I think the OP doesn't go far enough tbh. I've been arguing to for permanent character death for years now. It makes sense from both a storyline perspective and a balancing perspective. If your toon dies, you'd have to start over again.
It would also promote learning how the game works instead of joining a match without any real idea what's going on.
Yet another great idea to turn new players off from this game. I died so many times learning this games ins and outs when I first started that I lost count. So with your twist every time I would have to make a new charecter. Want to know how long I'd keep playing? Maybe a week tops then quit. You need to keep in mind that there are new players coming and going all the time in the game and slapping a perma death penalty on them is not how you attract players or keep them.
Considering the general reaction/attitude toward any PvE that has a fail condition, I'm fairly confident in my assumption that what you suggest would reduce the already stuggling queues to a graveyard.
I'm in favor of removing the respawn option as well, but I'd also add in "Resurrection" abilities, and in the event that the whole team died I would then allow all of them to respawn but with whatever phase they're on resetting to it's beginning.
You know, kinda like how in WoW if the group wipes on a boss the encounter resets and everyone runs back for another attempt. Being able to Zerg through certain queues in STO is a bad thing imho, almost as bad as fail conditions.
Yeah using World of Borecraft as an example is a bad idea. That game is dead and the vast majority left years ago due to things just like what you suggest along witht he stupidly insane 50 plaus man raids that lasted days and had a screwed up loot system. Golly gee I have ahunter that needs that bow but gosh a Death Knight pulled need and got the uber rare bow thay can't even use. Yeah great game WOW since Blizzard sold out to Craptasticvision...
a) The complaints from the glass cannon brigade would be on a par with some of the past "balance" passes that have reduced effectiveness of various pieces of equipment.
Whoe cares? They'll complain no matter what Cryptic does.
b) Many missions are so dps orientated that removing a respawn will have no affect because all the NPC's are dead before they do any real damage and thus place any need on a healer.
The DPS focus is why they are dead. It makes them entirely to boring.
c) Because of the way the NPC's are built and their weapons set up, there are a good deal of times when a player dies because the NPC fires a weapon that near enough one shots them (Borg Invisible Torps of days gone by in ISA or Terran Torpedo spreads for example), no healer is going to be any use in saving players from those.
This would place the ability to survive on the player as well. If you build a glass cannon, it's your fault for dying. Survival should always be a part of a build. This should be enforced with every part of the game, including episodes. If you can't survive you can't win.
The one shots from the old ISE and Terran torps aren't a mechanic. They're a bug. But the randomness of them happening also added to the challenge of the the old Borg Elites.
Something like having to have another player resurrect/render emergency repairs might be a bit more likely to work, but with PUGs in this game if it will I'm not sure.
I like the render emergency repairs part, though we have this for ground already. As you don't die in STO, you are rendered unconscious. As far as what happens in PUGs. Well, Starbase Blockade is a good indicator here. Very few carry the skills and understand the simple mechanic of heal the freighter.
I turned my Fed Sci from back then in to a dil farmer. It use to be a Space/Ground healer, with the setup to tank Aramek. Now there is not much of a call for a healer.
I disagree on your comment that the PVE quques are dead due to DPS. I more realistic reason is there are far to many PVE queques active. Cutting back the number of Active Quesques is a far better solution and I am not talking about retirng any queques but to make a rotation where sat ten different PVE queques are available at any given time say a week or Maintence cycle to cycle and would refresh with ten different queques for the next cycle and so on. This way the choices would be smaller at any givne time so people if they want the XP's or tokens from the queques they would need to do queques they eithe rpassed on or could not get a pug going for them due to the huge number of choices we have now.
While I like the idea. Then you run in to the same problem we have now. The less popular queues being the ones not run. The same would apply here. With the less popular queues in the rotation, they wouldn't be run. So it's not that there are to many queues. It'e more, why bother with the ones where you have to do more than pew. Hence why CCA, ISA, and the RA's are the most popular. You don't have to do anything other than pew. They are also fairly quick to complete.
This is reinforced with the new queues where BFAW and afking are encouraged. The new ground queue is, "meh.. just pew everything." Add to this they have dumbed down the game, like it's a No Child Left Behind program, to where anyone that can press the fire button can win. This style of game play, doesn't retain a player base. Just look at World of Warcraft. They had 12 million accounts during Wrath of the Lich king. I'll be generous here and say at the time 2/3's of those accounts were active subscribers. Putting that number at 8 million active players. At the end of WotLK they started instituting the easier mode of play. Easier to get the gear, easier to level, and have been working on making the game play and skill usage even easier. They did this from WotLK all the way to Warlords of Draenor, and Legion is even easier. During this time they LOST 50% their active subscriptions. That's 4 million players, poof, gone. They recovered some with the subscription token. But, that's marginal compared to what they lost.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to draw the correlation there. The easier the game is, the more people that will leave it. Right now, the only saving grace for STO, is the name Star Trek. Take that away and watch another mass exodus happen, just like it did with the influx of power creep that came with Delta Rising. Granted the auto-fail conditions didn't help much either.
Now to apply some common sense here. If you lose more players, by making the game easier. Then it stands to reason. that increasing the difficulty would then attract more players. The best way I can see to do this, is not to increase the hull/shield of the NPCs. But to leave them as they are, then since they're random spawn on abilities, give them random skill points and specializations at level appropriate settings.They could even set it up to where 1 or 2 per NPC group acted as a healer. Which we know they can setup NPCs to act as healers. The Regeneration probes and Nanite spheres for the Borg RA and ISA show this. This would then present a challenge to the players.
Well if you are going to make a rotation list you would want to make sure that each of the marks from the reps are available to be obtained in, which could mean that stfs that give multiple marks count for each of those reps they give marks for, and then on weeks that you have room (like lets say you would have 10 stf spots) those free spots could be filled with special event ques
Though i have heard myself from many players that it is not the length of stfs that gets them to not want to que, but that so many on the list are well dead. It gives the players a perception of the stfs are going to fill very slow, and so they don't que-up an instead go to other avenues of content to get their marks via.
