the same in either case: They are gone like the cool breeze.
I'd really rather not see such a thing happen to STO. Which overall, I like playing. A lot.
- Timegates are an annoyance. Regardless of whether or not the team outperforms the Queue. Fixing the Mirror Invasion Event is a one shot deal which does nothing at all for the rest of the Queues. I'd like to see timegates gone forever. Or, as an alternative, make everything a once a day deal. You want me to play this game every day, fine. But if you are the game company which owns it, you really need to remember the longer you lock me out of the content which I do play, the more likely it is I will find something else to do with my limited free time. This isn't the only way to get my daily Star Trek or MMO fix. It is one of many options. Admittedly, it is my preferred option. But I can learn to do without it if I have to. How quickly can someone become disgusted or distracted and leave STO permanently? Isn't hard at all to find the answer is it?
But ulimately this discussion is a waste of time. Neither Perfect World not Cryptic truly care what we think. They just make it look like they do. If they really cared, new additions to STO would not repeatedly and continuously break things which are already in STO. Which then seem to take months to correct. Perfect World has more than enough resources to turn STO into the best Star Trek MMO ever created. They have deliberately chosen to leave it at a bare subsistence level because the bottom line remains unaffected with things as they are right now. Until this game shows a loss instead of a profit, Perfect World and Cryptic have zero incentive to change anything at all in it.
Right. Thank you for sharing them.
The question here is, why isn't anyone playing Nromal now? Back when I first started playing at the start of DR, I played the Normal queues until I was sure I was ready for Advanced. So what changed?
It's most likely due to rewards. You won't get the Elite marks you need for your reps doing Normal queues. For a lot of players (and I can't blame them for this), they just go straight to Advanced hoping someone would carry them through. The problem is after S13, not a lot of players can carry PUGs through Advanced content, so now running Advanced queues are becoming a frustrating ordeal for both low-end and mid-tier players (which is the majority of the playerbase).
As a self-confessed chronic-PUGger, I can see a huge dip in player performance past S13, and a large increase of runs with failed optionals. I am also seeing an increase of frustrated chat messages from other players. Many of these frustrated messages (read: angry messages) actually come from the low-performers. My guess is that they are starting to run strings of failed runs and are therefore unable to make the most out of their gameplay.
The solution in this case IMO isn't to remove normals, but to increase their rewards (Advanced and Elite too) so that players won't find the need to jump to Advanced and Elites without being prepared.
This I can understand. However, I think this is another problem on the game right now. The fact that there are over-rewarding aspects of the game that require hardly any effort (hence my thread on Admiralty) and under-rewarding aspects of the game that require a lot of effort (like the queues). Ideally, there would be a good spread of rewards where time and effort are equally rewarded.
When people start thinking of "ROI" for time spent in the game, I think that's going to be another issue. One should be playing because it's fun, not to make the most out of resource-gathering. Once players play for that aspect, it becomes closer to a job than a game.
Agreed. The timegates do not add anything positive to the game.
I doubt that is the case. The devs do listen. It's just that not everything we want can be put into the game either due to practicality, gameplay mechanics/coding or it does not meet their long-term intentions. Another thing that threads like this do is raise awareness and opens player dialog (see the number of responses so far). The more players clamor for changes, the better the chances of changes actually happening.
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Volume was not the reason for the caps. It was to highlight certain parts. Your suggestion would not just affect Rep sets, but ALL sets, thus locking out almost everyone except people with money to throw at the game. Removing the incrimental set bonuses, which has been a part of set bonuses since the first RPG that introduced item sets, and forcing people to equip the ENTIRE set to recieve a bonus is not going to work because some sets actually cost upwards of $110 minimum. I speak of both the Faction Flagship set and the Vesta set. Both have been expanded to a grand total of 6, count them 6, consoles. And if they accepted your idea... anyone who doesn't have both the T5 AND T6 ships... are not going to get ANY benefit from having any less than all 6 consoles, which is pretty much taking up half the available console slots.
