Yeah it's not actually too bad a suggestion, the first part at least. If someone wants fleet stuff or EC it opens another means to get them. And like you say there was such an economy in the past. If people choose to uses their time to grind for pay th n that's their choice I guess, the market will certainly be here.
But the other side, demanding stuff from your fleet is not something I can agree with. You give resources to the fleet and are rewarded with fleet credits and I hope store access etc. So assuming your fleet is well run there is no need to demand extra pay or promotions etc, and I'd like to think some of the bigger better run fleets would frown upon members acting that way. Now if your fleet really is poorly run and treating you like slave workers for peanuts then by all means move on to one of the better ones, don't waste time demanding things from TRIBBLE.
This won't last long. When the complaining starts, things will change. Especially considering, turning in fleet holding provisions doesn't reward fleet credits. So they are already mini-games that have no reward to them, or a marginal one at best.
This also means, they'll have more people farming these provisions, than doing anything else in the game. Which makes the whole setup, counterproductive. The only way I can see this being balanced out, is to have X amount you can get from the mini-games and X amount you can buy with fleet credits.
The feedback has already started, the question is rather or not Cryptic will listen.
To be clear though, this isn't just fleets being complainers, the requirements for these grinded provisions are absolutely outlandish. If you can get 20 people at a time working on nothing but generating these provisions it would still take you a couple years to max the holding. And that's for a very large fleet which no longer exists in STO.
These provisions will be in high demand because Fleets simply won't be able to expand by doing things the way they're supposed to. The amount of needed provisions is beyond ludicrous which will make a huge market for them as Druk pointed out. In the end, fleets that can afford to pay players will flourish and fleets that can't will be stagnant as their members give all their provisions to other fleets that pay better.
Just as S13 was the end of general PVE play, S14 will be the end of fleets. At the rate Cryptic is going, there won't be a S15.
This won't last long. When the complaining starts, things will change. Especially considering, turning in fleet holding provisions doesn't reward fleet credits. So they are already mini-games that have no reward to them, or a marginal one at best.
This also means, they'll have more people farming these provisions, than doing anything else in the game. Which makes the whole setup, counterproductive. The only way I can see this being balanced out, is to have X amount you can get from the mini-games and X amount you can buy with fleet credits.
The feedback has already started, the question is rather or not Cryptic will listen.
To be clear though, this isn't just fleets being complainers, the requirements for these grinded provisions are absolutely outlandish. If you can get 20 people at a time working on nothing but generating these provisions it would still take you a couple years to max the holding. And that's for a very large fleet which no longer exists in STO.
These provisions will be in high demand because Fleets simply won't be able to expand by doing things the way they're supposed to. The amount of needed provisions is beyond ludicrous which will make a huge market for them as Druk pointed out. In the end, fleets that can afford to pay players will flourish and fleets that can't will be stagnant as their members give all their provisions to other fleets that pay better.
Just as S13 was the end of general PVE play, S14 will be the end of fleets. At the rate Cryptic is going, there won't be a S15.
Add to this, that the rewards for leveling it up, are not all that impressive. But, this is not unexpected. Of all the mmo's I have played. There are two things that always kill off the player population. Guilds and easy mode. WoW being the primary example here. They started what was affectionately called "welfare gear" with Trial of the Grand Crusade and Ice Crown Citadel. The player warned them, this would cost them players. They continued to make things easier through Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor. In these three expansions they drove off 50% of their subscriptions, or roughly 6 million players. Which is why Blizzard had to institute the server groups. To give the appearance of an active playerbase.
One would think Cryptic would have learned this, since they were on this path before WoW. The easy, powercreep, grindfest games, never last long. Plus, back in 2013 when they first said they were adding the fleet system, my first words were, "Well, that's great. That will only kill the game."
As you said, STO is currently living up to their name. Servers Temporarily Online. Which, as you also pointed out, might just get turned into, Servers Totally Offline.
Although sell provisions for ECs is an interesting way to acquire them, I doubt there are fleets rich enough--that are still active in the game--that can afford it. For me, this new holding isn't worth "buying" provisions to have it completed. I have no interest in rushing to get it done, nor will I be pushing my fleetmates to donate. At this point in the game, players are better off earning and saving Dilithium and ECs for other things.
There are fleets who have a reputation for promoting people based on how much they suck up and be a yes-man to the fleet leader. Like Druk mentioned, look at fleet XTERN1TY as an example of this and how well that worked out for them.
I know of people who earned millions of fleet credits for their fleet, yet always being passed over for promotion or being outright denied the opportunity to get fleet gear from their holdings. It's not surprising when they ditch their fleets - that sort of setup does not inspire loyalty.
Fleets like that should rightfully fall behind in their efforts to become a maxed out fleet and a player should not be made to feel guilty for ditching.