But the biggest issue for the fact that only the fastest ques fill up. Is that there is little if any incentive to do the longer stfs compared to the much easier an faster grinding you can do doing the stfs we see now. Even though many players hated the random unique drops that existed prior to delta rising, many of the stfs would be played for the sheer fact their was more incentive to do them via those drops (or some marks were only obtained from certain stfs).
Though I will say another reason is that once you get the rewards out of some of the reps, than the incentive to do those stfs that give that mark drops, and the players go for the quickest ques to grind to min-max their ability to convert marks to dil. If we saw periodic updates to the reps giving them some new projects, than it could create more incentive for players to do other stfs once more, just like what happens with the new stfs linked to a new rep.
Well if you are going to make a rotation list you would want to make sure that each of the marks from the reps are available to be obtained in, which could mean that stfs that give multiple marks count for each of those reps they give marks for, and then on weeks that you have room (like lets say you would have 10 stf spots) those free spots could be filled with special event ques
Though i have heard myself from many players that it is not the length of stfs that gets them to not want to que, but that so many on the list are well dead. It gives the players a perception of the stfs are going to fill very slow, and so they don't que-up an instead go to other avenues of content to get their marks via.
But the biggest issue for the fact that only the fastest ques fill up. Is that there is little if any incentive to do the longer stfs compared to the much easier an faster grinding you can do doing the stfs we see now. Even though many players hated the random unique drops that existed prior to delta rising, many of the stfs would be played for the sheer fact their was more incentive to do them via those drops (or some marks were only obtained from certain stfs).
Though I will say another reason is that once you get the rewards out of some of the reps, than the incentive to do those stfs that give that mark drops, and the players go for the quickest ques to grind to min-max their ability to convert marks to dil. If we saw periodic updates to the reps giving them some new projects, than it could create more incentive for players to do other stfs once more, just like what happens with the new stfs linked to a new rep.
The STFs are actually second rate for the mark to dil conversion. The Dyson ground BZ still rules there, hence why it's always active. The main reason the few active STFs remain that way, is they're the fastest way to gain fleet marks.
The things that comes to mind with this idea is. One, is putting the drops back into the STFs. Two, would be to tie the reputation marks into the fleet projects. How much more active would the queues becomes if you needed ____ amount of random reputation mark to complete them? Or ___ of more than one random Reputation mark? These could be used in say, the provisioning projects.
This provides an incentive to play the STFs. But it still leaves us with the problem of not learning how to do them. The only way I could think to help this out. Would be to have the STFs optional increase the pay out on marks. Say for Normal a 25% increase and for Advanced a 50% increase.
The STFs are actually second rate for the mark to dil conversion. The Dyson ground BZ still rules there, hence why it's always active. The main reason the few active STFs remain that way, is they're the fastest way to gain fleet marks.
The things that comes to mind with this idea is. One, is putting the drops back into the STFs. Two, would be to tie the reputation marks into the fleet projects. How much more active would the queues becomes if you needed ____ amount of random reputation mark to complete them? Or ___ of more than one random Reputation mark? These could be used in say, the provisioning projects.
This provides an incentive to play the STFs. But it still leaves us with the problem of not learning how to do them. The only way I could think to help this out. Would be to have the STFs optional increase the pay out on marks. Say for Normal a 25% increase and for Advanced a 50% increase.
That is true if you like ground combat, though many players do prefer space combat over ground. I would imagine that many that just do not like ground combat steer clear of the dyson ground bz instead doing the ques. Of course you also add in that it is also the fastest method of getting fleet marks an well yeah.
I will say it might be interesting to instead of keeping it that you can choose to get fleet marks from stfs, that instead fleet marks are gained either thru fleet projects or fleet stfs (could boost the pop in these). I could see it that a fleet project used for converting might use rep-marks/elite marks.
I think many players would not mind the idea of having drops that are linked either to specific stfs, or even groups of stfs (mabe those linked to the same rep) based on how the drop rate is. Well i would say that you could create incentive to learn how to do the optionals, as well as deal abit with the fact that people felt that the drop rate of the pre-delta items was too slow. How I would do this is that optional objectives in stfs when completed increase the base chance to have stf-item drop, but also you could make it that instead of the optionals giving more reg marks it is how you gain the elite marks. Combined I could see these giving players a good incentive to learn, and complete the optionals than even a 25-50% increase to the reg mark gained from the stfs.
Now the question is how hard would it be to redo the optionals to give out elite mark, or increase the chance at getting a unique drop linked to that stf or a group of stfs.
Yeah those pushing perma death are failing to count in the cash players like me spent to get their gear to epic quality. On just my main it's well over 400 real dollars spent on Zen then converted to Dilth or spent on the 20 key sets. So for giggles lets run the numbers based on the 20 key sets with the instant epic. typical cruiser 8 weapon slots so thats 8 epic tokens for
a) The complaints from the glass cannon brigade would be on a par with some of the past "balance" passes that have reduced effectiveness of various pieces of equipment.
Whoe cares? They'll complain no matter what Cryptic does.
b) Many missions are so dps orientated that removing a respawn will have no affect because all the NPC's are dead before they do any real damage and thus place any need on a healer.
The DPS focus is why they are dead. It makes them entirely to boring.
c) Because of the way the NPC's are built and their weapons set up, there are a good deal of times when a player dies because the NPC fires a weapon that near enough one shots them (Borg Invisible Torps of days gone by in ISA or Terran Torpedo spreads for example), no healer is going to be any use in saving players from those.
This would place the ability to survive on the player as well. If you build a glass cannon, it's your fault for dying. Survival should always be a part of a build. This should be enforced with every part of the game, including episodes. If you can't survive you can't win.