And then we come to lockbox/lobi ship sets. Players would have to obtain all pieces of those sets to get any benefit whatsoever, which means, for example the Kelvin set, a player Fed side would have to get not only the two cross faction consoles, but BOTH the Kelvin Connie AND Vengeance.
And then there's the non rep sets like the Brayden and Kobali sets. They come with pieces that had 3 available from an Episode and 1 from an Anniversary ship (Lukari Science Ship and Kobali Samsar respectively). So your idea would nulify those sets entirely because unless you get EXTREMELY lucky or throw a lot of money at the game, you cannot benefit from the set bonuses because the sets are incomplete. ALSO, the Samsar came with a console that is part of the Command Battlecruiser set, which is C-Store attached to the Command Battlecruisers. Guess what? You just nulified that set too.
You're punishing players for not having money and/or time to do Anniversary or Seasonal events. Not reviving queues.
THAT is the reason for the objection. Not yelling. If I was yelling... every single word would be in caps. Maybe if you actually read the counterargument rather than see caps and assume that my only reason to object was to yell you'd notice I have a very valid and thought out argument.
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Though i will say i like the idea of giving ships a set of slots that you can slot item's that are associated with set's linked to that ship, which would free up console spaces, and if you made it that items slotted into these slots did not give the bonus of the console only counted towards the set-bonus it might be abit more balanced.
Sounds interesting, however again I do have to point out the sheer number of slots you might need. The Flagship and Vesta sets have a total of 6 consoles each.
Still an interesting idea.
It might not be too fair as well, as it would favor ships with more multiple console clickies too.
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I think this point right here is one of the biggest issues right now.
A lot of people seem to look upon STO as some sort of job, or investment that must be worked to get a rate of return acceptable to them. Whereas in reality it is simply a computer game.
Perhaps if people just ignored rewards or just accepted what they got and played content that was fun regardless of the result then maybe we'd be in a better situation. We're in a situation now where people will actually AFK to get rewards, rather than play content. If you're doing all that then why are you actually playing? Why gather resources by doing 30 second queues or AFK'ing MI to get a better build to do the exact same thing?
Some of this is on the game itself, it's become such a massive grind really in recent years with every month having some new 14 day long grind or similar to get a rare event.
But the obsession with get a "good rate of return" seems a bizarre thought process for a game, the playing the content and having fun should be the return you look for.
How many toons do you have Steve hm? I think you play only one. As a matter of fact I see few more peeps in this thread that I always seem to encounter on the same 1-2 toons in game.
Things look very differently when you have multiple alts. While the word fun is a highly subjective term there is another aspect that - objectively - binds every mmopg player together. That would be the “urge to progress our toons”. That’s the single thing we all do in STO even though we each may do it differently. It's the main goal, the universal "fun".
When players with a huge toon gang look at certain aspects of the game they view it entirely different than those with have only a few. Nevertheless there is no right or wrong here. Especially not when an old game like STO has seen quite a few changes in core rules by now and peeps had to adapt their play style accordingly. When peeps bring in economic aspects of play or begin to resort to terms like “job” the game makes it difficult to adjust the playstyle to uphold a reasonable progression on the toon set.
Saying stuff like cut back on alts, relax and play slowly or don’t care about rewards that much is a bit short sighted and would be the same as to ask you to delete parts of the gear on your single toon or forbidding you to do the next reput system.
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Yeah... I think you make a strong point. The time gates are detrimental to queue activity. I'm sure they had good intentions for implementing them. But I just don't see any advantage player side.
And I've experienced this before on many occasions;
-Log in
-Doff/Contraband turn ins (10mins)
-Run Red Alerts: Borg/Tholian (10mins)
-Run a parse on ISA if I want to test something (5mins)... Usually I want to make adjustments after the round, and then want to re-test/parse again right away to see how the changes go...
-But no, I can't re-run ISA right away because I'm locked out for another 20+mins...