These minigames are unlikely to be fun or rewarding, we know cryptic content these days is geared towards boring time consuming grinds, existing only to make their log in statistics look good.
(current featured episode being a refreshing change from that usual format, but unlikely to become the norm.)
The minigame grind potentially rewards the spacepoor in a way Cryptic didn't intend. While the base rewards are unlikely to be worth the time spent, the player grinding has the opportunity to be adequately rewarded for their time spent by other players instead. If you're the sort of person who doesn't mind grinding, this is your opportunity to sell your pitiful minigame rewards to the space whales who these days use STO as a chatroom client.
Especially during the first few days of this new fleet holding grind, where the value of your grinding will be in flux. There's nothing wrong in taking advantage of that.
Think of it as clocking in, doing your repetitive task over and over again, clocking out and ensuring you get paid for your time.
Has anyone actually got a good idea of exactly how the provisions work here? I tried it on Trimble and it's basically just mini-games to "mine" the provisions and then it looks like these can go into the projects. So you're not actually buying them with flarks as you must do with other holdings.
And someone posted a pic somewhere recently of some sort of fleet coffers or something? Is that meaning you can continue to donate even with no project slotted and the fleet leaders can use them anywhere later on? So in essence you always have a means to gain rewards even when no project slots are free like in a big fleet?
Has anyone actually got a good idea of exactly how the provisions work here? I tried it on Trimble and it's basically just mini-games to "mine" the provisions and then it looks like these can go into the projects.
So you're not actually buying them with flarks as you must do with other holdings.
And someone posted a pic somewhere recently of some sort of fleet coffers or something? Is that meaning you can continue to donate even with no project slotted and the fleet leaders can use them anywhere later on? So in essence you always have a means to gain rewards even when no project slots are free like in a big fleet?
I am not sure THEY know how it is going to work, yet.
They have a week to figure all this out.
"Spend your life doing strange things with weird people." -- UNK
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
People have been selling fleet credits for years; Druk's post is nothing new or novel. As for harming small fleets by encouraging them to spend credits elsewhere, so what?
The odds against small fleets are already stacked against them, especially with the rollout of this new holding. Its up to each person and each small fleet to determine how they're going to tackle this, but if people in small fleet are draining all of their resources into, quite frankly, a lost cause, it's not unreasonable to expect some to shop around for a high bidder.
Fleets with mandatory minimum contributions are going to have problems down the road anyway.
They aren't the only ones that are going to have a problem with it. Something like this, a major time sink, for no real reward. This also has the high potential of running even more players off.
Remember, this is the new age of MMO's. All fun killing mechanics and no real reason to play.
Honestly, this strikes me as more a 'you do you, boo'. I'm just going to keep doing what I normally do, which is very much the opposite of what's being promoted by the ferengi. I give the fleets I'm in everything I can and don't ask for a thing outside of what is laid down for progress and promotion in the fleet charter. I don't care about 'fair recompense' or 'just reward', it's superfluous. I'd rather earn my accolades and if some of my donations fall outside of that then I don't count them, nor should they be counted as far as I'm concerned.
Honestly, this strikes me as more a 'you do you, boo'. I'm just going to keep doing what I normally do, which is very much the opposite of what's being promoted by the ferengi. I give the fleets I'm in everything I can and don't ask for a thing outside of what is laid down for progress and promotion in the fleet charter. I don't care about 'fair recompense' or 'just reward', it's superfluous. I'd rather earn my accolades and if some of my donations fall outside of that then I don't count them, nor should they be counted as far as I'm concerned.
So, yeah, you do you, boo. You do you.
Some people would say getting the fleet holding upgraded IS the "just reward."
All new content, events and systems get decried as "grinding" on the forums. When there are special rewards, it's "forcing" people to grind and when there aren't, it's a "worthless time sink." And everything is "driving more players away." Go figure. I've come to the conclusion some people just don't want to play the game at all.
I'd really like to see a universal currency exchange, similar to the dilex but where any resource can be traded with other players for any other resource. Itr would all be player driven and would essentially be a UI where you list your resource (say flarks) and the items you want in return, the price is dependent on demand and what sellers are setting.
This way you could swap your massive pile of unneeded flarks for omega rep marks if you need those, or swap EC for elite rep marks etc.
Basically it opens up a whole world of player driven economics that are currently only possible with some really "pain in the TRIBBLE" work arounds.
I'd really like to see a universal currency exchange, similar to the dilex but where any resource can be traded with other players for any other resource. Itr would all be player driven and would essentially be a UI where you list your resource (say flarks) and the items you want in return, the price is dependent on demand and what sellers are setting.
This way you could swap your massive pile of unneeded flarks for omega rep marks if you need those, or swap EC for elite rep marks etc.