The one shots from the old ISE and Terran torps aren't a mechanic. They're a bug. But the randomness of them happening also added to the challenge of the the old Borg Elites.
Something like having to have another player resurrect/render emergency repairs might be a bit more likely to work, but with PUGs in this game if it will I'm not sure.
I like the render emergency repairs part, though we have this for ground already. As you don't die in STO, you are rendered unconscious. As far as what happens in PUGs. Well, Starbase Blockade is a good indicator here. Very few carry the skills and understand the simple mechanic of heal the freighter.
I turned my Fed Sci from back then in to a dil farmer. It use to be a Space/Ground healer, with the setup to tank Aramek. Now there is not much of a call for a healer.
I disagree on your comment that the PVE quques are dead due to DPS. I more realistic reason is there are far to many PVE queques active. Cutting back the number of Active Quesques is a far better solution and I am not talking about retirng any queques but to make a rotation where sat ten different PVE queques are available at any given time say a week or Maintence cycle to cycle and would refresh with ten different queques for the next cycle and so on. This way the choices would be smaller at any givne time so people if they want the XP's or tokens from the queques they would need to do queques they eithe rpassed on or could not get a pug going for them due to the huge number of choices we have now.
While I like the idea. Then you run in to the same problem we have now. The less popular queues being the ones not run. The same would apply here. With the less popular queues in the rotation, they wouldn't be run. So it's not that there are to many queues. It'e more, why bother with the ones where you have to do more than pew. Hence why CCA, ISA, and the RA's are the most popular. You don't have to do anything other than pew. They are also fairly quick to complete.
This is reinforced with the new queues where BFAW and afking are encouraged. The new ground queue is, "meh.. just pew everything." Add to this they have dumbed down the game, like it's a No Child Left Behind program, to where anyone that can press the fire button can win. This style of game play, doesn't retain a player base. Just look at World of Warcraft. They had 12 million accounts during Wrath of the Lich king. I'll be generous here and say at the time 2/3's of those accounts were active subscribers. Putting that number at 8 million active players. At the end of WotLK they started instituting the easier mode of play. Easier to get the gear, easier to level, and have been working on making the game play and skill usage even easier. They did this from WotLK all the way to Warlords of Draenor, and Legion is even easier. During this time they LOST 50% their active subscriptions. That's 4 million players, poof, gone. They recovered some with the subscription token. But, that's marginal compared to what they lost.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to draw the correlation there. The easier the game is, the more people that will leave it. Right now, the only saving grace for STO, is the name Star Trek. Take that away and watch another mass exodus happen, just like it did with the influx of power creep that came with Delta Rising. Granted the auto-fail conditions didn't help much either.
Now to apply some common sense here. If you lose more players, by making the game easier. Then it stands to reason. that increasing the difficulty would then attract more players. The best way I can see to do this, is not to increase the hull/shield of the NPCs. But to leave them as they are, then since they're random spawn on abilities, give them random skill points and specializations at level appropriate settings.They could even set it up to where 1 or 2 per NPC group acted as a healer. Which we know they can setup NPCs to act as healers. The Regeneration probes and Nanite spheres for the Borg RA and ISA show this. This would then present a challenge to the players.
No thats not why folks left. First was the hell raised by a certain class that were in effect walking gods that finally were balenced out by Death Knights that lead the new owners Activision to cave and nerf the DK's into a joke. Then there were the endless nerfs to Hunters which had prior to the nerfs brougt balence to the warrior class loved when they took away Volley AOE. Then came the 4 in a row revamp to skill trees that took away your fine tuning of you charecter and made them all the same as everyone else. Ad to that the 50 buck price tag for a broken release in the form of Cataclysm. I had played WOW from Vanilla and walked away out of frustration over the Devs caving to cry babies who were to lazy to learn how to beat a new class.
Here is food for thought to those calling for permanent death. Have you even given any thought into the cash players spent for Epic gear? Ignoring farming or buying off the exchange lets use the current 20 key ring with instant epic one per purchase as an example. Each key ring set costs 2250 zen or 25 bucks. So typical crusier is a 4x4 weapons with 4 sots for deflectors,engines, warp core, and shields then another 11 slots for consoles. Thats 23 slots total or 575 dollars to bring ONE typical cruiser up to Epic not counting the level of the gear either. Ad in all the upgradeable gear on your charecter and we are into about a grand. So with most if these being locked to a charecter they go bye bye with permanent death. I don't know about you but losing that kind of money to making a mistake or from some one elese TRIBBLE up either by mistake or on purpose we all have run into those players and I'll take even money you have tanked things on purpose as well and having your ship and charecter die is a major wallet hit. So yeah rethink what you are pushing for.
'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.'
The 'Great Diversion' in this Thread was the 'Perma-death' suggestion.
Been playing a bit of LOTRO again over the last few days. My Character got some satisfaction in completing the North Downs Quest 'Masters of the Black Siege'. You have to defeat 16 Trolls in Dol Dinan.
'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.'
This has nothing to do with "improving the competency of players" whatever the hell that is meant to mean. This is a casual space fighting game that can be played any way you want to, be it a DPS chaser or a light-hearted roleplayer. Nobody needs to be of any particular "competence" to play the basic game.
What is needed is to provide a means to play the game in a more challenging way for those who do like a challenge, which is what Elite content should do, but doesn't.
Now whether that means permanent death, no respawns or fail conditions I don't know. However i do know that such a level of more complex play should be entirely optional and not negatively affect those wanting to play the casual way.
I'm all for more challenge but lets not anyone pretend that STO is a game for serious hardcore gamers. It's a casual friendly space fight with some Trek themed icing on top. As such any sort of EVE style perma-death/loss is not going to go down well with the majority.