-Get discouraged because I don't feel like waiting around, nor have the time to do so..
-Log Out
Time gate lockouts have caused me to log off "early" more often then it's kept me engaged in other content.
I just go play something else which doesn't have time gates on my favorite content... Or call it a night.
It becomes a lose-lose situation for all parties; PWE/Cryptic, and Myself.
They don't get my full playtime, and I leave feeling I couldn't accomplish what I wanted. (And not because I didn't have the time, but because I was forced to wait around needlessly.)
-Aint nobody got time for Time Gates.
[img][/img]
Advanced (Normal+) queues generally don't need much carrying, since they removed fail conditions. I suppose if NOBODY in the team can pull half-decent DPS then bosses might be a problem in some space queues, but nothing I'd be concerned about.
Logically, I'd expect players "starting to run strings of failed runs" would consider it's maybe their own fault (because it is), but people are rarely that logical. Inexperienced players are rarely qualified to assess their own performance, especially as part of a team, and the game certainly does nothing to assist them.
Having a good end-of-mission debrief screen with consistent and well-explained performance feedback, both for the team and for individual players would go a long way in helping new players find the level of difficulty they're proficient at, as well as improve their performance. The first step to improving performance is realizing your performance needs improvement. Random players typing obscenities at eachother is not useful feedback.
Fiddling with the rewards isn't going to stop ignorant players from queueing for content they can't handle, then complaining because the rest of the team was doing the same and they ended up with nobody who could actually win it.
Making the most out of resource-gathering IS fun. There are entire game genres centered around resource management.
But with the over-generalized reward structure in STO queues, that means ISA/CCA spamming, which gets old. And naturally, there is a saturation point at which dilithium-equivalent just stops being a reward at all, due to the refining cap. Hence, unique rewards needed.
must we argue about everything. i certainly don't think so.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
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Cool as a cucumber.
> Keep it cool everyone.
You're right.. not taking the bait. This thread actually has some good ideas and discussion.
IMO, reward schemes aren't the most interesting line of inquiry on this. We've been here before and there's logical fallacies a plenty holding up the view that we're only a dilithium rebalance or new rifle away from having balanced populations in PVE (it's more hope than real possibility). With Admiralty for example the burden of collecting resources through obsessive, single target grinding has been considerably reduced and yet people still play CCA, ISA, and the alerts (including the fleet alert) with problematic intensity.
What if people simply find those fun?
I've never seen that suggested on the forums and I do think it's time for people to start considering alternative hypotheses to a problem which has remained in spite of considerable changes to the dilithium economy and rewards schemes throughout the entire game. Maybe short queues are simply what people prefer to play in the PVE format, with missions and zones satisfying the need for longer content better than longer queues. Rewards simply enable the expression of these preferences to be a viable approach to running STO. Even if longer queues more rewarding, what's there for the short queues will still be enough for players to continue doing what they want to do.
In that case, the question is then what can Cryptic do to make longer queues more interesting in their own right (understanding that players like co-op gameplay like this in short bursts). Perhaps they could look into more queues like Battle at Korfez (which string a number of small vignettes through a full queue) only without the Elite design focus.
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Of course I need to hold back a bit to give some others a chance to do something as well, but that's not a problem.
Resources are not my main reason for playing content. Sure, when you need fleet marks or a certain type of mark, this is the main reason for playing a specific queue. But in general I don't care all that much about rewards.
For newer players who still need to build their ships or try out builds that I've abandoned a long time ago, those resources may be more important. I agree with the OP that such rewards should mainly come from played content, rather than clicky systems such as Admiralty.
In the end I guess it comes down to attitude and reasons for playing the game. Some want to reach the highest ranks of the DPS chart, others want to try out as many different builds as possible, again others just want to see their characters flying in their favorite ships and just go to the first queue that pops. And of course some players want to do all these things, depending on their current mood. Depending on this attitude, Admiralty can help some players to more easily build their favorite ship and enjoy the queues more. For others it's a reason not to play.