Basically it opens up a whole world of player driven economics that are currently only possible with some really "pain in the ****" work arounds.
If the marks were exchangable, there'd be no point having multiple types of mark in the first place.
You're basically trying to push worthy, working fleetmates to try and merchandise their work as you're probably preparing your pylons for a large payday if this trend or wave you start will have some results. This is breaking up the collective entertainment and collective accomplishment for most of the players. This is discouraging and contradictive to the basic idea of a collective effort followed by team or individual success (getting those amazing warpcores and/or armors/weapons). When you're basically pressing the narcisistic button on a MMO that is highly-dependant on people working together, sacrificing time and effort for a result... That is horrendous, mate. You should knock this off and encourage people getting things working in harmony and in friendly conjucture, not by trying to auction effort and switch fleets around. This type of attrition is ruining the fun of everyone. You can accumulate things which require a level of wealth by other means as well. Fleetmates help each other. I was helped alot and I do my best to help others. After all, we work together ingame for a great trek experience. This is totally encouraging the opposite.
I'd really like to see a universal currency exchange, similar to the dilex but where any resource can be traded with other players for any other resource. Itr would all be player driven and would essentially be a UI where you list your resource (say flarks) and the items you want in return, the price is dependent on demand and what sellers are setting.
This way you could swap your massive pile of unneeded flarks for omega rep marks if you need those, or swap EC for elite rep marks etc.
Basically it opens up a whole world of player driven economics that are currently only possible with some really "pain in the ****" work arounds.
If the marks were exchangable, there'd be no point having multiple types of mark in the first place.
How do you figure?
Someone would have to grind the whatever-marks in order for you to exchange them.
True, but then that doesn't mean much in this age of choice marks.
Nor is marks trading thematically appropriate. The marks are a symbolic representation of your good standing, your reputation if you will, with the groups in question. Favors they owe you for fighting for them (or raising funny animals for them, as the case may be). It makes no sense to be able to trade them as if they were actual currency.
The moment you mentioned you can take your work elsewhere and have control. I compared it to workers demands of bosses. How do bosses counter this? Cheaper labor that demands less for more pure work. Up to moving the labor portion to other states or countries. AKA outsourcing. That would make this a gold farmer's paradise. And while I do not condone this, it almost seems like who this holding is really being built for.
The only way to stop that and prevent tossing players out on their ears left and right when you are at a low metric. Is to monetize the various marks and materials themselves. Similar to WoW. I could buy a token for a month of game time. But it can't be used by me. But sold on the AH. Someone else buys it with in game gold which is how you legally buy gold there.
So Cryptic sets up something similar. So you can buy mats for coin. But can only sell them on the exchange. This will have whales putting money in the game and bolster trade. Without killing the market for those that want to play to earn the goods.
Just a thought.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Comments
If people choose to uses their time to grind for pay th n that's their choice I guess, the market will certainly be here.
But the other side, demanding stuff from your fleet is not something I can agree with. You give resources to the fleet and are rewarded with fleet credits and I hope store access etc. So assuming your fleet is well run there is no need to demand extra pay or promotions etc, and I'd like to think some of the bigger better run fleets would frown upon members acting that way.
Now if your fleet really is poorly run and treating you like slave workers for peanuts then by all means move on to one of the better ones, don't waste time demanding things from TRIBBLE.
The feedback has already started, the question is rather or not Cryptic will listen.
To be clear though, this isn't just fleets being complainers, the requirements for these grinded provisions are absolutely outlandish. If you can get 20 people at a time working on nothing but generating these provisions it would still take you a couple years to max the holding. And that's for a very large fleet which no longer exists in STO.
These provisions will be in high demand because Fleets simply won't be able to expand by doing things the way they're supposed to. The amount of needed provisions is beyond ludicrous which will make a huge market for them as Druk pointed out. In the end, fleets that can afford to pay players will flourish and fleets that can't will be stagnant as their members give all their provisions to other fleets that pay better.
Just as S13 was the end of general PVE play, S14 will be the end of fleets. At the rate Cryptic is going, there won't be a S15.
Add to this, that the rewards for leveling it up, are not all that impressive. But, this is not unexpected. Of all the mmo's I have played. There are two things that always kill off the player population. Guilds and easy mode. WoW being the primary example here. They started what was affectionately called "welfare gear" with Trial of the Grand Crusade and Ice Crown Citadel. The player warned them, this would cost them players. They continued to make things easier through Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, and Warlords of Draenor. In these three expansions they drove off 50% of their subscriptions, or roughly 6 million players. Which is why Blizzard had to institute the server groups. To give the appearance of an active playerbase.
One would think Cryptic would have learned this, since they were on this path before WoW. The easy, powercreep, grindfest games, never last long. Plus, back in 2013 when they first said they were adding the fleet system, my first words were, "Well, that's great. That will only kill the game."