This has nothing to do with "improving the competency of players" whatever the hell that is meant to mean. This is a casual space fighting game that can be played any way you want to, be it a DPS chaser or a light-hearted roleplayer. Nobody needs to be of any particular "competence" to play the basic game.
What is needed is to provide a means to play the game in a more challenging way for those who do like a challenge, which is what Elite content should do, but doesn't.
Now whether that means permanent death, no respawns or fail conditions I don't know. However i do know that such a level of more complex play should be entirely optional and not negatively affect those wanting to play the casual way.
I'm all for more challenge but lets not anyone pretend that STO is a game for serious hardcore gamers. It's a casual friendly space fight with some Trek themed icing on top. As such any sort of EVE style perma-death/loss is not going to go down well with the majority.
While I don't mind a perma-death system, it would need a recovery of items process. If this were instituted, I'd say you could recover lock box and lobi items only. Even if that item is a ship. It would just require an R&D project of say, 72 hours to repair the ship(s). The only thing you couldn't get from them would be the traits. You'd have to level those up again. For most this means a recovery of almost the entire ship. The only thing you wouldn't get is any crafted/reputation gear. One could even recoup some of the VR and UR Doffs, sort of rescue them. I'd have to mainly say this would be the active duty roster only. But the chances of this system being implemented are so small they might as well be zero.
As for more challenging, well, as I said, instead of just constantly increasing the NPC's hull/shield/resistances. Start having them spawn with random, level appropriate skill points, specializations and traits as well. This will add to the challenge, since you're now facing random builds.
As for making it worth while to learn how to play the content. They could lower the number of times you're allowed to respawn. But this doesn't help much. Another way to look at this would be to lower a player's reward based on the number of times they respawn. This would only affect that player. The player that didn't die, or didn't die as much, gets the better reward. Then with this, add in an increased reward for completing the optional.
With the random build and reward change. This then presents more challenging content and a reason to learn how to survive it. But it also leaves the problem of afker's and needing to provide some kind of incentive to play the less popular STFs.
Edit:
Since it just came to mind. Using the rotating STFs that have been mentioned. Instead of random rotating STFs. How about random, weekly Bonus marks for them? This could be a 3 per week rotation. For this week, these 3 STFs offer a 50%, or 100%, mark increase upon completing them. Not as a a one time reward, but as an any time you complete them reward.
I think the ghost ship idea is the best in-game way or recovering items once a player does but agree recovery is limited to lobi/lockbox items only.
I like this idea. Though running with it this way. They'd have to open up the quadrants more. A new character can't get to Delta, kind of kills the Ghost Ship idea. Though this could work in both cases of the player'd death being in space or on a ground map.
Hmm... how about more of a distress call for the next character that player uses? That way they can just T-Warp to it, to recoup their stuff, within 24 hours.
After this 24 hour is up, have it stay there for another 24 hours as a first come, first serve salvage. Not sure what one would be able to get here though.
Nabreeki, the day they bring permadeath into this game is the day I stop playing.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Here is food for thought to those calling for permanent death. Have you even given any thought into the cash players spent for Epic gear? Ignoring farming or buying off the exchange lets use the current 20 key ring with instant epic one per purchase as an example. Each key ring set costs 2250 zen or 25 bucks. So typical crusier is a 4x4 weapons with 4 sots for deflectors,engines, warp core, and shields then another 11 slots for consoles. Thats 23 slots total or 575 dollars to bring ONE typical cruiser up to Epic not counting the level of the gear either. Ad in all the upgradeable gear on your charecter and we are into about a grand. So with most if these being locked to a charecter they go bye bye with permanent death. I don't know about you but losing that kind of money to making a mistake or from some one elese **** up either by mistake or on purpose we all have run into those players and I'll take even money you have tanked things on purpose as well and having your ship and charecter die is a major wallet hit. So yeah rethink what you are pushing for.
Here is food for thought to those calling for permanent death. Have you even given any thought into the cash players spent for Epic gear? Ignoring farming or buying off the exchange lets use the current 20 key ring with instant epic one per purchase as an example. Each key ring set costs 2250 zen or 25 bucks. So typical crusier is a 4x4 weapons with 4 sots for deflectors,engines, warp core, and shields then another 11 slots for consoles. Thats 23 slots total or 575 dollars to bring ONE typical cruiser up to Epic not counting the level of the gear either. Ad in all the upgradeable gear on your charecter and we are into about a grand. So with most if these being locked to a charecter they go bye bye with permanent death. I don't know about you but losing that kind of money to making a mistake or from some one elese **** up either by mistake or on purpose we all have run into those players and I'll take even money you have tanked things on purpose as well and having your ship and charecter die is a major wallet hit. So yeah rethink what you are pushing for.
I don't feel sorry for people losing money on things that can be achieved without spending money in the first place. A fool and his money are soon parted, after all.
Perma-death is a major positive step in restructuring the game, attracting a different type of player that, honestly, might give this game a second life. Right now we have many thousands of part time players (those who only hop on for new missions/season events), some sunk-cost fallacy lunatics, RPers (thankfully in much diminished numbers), "casual players" who use the term "Casual" to mask "I suck at this game but refuse to learn", and a growing majority of players who are looking for more -- more challenge, difficulty. They want to go into a battle with something at stake.
Removal of the hard fail conditions in STFs was a major misstep. To improve the general competency of the playerbase, we need a new population of players and a way to incentivize competent gameplay in the existing playerbase. For those who can't keep up, the know where the door is.
It's also a great idea for balancing out space wealth. Those who die will have 24 hours to recover some of their inventory, but not all. Throughout history, calamity has been the great equalizer within civilizations.
The answer to your question, ssbn655, appears to be "Yes, but IDGAF because i'm so l33t that I won't be hoist on my own petard" . From the posts in this thread, he/she/it seems to see permadeath as the perfect mechanism to purge STO of the filthy casuals, potatoes, and *gasp* RPers that infest it, and usher in a new golden age in which the self proclaimed elite players, an august group of whom he/she/it is undoubtedly a member, will frolic in sunlit uplands, and never meet or have to deal with anyone who doesn't think or play the game like they do ever again.