I don't think there really is an easy solution. It all really depends on the dominant attitude and there's no way for us to know what type of players / attitude is the most numerous. Which makes me wonder if Cryptic actually knows or has information on such things ... I mean, some of the Devs have, not always as friendly as possible, emphasised that the Forum represents just a fraction of the playerbase.
But I wonder if they have cared to do some broader customer research then to figure out important basic information such as this. I know of only one survey and that was entirely related to the lock boxes IIRC (and it's also quite a while ago that it was sent out).
I mean everyone wants a cool ship that kills things and looks good but if all you do with that is fight 30 seconds battles then wait for a 30 mins cooldown to try again is that really the best you can get out of STO?
I REALLY don';t think Cryptic should be catering to that crowd to be perfectly honest.
Consider if CCA gave a reward proportional to it's 1 minute completion time. If rewards are meant to represent the 15 minutes duration the queue UI advertizes, that's 48 dil and 5 marks for one minute. You think someone would still find it fun?
Fact is the current reward structure doesn't "enable the expression of these preferences." You play a 15-minute Advanced queue you are going to be paid 48 dil per minute. How's that "viable" compared to CCA's 720?
I'm not sure basing the rewards on 15-min missions at this point will give us any good. That would push more people into other sources (like Admiralty) for their resource gathering.
An alternative to that would be to keep base queue rewards as is, but scale up the daily bonus box rewards (dil and marks) up based on what you said above. That would mean first play-throughs of longer missions would pay more than first play-throughs of something like CCA and ISA for that day.
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Whatever the going rate would be, balancing it is nonetheless necessary if the long queues are to be worthwhile at all. As long as it's at least roughly proportional. Not as it is now where something like CCA can pay 15-20 times more per minute than long queues.
If a "fact" doesn't does not have consistent explaining power then it should be thrown out as an problematic or an erroneous idea. It's not something to bank real changes on.
STO's economy has been rebalanced many times, and specifically in regard to the queue system (see. adding dil to all queues, scaling back the STF's, R&D, reputation daily bonus's, admiralty, and continued refinements in long queue design). Despite time and the volume of change, no appreciable effect has been observed. Even when there's far less need to maximize income rates through base PVE queue rewards people (as in: the bulk of the PVE population which would be unfair to characterize [looking at common builds] as min-maxing players) still play the short ones intensively. Alternatives have been made increasingly viable (even to the point where one's income rate from base PVE rewards isn't worth considering. Admiralty assignments can offer a lot more and all that takes is a minute of clicking at most and casual log ins) and yet here we are.
If rewards were the problem we should expect (in following the idea constantly and logically, not just however it best suits us) that changing the rewards should, in some respect, change the intensity of CCA/ISA/Alerts (including fleet). Even if a total fix isn't produced, some movement away from exclusive grinding should have been observed (in tinkering with the root of the problem). But that hasn't been the case, in spite of everything short queues still get played almost exclusively. It's time to look to other explanations rather than repeating the same old mantras with greater noise and emphasis (hoping that oh just this next time it'll really work.) It hasn't, it likely won't, so perhaps one should consider the possibly that short queues are a valid gameplay preference held by players at large rather than an error (represented only in dil math, in spite of our saturation) that needs to be corrected.
Then, that might lead to a more productive discussion of what can be done with PVE gameplay design to account for taste on all sides (long and short alike) and precipitate real change in the PVE population distribution (namely, new queues that can hold a population.) This could be in addition to other reward balancing, but my point is that the problem can't be solved with rewards tweaks alone (there's more going on here.)
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True. Luckilly most ship sets come in with only 3-4 consoles. The only ones that would have a SIGNIFICANT advantage would be the Faction Flaghsips and the Fed Vesta with 6. And for some people they don't actually have room to slot a ton of clickies on their power tray.
But like you said... it does give an advantage to ships with associated sets over ships without. The T6 Defiant would have an edge over the T6 Caitian Escort due to having a set.
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