As you said, STO is currently living up to their name. Servers Temporarily Online. Which, as you also pointed out, might just get turned into, Servers Totally Offline.
So really this holding really will be a massive drain for fleets to fill. Geeez they must reall want to time gate things.
Would someone please go to wherever Cryptic is and drug screen them? ALL of them.
And after you are done drug screening them, would you please make them play this game as a F2P player?
It is things like this which make me wonder if any of them have actually sat down and played their product in the last three or four years.
How much more disconnected from your customers can you be?
The only way I would even think about starting this is if I was a trust fund baby with no job and no life away from my laptop.
I know of people who earned millions of fleet credits for their fleet, yet always being passed over for promotion or being outright denied the opportunity to get fleet gear from their holdings. It's not surprising when they ditch their fleets - that sort of setup does not inspire loyalty.
Fleets like that should rightfully fall behind in their efforts to become a maxed out fleet and a player should not be made to feel guilty for ditching.
These minigames are unlikely to be fun or rewarding, we know cryptic content these days is geared towards boring time consuming grinds, existing only to make their log in statistics look good.
(current featured episode being a refreshing change from that usual format, but unlikely to become the norm.)
The minigame grind potentially rewards the spacepoor in a way Cryptic didn't intend. While the base rewards are unlikely to be worth the time spent, the player grinding has the opportunity to be adequately rewarded for their time spent by other players instead. If you're the sort of person who doesn't mind grinding, this is your opportunity to sell your pitiful minigame rewards to the space whales who these days use STO as a chatroom client.
Especially during the first few days of this new fleet holding grind, where the value of your grinding will be in flux. There's nothing wrong in taking advantage of that.
Think of it as clocking in, doing your repetitive task over and over again, clocking out and ensuring you get paid for your time.
So you're not actually buying them with flarks as you must do with other holdings.
And someone posted a pic somewhere recently of some sort of fleet coffers or something? Is that meaning you can continue to donate even with no project slotted and the fleet leaders can use them anywhere later on? So in essence you always have a means to gain rewards even when no project slots are free like in a big fleet?
I am not sure THEY know how it is going to work, yet.
They have a week to figure all this out.
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” -- Benjamin Franklin
They aren't the only ones that are going to have a problem with it. Something like this, a major time sink, for no real reward. This also has the high potential of running even more players off.
Remember, this is the new age of MMO's. All fun killing mechanics and no real reason to play.
So, yeah, you do you, boo. You do you.
All new content, events and systems get decried as "grinding" on the forums. When there are special rewards, it's "forcing" people to grind and when there aren't, it's a "worthless time sink." And everything is "driving more players away." Go figure. I've come to the conclusion some people just don't want to play the game at all.
Remember what happened to Sean O'Brien, Druk!
"-Grind is good!" --Gordon Geko
Accolades checklist: https://bit.ly/FLUFFYS
Fleet marks are in constant need by several fleets in my alliance, but that may break the game...
This way you could swap your massive pile of unneeded flarks for omega rep marks if you need those, or swap EC for elite rep marks etc.
Basically it opens up a whole world of player driven economics that are currently only possible with some really "pain in the TRIBBLE" work arounds.
This is breaking up the collective entertainment and collective accomplishment for most of the players. This is discouraging and contradictive to the basic idea of a collective effort followed by team or individual success (getting those amazing warpcores and/or armors/weapons).
When you're basically pressing the narcisistic button on a MMO that is highly-dependant on people working together, sacrificing time and effort for a result... That is horrendous, mate. You should knock this off and encourage people getting things working in harmony and in friendly conjucture, not by trying to auction effort and switch fleets around. This type of attrition is ruining the fun of everyone. You can accumulate things which require a level of wealth by other means as well. Fleetmates help each other. I was helped alot and I do my best to help others. After all, we work together ingame for a great trek experience. This is totally encouraging the opposite.
Nor is marks trading thematically appropriate. The marks are a symbolic representation of your good standing, your reputation if you will, with the groups in question. Favors they owe you for fighting for them (or raising funny animals for them, as the case may be). It makes no sense to be able to trade them as if they were actual currency.
The elite marks could maybe be tradeable, though.
The only way to stop that and prevent tossing players out on their ears left and right when you are at a low metric. Is to monetize the various marks and materials themselves. Similar to WoW. I could buy a token for a month of game time. But it can't be used by me. But sold on the AH. Someone else buys it with in game gold which is how you legally buy gold there.
So Cryptic sets up something similar. So you can buy mats for coin. But can only sell them on the exchange. This will have whales putting money in the game and bolster trade. Without killing the market for those that want to play to earn the goods.
Just a thought.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.