But sterner measure will be required to see such a purge through properly....it must be extended to failing a Admiralty or Duty Officer mission to catch the "cheaters" who tried to evade "justice" by not actually doing missions or PVE and hoping to ride it out by sticking to DOff and Admiralty Missions until the plummeting playerbase brings Cryptic to their senses. And to force the crafters and Ferengi wannabes to put some skin in the game too, there needs to be a way to enable "elite" players to expropriate their space wealth by right of conquest...why should they get to sit on dozens of lockbox ships to sell on the exchange with impunity? They should be forced to prove they are worthy of having their space wealth by defending it with their lives, if need be. I can see it now...a mandatory PVP que where the winner gets all the loser's stuffz....if the player doesn't show up for the match a bot fights for them in a random ship from their active roster. Hiding the space wealth in an alt account won't help them because if they don't level up that alt they'll just find themselves in a T1 Miranda facing a 150,000 DPS buzzsaw with billions in space wealth on the line. Great fun, I'm sure they'll get tons of new players....not.
PS - Is it not fashionable to buy ship/bank/Doff ect slots or something? All I see people discuss losing with a toon is lobi/lockbox stuff, nobody seemed to bring up what else costing Zen would go *poof* with a toon dying.
Permanent death is something you design into a game from the start, not something you change 7 years down the line. STO's design is completely incompatible with that.
Harder content or difficulty settings with no respawn would be nice...if and only if they also fixed the reward structures that currently make anything harder/longer than CCA a complete waste of time.
Considering the general reaction/attitude toward any PvE that has a fail condition, I'm fairly confident in my assumption that what you suggest would reduce the already stuggling queues to a graveyard.
I'm in favor of removing the respawn option as well, but I'd also add in "Resurrection" abilities, and in the event that the whole team died I would then allow all of them to respawn but with whatever phase they're on resetting to it's beginning.
You know, kinda like how in WoW if the group wipes on a boss the encounter resets and everyone runs back for another attempt. Being able to Zerg through certain queues in STO is a bad thing imho, almost as bad as fail conditions.
Yeah using World of Borecraft as an example is a bad idea. That game is dead and the vast majority left years ago due to things just like what you suggest along witht he stupidly insane 50 plaus man raids that lasted days and had a screwed up loot system. Golly gee I have ahunter that needs that bow but gosh a Death Knight pulled need and got the uber rare bow thay can't even use. Yeah great game WOW since Blizzard sold out to Craptasticvision...
There hasn't been a 40 man raid since either TBC or Vanilla. Modern WoW raiding has a queue difficulty, plus normal and Heroic which scale based on group size with a minimum of 10 players, and Mythic which requires 20. The loot system has also changed and players can now only roll on things designed for their class, with most non-raid loot now using a "personal loot" system in which players are awarded loot specifically for them which is then automatically placed in their bag without a roll.
All of that is irrelevant to my suggestion though, because the system I described, where instance encounters reset on a wipe and players try again after rezzing, is how every other MMO I've played other than STO has had instances work. STOs system, on the other hand, encourages a solo mentality and all but guarantees eventual victory as long as you keep respawning, and the alternative that Cryptic came up with, fail conditions, was absolutely stupid.
To help explain how this would work, let's take Borg Disconnected as an example. With my suggestion, failing to liberate enough Borg ships during the Undine phase, or everyone dieing, would result in everyone bring teleported / rezzed back to the start location, the Undine arrival cinematic replaying, and the phase starting over. No free win, but no fail and 30 minute lockout either.
Considering the general reaction/attitude toward any PvE that has a fail condition, I'm fairly confident in my assumption that what you suggest would reduce the already stuggling queues to a graveyard.
I'm in favor of removing the respawn option as well, but I'd also add in "Resurrection" abilities, and in the event that the whole team died I would then allow all of them to respawn but with whatever phase they're on resetting to it's beginning.
You know, kinda like how in WoW if the group wipes on a boss the encounter resets and everyone runs back for another attempt. Being able to Zerg through certain queues in STO is a bad thing imho, almost as bad as fail conditions.
Yeah using World of Borecraft as an example is a bad idea. That game is dead and the vast majority left years ago due to things just like what you suggest along witht he stupidly insane 50 plaus man raids that lasted days and had a screwed up loot system. Golly gee I have ahunter that needs that bow but gosh a Death Knight pulled need and got the uber rare bow thay can't even use. Yeah great game WOW since Blizzard sold out to Craptasticvision...
There hasn't been a 40 man raid since either TBC or Vanilla. Modern WoW raiding has a queue difficulty, plus normal and Heroic which scale based on group size with a minimum of 10 players, and Mythic which requires 20. The loot system has also changed and players can now only roll on things designed for their class, with most non-raid loot now using a "personal loot" system in which players are awarded loot specifically for them which is then automatically placed in their bag without a roll.
All of that is irrelevant to my suggestion though, because the system I described, where instance encounters reset on a wipe and players try again after rezzing, is how every other MMO I've played other than STO has had instances work. STOs system, on the other hand, encourages a solo mentality and all but guarantees eventual victory as long as you keep respawning, and the alternative that Cryptic came up with, fail conditions, was absolutely stupid.
To help explain how this would work, let's take Borg Disconnected as an example. With my suggestion, failing to liberate enough Borg ships during the Undine phase, or everyone dieing, would result in everyone bring teleported / rezzed back to the start location, the Undine arrival cinematic replaying, and the phase starting over. No free win, but no fail and 30 minute lockout either.
Great idea, how about giving players on higher difficulties three chances to get it right? If they fail on all three attempts then it could be classed as a fail.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Here is food for thought to those calling for permanent death. Have you even given any thought into the cash players spent for Epic gear? Ignoring farming or buying off the exchange lets use the current 20 key ring with instant epic one per purchase as an example. Each key ring set costs 2250 zen or 25 bucks. So typical crusier is a 4x4 weapons with 4 sots for deflectors,engines, warp core, and shields then another 11 slots for consoles. Thats 23 slots total or 575 dollars to bring ONE typical cruiser up to Epic not counting the level of the gear either. Ad in all the upgradeable gear on your charecter and we are into about a grand. So with most if these being locked to a charecter they go bye bye with permanent death. I don't know about you but losing that kind of money to making a mistake or from some one elese **** up either by mistake or on purpose we all have run into those players and I'll take even money you have tanked things on purpose as well and having your ship and charecter die is a major wallet hit. So yeah rethink what you are pushing for.
Here is food for thought to those calling for permanent death. Have you even given any thought into the cash players spent for Epic gear? Ignoring farming or buying off the exchange lets use the current 20 key ring with instant epic one per purchase as an example. Each key ring set costs 2250 zen or 25 bucks. So typical crusier is a 4x4 weapons with 4 sots for deflectors,engines, warp core, and shields then another 11 slots for consoles. Thats 23 slots total or 575 dollars to bring ONE typical cruiser up to Epic not counting the level of the gear either. Ad in all the upgradeable gear on your charecter and we are into about a grand. So with most if these being locked to a charecter they go bye bye with permanent death. I don't know about you but losing that kind of money to making a mistake or from some one elese **** up either by mistake or on purpose we all have run into those players and I'll take even money you have tanked things on purpose as well and having your ship and charecter die is a major wallet hit. So yeah rethink what you are pushing for.
I don't feel sorry for people losing money on things that can be achieved without spending money in the first place. A fool and his money are soon parted, after all.
Perma-death is a major positive step in restructuring the game, attracting a different type of player that, honestly, might give this game a second life. Right now we have many thousands of part time players (those who only hop on for new missions/season events), some sunk-cost fallacy lunatics, RPers (thankfully in much diminished numbers), "casual players" who use the term "Casual" to mask "I suck at this game but refuse to learn", and a growing majority of players who are looking for more -- more challenge, difficulty. They want to go into a battle with something at stake.
Removal of the hard fail conditions in STFs was a major misstep. To improve the general competency of the playerbase, we need a new population of players and a way to incentivize competent gameplay in the existing playerbase. For those who can't keep up, the know where the door is.
It's also a great idea for balancing out space wealth. Those who die will have 24 hours to recover some of their inventory, but not all. Throughout history, calamity has been the great equalizer within civilizations.
The answer to your question, ssbn655, appears to be "Yes, but IDGAF because i'm so l33t that I won't be hoist on my own petard" . From the posts in this thread, he/she/it seems to see permadeath as the perfect mechanism to purge STO of the filthy casuals, potatoes, and *gasp* RPers that infest it, and usher in a new golden age in which the self proclaimed elite players, an august group of whom he/she/it is undoubtedly a member, will frolic in sunlit uplands, and never meet or have to deal with anyone who doesn't think or play the game like they do ever again.
But sterner measure will be required to see such a purge through properly....it must be extended to failing a Admiralty or Duty Officer mission to catch the "cheaters" who tried to evade "justice" by not actually doing missions or PVE and hoping to ride it out by sticking to DOff and Admiralty Missions until the plummeting playerbase brings Cryptic to their senses. And to force the crafters and Ferengi wannabes to put some skin in the game too, there needs to be a way to enable "elite" players to expropriate their space wealth by right of conquest...why should they get to sit on dozens of lockbox ships to sell on the exchange with impunity? They should be forced to prove they are worthy of having their space wealth by defending it with their lives, if need be. I can see it now...a mandatory PVP que where the winner gets all the loser's stuffz....if the player doesn't show up for the match a bot fights for them in a random ship from their active roster. Hiding the space wealth in an alt account won't help them because if they don't level up that alt they'll just find themselves in a T1 Miranda facing a 150,000 DPS buzzsaw with billions in space wealth on the line. Great fun, I'm sure they'll get tons of new players....not.
PS - Is it not fashionable to buy ship/bank/Doff ect slots or something? All I see people discuss losing with a toon is lobi/lockbox stuff, nobody seemed to bring up what else costing Zen would go *poof* with a toon dying.
Look no further than 'Transdimensional Tactics' a 'Hard' Mission on Nakura Prime. You try to Respawn there and you are locked out in the waiting area until it is over.
'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.'
Permanent death is something you design into a game from the start, not something you change 7 years down the line. STO's design is completely incompatible with that.
Harder content or difficulty settings with no respawn would be nice...if and only if they also fixed the reward structures that currently make anything harder/longer than CCA a complete waste of time.
Normally I'd agree with the first part of your post, but if you saw STO at the start you'd agree that there wasn't much of anything designed into the game at all. It was a badly mismanaged game at launch, and a lot of what we enjoy now was built into the game afterwards.
Cryptic really needed another year to work on the game before launch. Unfortunately, after Perpetual wasted several years getting nowhere CBS was impatient, and Cryptic only got the IP because they could save time by adapting their existing engine.
Comments
Yet another great idea to turn new players off from this game. I died so many times learning this games ins and outs when I first started that I lost count. So with your twist every time I would have to make a new charecter. Want to know how long I'd keep playing? Maybe a week tops then quit. You need to keep in mind that there are new players coming and going all the time in the game and slapping a perma death penalty on them is not how you attract players or keep them.
Yeah using World of Borecraft as an example is a bad idea. That game is dead and the vast majority left years ago due to things just like what you suggest along witht he stupidly insane 50 plaus man raids that lasted days and had a screwed up loot system. Golly gee I have ahunter that needs that bow but gosh a Death Knight pulled need and got the uber rare bow thay can't even use. Yeah great game WOW since Blizzard sold out to Craptasticvision...
While I like the idea. Then you run in to the same problem we have now. The less popular queues being the ones not run. The same would apply here. With the less popular queues in the rotation, they wouldn't be run. So it's not that there are to many queues. It'e more, why bother with the ones where you have to do more than pew. Hence why CCA, ISA, and the RA's are the most popular. You don't have to do anything other than pew. They are also fairly quick to complete.
This is reinforced with the new queues where BFAW and afking are encouraged. The new ground queue is, "meh.. just pew everything." Add to this they have dumbed down the game, like it's a No Child Left Behind program, to where anyone that can press the fire button can win. This style of game play, doesn't retain a player base. Just look at World of Warcraft. They had 12 million accounts during Wrath of the Lich king. I'll be generous here and say at the time 2/3's of those accounts were active subscribers. Putting that number at 8 million active players. At the end of WotLK they started instituting the easier mode of play. Easier to get the gear, easier to level, and have been working on making the game play and skill usage even easier. They did this from WotLK all the way to Warlords of Draenor, and Legion is even easier. During this time they LOST 50% their active subscriptions. That's 4 million players, poof, gone. They recovered some with the subscription token. But, that's marginal compared to what they lost.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to draw the correlation there. The easier the game is, the more people that will leave it. Right now, the only saving grace for STO, is the name Star Trek. Take that away and watch another mass exodus happen, just like it did with the influx of power creep that came with Delta Rising. Granted the auto-fail conditions didn't help much either.
Now to apply some common sense here. If you lose more players, by making the game easier. Then it stands to reason. that increasing the difficulty would then attract more players. The best way I can see to do this, is not to increase the hull/shield of the NPCs. But to leave them as they are, then since they're random spawn on abilities, give them random skill points and specializations at level appropriate settings.They could even set it up to where 1 or 2 per NPC group acted as a healer. Which we know they can setup NPCs to act as healers. The Regeneration probes and Nanite spheres for the Borg RA and ISA show this. This would then present a challenge to the players.
Though i have heard myself from many players that it is not the length of stfs that gets them to not want to que, but that so many on the list are well dead. It gives the players a perception of the stfs are going to fill very slow, and so they don't que-up an instead go to other avenues of content to get their marks via.
But the biggest issue for the fact that only the fastest ques fill up. Is that there is little if any incentive to do the longer stfs compared to the much easier an faster grinding you can do doing the stfs we see now. Even though many players hated the random unique drops that existed prior to delta rising, many of the stfs would be played for the sheer fact their was more incentive to do them via those drops (or some marks were only obtained from certain stfs).
Though I will say another reason is that once you get the rewards out of some of the reps, than the incentive to do those stfs that give that mark drops, and the players go for the quickest ques to grind to min-max their ability to convert marks to dil. If we saw periodic updates to the reps giving them some new projects, than it could create more incentive for players to do other stfs once more, just like what happens with the new stfs linked to a new rep.
The STFs are actually second rate for the mark to dil conversion. The Dyson ground BZ still rules there, hence why it's always active. The main reason the few active STFs remain that way, is they're the fastest way to gain fleet marks.
The things that comes to mind with this idea is. One, is putting the drops back into the STFs. Two, would be to tie the reputation marks into the fleet projects. How much more active would the queues becomes if you needed ____ amount of random reputation mark to complete them? Or ___ of more than one random Reputation mark? These could be used in say, the provisioning projects.
This provides an incentive to play the STFs. But it still leaves us with the problem of not learning how to do them. The only way I could think to help this out. Would be to have the STFs optional increase the pay out on marks. Say for Normal a 25% increase and for Advanced a 50% increase.
That is true if you like ground combat, though many players do prefer space combat over ground. I would imagine that many that just do not like ground combat steer clear of the dyson ground bz instead doing the ques. Of course you also add in that it is also the fastest method of getting fleet marks an well yeah.
I will say it might be interesting to instead of keeping it that you can choose to get fleet marks from stfs, that instead fleet marks are gained either thru fleet projects or fleet stfs (could boost the pop in these). I could see it that a fleet project used for converting might use rep-marks/elite marks.
I think many players would not mind the idea of having drops that are linked either to specific stfs, or even groups of stfs (mabe those linked to the same rep) based on how the drop rate is. Well i would say that you could create incentive to learn how to do the optionals, as well as deal abit with the fact that people felt that the drop rate of the pre-delta items was too slow. How I would do this is that optional objectives in stfs when completed increase the base chance to have stf-item drop, but also you could make it that instead of the optionals giving more reg marks it is how you gain the elite marks. Combined I could see these giving players a good incentive to learn, and complete the optionals than even a 25-50% increase to the reg mark gained from the stfs.
Now the question is how hard would it be to redo the optionals to give out elite mark, or increase the chance at getting a unique drop linked to that stf or a group of stfs.
No thats not why folks left. First was the hell raised by a certain class that were in effect walking gods that finally were balenced out by Death Knights that lead the new owners Activision to cave and nerf the DK's into a joke. Then there were the endless nerfs to Hunters which had prior to the nerfs brougt balence to the warrior class loved when they took away Volley AOE. Then came the 4 in a row revamp to skill trees that took away your fine tuning of you charecter and made them all the same as everyone else. Ad to that the 50 buck price tag for a broken release in the form of Cataclysm. I had played WOW from Vanilla and walked away out of frustration over the Devs caving to cry babies who were to lazy to learn how to beat a new class.
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.'
Been playing a bit of LOTRO again over the last few days. My Character got some satisfaction in completing the North Downs Quest 'Masters of the Black Siege'. You have to defeat 16 Trolls in Dol Dinan.
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.'
What is needed is to provide a means to play the game in a more challenging way for those who do like a challenge, which is what Elite content should do, but doesn't.
Now whether that means permanent death, no respawns or fail conditions I don't know. However i do know that such a level of more complex play should be entirely optional and not negatively affect those wanting to play the casual way.
I'm all for more challenge but lets not anyone pretend that STO is a game for serious hardcore gamers. It's a casual friendly space fight with some Trek themed icing on top. As such any sort of EVE style perma-death/loss is not going to go down well with the majority.
While I don't mind a perma-death system, it would need a recovery of items process. If this were instituted, I'd say you could recover lock box and lobi items only. Even if that item is a ship. It would just require an R&D project of say, 72 hours to repair the ship(s). The only thing you couldn't get from them would be the traits. You'd have to level those up again. For most this means a recovery of almost the entire ship. The only thing you wouldn't get is any crafted/reputation gear. One could even recoup some of the VR and UR Doffs, sort of rescue them. I'd have to mainly say this would be the active duty roster only. But the chances of this system being implemented are so small they might as well be zero.
As for more challenging, well, as I said, instead of just constantly increasing the NPC's hull/shield/resistances. Start having them spawn with random, level appropriate skill points, specializations and traits as well. This will add to the challenge, since you're now facing random builds.
As for making it worth while to learn how to play the content. They could lower the number of times you're allowed to respawn. But this doesn't help much. Another way to look at this would be to lower a player's reward based on the number of times they respawn. This would only affect that player. The player that didn't die, or didn't die as much, gets the better reward. Then with this, add in an increased reward for completing the optional.
With the random build and reward change. This then presents more challenging content and a reason to learn how to survive it. But it also leaves the problem of afker's and needing to provide some kind of incentive to play the less popular STFs.
Edit:
Since it just came to mind. Using the rotating STFs that have been mentioned. Instead of random rotating STFs. How about random, weekly Bonus marks for them? This could be a 3 per week rotation. For this week, these 3 STFs offer a 50%, or 100%, mark increase upon completing them. Not as a a one time reward, but as an any time you complete them reward.
I like this idea. Though running with it this way. They'd have to open up the quadrants more. A new character can't get to Delta, kind of kills the Ghost Ship idea. Though this could work in both cases of the player'd death being in space or on a ground map.
Hmm... how about more of a distress call for the next character that player uses? That way they can just T-Warp to it, to recoup their stuff, within 24 hours.
After this 24 hour is up, have it stay there for another 24 hours as a first come, first serve salvage. Not sure what one would be able to get here though.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
The answer to your question, ssbn655, appears to be "Yes, but IDGAF because i'm so l33t that I won't be hoist on my own petard" . From the posts in this thread, he/she/it seems to see permadeath as the perfect mechanism to purge STO of the filthy casuals, potatoes, and *gasp* RPers that infest it, and usher in a new golden age in which the self proclaimed elite players, an august group of whom he/she/it is undoubtedly a member, will frolic in sunlit uplands, and never meet or have to deal with anyone who doesn't think or play the game like they do ever again.
But sterner measure will be required to see such a purge through properly....it must be extended to failing a Admiralty or Duty Officer mission to catch the "cheaters" who tried to evade "justice" by not actually doing missions or PVE and hoping to ride it out by sticking to DOff and Admiralty Missions until the plummeting playerbase brings Cryptic to their senses. And to force the crafters and Ferengi wannabes to put some skin in the game too, there needs to be a way to enable "elite" players to expropriate their space wealth by right of conquest...why should they get to sit on dozens of lockbox ships to sell on the exchange with impunity? They should be forced to prove they are worthy of having their space wealth by defending it with their lives, if need be. I can see it now...a mandatory PVP que where the winner gets all the loser's stuffz....if the player doesn't show up for the match a bot fights for them in a random ship from their active roster. Hiding the space wealth in an alt account won't help them because if they don't level up that alt they'll just find themselves in a T1 Miranda facing a 150,000 DPS buzzsaw with billions in space wealth on the line. Great fun, I'm sure they'll get tons of new players....not.
PS - Is it not fashionable to buy ship/bank/Doff ect slots or something? All I see people discuss losing with a toon is lobi/lockbox stuff, nobody seemed to bring up what else costing Zen would go *poof* with a toon dying.
Harder content or difficulty settings with no respawn would be nice...if and only if they also fixed the reward structures that currently make anything harder/longer than CCA a complete waste of time.
If i could give an upvote you Sir, would get one.
There hasn't been a 40 man raid since either TBC or Vanilla. Modern WoW raiding has a queue difficulty, plus normal and Heroic which scale based on group size with a minimum of 10 players, and Mythic which requires 20. The loot system has also changed and players can now only roll on things designed for their class, with most non-raid loot now using a "personal loot" system in which players are awarded loot specifically for them which is then automatically placed in their bag without a roll.
All of that is irrelevant to my suggestion though, because the system I described, where instance encounters reset on a wipe and players try again after rezzing, is how every other MMO I've played other than STO has had instances work. STOs system, on the other hand, encourages a solo mentality and all but guarantees eventual victory as long as you keep respawning, and the alternative that Cryptic came up with, fail conditions, was absolutely stupid.
To help explain how this would work, let's take Borg Disconnected as an example. With my suggestion, failing to liberate enough Borg ships during the Undine phase, or everyone dieing, would result in everyone bring teleported / rezzed back to the start location, the Undine arrival cinematic replaying, and the phase starting over. No free win, but no fail and 30 minute lockout either.
Great idea, how about giving players on higher difficulties three chances to get it right? If they fail on all three attempts then it could be classed as a fail.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
Bravo, comrade. This really does say it all.
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.'
Cryptic really needed another year to work on the game before launch. Unfortunately, after Perpetual wasted several years getting nowhere CBS was impatient, and Cryptic only got the IP because they could save time by adapting their existing engine.